When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation
Written by Paula Fredriksen
Narrated by Matthew Lloyd Davies
4/5
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About this audiobook
A compelling account of Christianity’s Jewish beginnings, from one of the world’s leading scholars of ancient religion
How did a group of charismatic, apocalyptic Jewish missionaries, working to prepare their world for the impending realization of God's promises to Israel, end up inaugurating a movement that would grow into the gentile church? Committed to Jesus’s prophecy—“The Kingdom of God is at hand!”—they were, in their own eyes, history's last generation. But in history's eyes, they became the first Christians.
In this electrifying social and intellectual history, Paula Fredriksen answers this question by reconstructing the life of the earliest Jerusalem community. As her account arcs from this group’s hopeful celebration of Passover with Jesus, through their bitter controversies that fragmented the movement’s midcentury missions, to the city’s fiery end in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, she brings this vibrant apostolic community to life. Fredriksen offers a vivid portrait both of this temple-centered messianic movement and of the bedrock convictions that animated and sustained it.
Paula Fredriksen
Paula Fredriksen, Aurelio Professor of Scripture emerita at Boston University, is currently the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is one of the world’s leading scholars of ancient Judaism and early Christianity.
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Reviews for When Christians Were Jews
52 ratings7 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5There were some interesting bits of information, especially her reading from Josephus, but her analysis of the Gospels was a bit flat, interpreting the apocalyptic sections as history reporting. Her interpretation of Paul shows a particular lack of insight into the history of the movement and the beliefs of Jews of the time, even as divergent as they were at the time. She would do well to explore the genesis of the idea of the expectation of the end by early Christians as a later Western myth, rather than what early Christians were actually expecting.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very good book a lot of information about the first people that started preaching what jesus teach them,and who they were.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An excellent close and careful reading of the gospels, laid upon a solid understanding of the contemporary Jewish and Roman world. Highly readable, this is a well researched and detailed work, yet flows and maintains a gripping narrative of how the first followers thought they were going to be the last.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Great insight about the history in the times of Jesus.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5It is a good story-telling but its foundational facts are not very well reasoned and can be easily demolished.
Generally, the book is trying to portray Jesus as a false prophet, Jesus narratives as contradictory and full of surprising and almost inexplicable twists to their changing situation, and Gospels as non-historic narratives with the only intention to persuade their respective audiences.
The book fails on many, both historical and theological, grounds:
1. Many contradictions she states are not contradictions at all. For example, Paul's journey to Damascus, him getting blind but Christ being revealed to him at that moment - she pits Acts and Galatians against each other as if they were incoherent together which is untrue.
2. She uses wrong dating (e.g., Acts as the 2nd century source) or at least she does not provide evidence for using this dating nor does she try to reason pros and cons of this dating. This is essential as her narrative is highly dependent on late dating of the Book of Acts. There is a plenty of reasons against that (for example, Colin Hemer's book 'The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History').
3. She has serious issue understanding the prophecies. Prophecies are not forecasts. They have conditional nature, it is sufficient to open the Old Testament to see that. For that matter, even books by Jewish authors such as Abraham Heschel do good job showing this.
Most importantly, this book's main failure is to explain why Nazarenes whose Messiah had just died were at all able and willing to spread this message, it does poor job demonstrating Jewishness of Jesus and his claims (or gospel claims), and also weak job on the parting of the ways.
If you want to know more on this topic, there are plenty of better books - Marvin Wilson's Our Father Abraham or books by Richard Bauckham or even Geza Vermes for that matter.4 people found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The author reports contradictions in the New Testament, where there are no contradictions. These are assumptions. Assumptions are the mother of all error.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Someone that doesn’t know about the Bible, talking about it. What can go wrong?
Honestly, this book is a misrepresentation of second temple Judaism, the life of Jesus and the neo testamentary time. You cannot take seriously someone that examines the whole biblical corpus as disconnected works from each other and wants to find so-called contradictions in places where even atheist would agree that there are non. Besides, many of her comments are factually mistaken. It feels more like a pseudo-academical work created just to smear the first believers in Jesus Christ as God and Messiah.
Honestly, if this is the average level of the academia, then they’re are lost. I still can’t fathom what I’ve just read. I honestly recommend to avoid this book, unless you want to know which kind of pseudo-academic arguments people want to believe nowadays.1 person found this helpful