Jesus : a brief history / W. Barnes Tatum.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Drawing on examples from literature, art, and popular culture, as well as theology, this engaging book reveals the importance of the question, "whose was he?" in fully understanding the life and legacy of Jesus. A concise, accessible and engaging exploration of Jesus's life and enduring influence Charts the changing global status and influence of Jesus, a Galilean Jew born when the ancient Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean world, and how he has come to be honored as the Christ and recognized by billions of people around the world Traces the reception history of Jesus and his story over the past two millennia, through art, literature, and culture, as well as theology Draws on a fascinating range of materials - from ancient texts, creeds, and theological treatises, to the visual and dramatic arts, including books like The DaVinci Code and films such as The Passion of the Christ

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Tatum (Greensboro College) offers a reception history of Jesus, beginning with Roman Palestine and tracing portrayals of Jesus through Europe, India, and China to today's US in text, art, and architecture. Attempting a comprehensive survey in such a brief volume inevitably provokes questions about the criteria for the volume's illustrative selections. Despite some relatively minor historical mischaracterizations, the selected portrayals of Jesus are contextualized sufficiently to justify the volume's use as an introduction to the history of Christianity. The narrative is anchored to familiar ports-of-call in the history of Christian theology, e.g., the Jesus of the earliest Jesus movement, Paul's Jesus, and the Jesus of the creeds, Augustine, Aquinas, or Luther. Welcome side trips offer brief encounters with noncanonical and unorthodox portrayals of Jesus, including a valuable look through multiple media at the Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist Jesus. The book's limited treatment of the Jesus of personal mystical experience and the lack of a theoretical perspective relevant to its substantial evidence for the imaging of Jesus as an exercise in both communal and individual identity construction are the volume's obvious weaknesses. A topically arranged, select bibliography, chapter endnotes, and a single subject/proper name index enhance this introductory text's classroom usefulness. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and general readers. J. C. Hanges Miami University