The Changing Faces of Jesus

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 1 APR 2001

This academic yet accessible book tackles the question of Jesus' identity by attempting to strip away theological and historical interpretations in order to reach the original, Jewish, human Jesus. Vermes, professor emeritus of Jewish studies at Oxford, begins with the Gospel of John, which he asserts was the first to ascribe divine status to Jesus, and proceeds through the Pauline letters, the Book of Acts and the Synoptic Gospels. Along the way, he dismantles any statements about Jesus' life that he feels to be inaccurate or questionable. Vermes argues instead that if one returns to the actual and indisputable words of Jesus as stated by the Synoptic Gospels, and if one also takes into account the historical and Jewish religious tenor of the time, Jesus is revealed as a "prophet-like holy man, mighty in deed and word, a charismatic healer and exorcist." Vermes's Jesus is a teacher concerned with the Kingdom of God on earth, in the tradition of other Jewish holy men. The book sometimes engages in speculative reasoning: for example, a) Luke was an associate of Paul, b) Paul's theology is missing from Acts, c) "one would have expected an associate of Paul to do better than that," so d) Luke must not have written Acts. For the most part, however, Vermes ably poses the critical questions that have characterized the "quest for the historical Jesus," adding a few of his own.