Displacing Jesus


Book Description

Displacing Jesus studies the inner workings of Thomas Jefferson’s editing and shortening of the Gospels of the New Testament, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. It uncovers the immanent moves of his editorial project and shows how he makes judgments on what to include and exclude from the Gospels. As the book analyzes Jefferson’s gospel, it reconstructs his cut-and-paste project as a displacing of the biblical story of Jesus into a war on Jewish authorities. Ignoring nearly all traditional religious themes, the new gospel reframes the story into a battle against the narrow and hypocritical morality of the leaders of Second Temple Judaism. Surprisingly, Jefferson’s editing does provide a robust, if not traditional, theology and a Christology centered in the passion of the Shepherd-Sage who performs his death for Wisdom. Displacing Jesus ends by connecting Jefferson’s creation in The Life and Morals with theological themes, with the history of his views on religion, and with comments on how new insights into Jefferson’s gospel can inform contemporary Jefferson research.




100 Days with Jesus


Book Description

I have designed this book to help Christians who are ready to walk with Jesus. And especially for those who have had some basic training in the elements of NT Discipleship. As you start, if you are extremely blessed, you may become a disciple in 100 days. It took the Apostles over 1000 days in the direct, miraculous, personal presence of God, Himself! That is why 100 days might not be nearly enough time. But, with the Holy Spirit's help, it could be more than enough. And you could even find yourself so blessed that God uses you to start a Disciple Making Movement (DMM), which reaches your entire area for Christ! This has happened before and is happening today. Why not in and through you? God's great love is for you and your region, too!







Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination


Book Description

Movies about the life of Jesus continue to be a fascinating way to consider how the Gospels present an image and a narrative of Jesus. In Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination, Jeffrey Staley and Richard Walsh use their biblical knowledge and admiration for films to summarize eighteen popular Jesus movies and to show exactly where each movie parallels the Gospel accounts of Jesus's life. The authors provide teachers and students easy access to both Gospel and film parallels, enhancing the value of these select films as teaching tools and useful resources for pastors, those leading discussions of films, and libraries.




Following Jesus


Book Description

Two questions are braided together in Luke’s Gospel. Who is Jesus, and what does it mean to be his student and apprentice? The church has spent much of its intellectual energies on the first question, but not so much on the second. We are precise in our Christology and vague in our Discipleology (my new word!). Of the four biographies that open the New Testament, Luke is perhaps the best equipped to answer the question of what it means to follow Jesus along with others, and what we can expect in the process. Luke’s Gospel is dense with story after story about Jesus’s stumbling, goofy, persistent disciples. And his second volume—Acts—continues the tale. There is a deep continuity, as Luke teaches, between Jesus’s original disciples and the ones who later declared their allegiance to him after his resurrection. We walk in the footsteps of pioneers in this new way of living with a Jesus who is always near but just beyond sight. The aim of this book is to plunder the fruits of New Testament scholarship, especially the tools of rhetorical and narrative criticism, to highlight what an incredible adventure came with the call to follow me.




Jesus of Nazareth: The Deep State of Rome


Book Description

Two irrefutable truths are the starting point of a journey in which Tomás Morales embarks us through an incontrovertible investigative logic through an extensive and necessary stretch of historical analysis that leads us to discover the roots, characteristics and universal socioeconomic conditions that end up leading to Populism and the methods it uses for its implantation and perpetuation, regardless of the historical period. Morales has gone further - he always goes further - and does not settle for characters that perhaps reach the category of a footnote in a history book, but points directly to the famous Jesus of Nazareth, proving that he is a myth commissioned whose construction was a carbon copy of the quirky Buddha mahāyāna and considering him the hero of the "most successful populist plot in history." Deconstructing the Myth of Jesus of Nazareth is the title chosen to pull the thread that will confront with the truth “2,350 million Christians, 1,350 million Muslims, 520 million Buddhists, that is, a total of 4,220 million believers, or that is, people who believe it ”and the institutions that manipulate them. Deconstructing the myth of Jesus of Nazareth is a mandatory reading that warns of the risks of faith for those who consider themselves believers and, therefore, unsuspecting collaborators of populist organizations whose legitimacy is based on History defined as “a literary genre of fiction […] A collection of stories written on request ”and that“ taking it seriously refers to the infantile postures necessary to achieve being indoctrinated and enlisted ”, and those are big words. Happy journey.




Displacing Christian Origins


Book Description

Blanton Ward traces the current critical engagement of Agamben, Derrida and Zizek, among others, back to the 19th and early 20th century philosophers of early Christianity.




Bible In/and Popular Culture


Book Description

In popular culture, the Bible is generally associated with films: The Passion of the Christ, The Ten Commandments, Jesus of Montreal, and many others. Less attention has been given to the relationship between the Bible and other popular media such as hip-hop, reggae, rock, and country and western music; popular and graphic novels; animated television series; and apocalyptic fantasy. This collection of essays explores a range of media and the way the Bible features in them, applying various hermeneutical approaches, engaging with critical theory, and providing conceptual resources and examples of how the Bible reads popular culture—and how popular culture reads the Bible. This useful resource will be of interest for both biblical and cultural studies. The contributors are Elaine M. Wainwright, Michael Gilmour, Mark McEntire, Dan W. Clanton Jr., Philip Culbertson, Jim Perkinson, Noel Leo Erskine, Tex Sample, Roland Boer, Terry Ray Clark, Steve Taylor, Tina Pippin, Laura Copier, Jaap Kooijman, Caroline Vander Stichele, and Erin Runions.







Jesus, Symbol of God


Book Description

Already hailed as a landmark in contemporary Catholic theology, Jesus Symbol of God surveys scriptural data, the key moments in the development of doctrine, and the distinctive horizons of our contemporary world to develop a comprehensive and systematic christology for our time. The task of christology is to explain what it means to say that Jesus is the bearer and revealer of God in the Christian community, the decisive mediation of God's salvation -- or, in other words, the symbol of God.