


Morton Smith took a magnifying glass to the gospels, and to other ancient texts, to make Jesus the magician appear from thin air. The enlightened Thomas Jefferson took a pair of scissors to the New Testament, cutting out all the objectionable, fanciful miracle tales in order to show Jesus in his rational light as a great moral teacher. In all, Meier brings to life the story of a man, Jesus, who by his life and teaching gradually made himself marginal even to the marginal society that was first century Palestine. All of the Baptist's fiery talk about the end of time had a powerful effect on the young Jesus and the formulation of his key symbol of the coming of the "kingdom of God." And, finally, we are given a full investigation of one of the most striking manifestations of Jesus's Jesus's practice of exorcisms, hearings, and other miracles. To begin, Meier identifies Jesus's mentor, the one person who had the greatest single influence on him, John the Baptist.

Now, in this volume, Meier focuses on the Jesus of our memory and the development of his ministry. Volume one concluded with Jesus approaching adulthood. A Marginal Jew is what Meier thinks that document would reveal. and not allowed to emerge until they had hammered out a consensus document on who Jesus of Nazareth was and what he intended.". In it he continues his quest for the answer to the greatest puzzle of modern religious Who was Jesus? To answer this Meier imagines the following "Suppose that a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, and an agnostic were locked up in the bowels of the Harvard Divinity School library. This book is the second volume in John Meier's masterful trilogy on the life of Jesus.
