Jesus the Man [antikvár]

FOREWORD On Palm Sunday, 1990, a television documentary outlining the work of Dr Barbara Thiering was broadcast throughout Australia by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It concerned the connection between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament gospels as they impinge on the foundations of Christianity. The documentary, which received media and individual attention rare in Australia for material with a religious theme, was alternately seen as "a gift for television" or "academic mumbo-jumbo", as "liberating" or "extremely misleading". If there was anything common to the reactions of the Churches, academics and individuals, it was the implicit acknowledgement that here was a hypothesis about Christian beginnings which was original and challenging. Modem literature makes much of the concept of "subtext", those ideas lying below the surface words of the text. Some of the biblical interpretations of the last century have accepted that there is a second meaning lying below the words of the gospels—this meaning is usually seen as either mythical or allegorical. Thiering's view of the underlying meaning is radically different—she sees in it an actual chronicle of events, portraying the history of Jesus. These events can be traced through the device of "pesher", a technique adapted from Old Testament interpretations characteristic of the