Jesus of Nazareth

by Verhoeven, Paul; Van Scheers, Rob; Massotty, Susan

• ISBN13: 9781609803483
• ISBN10: 1609803485
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-11-29
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press

Summary

Building on the work of biblical scholarsRudolph Bultmann, Raymond Brown, Jane Schaberg, and Robert Funk, among othersfilmmaker Paul Verhoeven disrobes the mythical Jesus to reveal a man who has much in common with other great political leaders throughout historyhuman beings who believed that change was coming in their lifetimes. Gone is the Jesus of the miracles, gone the son of God, gone the weaver of arcane parables whose meanings are obscure. In their place Verhoeven gives us his vision of Jesus as a complete man, someone who was changed by events, the leader of a political movement, and, perhaps most importantly, someone who, in his speeches and sayings, introduced a new ethic in which the embrace of human contradictions transcends the mechanics of value and worth that had defined the material world before Jesus. "The Romans saw [Jesus] as an insurrectionist, what today is often called a terrorist. It is very likely there were 'wanted' posters of him on the gates of Jerusalem. He was dangerous because he was proclaiming the Kingdom of Heaven, but this wasn't the Kingdom of Heaven as we think of it now, some spectral thing in the future, up in the sky. For Jesus, the Kingdom of Heaven was a very tangible thing. Something that was already present on Earth, in the same way that Che Guevara proclaimed Marxism as the advent of world change. If you were totalitarian rulers, running an occupation like the Romans, this was troubling talk, and that was why Jesus was killed." Paul Verhoeven, from profile by Mark Jacobson in New York Magazine

Author Biography

After receiving advanced degrees in math and physics, PAUL VERHOEVEN began to make movies, eventually moving from his native Holland to Los Angeles in 1985, where he also became the only non-theologian admitted into the Jesus Seminar, a group of seventy-seven eminent scholars in theology, philosophy, linguistics, and biblical history. Verhoeven is the director of successful films such as Turkish Delight, The Fourth Man, RoboCop, Basic Instinct, and Starship Troopers.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
Introduction: My Search for the Historical Jesus	p. 1
From Conception to Early Adulthood	p. 31
John the Baptist and Jesus	p. 39
Jesus' Proclamation of the Kingdom of God	p. 53
Jesus the Exorcist	p. 79
Jesus Flees	p. 93
The Transfiguration	p. 113
The Confrontation	p. 131
Lazarus Is Killed	p. 141
The Last Day of Jesus' Life	p. 161
The Traitor	p. 179
Epilogue	p. 187
The Secret Gospel of Mark	p. 189
Did Jesus Select the Twelve Disciples Himself?	p. 197
Notes	p. 201
Interview with The Fourth R	p. 265
Bibliography	p. 277
Index of Scriptural Passages	p. 289
Index	p. 297
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.