“Ben Witherington has produced just the right book for exposing the nonsense that has been written about Jesus in recent years.”
—Craig A. Evans, Payzant Distinguished
Professor, Acadia Divinity College,
Nova Scotia
“Ben Witherington does a great job of cutting through the fluff and fuss around modern thinking about Jesus. He shows that much of this isn’t really ‘thinking’ after all. Here is in-depth, faithful scholarship made accessible for all of the rest of us. Here is orthodox, traditional Christianity not only defended but also made delightful.”
—Bishop William H. Willimon
“In this accessible yet scholarly book, Ben Witherington is absolutely right to focus on the people who were closest to Jesus. We know a lot about them, enough to know that they knew a lot about Jesus. As Witherington shows, to know the real Jesus, we don’t have to resort to late and unreliable sources. The best sources are the ones we’ve always known about.”
—Richard Bauckham, professor of
New Testament studies, University of
St Andrews, Scotland
“Witherington insightfully critiques today’s plethora of speculations about the evolution of earliest Christianity, rightly pointing us away from misinterpretations of Gnostic and other late documents and back to the earliest sources.”
—Craig S. Keener, professor of New
Testament, Eastern University, and
author of three commentaries on
the gospels.
“Witherington brings sanity into those areas of the historical Jesus debate where it has been lacking, even as he presents what can and can’t be known about the first, closest followers of Jesus and what their testimony demon strates about Jesus himself.”
—Craig L. Blomberg, distinguished
professor of New Testament, Denver
Seminary
“The question Jesus asked about himself long ago, “Who do folks say that I am?” just won’t go away. Ben Witherington gauges the plausibility of some of the recent answers and presents a new portrait of the Jesus of history who emerges as a believable, compelling figure still to be reckoned with. A superb read by one of our finest scholars of Christian origins.”
—Timothy George, dean of Beeson
Divinity School, Samford University,
and an executive editor of Christianity
Today