Rating: 
Summary: Thought Provoking!
Review: Fredriksen (Boston Univ.) builds her account of Jesus and the early Jesus movement around two facts. First, the Roman prefect Pilate executed Jesus by crucifixion, a form of execution typically applied to political insurrectionists. Second, the Roman authorities did not execute the followers of Jesus as political insurrectionists. How, then, does the Roman crucifixion of Jesus make sense? Fredriksen proposes that while knowing that Jesus was not a political insurrectionist, Pilate used his crucifixion to restrain the potentially insurrectionist Passover crowd in Jerusalem, which had eagerly anticipated God's impending redemption and liberation, announced by Jesus. Jesus was thus crucified as Pilate's means of calming the turbulent Passover crowd, but Pilate had no need to crucify the followers of Jesus as well. Fredriksen supports this hypothesis by giving special attention to some historical themes in John's gospel. She doubts, however, that Jesus was interrogated by either the Jewish High Priest or Pilate. The book is eminently readable and characteristically honest about its speculative moves in historical interpretation. Fredriksen is also honest about her Humean skepticism of miracles. The book will benefit students from the upper-division undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as teachers. A recent related work is Dale Allison's Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet (1998).
Rating:
Summary: Allow One A Brief Rave
Review: Her books should be required. They are well written, thoroughly researched and incisively argued. Even if you do not agree with all she says, you will challenged and inspired by it.
Rating:
Summary: Thought Provoking!
Review: It has been some ten or twelve years since Dr Paula Fredriksen introduced her earlier book, _From Jesus to Christ_. That earlier book was a "discussion of the development of the New Testament's theological images of Jesus." This current book intends to be an attempt to describe the historical Jesus and explain why theological images developed about him.
Fredriksen recognizes that her book is one of many in more than one quest for the historical Jesus. The first quest culminated with Albert Schweitzer's work. The second quest was typified by Rudolf Bultmann. Fredriksen sees herself in the same quest as Crossan, Vermes, Sanders, Wright, etc.
Fredriksen believes that she has found a "polestar" by which we might guide our way through the myriad writers and their discussions. That polestar may be found in the fact that not only was Jesus executed, but he was crucified.
Since this is not a mystery novel, Fredriksen's conclusion may be revealed. On one hand, Pilate could have easily had Jesus executed at the behest of the chief priests. On the other hand, had Jesus posed any political threat, Pilate would have crucified the followers of Jesus as well. Pilate crucified Jesus because Jesus had a message of the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God which excited the crowds at a Passover celebration in Jerusalem. With the death of Jesus, the excitement of the crowds abated.
If a reader prefers s/he may read just the first and last chapters of Fredriksen's book. Fredriksen includes a chapter on what was most distinctive for a Jew during the time of Jesus. A long chapter follows in which Fredriksen traces trajectories of the meaning of messiahship back through the NT writers to Jesus. And yet another chapter describes the contexts of Galilee and Judea in which Jesus lived and operated. The adage that getting there is half the fun applies to this book.
A brief response to Fredriksen's proposal is in order. That Jesus was executed in order to avoid a massive riot is very plausible except for two things. First of all, it denies the testimony of the NT writers. And second of all, it does not explain the anti-Jewish polemic found in early Christian writings.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting but No new ground
Review: Ms. Fredriksen is a scholar who has concentrated on the Origins of Christianity. She has written several books on this theme, the most recent being the excellent "FROM JESUS TO CHRIST" in which she explored the evolution from a humble Jewish teacher to the always existing creator of the Universe.In this work she attempts to (again) study both the Man and the times in which he lived. In addition to the main question - Why was Jesus killed? - she is interested in what Jesus taught, what his followers believed at the time and how those beliefs became transformed into a theology about Jesus instead of his teachings. Surely his disciples did not think that he was the son of Jehova and now reigns with two other "parts" of a divine Trinity. That theology was not developed until a much later era. Frideriksen is not afraid to make pronouncements and conclusions that are at variance with other scholars. She is always careful to support her thesis with solid sociological, historical and/or archieological evidence. In this case she concludes that Jesus - and no one else - was killed because he was viewed as a threat to Roman rule in that volatile area. This has momentous portent since it effectively eliminates "Jews" as the murderous agent and denies that Jesus was crucified for the sins of the world. The biggest problem is the seeming redundancy of much of the book with earlier works. Perhaps this is a natural result of devoting ones work to a narrow historical scope.
