The Jesus Seminar approach to understanding the historical Jesus is totally devastated by Murphy-O'Connor's presentation. After a century of scholarship discounting even the possibility of knowing the Jesus of history, more and more contemporary scholarship is accepting the historicity of the Gospels and defending their reliability. LaGrange writing in the 1920s was the first to expose the prejudices and misconceptions of the German scholarship that rejected the miracles of Jesus and credibility of the believers' testimonies captured in the New Testament. An ever-growing cross section of contemporary scholarship is accepting and enlarging LaGrange's arguments.
Rev. Murphy-O'Connor does just this in this riveting series of talks. He defends the historicity of the virgin birth, the miracle stories and major events of the Gospel narratives. He explains the differences in content and style of the writers and dispels much of the cynicism that has dominated academia for the past 100 years. His insights, however, are far from commonplace and his explanation of the events recounted is fresh and provocative. The most well read listener will come away from this series of talks with a greater knowledge of Jesus and a deeper desire to build up the body of Christ on earth, the community of loving believers.
He challenges the listeners to be the answer to humanity's universal cry for justice and love in this world. Wherever believers come together in love the spiritual life will flourish and the suffering of people will be greatly diminished by their caring actions. Preachers, teachers and students of the word of God will all be enriched by this series and come away with a greater confidence in the Lord's on-going concern for us his trusting disciples.
CDAH585
8 hours with outline
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Author: |
Rev. Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, op |