How would our understanding of Jesus change if we abandoned our preconceptions and focussed on his words alone? How would this wisdom compare with that of ancient Israel and the early first-century church? Such questions pose serious difficulties. Everything in the early Christian gospels is either derived from historical memory, or is borrowed, or invented, argues Charles W. Hedrick. Of the many sayings attributed to Christ, historians can only agree on a few as having been spoken by him – and those few are far from certain. In The Wisdom of Jesus, Hedrick overcomes these challenges, presenting a picture of Jesus as expressed through his own words. The Jesus that emerges is a lower-class man of the first century; a complex figure who cannot be considered religious in a traditional sense. Liberated from theological explanation and interpretation, his discourse is revealed as belonging to the secular world, and his concerns to be those of common life. Table of Contents Preface Introduction 1 The Problem of the Historical Study of Jesus 2 Jesus and the Language of the Gospel 3 Early Christian Wisdom 4 Surveying the Sages of Ancient Israel 5 The Sayings of Jesus: A Preface 6 Vestiges of a Discourse 7 Parables: Fictional Narratives about the Ordinary 8 A Case Study of a Parable: The Fired Manager 9 Jesus between the Wisdom Canons of Israel and the Church Epilogue: Pondering the Unreliability of the Gospels List of Abbreviations Bibliography Index of Ancient Sources Index of Modern Authors

The Wisdom of Jesus: Between the Sages of Israel and the Apostles of the Church

Religion & Spirituality

Hedrick, Charles W.

Christian Books & Bibles

James Clarke & Co.

In this splendid introduction to the elusive rhetorical device central to the New Testament picture of Jesus, Charles Hedrick explores the nature of the parable and its history of use. He asks basic questions such as, what is a parable? is Jesus really the author of the parables? and what does a parable mean? and then reviews a range of sources--from Aesop's fables to modern New Testament scholarship--to answer them. He also surveys the various ways the parables have been approached in literary criticism throughout history, giving specific examples of each method and delineating their strengths and weaknesses.

Many Things in Parables: Jesus and His Modern Critics

Westminster/John Knox Press

Hedrick explores the tension, or collision, that occurs when one studies the Jesus of faith with the critical eye of historical scholarship. He outlines the nature of historical inquiry, gives a brief history of how scholars have understood Jesus, and identifies the essential issues confronting the reader of the New Testament Gospel accounts of Jesus: discrepancies, contradictions, and differences as well as strong similarities among different writers.

When History and Faith Collide: Studying Jesus

Baker Academic

The 'Apocalypse of Adam' was discovered among the papyri from the ancient gnostic library at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1946. It is a revelatory discourse that Adam delivers to his son Seth. This discourse is the fifth and final tractate in Nag Hammadi Codex V. The manuscript is now in the Coptic Museum in Old Cairo (codex inv. no. 10548). In Part I of this significant treatment, Hedrick analyzes the sources that lay behind this work, the redaction, and the main theological themes. In Part II, he provides the Coptic text, translation, and notes on the complete text, broken down by Source A, Source B, and the Redactor's additions.

Apocalypse of Adam: A Literary and Source Analysis (1980, C1979) (English and Coptic Edition)

UNKNO

The Apocalypse of Adam: A Literary and Source Analysis (SBL Dissertation Series, No. 46)

Book by Attridge, Harold W., Hodgson Jr., Robert, Hedrick, Charles W., Working Seminar on Gnosticism and Early Christianity

Nag Hammadi, Gnosticism, & Early Christianity: Fourteen Leading Scholars Discuss the Current Issues in Gnostic Studies

Attridge, Harold W.

