Who Was Jesus?

By: N. T. Wright

Narrated by: Derek Perkins

Length: 4 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

Did the historical person Jesus really regard himself as the Son of God? What did Jesus actually stand for? And what are we to make of the early Christian conviction that Jesus physically rose from the dead?

In this book, N. T. Wright considers these and many other questions raised by three controversial books about Jesus: Barbara Thiering's Jesus the Man, A. N. Wilson's Jesus: A Life, and John Shelby Spong's Born of a Woman. While Wright agrees with those authors that the real, historical Jesus has many surprises in store for institutional Christianity, he also presents solid reasons for discounting their arguments, claiming that they "fail to reach anything like the right answer" as to who Jesus really was.

Written from the standpoint of professional biblical scholarship yet assuming no prior knowledge of the subject, Wright's Who Was Jesus? shows convincingly that much can be gained from a rigorous historical assessment of what the Gospels say about Jesus. This is a book to engage skeptics and believers alike.

©2016 eChristian (P)2016 eChristian

Excellent scholarship and very readable

Wright has a gift for combining simplicity and profundity in his writings and this short book does not disappoint. And apart from the reader's consistent mispronunciation of one of the key scholars under review, the book is read very well.

Exceptional

Great summary of “Who Jesus Was” in the religious and secular dialogue. Very helpful and useable in a secular conversation.

Great content, sometimes distracting narrator

This is a fantastic read, and NT Wright delivers all that could be expected of this book. My only complaint is that the narrator's delivery is sometimes distracting, not for the any particular reason (Wright's other audio books from British narrators are not distracting to me) but even my wife concurred that she found the narrator difficult to listen to. I still give the book a 5 star, it's well worth the read (or listen).

Who Do We Say Jesus Was?

This little book covers how contrasting scholars of the last 50-100 years have struggled to place Jesus in his historical context. While some reviewers believe the material to now be dated, I cannot agree entirely. I see this book as responding to important-to-know movements in recent history so that we can respond accordingly. Though we may not know anyone who holds these views, they are out there, and, more importantly, are out there in scholarly circles. Tom addresses the merits and misunderstandings of each view presented in the hope of best answering the question, "Who Was Jesus?"

Good Refute of Heresy, Hardly any Defense of Orthodoxy

Wright does a great job of picking apart modern heretical and anti-historical views of Jesus, but spends maybe 10 minutes outlining the real historical Jesus. Sometimes it also seems like he has his own unorthodox views that aren’t heretical, but it’s hard to tell what is and isn’t sarcasm sometimes. Overall good, but not up to his usual quality

A little on the boring side

Not sure what the author’s point was. Long chapters and overall didn’t find the book very interesting.

misleading headline

I struggled with this book. it should be about Jesus but it is mostly about Wright's disagreements and agreements with different authors on the person of Jesus.