There can be no doubt that Jesus, 'a religious genius' as Geza Vermes describes him, lived and taught in Palestine some 2000 years ago. The influence he has had is incalculable. How though can we distinguish between the doctrines shaped to the needs of the burgeoning Christian church and the original views laid out by Jesus himself? How can we dig back through the additions, misinterpretations and confusions of later writers and two millennia of tradition to get back to the authentic gospel of Jesus? In his new book, Vermes subjects all the sayings of Jesus to brilliantly informed scrutiny. The result is a book of unique value and novelty--scraping aside the accretions of centuries to come as close as we can hope to be to the true Jesus.
Author Biography
Geza Vermes was born in Hungary in 1924. From 1957 to 1991 he taught in at the Universities of Newcastle and Oxford. Professor Vermes is the author of The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (1997) and The Changing Faces of Jesus (2000). He lives in Oxford.
