Bible Books: Filling in the Gaps

Bruce Chilton’s new book on Jesus starts off with a rather bold claim: “Rabbi Jesus offers the first comprehensive, critical biography of Jesus to date.” To those who make a hobby of reading Jesus biographies—to say nothing of those who read them professionally—this claim will seem rather surprising, to say the least. Chilton does, however, have a point: Most biographies of Jesus focus on the last few years of his life, just as the Gospels do. Chilton, rather, tries to tell the story of Jesus’ entire life. He describes Joseph and Mary’s courtship, the circumstances of Jesus’ birth, Jesus’ precocious behavior as a child, Jesus’ anguish after the death of his father Joseph, his years as a talmid (student) of John the Baptist, and so forth.

The Gospels, of course, say little about any of this. In order to fill in the gaps in the Gospels, Chilton draws on a wealth of sources, including information gleaned from archaeological excavations, as well traditions from the Babylonian Talmud and the church fathers (in some cases these sources are as late as the fifth century C.E.). The result is a biography of Jesus that is certainly “comprehensive,” but is it “critical”?