Skip to main content
Cover of Interpreting Jesus

Interpreting Jesus

  • Biblical Studies & Commentaries
  • Publisher: Eerdmans
  • Published: 2025

FritzSearch.com earns a commission on purchases made through Bookshop.org links.

Publisher's Description

Timely new essays from a renowned scholar of historical Jesus studies Dale Allison, Jr. has long been recognized as a leading scholar in historical Jesus studies. In Interpreting Jesus, he continues to advance the discussion with the expertise and insight for which he is renowned. Within these highly original essays, Allison explores questions related to Jesus and women, Jesus and miracles, Jesus and Moses, Jesus and the last things, and method in Jesus scholarship. His sound analysis is particularly timely as scholars reconsider the historical figure of Jesus and the relationships among the canonical gospels. Allison’s keen interest in developing fresh perspectives make this book an important contribution to the field; readers can be grateful that, as he puts it, “enduring curiosity has kept me pondering the historical Jesus.”


Endorsements (4)

“Dale Allison has the originality and courage to challenge the scholarly status quo, and the knowledge of ancient sources to do it seriously. This is a fresh and refreshing take on the historical Jesus.”

John J. Collins

“Stunning essays from arguably the most important—and unarguably the most prolific— contemporary scholar of the historical Jesus. To borrow from Star Trek, Dale Allison boldly goes where few critical scholars have gone before—parapsychology, miracles, Jesus’s knowledge (or lack thereof) of the future, his relations with women—and he does it so logically, and with such a mountain of evidence, that he drags you along with him!”

Joel Marcus

“Happily, Dale Allison has not left Jesus behind. Allison’s well-known attention to detail continues in Interpreting Jesus as he updates his thinking on topics where he has had a profound influence on modern historical Jesus and Gospel scholarship (e.g., eschatology, Moses typologies, the miraculous, memory). He has also continued to produce equally important detailed work on the history of Jesus scholarship and its broader reception, areas overlooked by many peers. Allison’s thinking is not easily pigeonholed, and his independence of mind shown in Interpreting Jesus means he will continue to influence scholarship for years to come.”

James Crossley

“Dale Allison’s new book about Jesus not only enlivens old questions in the quests for the historical Jesus, but it also adds new life at important points: Jesus’s expectation of the world’s future, his understanding of the past by Moses typology, his metanormal activity, and his interactions with female followers. Most importantly, Allison questions the all-too-easy dichotomy between the historical and the fictional in the Jesus tradition. Allison, a leading Jesus researcher of our time, demonstrates that Jesus research is not yet over. There are always new perspectives and ideas.”

Gerd Theissen

See something wrong on this page? Report a problem