A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus: The Roots of the Problem and the Person, Vol. 1 by John P. Meier (PDF)

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In this definitive book on the real, historical Jesus, one of our foremost biblical scholars meticulously sifts the evidence of 2,000 years to portray neither a rural magician nor a figure of obvious power, but a marginal Jew.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: From Library Journal This study inaugurates a new series that seeks to examine various topics (e.g., anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, theology) as they relate to the Bible. The series is intended for the general reader as well as for scholars. Here, Meier (New Testament studies, Catholic Univ. of America) adopts a two-tier approach: he delineates up-to-date research on the Jesus of history with discussions geared toward well-read general readers, and in his extensive notes he discusses technical matters of interest to doctoral students and scholars. Meier explains issues of method, definitions and sources, and then turns to the birth, years of development, and cultural background of Jesus. He distinguishes between “what I know about Jesus by research and what I hold by faith.” His study is a necessary purchase for academic libraries.- Cynthia Widmer, Downingtown, Pa.Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus Reviews Meier (Religion/Catholic Univ. of America), a Catholic priest, offers a vigorously honest, skeptical, and scholarly attempt to discover the historical Jesus. The author poses an intriguing hypothetical: “suppose that a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, and an agnostic…hammered out a consensus document on who Jesus of Nazareth was.” Meier tries to create such a “consensus document” by examining the fundamental facts of Jesus’ life (while excluding those aspects of Jesus’ biography that are premised on tenets of Christian belief, like the Resurrection). In this, the first volume of a two-part work, Meier carefully conducts an exegesis of the “Roots of the Problem” (the New Testament texts, which are not primarily historical works; the apocryphal gospels; and the fleeting references in the works of Josephus, Tacitus, and other pagan and Jewish writers that constitute the entire historical record of Jesus), and an analysis of the “Roots of the Person” (in which Meier brings hermeneutic tools to bear on the birth, development, and early years of Jesus). Meier points out Jesus’ historical “marginality”–his peripheral involvement in the society, history, and culture of his age–that ironically underscores the central position he has occupied in Western culture in the centuries since he died. Rife with scholarly terminology, and thus slow going for the nonspecialist–but, still, a superb examination of a fascinating historical problem. — Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. From the Publisher In this definitive book on the real, historical Jesus, one of our foremost biblical scholars meticulously sifts the evidence of 2,000 years to portray neither a rural magician nor a figure of obvious power, but a marginal Jew. From the Inside Flap In this definitive book on the real, historical Jesus, one of our foremost biblical scholars meticulously sifts the evidence of 2,000 years to portray neither a rural magician nor a figure of obvious power, but a marginal Jew. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Professor Bart Ehrman (author of “Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium”) recommended this book to me as one of the best treatments of the historical Jesus.I put off reading it because I was daunted by John P. Meier’s erudition and the proposed length of the series (five volumes) as I am a general reader who has only done a little reading on the historical Jesus.Surprisingly, it turns out, the language is accessible and the content understandable for the layperson (with a little background knowledge). This is due in no small part to Mr. Meier’s avoidance of too much technical jargon, and his systematic organization and presentation of what historians can reasonably say about the subject, given “the fragmentary nature of the sources, and the indirect nature of the arguments”. (It also helps that Mr. Meier puts the more technical aspects of his arguments in the extensive notes at the end of each chapter, allowing the reader to choose to read them or not.)I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to read the first volume of a comprehensive treatment of the Jesus of history (not the Jesus of faith).

⭐Why even bother trying to learn about the historical Jesus? Why try where so many others have given up or gotten bogged down in disagreement? In his great, academic book, Fr. John Meier recalls Plato: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” For the Christian, some things are sacred, but nothing about Yeshu the “marginal” Jew is forbidden in a proper historical examination. And Fr. Meier does just that in this, the first of three volumes. Was Jesus an illegitimate child? Could he read? Did he have brothers and sisters? Why was he “marginal”? What was his early life like?The scarcity of the evidence can at first be discouraging, but Fr. Meier takes us through the centuries of scholarship and the best available modern evidence to paint us a picture of the young son of Mary and Joseph. Faithless and faithful alike may be unhappy with Meier’s conclusions, but his arguments are well-researched and presented. You can read the text and skip the chapter endnotes for a decent academic presentation, or you can delve into the notes and branch off into the cutting edge discussion on the Jesus of history.Most interesting to me was the fact that the book bears the Imprimatur of Bp. Sheridan, but does not have the Nihil Obstat, or the approval of the Church’s censor office. Normally the two go together. Fr. Meier’s message may not be popular among modern Christians, Catholic or otherwise, but he’s not been censured either. It’s a testimony the the impeccability of his scholarship and the validity of his message: The historical Jesus is not the Jesus of faith. He is also not the “real” Jesus, irrecoverable now after 2000 years. He is simply the Jesus that we can recover from “purely historical sources and arguments.”

