I don't know anything about this stuff except what I overhear my husband ranting about it. The true character of the gospels figures as a theme in a book he's writing, so he's done a lot of reading in the field, and has already read the Atlantic piece you mentioned, though I haven't. He was initially very intrigued by the work of the Jesus seminar, (of which Kloppenborg is a member in good standing) but now sees it as an effort somehow deformed by the impulse to extract from a particular reading of the Q document a non-apocalytic or non-eschatological historical Jesus. (BTW, he now inclines to the view that in fact, this is wrong, and that, if there was an historical Jesus, he was an eschatological nut case. A summary of this position can be found, he tells me, in a book he says is wonderful, Jesus of Nazareth, Millenarian Prophet, by Dale C. Allison, Jr., Fortress Press, 1999, although he says that Dale Allison wouldn't put it in terms quite as strong as his. Meaning the nut case characterization.)
I will definitely go to www.google.com and bookmark it, and thanks for doing that research. |
