This Jesus: Martyr, Lord, Messiah

This book sets out to substantiate the idea, in the words of Bockmuehl himself, "...that it can be historically legitimate to see Jesus of Nazareth in organic and causal continuity with the faith of the early Church" (Intro, p. 8). In other words, Bockmuehl is showing that it is historically valid to see Jesus as the natural cause of the faith of early Christians. Moreover, in contrast to the recent popular scholarship which attempts to divide the "Jesus of history" from the "Christ of faith," Bockmuehl deliberately departs from this "forced amputation" (as he calls it, p. 8) and tries to demonstrate a historically responsible case, set in a first century Jewish context, for a unified Jesus whose life and teaching inspired the Church's faith in Him as both Lord and Messiah.Bockmuehl begins by establishing some historical sources for Jesus, from Roman historians like Tacitus and Suetonius, to Jewish historian Flavius Josephus and Rabbinic literature, to Christian sources outside the New Testament and finally to the Gospels themselves. By keeping the Gospel story of Jesus within the context of first-century Palestinian Judaism, Bockmuehl shows how the Jesus of history (found in various sources) was in living and causal continuity with the Christ of faith we find in His followers that developed after His death and resurrection, contrary to modern attempts to separate the two. In chapter 2, Bockmuehl presents the case that Jesus was the promised Jewish Messiah, but not according to all standards of Jewish expectations of what the "Messiah" was to be in first-century Jewish expectation. He starts by presenting the Old Testament understanding of what a "Messiah" was and how Messianism was perceived in ancient times. He proceeded to show how O.T. Messianic texts and other ancient Jewish writings (before and after the first-century AD) established a framework for recognizing true messianic fulfillment, whether in one person or a number of persons throughout Jewish history. He then goes on to show that one can detect in the Gospels "an overall scheme of Messianism which agrees with many of the familiar themes of contemporary Jewish hope" (p. 52). In his final chapter (7), Bockmuehl addresses the concern of how we got from the historical Jesus of Nazareth to the exalted and worshiped Christ we find in our creeds by asking and answering the question, "Why Was Jesus Exalted to Heaven?" Using important New Testament passages like Paul's affirmation of the importance of the Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:14 ("If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain"), Bockmuehl demonstrates that only a continuity between the body placed in the tomb and the one "raised" could explain why the early Church began to view the person of history as the exalted One of its faith. Bockmuehl further elaborates on the idea of worshipping Jesus and its implications for a monotheistic