Jesus, A Jewish Galilean: A New Reading Of The Jesus Story
Pages
224
Publisher
T&T Clark
Published
2004
ISBN-13
9780567084675
In his latest book, Sean Freyne draws on his detailed knowledge of Galilean society in the Roman period, based on both literary and archaeological sources, to give a fresh and provocative reading of the Jesus story within its Galilean setting. Jesus, a Jewish Galilean focuses on the religious as well as the social and political environment and examines the ways in which the Jewish religious experience had expressed itself in Galilee. It considers the ways in which the Jewish tradition in both the Pentateuch and the Prophets had constructed notions of an ideal Galilee. These provided the raw material for Jesus' own response to the issues of the day, from which he fashioned his own distinctive views of Israel's restoration and his own role in that project. Although Freyne is in touch with all recent scholarship about the historical Jesus, he brings his own distinctive take on the issues both with regard to Galilean society and Jesus' grounding in his own religious tradition. His Jesus is both Jewish and yet distinctive in his concerns and the ways in which he responds to the ecological, social and religious issues of his own time and place. Freyne seeks to retrieve the theological importance of Jesus' own message, something that has been lost sight of in the trend to present him primarily as a social reformer, while acknowledging the dangers of modernizing Jesus.
Reviews
Review of Biblical Literature (RBL) (Joshua Burns)
June 1, 2005
June 1, 2005
Sean Freyne begins the preface to his new book by expressing a thought that will surely be on the mind of most readers who might venture to read it: Yet another attempt to discover the historical Jesus! (xi). The se arch for the historical Jesus has indeed consumed so much attention amidst modern New Testament scholarship that we are now seeing volumes devoted to sorting out the various and often disparate portraits yielded by the investigation. In fact, Freyne himself has produced one such volume, Galilee, Jesus, and the Gospel: Literary Approaches and Historical Investigations (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), an evaluation of the New Testament as a source for the social history of the Jesus movement. Following the cautious methodology typical of his extensive work on the Galilee region, Freyne s earlier study mined the Gospels for data attesting to the geographical and social surroundings of the Galilee of Jesus day. In Jesus, a Jewish Galilean, Freyne resumes his prior investigation with an exploration of how Jesus might have related to the Galilee as an ideologically charged Jew living in the first century C.E. Whereas Freyne s prior study followed the main stream of historical Jesus research by seeking to identify the tangible aspects of Jesus activities in the Galilee, the present study seeks to define how Jesus understand his role in the unique environs of the region. In this respect, Jesus, a Jewish Galilean is not simply another attempt to discover the historical Jesus but a tour of the Galilee guided from Jesus perspective.
[Full Review]