In lively prose, this book blends today’s cultural idioms with serious biblical scholarship. The result is a provocative read that will surely challenIn lively prose, this book blends today’s cultural idioms with serious biblical scholarship. The result is a provocative read that will surely challenge the many easy assumptions we consumers of American pop culture make about Jesus, Paul, and the early followers of the Christ-movement. Greg Carey is a public theologian of the most serious sort. —Sze-kar Wan, Professor of New Testament, Southern Methodist University, Perkins School of Theology
A welcome and innovative contribution to New Testament Studies! Greg Carey sets forth an excellent and innovative example of how to read the character of Jesus from a literary, historical, and theological perspective, with an emphasis on ethics of interpretation for the postmodern world. This bold study is not afraid to take on the topic of Jesus and examine Jesus’ responses to those considered “sinners” in the New Testament. —Francisco Lozada, Jr., Associate Professor of New Testament and Latina/o Church Studies, Brite Divinity School
With wit and passion, Greg Carey draws a vivid portrait of Jesus as a friend of sinners and explicates what that memory meant in early Christian identity. A nuanced reading of the New Testament literature in its social context, Carey’s argument challenges contemporary Christians to reconsider the relationship of the church with sin, shame, respectability and risk. —Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, Professor of New Testament, The Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest
How did early Christians remember Jesus—and how did they develop their own “Christian” identities and communities? In this accessible and revelatory book, Greg Carey explores how transgression contributed to early Christian identity in the Gospels, Acts, Letters of Paul, and Revelation. Examining Jesus as a friend of sinners, challenger of purity laws, transgressor of conventional masculine values of his time, and convicted seditionist, Carey shows how early Christian communities as out of step with “respectable” practices of their time—and, in conclusion, offers a challenge to contemporary Christians whose faith requires them to do the same....more
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