A Christian Sceptic
26th January 2008, 02:08 PM
In case anyone's interested.
A Book Review:
Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels by Michael Grant (1977)
“But above all, if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus’ existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned., p. 200”
I took a Roman History course in college and when it came to the topic of Jesus the history teacher (who was not a Christian I don’t think) kept it simple – most historians believe he existed and what we know of him was he was a Jewish teacher who started the religion of Christianity. Anything more about what his life meant, what his teachings meant, and religious aspects are not the realm of history. This teacher was very adament about getting the point across to us students that the historian takes each piece of literature for what it is – Shakespeare is good drama, Dante is good poetry, Suetonius is good gossip. :) All these may contain history in them and it’s the historians job, if possible, to glean and separate the history out.
Michael Grant attempts to do this with the gospels to discover the factual Jesus. As he writes: “There are three possible approaches to this task. One can write as a believer, or as an unbeliever, or (as I have attempted to do) as a student of history seeking, as far as one’s background and conditions permit, to employ methods that make belief or unbelief irrelevant. P. 198”
He combines his extensive knowledge of Rome (He was a classicist with a specialization in ancient currency - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Grant_%28author%29) with what was known of Judaism to attempt to build up a history of Jesus’ life. This is tough though because the primary sources are the Gospels which he admits are entirely unique forms of literature: “They do not fit into any known genre of literature, ancient or modern., p. 180” He does, thankfully in my opinion, recognize that the Gospels weren’t meant to be history. “the writers of the gospels, their aims being what they were , had no intention of limiting themselves to these facts of prosaic history. For they interwove them with a great deal of other material as well. But so did ancient pagan writers on historical subjects. P. 182”
Michael Grant does explain that the history of Christianity is to be looked at, because although the primary reason for writing the gospels was spiritual and the history was second, the claims of Christianity are of historical importance. Michael Grant boldly claims “since Christianity is the only religion which stands or falls by supposed historical happenings. P. 182”
The majority of the book Michael Grant spends going through different periods and themes of Jesus life, what he probably claimed and how people interpreted those claims. The last few chapters are a summary and explanations of how historical analyses works. He also touches on the christ-myth believers with which he, obviously, disagreed.
Since this book only covers Jesus life he only briefly touches on the beginnings of the early church and what he believes happened. He apparently has a few other books – one called The Jews in the Roman World , one called St Peter: A Biography, and one called Saint Paul. Perhaps he talks more about that in those books.
Christians might want to read this, not only for the original interpretation of the factual events, which may be challenging in and of themselves, but also for all the background information this book provides about the times and places. The bibliography he includes has many other books to dive further into. People who do not believe in Christianity might still like to read this – if anything, to learn about how a prominent historian viewed Jesus.
As is to be expected some of his interpretations of some of the verses I disagree with. But overall I can’t tell what Michael Grant really believes. He comes to some conclusions but he never tells what that means to him or should mean to me or how I should take it – and perhaps that’s a strength. A historian shouldn’t be telling you those things – he should be concerned with finding the truth itself and trying to lay it bare for all to see. A historian shouldn’t want something to turn out to be true or false. That, to Michael Grant, is the correct approach. And with Jesus it appears the challenge to historians and laymen alike is to determine what Jesus said and did and then consider the significance of what he said and did.
After reading this book I’m left with the conviction of the historical fact of Jesus existence more than ever, but I’m not satisfied with some of the questions his book leaves me with. I’ll have to read his other works in order to satisfy the curiousity which he has invoked.
A Book Review:
Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels by Michael Grant (1977)
“But above all, if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus’ existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned., p. 200”
I took a Roman History course in college and when it came to the topic of Jesus the history teacher (who was not a Christian I don’t think) kept it simple – most historians believe he existed and what we know of him was he was a Jewish teacher who started the religion of Christianity. Anything more about what his life meant, what his teachings meant, and religious aspects are not the realm of history. This teacher was very adament about getting the point across to us students that the historian takes each piece of literature for what it is – Shakespeare is good drama, Dante is good poetry, Suetonius is good gossip. :) All these may contain history in them and it’s the historians job, if possible, to glean and separate the history out.
Michael Grant attempts to do this with the gospels to discover the factual Jesus. As he writes: “There are three possible approaches to this task. One can write as a believer, or as an unbeliever, or (as I have attempted to do) as a student of history seeking, as far as one’s background and conditions permit, to employ methods that make belief or unbelief irrelevant. P. 198”
He combines his extensive knowledge of Rome (He was a classicist with a specialization in ancient currency - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Grant_%28author%29) with what was known of Judaism to attempt to build up a history of Jesus’ life. This is tough though because the primary sources are the Gospels which he admits are entirely unique forms of literature: “They do not fit into any known genre of literature, ancient or modern., p. 180” He does, thankfully in my opinion, recognize that the Gospels weren’t meant to be history. “the writers of the gospels, their aims being what they were , had no intention of limiting themselves to these facts of prosaic history. For they interwove them with a great deal of other material as well. But so did ancient pagan writers on historical subjects. P. 182”
Michael Grant does explain that the history of Christianity is to be looked at, because although the primary reason for writing the gospels was spiritual and the history was second, the claims of Christianity are of historical importance. Michael Grant boldly claims “since Christianity is the only religion which stands or falls by supposed historical happenings. P. 182”
The majority of the book Michael Grant spends going through different periods and themes of Jesus life, what he probably claimed and how people interpreted those claims. The last few chapters are a summary and explanations of how historical analyses works. He also touches on the christ-myth believers with which he, obviously, disagreed.
Since this book only covers Jesus life he only briefly touches on the beginnings of the early church and what he believes happened. He apparently has a few other books – one called The Jews in the Roman World , one called St Peter: A Biography, and one called Saint Paul. Perhaps he talks more about that in those books.
Christians might want to read this, not only for the original interpretation of the factual events, which may be challenging in and of themselves, but also for all the background information this book provides about the times and places. The bibliography he includes has many other books to dive further into. People who do not believe in Christianity might still like to read this – if anything, to learn about how a prominent historian viewed Jesus.
As is to be expected some of his interpretations of some of the verses I disagree with. But overall I can’t tell what Michael Grant really believes. He comes to some conclusions but he never tells what that means to him or should mean to me or how I should take it – and perhaps that’s a strength. A historian shouldn’t be telling you those things – he should be concerned with finding the truth itself and trying to lay it bare for all to see. A historian shouldn’t want something to turn out to be true or false. That, to Michael Grant, is the correct approach. And with Jesus it appears the challenge to historians and laymen alike is to determine what Jesus said and did and then consider the significance of what he said and did.
After reading this book I’m left with the conviction of the historical fact of Jesus existence more than ever, but I’m not satisfied with some of the questions his book leaves me with. I’ll have to read his other works in order to satisfy the curiousity which he has invoked.