ReViews: Ideologically Driven Views of the Historical Jesus

“Is This Not the Carpenter?” The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus

Edited by Thomas L. Thompson and Thomas S. Verenna (Durham, UK: Acumen, 2013; first published by Equinox in 2012, hardcover), viii + 280 pp., $25.00 (paperback)

The editors’ aim in publishing the essays in this volume is “to resist the endless production of works on the historical Jesus.” All of the contributors are to some degree “minimalists” as regards the historical value of the ancient sources. And several argue vigorously that Jesus was an entirely mythic figure, created by writers who drew on ancient mythic narratives and rewrote parts of the Hebrew Bible for their own purposes (variously defined).