INTERPRETING JESUS

Essays on the Gospels

N. T. Wright

ZONDERVAN ACADEMIC

Interpreting Jesus

Copyright © 2020 by N. T. Wright

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ISBN 978-0-310-09864-5 (hardcover)

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations taken from the Old Testament are either the author’s own translation or taken or adapted from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, with Apocrypha, Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved; Scripture quotations from the New Testament are either the author’s own translation or from his published translation, The New Testament for Everyone (SPCK, 2019; US edn, The Kingdom New Testament, Zondervan HarperCollins, 2012) © 2011, 2019

Scripture quotation marked AV from the Authorized Version of the Bible (The King James Bible), the rights in which are vested in the Crown, is reproduced by permission of the Crown’s Patentee, Cambridge University Press.

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Cover Design: Brand Navigation

For the principal, staff and students

at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford

Contents

Preface

List of Abbreviations

1 Towards a Third ‘Quest’? Jesus Then and Now

2 Jesus, Israel and the Cross

3 ‘Constraints’ and the Jesus of History

4 Taking the Text with Her Pleasure: A Post-Post-Modernist Response to J. Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus

5 Jesus

6 Five Gospels but No Gospel: Jesus and the Seminar

7 Resurrection in Q?

8 Introduction to the Second Edition of B. F. Meyer, The Aims of Jesus

9 Kingdom Come: The Public Meaning of the Gospels

10 Whence and Whither Historical Jesus Studies in the Life of the Church?

11 The Evangelists’ Use of the Old Testament as an Implicit Overarching Narrative

12 John, Jesus and ‘The Ruler of This World’: Demonic Politics in the Fourth Gospel?

13 Pictures, Stories and the Cross: Where Do the Echoes Lead?

14 Son of Man—Lord of the Temple? Gospel Echoes of Psalm 8 and the Ongoing Christological Challenge

15 Son of God and Christian Origins

16 History, Eschatology, and New Creation in the Fourth Gospel: Early Christian Perspectives on God’s Action in Jesus, with Special Reference to ...