Un certain juif Jésus – Tome 2

John P. Meier shines a spotlight on Jesus himself, on the way he appeared in his particular message and through his actions. The volume opens with an initial and now hotly debated line of questioning: the importance of Jesus’ connections to John the Baptist. To what extent did Jesus share the practice and the message of this prophet who brought crowds together for a baptism and called for a radical lifestyle change in light of the impending day of judgement before God? The author then seeks to ascertain how Jesus’ own message took form, which was fundamentally rooted in the Jewish faith and expectations of his time but which declared the importance of a forthcoming new dawn. He also attempts to capture as much of what Jesus actually said as possible, and in the same terms he used. It was essentially the announcement of a kingdom of God, paradoxically the future and underway “all around you”. What is, in its original context, the portal of this announcement, revealed by the bewildering rapture and even by a new prayer? This kingdom is announced both by the acts, those gestures of Jesus himself which his disciples understood to be miracles. Were those numerous acts detailed in the chronicles of the Gospel simply the case of a miracle worker, possibly even a magician? What acts were actually carried out, under what circumstances and in order to do what? Such scrutiny of the texts can only provide answers which are partial, sometimes problematic. But how valuable! It is the only an approach which offers real dependable consistency, in terms of thorough historical science, regarding the figure of Jesus of Nazareth