Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography

If you like fiction, and you don't believe the Bible has any truth to it, you'll love this book. It is a tale that is woven of bits and pieces of scripture, no more resembling the gospels than Jesus Christ Superstar. In an effort to bring the human side of Jesus home, the author reconstructed Jesus' life with no research, but simply making it up as he went along, slightly remembering what he learned in Sunday school and ignoring what has been studied by Biblical scholars throughout the ages. I must confess, I stopped reading about a third of the way in. It was just too bizarre for me.

I enjoyed this book immensely. Jesus came alive for me as a real person in the context of his time and his community. The author has the unique skills needed to accurately interpret the life and times of Jesus as recorded in the original language as well as to identify where the original intent was distorted in later interpretations. There are insights provided here not to be found anywhere else.

Until I read this book, no author has ever caused me to like Jesus very much, much less love him. No one has ever made him seem real before. Bruce Chilton makes him a real person, and in doing so makes him lovable, but not in the conventional, saccharine way to which we are so accustomed. It's more the way you feel toward a hungry, homeless youngster living on the edge and just barely surviving.Jesus was the black sheep of his family. He didn't get lost when his family took him to the Temple in Jerusalem at the age of twelve. He ran away from home, and he never returned for the next six years. Chilton shows us how the psychological and emotional trauma of his "early years" created the adult he eventually became. To my knowledge, no one has ever attempted a reconstruction of this sort before. Chilton explains how the experiences of his early life influenced the development of his thinking, explaining how and why Jesus came to believe and later to teach the things he did. In this respect, Chilton has, as he claims, composed the first ever biography of Jesus. Chilton respects the integrity and intent of the Gospels in a way that few modern scholars seem capable of doing. Although not traditional, he clearly resists the fashion of the moment, and charts his own unique course. Speculation it may well be, but hardly idle. Granted, it is a reconstruction, as are all accounts of the life and times of Jesus including the Gospels. Chilton doubts that Jesus' itinerant lifestyle ever allowed him to marry. (See the convincing arguments to the contrary that John Shelby Spong, former Anglican Archbishop of Newark now on the faculty at Harvard, offers on this topic in chapter thirteen of his recent book Born Of A Woman.) The Gospel writers themselves, given their cultural biases regarding women, saw no reason to raise the issue of Jesus' marital status. Chilton does make the point however that Jesus most certainly did have a significant other in his life (see pages 144-47 and 249-50).Chilton also speculates, as I have long believed, that Jesus displayed bi-polar tendencies (see pages 104 & 94-95). If so, this would certainly help to explain his personal magnetism. Right or wrong, and I think he gets more of the story right than not, Chilton's book Rabbi Jesus makes for some mighty fascinating reading. His explanation of the origin and meaning of the Eucharist (pp. 250-54) is particularly compelling, not to mention enlightening.

Bruce Chilton has offered a plausible analysis of the gospel events in their appropriate Jewish setting, answering age-old questions about the "missing years", and helping readers to understand what Jesus might have said, and might have meant by what he said, in the context of first-century Jewish culture and religion. The author uses his vast knowledge of Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, and the Targums, the oral Hebrew Biblical tradition known to Jesus, as aids in his analysis. Woven throughout this narrative of Jesus' life are clues to what the parables meant to Jesus, what his deep spirituality and his relationship with God were like, and what he really meant when he said "this wine is my blood and this bread is my flesh". A must-read for thoughtful Christians!

-Bruce Chilton answers real questions. If you read the gospels with an open mind you will find much of what is written in them a closed book. Personally, I have always found the obscurity itself to be a stumbling block. I have always been at a loss to understand many stories told in the gospels: the wedding at Caana (am I the only person who thinks it's a little weird to turn water into wine?--sort of like Mr. Wizard, sort of like David Copperfield the magician), Mary and Joseph LOSING their child (didn't that strike anyone else as weird?), turning out the money changers from the temple (how did one guy do that with Jewish and Roman guards all around?). It isn't just that Chilton makes sense out of the wild and wide sweep of the gospel accounts; he makes loving sense. For instance, he gives a probable account of what Jesus would have been taught by John the Baptist (Zecharaiah's prophecy is foremost in that teaching). I found the realization of the teacher/student relationship in this biography debastatingly beautiful. To think that any overlay of historical reality gleaned through scholarly application diminishes the story of Jesus is really the same thing as to say Jesus diminishes the law. The discipline and passion of scholarship, in this instance, really do resemble law and love.

Rabbi Jesus, a narrative that author Bruce Chilton calls, "an intimate biography" is all that and more. It is a bold and illuminating work that takes the reader on an eye-opening and startling journey with Yeshua throughout his 30 some years. Other authors have attempted to do similar thing, but as an author and Messianic Jewish evangelist, I can tell you that Chilton engages his subject with a vibrancy and candor that is the equivalent of standing under a cold shower. His revelations are just that, and the thoughtful reader will be not be disappointed. In short, if you want to meet the real Messiah and experience the dynamics that drove this man, then Rabbi Jesus is must reading. Among the many books on Jesus, this is one that will raise eyebrows, quicken hearts and yes, make your skin tingle. Be there with Jesus in the first century. Get on board for the trip of a lifetime!