LeRon Shults announces a new book and a discussion on his blog about the book.  The book, Seeking the Identity of Jesus, gathered scholars to write about, well, Jesus’ identity.  Among other things, they agreed on the following nine points:

1. Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew.
2. The identity of Jesus is reliably attested and known in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.
3. The entirety of the canonical witness is indispensable to a faithful rendering of the figure of Jesus.
4.
In order to understand the identity of Jesus rightly, the church must constantly engage in in the practice of deep, sustained reading of these
texts.
5. To come to grips with the identity of Jesus, we must know him as he is presented to us through the medium of narrative.
6.
The trajectory begun with the the NT of interpreting Jesus’ identity in
and for the church has continued through Christian history.
7. Because Jesus remains a living presence, he can be encountered in the community of his people,the body of Christ.
8. Jesus is a disturbing, destabilizing figure.
9. The identity of Jesus is something that must be learned through long-term discipline.

If you’re reading the book, go to LeRon’s blog and drop a comment.

More from Beliefnet and our partners