⭐This is the best book on Biblical scholarship I have yet read. Everyone from Anne Rice to Harold Bloom cites John P. Meier as the foremost authority on the “historical Jesus.” Meier, a Roman Catholic priest, begins his work by explaining that the “historical Jesus” is not the “real Jesus,” and vice versa. One cannot write an accurate “biography” of Jesus (understood in its modern sense) because there is just too little information. What he can do however, is assess the information that we do have, and see what everyone – “Catholic, Protestant, Jew, and agnostic” – can agree on.Make no mistake; this is a work of genuine scholarship by a university professor – not some book of pop pseudo-science or conspiracy theory, such as Holy Blood, Holy Grail. As such, the casual reader MAY find it a bit dry; it is heavily footnoted and Meier makes reference to all the previous researchers in the same field. However, if you are fascinated by the subject-matter (as I am) it is a genuine page-turner. Although it is listed as being 496 pages long, in reality it is much shorter than that as a lot of the book is taken up by supplementary material – such as footnotes – which I simply skipped.This is the first volume of an ongoing series of books, and they arrive at an important time. As is often pointed out, most “scholarly” works on Jesus or Christianity (such as Albert Schweitzer’s, or the recent disappointing work by Harold Bloom) approach the subject with an openly hostile attitude; they write from emotion and not from fact, rendering their “non-fictional” works unattractive and unconvincing. Now – with the Da Vinci Code movie opening shortly – people are willing to believe just about anything. How refreshing then is it for Meier to try to tackle the problem without seeking to AFFIRM OR DENY anyone’s faith! The result is sure to offend fundamentalists and atheists alike, but it is surely a fascinating read.

⭐Spectacular and admirable book of history to get inside the problems concerning the human history of Jesus. Meier goes on with every detail, every theory, judging all the pros and cons under an explicit method. He does not surpass any issue no matter how insignificant it may appear. For instance, ¿are the apocryphal Gospels older than the official ones? ¿was Jesus married? ¿Did he had brothers and sisters? ¿Is really Mary a reliable and objective testimony about Jesus? Usually Meier offers and historical background about every question, thing that focuses the reader on the main points in discussion. Then he goes on to study the current opinions. Finally, applying his criteria of historicity, he gives his own position.The prose of Meier is quite accessible. You don’t need to have skills in exegesis to read the book. You can read it as a romance. Once you finish the book, you will be familiar with all the major opinions about the problems of historicity of Jesus life in the past, and also you will be familiar with the current situation of Jesus chronology investigation. Another important benefit of the book, is that you will have arguments to defend or attack each position presented.

⭐I’ve read innumerable books on the “historical Jesus”, and Meier’s “A Marginal Jew”, of which this is the first volume, is undoubtedly one of the very best. As other reviewers have pointed out, Meier is extremely meticulous, and discusses all possibilities exhaustively. But at the same time Meier is a superb writer, and this is actually one of the most *readable* volumes about Jesus that I have come across. Meier doesn’t presuppose that the reader have any particular beliefs. He distinguishes between what can be known through empirical study and what he, as a Catholic, believes on faith. There are illuminating sections on the question of whether Jesus was a “poor carpenter”, whether he was literate, whether he had siblings (despite Catholic tradition on this question, Meier concludes unequivocally that he had four brothers and at least two sisters), whether he was of Davidic descent, the origins of the story of his virginal conception, etc. But in the course of discussing these questions, we learn a great deal about first century Galilee as well, and the culture that Jesus would have absorbed.Meier’s text is full of wry observations on the contrast between the Jesus of history and the Jesus of contemporary imagination. For example, as a carpenter, or “woodworker” (Greek “tekton”), his work as an adolescent “involved no little sweat and muscle power. The airy weakling often presented to us in pious paintings and Hollywood movies would hardly have survived the rigors of being Nazareth’s tekton from his youth to his early thirties.” (p. 281) In other words, Jesus would probably have been a strapping lad!There are, of course, a lot of things which we would dearly like to know but which are now forever obscured, and Meier is aware of the limitations of historical research. For example, “that Jesus experienced sexual maturation like any other Jewish boy of his day is obvious; what that experience meant to him personally as an individual, or what special aspects that experience may have held for him, is completely hidden from us.” (p. 254)Meier presents the quest for the historical Jesus as a profoundly religious quest. For it tends to operate against the modern trend to “domesticate” Jesus: “although the quest for the historical Jesus is often linked in the popular secular mind with ‘relevance’, his importance lies precisely in his strange, off-putting, embarrassing contours, equally offensive to right and left wings. To this extent, at least, Albert Schweitzer was correct. The more we appreciate what Jesus meant in his own time and place, the more ‘alien’ he will seem to us. Properly understood, the historical Jesus is a bulwark against the reduction of Christian faith in general and christology in particular to ‘relevant’ ideology of any stripe” (pp. 199-200)The dust jacket of this volume of Meier’s monumental work is graced by a gorgeous painting by Joel Peter Johnson representing Jesus as a very striking and beautiful boy, but at the same time very much a Palestinian Jew.

⭐I have enjoyed reading this book very much. The writers style and approach fits with my own. The author proceeds methodically through the different questions that need to be asked and does not rush to premature conclusions. His knowledge of what others have written and realted resources is tremendous. Each chapter is set out so that extensive footnotes on complex issues are there but at the end of each chapter so the reader does not have to get bogged down in them and can pursue them when they wish. The author is meticulous and measured ad proceeds step by step. The book is both accessible to academics but also those outside academia who are intelligent general readers. This volume is background – a clearing away of the difficulties before future volumes look at the content of Jesus’s life and ministry. It encourages me to get hold of the second volume in the series.

⭐Needed this for my studies.

⭐While not the easiest book to read it is worthwhile. A must have research book for students and those of a curious mind.

⭐none

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