Servant and Son: Jesus in Parable and Gospel

First published in 1981, Servant and Son attempts to look simultaneously at Jesus as the subject of our four canonical Gospels, and as a figure, at times the main figure, in his own parables. The parables are understood not as fictions he created but as ""stories his Father told him,"" revelations received from God in his capacity as a prophet. From these parables he emerges as servant of God, Son of God, and much more, anticipating in a variety of ways the Jesus of the four Gospels. ""He attempts to break the log-jam of current skepticism about the historical Jesus by examining his teaching to see if the religious faith of the person himself can be discerned. The result is a flood of new light on familiar problems."" I. Howard Marshall, in The Evangelical Quarterly. ""This is not just another conventional attempt to write a life of Jesus; it is a bold, but sensitive and suggestive, approach to understanding his faith in God."" David Hill, in The Expository Times. ""[T]he book deserves to be widely read and discussed among evangelicals and all who continue to respect the influence and impact of Jesus upon Christianity."" James A. Davis, in Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. J. Ramsey Michaels, now living in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. He is the author of New Testament commentaries on Revelation and Hebrews, and most notably on First Peter in the Word Biblical Commentary and the Gospel of John in the New International Commentary on the New Testament. His most recent book, Passing by the Dragon: The Biblical Tales of Flannery O'Connor for Wipf & Stock publishers, marks a crossover into the field of American literature.