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WILLIAM R. HERZOG II, Jesus, Justice, and the Reign of God: A Ministry of Liberation
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2000). Pp. xvi + 316. Paper $26.95.
A companion piece to Herzog's Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), this study explicates the larger view of Jesus' ministry implied in the author's earlier book and clarifies the theological foundation of Jesus' work "by connecting him to the prophetic traditions of Israel" (p. 47).
Herzog divides his book into four parts. Part 1, "The Continuing Quest for the Historical Jesus," deftly surveys the methods and results of the quest, with particular attention to whether and how the political dimension of Jesus' work has been taken into account. In H.'s "gestalt," the historical Jesus is a "prophet of the justice of the reign of God." Jesus, being an "odd combination of prophetic types" (p. 66), stood in the tradition of the great oracular prophets of Israel even though he was a peasant prophet who interpreted Torah from within the "little tradition" of Galilee.
Part 2, "Jesus of Nazareth: A Contextual Approach," argues that any adequate context for Jesus must include the material, political, social, and economic conditions of his life. In H.'s context Jesus was a peasant in colonized Galilee, which was "an advanced agrarian society dominated by a...