Jesus Christ Jesus Christ. - The Historical Figure of Jesus

PENGUIN BOOKS

THE HISTORICAL FIGURE OF JESUS

Professor E. P. Sanders is America's most distinguished scholar in the field of Jesus-research today I hope to see The Historical Figure of Jesus widely used; it will be a healthy antidote to some of the extravagant claims made recently about the historical Jesus' Professor John B. Meier, Catholic University

A non-dogmatic, non-religious study of the evidence for Jesus's existence and career by a leading expert' Paul Johnson in the Sunday Times Books of the Year

A remarkably lucid book, that provides a comprehensive account of the life of Jesus from a historian's point of view. An excellent textbook for undergraduates, this volume will also be useful for graduate students and scholars as a convenient synthesis of the views of a major new testament scholar' Professor John J. Collins, University of Chicago

An exceptionally lucid and informative account of the relevant evidence (both Christian and non-Christian) and the problems it poses' G. A. Wells in the New Humanist

Better reading than most detective stories' E. C. Hodgkin in the Tablet Books of the Year

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

After receiving two baccalaureates in his native Texas, E. P. Sanders pursued graduate studies in Gttingen, Jerusalem, Oxford and New York, culminating in a Th.D. from Union Theological Seminary. He joined the Faculty at McMaster University, Ontario, in 1966. In 1984 he was elected Dean Ireland's Professor of Exegesis in the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Queen's College. He moved to Duke University, North Carolina, as Arts and Sciences Professor of Religion in 1990. He has held visiting professorships and lectureships at Trinity College, Dublin, and Cambridge University.

His field of special interest is Judaism and Christianity in the Graeco-Roman world. Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977) won national book awards and Jesus and Judaism (1985) won the Grawemeyer Award in Religion and was chosen as one of the most significant works of religious history in the 1980s by the Sunday Correspondent. Other publications include The Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition (1969), Paul, the Law and the Jewish People (1983), Studying the Synoptic Gospels (with Margaret Davies, 1989), Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah (1990), Paul: Past Master (1991) and Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE-66 CE (1992).

In recent years E. P. Sanders has received further degrees: Doctor of Letters from the University of Oxford and Doctor of Theology (honoris causa) from the University of Helsinki. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.

E. P. SANDERS

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published by Allen Lane The Penguin Press 1993

Published in Penguin Books 1995

Copyright E. P. Sanders, 1993

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-192822-7

For Jack and Susan