Jesus and the Rise of Nationalism: A New Quest for the NineteenthCentury Historical Jesus

Much of the enduring value of that period's works for the biblical studies guild derives from the ways in which they moved source-critical questions about the Gospels to the foreground of New Testament scholarship and their conscious detachment of historical reconstruction from the traditional dogmatic concerns of Christology and Trinitarian theology. The book concludes with a critique of more recent notions of nationalism, especially those intertwined with the concept of ethnicity, and a provocative consideration of how Jesus' utopian vision of the Kingdom of God might provide hope for a world whose most threatening problems seem beyond the capabilities of nation states to solve.