Jesus and the Victory of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God: Volume 2

by N.T. Wright

Book Overview

In this highly anticipated volume, N. T. Wright focuses directly on the historical Jesus: Who was he? What did he say? And what did he mean by it?Wright begins by showing how the questions posed by Albert Schweitzer a century ago remain central today. Then he sketches a profile of Jesus in terms of his prophetic praxis, his subversive stories, the symbols by which he reordered his world, and the answers he gave to the key questions that any world...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0800626826
• ISBN13: 9780800626822
• Release Date: February 1997
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Length: 770 Pages
• Weight: 2.24 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

One of THE best books on Jesus

I first read NT Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God as an undergrad who was extremely interested in the historical Jesus and his message and in the contours of biblical theology in general. Since then, I've come back to this book again and again. In fact, it has done more to shape my personal views and personally impact me than any other book aside from the Bible. It is literally one of my favorite books ever written and NT Wright has quickly become one of my favorite authors. The book is Wright's second in his magnum opus Christian Origins and the Question of God and follows on the methodological and historical foundations laid in the first volume, The New Testament and the People of God. One need not read this first volume to successfully wade through JVG but it certainly helps. In particular, many of the methodological or historical questions that might arise when reading JVG could probably be answered from a reading of NTPG. The diagrams he uses in JVG are also very confusing and not very well explained If one wants to understand them thoroughly, a look at the sections in NTPG where these diagram types are introduced will be necessary both to interpret them and learn of their uses. That said, JVG stands on its own fairly well (I myself did not read NTPG until several years after I had first read JVG). Jesus and the Victory of God is definitely not for the casual reader - it is dense, scholarly, extensively foot-noted, and thoroughly argued. Those looking for a light read, brief apologetics arguments, or instant theological gratification will not find this book to their tastes. This long book is itself just the second part of a multi-part series building one big, long argument about the origins of Christianity (hence the title of the series). Wright is incredibly thorough in his arguments, careful to forestall as many objections as possible, whether good or bad, and marshall the full weight of the historical and textual evidence in favor of his views. This of course makes the book rather long and the arguments, for someone of limited attention span, hard to follow and therefore not as convincing as if they were laid out in summary. If one can keep one's eye on the thread, however, you can see that the many words are there for good reason and put to good reason - this is a scholarly work after all, not a book for the novice. Anything shorter or less nuanced in a scholarly work of this sort on a subject like this would be unthinkable. In fact, the book and its arguments could easily have been made much longer and the evidence in favor of traditional christology been supplemented even more. But of course that would have made a long book even longer. If you want a shorter version of Wright's views and arguments I recommend some of his shorter, more popular works on Jesus. In this book, Wright distinguishes three periods or strands of scholarship on the historical Jesus - which he calls the First Quest, the Second Quest, and t

The Victory

With his book, Jesus and the Victory of God, N. T. Wright has made his most significant contribution the new historical quest for Jesus. This book is Wright's second in a series of five volumes. For the most part, Wright uses the synoptic gospels as his primary biblical source of information, with occasional use of John and Acts, and extensive examination of Old Testament text. Wright sees the gospel stories as historically reliable. He arranges the material by themes rather than chronological events. He uses a technique of double similarity with double dissimilarity, where what is believable within first century Judaism and early Christianity, while at the same time enough dissimilar from both in some aspect, is likely to be historically accurate. Wright accounts for the variations in the synoptic stories by convincingly arguing that Jesus used the same stories on several different occasions. The book is divided into four parts. In the first section, Wright surveys the history, from the nineteenth century to the present, of the quest of the historical Jesus. I feel the first two chapters are the weakest part of the book, and will be the first to date what should otherwise be a long enduring work. Wright seems overly concerned about pointing out the weakness of more liberal scholars, and spends much time critiquing their work. He seems particularly concerned with the works of Crossan, Mack, and the Jesus' Seminar. He attacks their methods of "criteria of authenticity," and their narrow focus on the individual saying of Jesus. In the third chapter Wright presents some key questions in the study of Jesus and looks at how they are handled within the Third Quest. Answering these questions becomes the task of much of the remainder of the book. The largest section of the book, Profile of a Prophet, Wright shows that Jesus' public image within first century Judaism was that of a prophet, one who proclaimed the coming kingdom of Israel's God. The portrait of Jesus as a prophet fits well with what is known of his public career and praxis. Jesus, like John the Baptist before him, seems to consciously model himself after Elijah. Like John, Jesus issued solemn warnings about imminent judgement. Jesus delivers his prophecies with great authority, often in the form of parables. Wright sees the literary background of the parables as apocalyptic. As such, they were subversive stories told to articulate a new way of being a people of God. Jesus engaged in the characteristically Jewish activity of subversively retelling the basic Jewish story, accommodating them for the new situations. Wright argues that Jewish apocalyptic, for many, did not include the end of the world, but rather a renewed covenant with God was "this-worldly." Key to Wright's thesis, which he argues repeatedly, was that most first century Jews would have seen themselves as still living "in exile." The exile functioned, in the second-Temple period, as an eschatological hope, that the triumph o

