This author, N.T. Wright,has a theory which develops into an agenda.Instead of sound historical study, he presents a work of speculative revisionism with arrogant presumpion on the reader to come out of his benightedness into Wright's new insight: "T... (more)

This author, N.T. Wright,has a theory which develops into an agenda.Instead of sound historical study, he presents a work of speculative revisionism with arrogant presumpion on the reader to come out of his benightedness into Wright's new insight: "The new pattern that WE find fits into the prophetic profile of Jesus that WE are building up." He claims, "it is not going beyond the evidence to suggest..." when the only "evidence" is the basic theory he has devolved, spun in lacy cobwebs of his mind and not based on historical reading of the Scriptures. Thus, the Last Supper becomes for Wright a "metaphor". Dealing with Christ's miracles is awkward for Wright. Call them "mighty works" that might well have been "magic". "Few serious historians now deny that Jesus, and for that matter many other people, performed cures and did other starting things for which there was no natural explanation." Christ's resurrection from the dead Wright does not mention ...except to imply some symbolism. The cures attributed to Christ "and many others for that matter" (sic)he does not care to engage. Just ignore. History or terribly flawed research? "But Christan apologetics has moved on as well: 'miracles' are not advances as 'proof' of anythng much. What matters far more is intention and meaning." And Wright will tell repeatedly how we "credibly reconstruct". (I love the "apologetics has moved on" line. Moved on to what? Where?) Miracles prove nothing? Only to the irreconciled skeptic with a bad theory.According to the author,Jesus was a deluded messiah , and if you follow his theory of Christ's life and existence you know He had a "strange vocation", "spoke in riddles",that the "symbolism and story-telling of Jesus makes sense only..." as it fits into Wright's tortured and abberational scenario.Skepticism, not honest history calls miracles 'mighty works" that were "supposed events" that "friend and for alike believed him to be doing such things....and they were more or less true".
This book is NOT scholarly history. It reflects an author whose interpretation is authentically his own, yes, and devastating far from honest history. He ignores the strongest testimony: people who were present and wrote what Jesus said and did contemporaneously. They didn't fit his bald theories of interpreted "intent". Jerome A Urbik (less)

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