Hodgson Jr., Robert

Working Seminar on Gnosticism and Early Christianity

Hendrickson Pub

Contending that Jesus' narrative parables are more poetic than metaphoric, Charles Hedrick argues that parables should be understood solely on their own terms and not on the terms of the Gospel writers' contexts into which they have been placed or of the agendas of the later church. Hedrick charts new territory as he dares readers to recover the "imaginative fiction" of Jesus' parables. Hedrick's dissatisfaction with figurative and metaphorical approaches or approaches that argue for a particular "meaning" or a "single interpretation"Â—especially those attempting to tie a parable's meaning to the "kingdom of God"Â—diverges sharply from the modern consensus and breaks new ground in parable studies.
"Jesus told parables. Gospel writers give them diverse readings. Modern exegetes give them even more diverse readings. Hedrick chronicles both diversities and then poses a new question. How would those parables, precisely as poetic but realistic stories, have sounded to Jesus' first hearers 'in the context of Israel's fictions about itself'? His book emphasizes original audience reaction, and its signal achievement is to have said something new, interesting, and provocative in the very crowded field of parables research." Â—John Dominic Crossan, Professor of Biblical Studies, De Paul University
"Charles Hedrick's Parables as Poetic Fictions places the story character of Jesus' parables at the center of attention. His innovative use of Aristotle's poetics pioneers the place of sound in the structuring of the parables and provides a way of understanding how the story is organized. This book must be on the shelf of anyone interested in the parables." Â—Bernard Brandon Scott, Darbeth Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Phillips Graduate Seminary

Parables as Poetic Fictions: The Creative Voice of Jesus

What difference does scholarship on the historical Jesus make for the way we think about the meaning of Christian faith in the twenty-first century? In The Historical Jesus Goes To Church, biblical scholars--Fellows of the Jesus Seminar--speak directly to the ways in which new knowledge of the Jesus of history requires and enables us to think differently about the significance of Jesus and about the reliability and authority of the Bible. They also imagine what these new understandings imply for public worship, preaching, prayer and practice, and life in community. These articles evoke the spirit of Paul, Christianity's first theologian, who like us found himself standing at the intersection of two eras and knew that he had to let go of his past if he hoped to have a future.

The Historical Jesus Goes to Church (Jesus Seminar)

Taussig, Hal

Patterson, Stephen J.

Hoover, Roy W.

McGaughy, Lane C.

MacNab, Francis

Bessler-Northcutt, Joe

Jackson, Glenna S.

Polebridge Pr Westar Inst

On March 20, 1967, the Berlin Egyptian Museum acquired a collection of thirty-three parchment fragments written in Coptic. There they were given the simple designation P22220 and stored unceremoniously in paper folders. 
Almost thirty years later, two American scholars working independently of each other—Charles Hedrick and Paul Mirecki—began to study these forgotten fragments. What they found were pieces of a previously unknown gospel, a gospel composed perhaps in the second century and written down sometime between the fourth and seventh centuries. 
This new gospel text contains sayings of a speaker identified as "the savior" and dialogues between the savior and "the apostles." While it shares some sayings with the canonical gospels, there are remarkable additions: To the familiar "You are the salt of the earth" (Matt 5:13), for example, is added the phrase "you are the fire that illuminates the world"—a saying unknown in the canonical gospels. 
In this first-ever publication of The Gospel of the Savior, the scholars who discovered and reconstructed it provide a translation and critical original language text, along with illuminating introduction, commentary, and Coptic/Greek indices. This volume also includes complete facsimile reproductions of the fragments.

Gospel of the Savior: A New Ancient Gospel

History

World

Can the authentic words and deed of Jesus identified by the Jesus Seminar furnish a sufficient basis for a credible profile of the Jesus of history? That is the challenge faced by the contributors to this volume. Their efforts have resulted in a unique collection of studied impressions of Jesus. Here readers will see not Jesus the icon of myth and creed, but a provocative young man of first-century Palestine whose vision and determination to live the vision gave birth to a new form of faith and changed the course of history.

Profiles of Jesus

Crossan, John Dominic

Borg, Marcus J.

Funk, Robert W.

Dewey, Arthur J.

Fortna, Robert T.

Corley, Kathleen E.

James M. Robinson

Polebridge Press

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