Brother Jesus

This is a precious book. We see a Jewish intellectual deconstructing the Christian gospels in his quest to reconstruct his brother Jesus. It is also a poignant book. For though he knew that the gospels were Christian myth, they were the only texts he had. His pursuit of historical truth despite the mystifications of the texts reveals the no-nonsense logic of an exceptionally well-trained mind in a relentless struggle with German scholarship. And in the end, by an amazing control of historical imagination, Ben-Chorin does catch sight of his non-Christian Jewish brother. Some will celebrate this book as the excellent translation of a most readable classic on the historical Jesus. But it is more. It is a moving documentation of a little-known chapter of cultural and intellectual history. It should be read as a meditation on the civility and skill of a German-Jewish scholar in pre- and post-holocaust debate with the Christian mind.

For centuries we Christians have imagined a composite gospel picture of Jesus's life and viewed it through the developing tradition of our own faith. It has usually been the Nazarene through Christian eyes. But what happens when a Jew imagines the Nazarene through Jewish eyes? Schalom Ben-Chorin's 1967 classic gives Jesus his proper context as a first-century Jew and sees him within that Judaism's vibrant and on-going tradition. But his book also carries a deeper challenge in the delicacy of its titular address and the pain of its terminal image. Those who stand with the crucifiers cannot stand with the crucified. Where have we Christians been standing throughout most of those centuries? Who, then, is brother to 'the Jew on the cross'?

[An] elegant translation of the 1967 German original.