Hutchinson - Searching for Jesus : new discoveries in the quest for Jesus of Nazareth-- and how they confirm the Gospel accounts

PRAISE FOR SEARCHING FOR JESUS

This entertaining book, setting its scenes with plenty of local color, demonstrates just how far the modern skepticism about Jesus has overreached itself. Questions remain, but Robert Hutchinson reminds us that we do not need to be browbeaten by those who say that only negative answers are available.

N. T. Wright, Ph.D., author of Simply Good News and
Chair of New Testament and Early Christianity at the
School of Divinity at the University of St. Andrews

Robert Hutchinsons new bookSearching for Jesus: New Discoveries in the Quest for Jesus of Nazarethis a significant and very welcomed contribution to the discussion about the Historical Jesus. In his book, Hutchinson reviews recent archaeological finds and new directions in New Testament scholarship that challenge some of the older theories. He does it with great clarity and in a lively and intriguing way.

Israel Knohl, Ph.D., Yehezkel Kaufmann Chair in
Biblical Studies, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem

Searching for Jesus is an excellent, informed, up-to-date review of biblical research presented in clear, engaging prose for the average reader. Again and again, Robert Hutchinson shows how recent historical and archaeological investigations have overturned many of the bias-laden and unverified conclusions of biblical scholarship in the past century. Searching for Jesus will teach you, challenge you, and encourage you. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is seeking the truthabout Jesus of Nazareth and about the historical accuracy of the Gospels.

Mark D. Roberts, Ph.D., author of Can We Trust the
Gospels? and executive director of the Max De Pree
Center for Leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary

2015 by Robert J. Hutchinson

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition. 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, DC. Used by permission of the copyright owner. All rights reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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ISBN: 978-0-7180-1849-8 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015943724

ISBN: 978-0-7180-1830-6 (HC)

ISBN: 978-0-7180-7797-6 (IE)

15 16 17 18 19 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

I have come to set the earth on fire.

LUKE 12:49

For our first grandchild, Theodore,
whose name means Gods gift

CONTENTS

, .
Test everything; hold fast to what is good.

1 THESSALONIANS 5:21 NRSV

We must love them both, those whose opinions
we share and those whose opinions we reject.
For both have labored in the search for truth,
and both have helped us in the finding of it.

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

F or more than a century, Bible scholars and university researchers have been systematically debunking much of what ordinary Christians thought they knew about Jesus of Nazareth. Every Christmas and Easter over the years, educated Christians grew accustomed to reading magazine cover stories and seeing TV documentaries purporting to demonstrate that most traditional beliefs about Jesus are not merely fairy tales but outright fabrications.

But what if a lot of what we have been told about the historical Jesus of Nazarethmany of the academic orthodoxies weve heard over the decades from university experts and media sourcesturned out to be... false?

What if parts of the New Testament were actually composed by eyewitnesses to the events, perhaps even when Jesus was living in Galilee?

What if Jesus was not a Zealot revolutionary... or a Greek Cynic philosopher... or a proto-feminist Gnostic... but precisely who he claimed to be, the divine Son of Man prophesized in the book of Daniel, who gave his life as a ransom for many?

What if some people in Jesus time and place knew precisely what that meantand, contrary to what Christians have been told for the past two hundred years by scholars, were actually expecting a suffering and dying messiah who would redeem the world?

In short: What if everything the Gospels say about Jesus of Nazarethhis words, his deeds, his plansactually turned out to be... true?

This is a book about new discoveries in the search for Jesus of Nazareth. Its an overview of recent archaeological finds and new developments in biblical scholarship that are calling into question much of what skeptical scholars have assumed and asserted about Jesus over the past two centuries.

It argues that many of the scientific or scholarly ideas about Jesus paraded in the media every Christmas and Easter are increasingly obsolete, based on assumptions, theories, and unproven hypotheses that are, in some cases, more than a century old and which have been superseded by more recent research.

Among the recent developments discussed in this book are:

the 2012 announcement of the discovery of seven previously unknown New Testament papyrione of which, from the gospel of Mark, may date to the first century;

the 2009 discovery of a first-century stone house in Nazareth that refutes one of the key arguments used by those who say Jesus never existed;

a young secular scholar in the UK who recently argued that the gospel of Mark was written not forty or fifty years after Jesus death, as many scholars have claimed for at least a century, but more like five or ten;