Jesus Beyond Nationalism: Constructing the Historical Jesus in a Period of Cultural Complexity

The link between historical Jesus studies and the broader cultural contexts has been largely lost in contemporary scholarship, with the heritage of the Jesus scholarship from the nineteenth century being detached from its cultural context and with the history of Jesus scholarship being buried as a topic in the development of methods and issues in New Testament studies. As a result most presentations of the historical Jesus are historiographically and hermeneutically na've, assuming an objective posture, with little or no reflection on their ideological presuppositions. Therefore, consciously or unconsciously, they often represent hegemonic positions. This collection of essays starts from a different position, by questioning the use of presentations of Jesus to defend and protect hegemonic or mono-cultural contexts, and thereby explicitly or implicitly favour a development towards a more inclusive society for persons from different ethnic, racial, national, gender and sexual orientation backgrounds. This collection of essays will look at the cultural and ideological beginnings of historical Jesus studies in the nineteenth century and expose the underlying presuppositions of hegemony in contemporary presentations of Jesus, viewed from the perspective of cultural complexity.

Ward Blanton lectures in New Testament in the Dept of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Glasgow. He is author of Displacing Christian Origins: Philosophy, Secularity, and the New Testament (2007}. James G. Crossley is Lecturer in New Testament Studies at the University of Sheffield. His recent publications include Jesus in an Age of Terror: Scholarly Projects for a New American Century (Equinox Publishing, 2008) and Why Christianity Happened: A Sociohistbrical Account of Christian Origins 26-50CE (2006). Halvor Moxnes lectures in New Testament in the Department of Theology at the University of Oslo. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters. Among his numerous publications are Putting Jesus in his Place: A Radical Vision of Household and Kingdom (2003) and Constructing Early Christian Families (ed., 1997).