Searching for Jesus (Hardcover) Robert J. Hutchinson

Searching for Jesus:  In this exhaustively researched new life of Jesus, award-winning writer Robert J. Hutchinson argues that Jesus was not an "apocalyptic prophet" who thought the world was about to end. Jesus was not a "zealot" revolutionary who wanted to kill the Romans. Jesus was not a Greek Cynic philosopher. Jesus was not an orthodox rabbi who accidentally got himself killed by causing a disturbance in the Temple. Jesus was not a world-hating Gnostic. Jesus was not a delusional fanatic who tricked his followers into following him.

Instead, Jesus was just as the Gospels describe him: a fiery, courageous, charismatic populist who drew crowds by the tens of thousands and electrified all of Palestine with his strange and exhilarating announcement of God's kingdom in their midst.  Jesus reached out to the most wretched and despised people in society -- the demon-possessed, the deformed, those afflicted with horrible contagious diseases, prostitutes, even soldiers of an occupation army.  Hutchinson shows that many of the negative ideas about Jesus paraded in the media every Christmas and Easter are increasingly obsolete.  These obsolete portraits of Jesus, the author says, are based on assumptions, theories and unproven hypotheses that are more than a century old and that have been discredited by more recent research.

Written for skeptics and believers alike, Searching for Jesus reveals how the Gospels are truer than many people have been led to believe. He asks the question:  "What if everything the Gospels say about Jesus... his words, his deeds, his plans... actually turn out to be... true?"

August 2023