Rating: 
Summary: an excellent, if slightly flawed, scholarly work
Review: Paula Fredriksen succeeds where so many of her colleagues fail: recapturing the Jewishness of Jesus. She accomplishes this feat simply by placing him within his Jewish context, accompanied of course by very in-depth and rigorous research into the historical settings of Judea and Galilee, collectively known to us as Palestine. She quite correctly criticizes scholars such as Crossan who Hellenize Jesus by making him into some sort of wandering Cynic sage, although at other times she is quite dismissive of arguments contrary to her own. However, given the scope of the subject and the limited time involved, perhaps we may forgive such a tendency as perhaps inevitable. ALthough I agreed with her main thesis, she immerses herself in overly rank speculation towards the end. I personally do not feel it necessary to posit John's itenerary rather than the Synoptics to explain why Jesus' followers were not crucified. Also, although all scholars do this, I seriously question the tendency to speculate far beyond what is necessary to explain the limited facts we have. Of course, some speculation (one might even say "much") is inevitable given the subject matter and the questionable nature of many of the facts involved, but to seek to explain every bit of questionable evidence just to fully flesh out one's theory seems wholly unnecessary to me. Either way, though, if you are interested in the actual Jesus of history, then you would be hard pressed to do better than this book.
Rating:
Summary: an excellent, if slightly flawed, scholarly work
Review: Paula Fredriksen succeeds where so many of her colleagues fail: recapturing the Jewishness of Jesus. She accomplishes this feat simply by placing him within his Jewish context, accompanied of course by very in-depth and rigorous research into the historical settings of Judea and Galilee, collectively known to us as Palestine. She quite correctly criticizes scholars such as Crossan who Hellenize Jesus by making him into some sort of wandering Cynic sage, although at other times she is quite dismissive of arguments contrary to her own. However, given the scope of the subject and the limited time involved, perhaps we may forgive such a tendency as perhaps inevitable. ALthough I agreed with her main thesis, she immerses herself in overly rank speculation towards the end. I personally do not feel it necessary to posit John's itenerary rather than the Synoptics to explain why Jesus' followers were not crucified. Also, although all scholars do this, I seriously question the tendency to speculate far beyond what is necessary to explain the limited facts we have. Of course, some speculation (one might even say "much") is inevitable given the subject matter and the questionable nature of many of the facts involved, but to seek to explain every bit of questionable evidence just to fully flesh out one's theory seems wholly unnecessary to me. Either way, though, if you are interested in the actual Jesus of history, then you would be hard pressed to do better than this book.
Rating:
Summary: Thought Provoking
Review: Paula Fredriksen's "Jesus of Nazareth" makes the reader pause to consider the reasoning behind Jesus' crucifixion. Christians believe Jesus had to die to serve as the "ultimate sacrifice", if you will, for the sins of mankind. However, Ms. Fredriksen causes the reader to ponder why crucifixion had to be the method of death, and more importantly, if Jesus was such a "threat" to Roman rule over Judea why weren't his disciples and follwers also executed. The book also examines when and how He came to be recognized as and called Jesus the Christ. This is not a book to be selected for "leisurely reading". It is definitely for someone who studies Christianity and realizes the importance of examining the history surrounding events when attemting to gain better insight into why certain events occurred in the manner in which they did.
Rating:
Summary: This is a good book, but isn't anyone else a bit skeptical??
Review: Paula Fredriksen's argument about the reason for Jesus' death by crucifixion are very convincing. She provides good evidence for her arguments based on the Gospel and an understanding of the historical and religious context in which Jesus would have lived. However, even with her basis of Gospel evidence and historical record, Fredriksen must still make certain assumptions and inferences in order to make her arguments.
The first claim Fredriksen makes is that Jesus preached in Jerusalem many times before his crucifixion. This is confirmed by John's gospel, and also just seems likely that Jesus, as a devout Jew, would have made the trip to Jerusalem many times for the various festivals. It is likely that she is correct on this point, but she has little evidence other than John, which she prefers precisely for this reason.
Another point Fredriksen makes is that Jesus was probably proclaimed as the Messiah by the crowds gathered in Jerusalem for Passover, and not his close followers who had been with him for a few years. It is more difficult to argue against this claim, because it seems that Jesus would have been killed at the very beginning of his ministry if his followers had immediately proclaimed him to be the Messiah.
That Jesus was arrested by the priests also seems very likely. They would be the ones to lose power if there was a riot or insurrection surrounding Jesus. However, Fredriksen argues that Jesus was probably not interrogated by the chief priests or Pilate. She believes that it would have been unnecessary for them to do so, and unlikely because they would not have wanted to do so at night on a festival (or the day before it), as they would already have been very busy and tired. This seems to be a weak argument. Perhaps Jesus would not have been interrogated by these high authorities, but it seems that the priests and Pilate may wanted to have maintained some semblance of lawfulness before killing Jesus. If he was simply killed without a mock trial or interrogation of some kind, people may have been stirred to insurrection based solely on the injustice of Jesus' death.
Fredriksen attributes the rise of Christianity after Jesus' death to the idea that the disciples were still working within an apocalyptic paradigm. They believed that Jesus had promised to come again, and that it would be at that time that End of Days would come. As well as a continued belief in Jesus by his disciples, the movement grew to include many Gentiles, who were excused from following most of the laws of Judaism in order to become Christians.
