A Jewish Life of Jesus

Extract

Jesus Of Nazareth. His Times, His Life, And His Teachings. By Joseph Klausner, Jerusalem, 1922.

The author of this Life of Jesus is a well-known scholar, who has written much, especially in Hebrew periodicals such as “Ha-Shiloh,” of which he became editor in 1903. To Christian scholars he is best known by “Die Messianischen Vorstellungen des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter der Tannaiten” (Berlin, 1904), a work distinguished to its advantage from the ordinary literature on the subject by the limitation of its field to a definite period, the first two centuries of the Christian era, and to sources recognized as authoritative. In that volume he showed himself amply acquainted with the modern Christian literature on Jewish messianic beliefs and expectations. In his Life of Jesus the same familiarity with New Testament criticism and discussion, down to the most recent, and with writings that deal at large or incidentally with the life and teaching of Jesus, appears on every page. It is, as he says, the first time that a Jewish scholar, writing in Hebrew and primarily for Jewish readers, has attempted to present the life of Jesus in the light of historical criticism and with the methods of the modern historian; previous lives of Jesus in Hebrew having been written either for the purpose of converting Jews to Christianity or of combating this propaganda.