Posted by: Curtis W. Lindsey | March 15, 2011  “The Historical
Jesus: Five Views” edited by Beilby and Eddy  Historical Jesus
Five Views  Who was the “historical Jesus”?  To answer, many
would open their Bibles and turn to their favorite Gospel.  But
since the Enlightenment, some have tried to “peel” away the
“theology” of the Gospels to get to the real “history” of the
person: what was he like, what did he really teach, etc.  The
conversation continues today in James K. Beilby and Paul R.
Eddy’s edited work entitled The Historical Jesus: Five Views
(Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009).  The introduction gives
a nice 45 page summary of the history of Jesus research and
orients the reader to the present discussion.  Each of the five
contributors writes about a 30 page argument for their view,
followed by about 20 pages (total) of responses from the
opposing authors.  First, Robert M. Price argues that there was,
in fact, no historical person named Jesus of Nazareth in the
first century.  Instead, he defends