The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is

About this book

Today a renewed and vigorous scholarly quest for the historical Jesus is underway. In the midst of well-publicized and controversial books on Jesus N. T. Wrights lectures and writings have been widely recognized for providing a fresh provocative and historically credible portrait. Now this paperback edition of Wrights classic work contains the same original content plus even more insight with an all-new introduction by the author.Out of his own commitment to both historical scholarship and Christian ministry Wright challenges us to roll up our sleeves and take seriously the study of the historical Jesus. He writes "Many Christians have been frankly sloppy in their thinking and talking about Jesus and hence sadly in their praying and in their practice of discipleship. We cannot assume that by saying the word Jesus still less the word Christ we are automatically in touch with the real Jesus who walked and talked in first-century Palestine. . . . Only by hard historical work can we move toward a fuller comprehension of what the Gospels themselves were trying to say."The Challenge of Jesus poses a double-edged challenge: to grow in our understanding of the historical Jesus within the Palestinian world of the first century and to follow Jesus more faithfully into the postmodern world of the twenty-first century.