Editor's Preface
Editor's Preface
Jesus of Nazareth remains the most important individual who has ever lived. Nobody else has had comparable influence over so many nations for so long. Nobody else has so affected art and literature, music and drama. Nobody else can remotely match his record in the liberation, the healing and the education of mankind. Nobody else has attracted such a multitude not only of followers but of worshippers.
And nobody else has been subjected to such intense and prolonged critical study. After more than two hundred years of detailed examination and argument, many of the critical issues remain astonishingly open. The high-water mark of scepticism has receded somewhat. It is no longer assumed without question that nothing orthodox can be true. But certain emphases, methodologies and presuppositions, common in New Testament studies, are widely held to militate against the reliability of the picture of Jesus presented to us by the documents. There is a rumour abroad that in these days of redaction criticism it is neither proper nor necessary to ask what actually happened, and that the Jesus of history is indistinguishable behind the Christ of faith. This series will address itself to the task of re-examining Jesus.
During the 1970s Hodder put out a series of books on controversial issues within the Christian religion. They were published in various countries, and were written by a variety of authors who were united in the belief that good scholarship and orthodox belief were not incompatible. During the 1980s the same publishers hope to produce a comparable series concentrating on the supremely controversial storm-centre of Christianity, Jesus Christ himself. Various aspects of the Jesus story will be looked at: his teaching, his example, his death and resurrection, his uniqueness. In this, the first volume of the series, Dr. F. F. Bruce, recently retired as Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at Manchester, and one of the most distinguished of British New Testament scholars, has set the tone to which other writers in the series will aspire. His book is characterised by clarity, honesty, scholarship, intelligibility and faith.
Those who have heard Professor Bruce answer questions, without a note, on the most abstruse New Testament problems will be delighted that he has agreed to tackle seventy of the most difficult sayings of Jesus. I know of no book like this, and I am confident that it will reach a very wide circle of readers. The considered fruits of his research and reflection will afford both understanding and confidence to many, and will bring the person of Jesus into clearer focus for every reader.
Michael Green