THE CHRISTOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF HIS WORK

Whether you agree or disagree with Wright, he presents such a careful, cogent, and compelling argument that you must come to terms with his key position in working through your own. He has a rare talent for catching important points, making connections, viewing matters in their broader context, and putting things together in a manner that makes sense and is credible. The other reviewers have done a good job giving a flavor of the contents of the book; I wish to raise some questions pertaining to the Christological implications of his work.In the last chapter of his book, in the section which deals with the aims and beliefs of Jesus, Wright's argument becomes a bit more confusing than his previous chapters, which is to be expected since here he attempts to draw his points together and indicate the Christological implications of his treatment. It follows, therefore, that this is the place where many of the key issues will emerge.Wright maintains that certain key O.T. texts (e.g., Psalm 110 & Daniel 7) came together in Jesus' mind and, in their combination, constitute a claim to share the throne of God. He also argues this is the basic reason why he is charged with blasphemy at his trial. Wright seems to want to use this claim to support a view that Jesus was "more than" a prophet or the Messiah. While this might well prove to be the case, since even Wright himself points out that there were strands of Jewish thought which also held such belief, more will be needed to justify the claim itself that Jesus was "more than" these.Throughout his book, Wright has insisted that we should not, and cannot, conclude the "divinity" of Jesus based on certain historical claims (e.g., that he was the "Messiah," "one like a son of man," etc.). He rightly points out that such claims in their various historical contexts do not (at least necessarily) carry this meaning. This raises the question, if such phrases cannot be used as a stepping stone to derive the divinity of Jesus, then how can we ever conclude his being divine?Wright's main point is that when you put these various strands of thought (stories) together, particularly the underlying narrative that Jesus thereby intends to evoke, symbolize, and actually embody the coming of YHWH to Zion, this implies that he is "more than" simply a prophet or the Messiah. Is this where we must finally admit entrance of divinity into our concept of Jesus? Or, in view of the sharing of the throne, is the distinction between Jesus and God maintained? In many of his works, Wright (to use his own word) "teases" out the meaning, but seems to leave us asking, as Jesus' disciples, "tell us plainly." At one point in his book, he says about another theologian that his treatment of the materials does not justify, at the end, his suddenly concluding the traditional Christological formula. I simply raise the question, not whether Wright is justified, but what is the conclusion he draws

JESUS: YHWH'S COMING AS KING

Wright attempts to portray Jesus by examining the synoptic accounts in light of the appropriate 1st century setting; challenging the views of other scholars on all sides along the way while offering what he considers to be the most probable historical reconstruction. In the process, he offers original and distinctive interpretations that bring the materials to life.Traditional scholarly criteria for determining the authenticity of Jesus material primarily utilizes the criterion of similarity (if it was the same or similar to his environment it was not authentic) and dissimilarity (if it was not something found in his environment it was authentic). Wright, as many other scholars finds these to be insufficient and arbitrary. The probability is that Jesus was both like and unlike contemporary Judiasm and the early Christian community, which is to say that there must be both continuity and discontinuity between Jesus and Judaism and the the early community.In his first volume to the series, The New Testament and the People of God, Wright has laid out the worldview of 2nd temple Judaism, as well as that of the earliest Christian community. In the present volune, Wright sets the Jesus material in this context.C.K. Barrett once stated that after years of study he was now reluctant to claim that the synoptics portrayed Jesus as Messiah. Wright, by setting Jesus in the context of the Judaism of his day, finds such a claim on virtually every page. Instead of focusing, as traditional scholarship has done, on individual words, phrases, forms, etc., or on explicit testimony, he shows that the symbols and stories everywhere portray Jesus as the eschatological prophet and Messiah of Israel, who speaks and acts for YHWH and embodies the coming of YHWH as King.According to Wright's standards for determining which portrayal is the best historical picture (e.g., simplicity, coherence of all data, explains other facts), discussed in his first volume, and the fact that his portrayal meets the criterion of double similarity and double dissimilarity with Judaism and the early Christian community, Wright urges that his historical reconstruction is most probable among all other views on offer.Several considerations make Wright's portrayal so convincing: 1) He thoroughly and carefully lays out the 2nd temple Jewish worldview via an extended treatment of its praxis, symbols, stories and beliefs. 2) The synoptic materials naturally fit into this framework and come alive. 3) His portrayal best meets the numerous and various critical standards and criteria for historical reconstruction. In short, Wright does not just argue points, he offers a massive reconstruction that allows us to see a real historical human being coming to meet us, as the actual embodiment of YHWH.

Wright paints a brilliant picture of the Synoptic Jesus

N.T. Wright, in this exhaustively documented work, sets the standard for Historical Jesus research. By virtue of his explicit agenda to set forth a portrait of Jesus based on his understanding of a parsimonious hypothesis which situates Jesus between 1st century Judaism and the early church, Wright brilliantly examines every aspect of his model for doing history-praxis,story symbol,questions and beliefs- which makes his Jesus historically credible. The portrait which emerges is a Jesus who is an eschatological prophet/messiah whose mission is to proclaim, implement and embody YHWH's Kingdom program, climaxing in the establishment of a new covenant for the renewed Israel he is forming. What is so impressive about this study is the detailed arguments advanced which make his portrait of Jesus plausible in terms of his fit within his socicultural context and, at the same time, shows how Jesus' work was the root of, yet different from the early church's interpretation of him. Finally, one outstanding,yet underemphasized, aspect of this book is Wright's attempt to ground Christology in the life of Jesus, the 1st century Jew. His novel thesis, that Jesus' prophetic/messianic vocation led him to attempt certain tasks that were ascribed to YHWH in the OT, sets the stage for further fruitful research in both biblical studies and theology, at a time when the Church needs to develop Christologies grounded in the "Jewishness" of Jesus. These aspects of this work, along with a scholarly and theologically insightful survey of previous Historical Jesus research, makes this the premier work of this kind available today. It is a must read for any serious student of Jesus-whether believer, non-believer or agnostic!