Synopses & Reviews
Who was the historical Jesus? Here veteran movie director Paul Verhoeven’s lifelong fascination with the facts and fictions surrounding the life of Jesus of Nazareth culminates in a work of brazen scholarship. Combining his passion for the subject with an in-depth knowledge of the history gained through rigorous study, Verhoeven paints a portrait of Jesus the man and Jesus the radical prophet. Verhoeven constructs a new vision of Jesus as a child born from the rape of Mary by a Roman soldier, as a spiritualist who performed exorcisms by screaming and spitting in the mouths of the possessed to drive out demons, and as a militant revolutionary who urged his followers to arm themselves.
After moving from his native Holland to Los Angeles in 1985, Paul Verhoeven became the only non-theologian admitted into the Jesus Seminar, a group of seventy-seven eminent scholars in theology, philosophy, linguistics, and biblical history. Their discussions are devoted to determining what Jesus actually said and did. Jesus of Nazareth was developed in extensive consultation with Rob van Scheers, Verhoeven’s biographer. Verhoeven is the director of successful films such as Turkish Delight (1973), Soldier of Orange (1977), The Fourth Man (1983), RoboCop (1987), Basic Instinct (1992), Starship Troopers (1997), and Black Book (2006).
Susan Massotty is an award-winning translator who has also translated The Diary of Anne Frank, My Father’s Notebook by Kader Abdolah, All Souls Day by Cees Nooteboom, Wedding by the Sea by Abdelkader Benali, and The Kreutzer Sonata by Margriet de Moor. She lives and works in the Netherlands.
Review
"Shrewd and learned."Adam Gopnik, New Yorker
"Paul Verhoeven, director of Robocop,” Basic Instinct” and Starship Troopers,” has long been known for perfecting the art of the subversive blockbuster. However, he may have topped that feat with his latest achievement:Jesus of Nazareth, a quasi-scholarly, 200-page portrayal of Christianity’s most emblematic figure from a realistic perspective.The newly released book, which reflects Verhoeven’s 25 years of research as a member of the Jesus Seminar in Los Angeles, blends historical insights with the filmmaker’s flair for drama."Wall Street Journal
"A compelling read that will grip readers regardless of their religious beliefs."Midwest Book Review
"Verhoeven brings a searing honesty to the Jesus debate. His cinematic eye catches nuances that scholars have often overlooked. The payoff is a Jesus released from ecclesial and dogmatic winding sheets ... a human being who breathes our air, risks, dreams, imagines, and makes mistakes."Arthur Dewey, Professor of Theology, Xavier University and fellow of the Jesus Seminar
Synopsis
Who was the historical Jesus? Here veteran movie director Paul Verhoeven's lifelong fascination with the facts and fictions surrounding the life of Jesus of Nazareth culminates in a work of brazen scholarship. Combining his passion for the subject with an in-depth knowledge of the history gained through rigorous study, Verhoeven paints a portrait of Jesus the man and Jesus the radical prophet. Verhoeven constructs a new vision of Jesus as a child born from the rape of Mary by a Roman soldier, as a spiritualist who performed exorcisms by screaming and spitting in the mouths of the possessed to drive out demons, and as a militant revolutionary who urged his followers to arm themselves.
Synopsis
Combining his passion for the subject with an in-depth knowledge of the history gained through rigorous study, film director Verhoeven paints a portrait of Jesus the man and Jesus the radical prophet.
Synopsis
The director of Robocop paints a groundbreaking portrait of Jesus.
Synopsis
Building on the work of the great Biblical scholars of the twentieth century—Rudolf Bultman, Raymond Brown, Jane Schabert and Robert Funk, founder of the Jesus Seminars, among others—filmmaker Paul Verhoeven disrobes the mythical Jesus to reveal a man who is, after all, startlingly familiar to us, a man who has much in common with other great political leaders throughout history, human beings who believed that change was coming in their lifetimes.
Gone is the Jesus of the miracles, gone the son of God, gone the weaver of arcane parables whose meanings are obscure. In their place Verhoeven gives us his vision of Jesus as a complete man, someone who was changed by events, the leader of a political movement, and, perhaps most importantly, someone who, in his speeches and sayings, introduced a new ethics in which enlightened behavior and the embrace of human contradictions transcend the mechanics of value and worth that had defined the material world before Jesus.
Coming to a deeper understanding of the historical Jesus has been a lifelong passion for Verhoeven, who for the last quarter-century has been among the very few nonacademics participating in the Jesus Seminars. Verhoeven assumed that one day he would make a film of the life of Jesus. Then he realized that it must be a book. Steeped in Biblical scholarship but free of the institutional biases, whether academic or religious, that so often dictate the terms of discussion of the historical Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth is a book that builds a bridge reaching all the way back to Jesus's lifetime, all the way forward to the present, and from biblical scholars to lay readers whose interest might be personal or political.
About the Author
After moving from his native Holland to Los Angeles in 1985, Paul Verhoeven became the only non-theologian admitted into the Jesus Seminar, a group of seventy-seven eminent scholars in theology, philosophy, linguistics, and biblical history. Their discussions are devoted to determining what Jesus actually said and did.
Jesus of Nazareth was developed in extensive consultation with Rob van Scheers, Verhoeven's biographer. Verhoeven is the director of successful films such as
Turkish Delight (1973),
Soldier of Orange (1977),
The Fourth Man (1983),
RoboCop (1987),
Basic Instinct (1992),
Starship Troopers (1997), and
Black Book (2006).
Susan Massotty is an award-winning translator who has also translated The Diary of Anne Frank, My Father's Notebook by Kader Abdolah, All Souls Day by Cees Nooteboom, Wedding by the Sea by Abdelkader Benali, and The Kreutzer Sonata by Margriet de Moor. She lives and works in the Netherlands.