Schalom Ben-Chorin (1913-1999) wrote some thirty books on Jewish historical and cultural themes. Jared S. Klein is a professor of linguistics, classics, and Germanic and Slavic languages at the University of Georgia. Max Reinhart is a professor of German and head of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages at the University of Georgia.
"For centuries we Christians have imagined a composite gospel
picture of Jesus's life and viewed it through the developing
tradition of our own faith. It has usually been the Nazarene
through Christian eyes. But what happens when a Jew imagines the
Nazarene through Jewish eyes? Schalom Ben-Chorin's 1967 classic
gives Jesus his proper context as a first-century Jew and sees him
within that Judaism's vibrant and on-going tradition. But his book
also carries a deeper challenge in the delicacy of its titular
address and the pain of its terminal image. Those who stand with
the crucifiers cannot stand with the crucified. Where have we
Christians been standing throughout most of those centuries? Who,
then, is brother to 'the Jew on the cross'?"--John Dominic
Crossan
"[An] elegant translation of the 1967 German original."--"Journal
of the American Academy of Religion"
"This is a precious book. We see a Jewish intellectual
deconstructing the Christian gospels in his quest to reconstruct
his brother Jesus. It is also a poignant book. For though he knew
that the gospels were Christian myth, they were the only texts he
had. His pursuit of historical truth despite the mystifications of
the texts reveals the no-nonsense logic of an exceptionally
well-trained mind in a relentless struggle with German scholarship.
And in the end, by an amazing control of historical imagination,
Ben-Chorin does catch sight of his non-Christian Jewish brother.
Some will celebrate this book as the excellent translation of a
most readable classic on the historical Jesus. But it is more. It
is a moving documentation of a little-known chapter of cultural and
intellectual history. It should be read as a meditation on the
civility and skill of a German-Jewish scholar in pre- and
post-holocaust debate with the Christian mind."--Burton L. Mack
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