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GARY GREENBERG, The Judas Brief: Who Really Killed Jesus? (New York/London: Continuum, 2007). Pp. x + 282. $29.95.
"Who really killed Jesus?" The Judas Briefs a spirited defense of first-century Jewish people and leaders by way of a historical reassessment of the NT Gospel accounts of the death of Jesus. Although the book's title centers on Judas, the recasting of his role in the passion drama, as Greenberg (re)constructs it, is only a minor element of a larger project of historical retrieval.
Like many other books of its genre - popular "revisionist" readings of NT accounts, whether written by biblical studies specialists or, as in G.'s case, by interested nonspecialists (G. is an attorney) - this monograph seeks to make accessible to a general audience methods and conclusions of conventional, historically informed biblical scholarship that specialists in the field will recognize as much less novel and provocative than the author acknowledges. It has long been recognized that the canonical Gospels do not present neutral, disinterested historical accounts of Jesus' career but have been shaped by complex religious, social, and political interests. In the case of the passion narratives, such interests contribute to diverse ways of developing character (e.g., attributing base motives to Judas) and plot (e.g., deflecting primary responsibility for Jesus' death sentence from Pilate to Jewish authorities)....