At the end of the book, Fredriksen claims that the pictures of Jesus presented in the Gospels and Paul's writings do not so much describe Jesus as the effect he had on the people to whom he preached. She believes that there is little of historical representation other than a few facts about Jesus' death. Fredriksen therefore attempts to recreate the life of Jesus based on political and religious history of the time, but she must always make assumptions. Her arguments are ineffective if Jesus had not indeed preached in Jerusalem many times; if the crowds did not first proclaim Jesus to be the Messiah and then clamor for his death. Her argument it logical, but it remains a theory.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: Paula Fredriksen's book starts off with pointing out the one fact we know about Jesus: that he was crucified. Because we know he was crucified, we also know that he was executed by the Romans, which means he had to be executed for a reason other than a theological dispute with Jesus' fellow Jews. But none of Jesus' followers were also executed. This would be very odd if Jesus was a genuine rebel or insurrectionist. But if Jesus had predicted say in the last week of his life that the world faced imminent destruction, that this was the last Passover before the coming of the Kingdom, Pilate would have executed him just to remind everyone that this was not the case. Once that was done Pilate could ignore Jesus' basically apolitical followers who, however, in the apocalyptic fervor of the events imagined that Jesus had been resurrected in spiritual form. (This is the impression one finds in Paul's letters, while the physical details of a bodily resurrection in the Gospels appeared decades afterwards.) This is not implausible, though one might think given the brutality of Roman occupation in general that Pilate would have killed several of Jesus' followers just to be on the safe side. Fredriksen provides a useful discussion on many matters. For a start, she points out how much more attention Josephus pays to John the Baptist than to Jesus. She notes how the urgent apocalyptic themes in Mark, the earliest Gospel, are softened in later ones. Mark, after all states that there are those alive today who will see the world's end, a theme tactfully underplayed in later gospels. Fredriksen is also good on Jesus' attitude towards the law, which he was a reasonably faithful observer. The quarrel that arises in Mark 7, for instance, is with the Pharisee minority, not Jews per se. And Mark's claim that Jesus "declared all foods clean," (7:19) is clearly an editorial gloss, since if Jesus had said this, the Apostles would not have quarrelled on the issue later in Acts. She is also useful on Jewish traditions of inclusiveness towards Gentiles, allowing them to attend synagogues, speaking of their eventual redemption. One problem that I do have with Fredriksen concerns her opinions about the social-economic context. A theme of this book is that alternative portraits of Jesus as a non-apocalyptic figure who would be more ameneable to Christian sensibilities today are wrong. And there is no good reason to believe that Jesus was a proto-feminist, and it is unlikely that he represented a hellenistic cynicism. (Quite the contrary, Jesus' mission in Galilee is noteworthy for the way it ignores the large cities that the Romans built in the area). And a thorough understanding of Jesus's support for the purity codes undermines the idea that his opposition to them was the basis for a political and populist challenge to the Temple orthodoxy. Yet Fredriksen goes on to argue in her notes that not only do scholars disagrees about the state of the Judaean economy, that the most likely consensus seems to view Judea and Galilee as a world with large markets, which "created a web of reciprocal, and usually mutally beneficial, economic relations." (286) I find this misleading for a variety of reasons. First off, it is anachronistic to talk of markets and and the supposedly benign effect they have today and transfer them back too millenia in an overwhelmingly rural world ruled by a brutal and despotic empire that was fundamentally based on slavery. Second, it strikes me as naive to believe that an imperial power that would in 70 and 135 CE brutally murder and exile much or most of the population would somehow not stoop to economically exploiting them as well. Third it does not follow that because there was no "exploitation" there could be no indenpendent peasant politics, we simply do not have the sources available to make such a judgement, given the religious biases of the few literate people who wrote. In this respect, G.E.M. De ST. Croix's The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World is more convincing.
Rating:
Summary: Allow One A Brief Rave
Review: The book is so extraordinary as to be almost unique among the Quest for the Historical Jesus literature. Whatever one may think of its conclusions, it is powerfully written and exquisitely argued. But its strongest accomplishment for me was that it recreates the Jewish milieu of the First Century with cinematic power. The grandeur of Herod's enlarged Temple, the multitudes in Jerusalem for the various feasts, the impact of ritual and sacrifice upon the life of Jews not only in Palestine but throughout the Roman Empire -- all of this is beautifully described. Of course Jesus is placed within it, and our sense of him as part of this complex Jewish world is greatly increased and deepened. The bibliography is rich. The ideas are challenging. I don't personally agreed with the conclusions at the end, but I keep the book nearby, checking it on any number of questions as to purity laws, customs, etc. I actually check other biblical scholars against it. I hope Fredriksen gives us more books. Her gifts are great. Is this still brief? Ah, well, it's a rave. I was true on that score. Anne Rice, New Orleans, La.
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