The Acts of Jesus : The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus
1 Edition
Hardcover, 560 pages
Published by A Polebridge Press Book published by HarperSanFrancisco
Publication date:
Dimensions (in inches): 1.71 x 9.56 x 7.63
ISBN: 0060629789
Seventy-nine scholars worked six years on this new translation of the Gospels in order to "produce in the American reader an experience comparable to that of the first readers--or listeners--of the Gospel." Most attempts to translate the Bible into contemporary English fall flat because they're blatantly agenda-driven or because they rescue the Gospels from limp Victorian prose only to encrust them in awkward contemporary jargon. The Acts of Jesus, by contrast, listens closely to the Greek styles of the Original texts, then renders each distinctive voice in modern English. Consequently, Luke sounds like a good college English professor, but Mark sounds rougher, like street language. The text is color-coded--words in red indicate events that the translators believe to have actually taken place, for instance--and the volume also includes exhaustive commentary and indices by the members of the Jesus Seminar. Only the heartiest of readers will make use of all this auxiliary information. For most of us, the freshness of the language ("You scholars and Pharisees, you impostors! Damn you! You slam the door of Heaven's domain in people's faces.") is the most valuable discovery in The Acts of Jesus. --Michael Joseph Gross
The bestselling author of "The Five Gospels" and "Honest to Jesus" furthers his explorations in "The Acts of Jesus". "It is Funk's evangelistic zeal, as much as his unorthodox views, that has placed him and his California-based seminar at the forefront of the modern historical Jesus quest and at the center of the scholarly storm".--"U.S. News & World Report".
For over a decade, the Jesus Seminar, a group of more than seventy-five internationally recognized biblical scholars - experts in such diverse fields as Greco-Roman history, archaeology, and linguistics - has met twice yearly to conduct a painstaking search for the authentic Jesus. Through rigorous research and debate, they have combed the gospels for evidence of the man behind the myths. The figure they have discovered is very different from the icon of traditional Christianity. The Acts of Jesus presents and illuminates the historical and literary evidence that led to the Seminar's often controversial conclusions. It provides the reader with immediate access to the latest scholarship in historical Jesus research today. --This text refers to the paperback edition of this title.
Customer Comments
ps418@aol.com from Louisville, Kentucky , 05/09/98, rating=9:
Clearest and most honest modern English translation ever
Historically speaking, translations of the Gospels have obscured rather than elucidated their meaning and style. The 'characters' behind the compositions, their style, is typically lost in translation. The scholars version compiled by the Seminar allows the style and meaning of the original compositions to come through, in modern, unpretentious English, in a way which no other translation has ever done. Mark's grammatically rough Koine Greek comes through true to life, and Luke's superior compositional skills come through with clarity; The Acts of Jesus, like the rest of Funk's works, is set aside by its clarity, insight, and honesty. I would recommend it to anyone who is more interested in who and what Jesus really was rather than what the anonymous gospel writers in the late first century thought of him.
John Coombs (jcoombs@computeraide.com) from New York State , 04/29/98, rating=3:
Basically the same old stuff.
The Jesus Seminar and Robert Funk continues the same old story of recreating Jesus in any way that
they can to remove him from the religious world. Their intellectual dishonesty is smeared across the pages to expose their real agenda - convince you that Jesus was nothing more than a sage and try convince you that Jesus, God and religious standards are foolish and restrictive.
--This text refers to the paperback edition of this title.
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