Jesus in the Jewish world

the long version

Readers of the present volume are offered lively and often humorous accounts of the impact of Jesus the Jew on Christian and Jewish readers; of the value of Josephus as a historical source regarding John the Baptist, James the brother of the Lord, and Jesus; the historical implications of ancient Jewish biblical exegesis; of the inside story of the monumental recasting by Vermes and his friends of Emil Schürer's History of the Jewish people; and of the sacrifice of Isaac and the story of the first-century Galilean rabbi, Hanina ben Dosa. The final two essays, written in 2007 and 2010, are particularly noteworthy, the first propounding a fresh and revolutionary approach to methodology in the study of the historical Jesus and the second restating and reinforcing Vermes's stance in the half-a-century long Son of Man debate.