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CHRISTOBIOGRAPHY HB

Availability: OUT OF STOCK, AVAILABLE TO ORDER
  • ISBN 9780802876751
  • Author KEENER CRAIG S
  • Pub Date 27/09/2019
The four canonical Gospels are ancient biographies, narratives of Jesus’s life. The authors of these Gospels were intentional in how they handled historical information and sources....
£42.75
£45.00
The four canonical Gospels are ancient biographies, narratives of Jesus’s life. The authors of these Gospels were intentional in how they handled historical information and sources.

Building on recent work in the study of ancient biographies, Craig Keener argues that the writers of the canonical Gospels followed the literary practices of other biographers in their day. In Christobiography he explores the character of ancient biography and urges students and scholars to appreciate the Gospel writers’ method and degree of accuracy in recounting the ministry of Jesus. Keener’s Christobiography has far-reaching implications for the study of the canonical Gospels and historical-Jesus research. He concludes that the four canonical Gospels are historically reliable ancient biographies.

As reviewed by Dr. Stephen McQuoid in February 2020- 'Essentially Keener sets out to demonstrate that the gospels are of the genre of historical biography and that, while legitimate questions can be raised about the finer details of the text, nevertheless the scepticism of liberal scholars about the reliability of the gospels is unwarranted. This book is very typical of Keener, it is a significant tomb, clearly laid out, giving huge detail about the literature of the ancient world, the texts of the New Testament and scholarly opinions on both. All of this detail is delivered over 500 pages which are replete with footnotes. This is then followed with a bibliography of primary and secondary sources covering a further 130 pages. In other words, this book is not for the feint hearted.

That said, Keener is never hard to read and if you can cope with the massive detail, there is some brilliant material here and all from a scholar who is not just academically at the top of the tree, but a committed Christian who clearly loves the scriptures. My favourite section of the book is chapters 14-16 where Keener looks at the issue of memory, oral tradition and the handling of the teachings of Jesus. This is an area where liberals such as Bart Ehrman have questioned the gospel’s reliability, using analogies such as the telephone game or Chinese whispers to claim they cannot be trusted. Keener deals with those objections stating that the gospel writers did not just act as individuals but utilised group memory to record the proper details. Moreover, Jesus teaching was done in public so there were plenty of witnesses to guarantee the accuracy of the gospel accounts. This book makes comforting reading (provided you don’t doze off) because Keener’s careful scholarship supports the case for biblical reliability.'


Product Information:
Format: Hardcover
Number of Pages: 496
Publication Date: 2019
Dimensions: 9 X 6 (inches)
ISBN-13: 9780802876751