In this stimulating work, one of the most renowned scholars of ancient Judaism explores how Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom and the earliest Jesus movement fit into the Jewish world of Judea and Galilee. In this revised edition of an earlier work, Vermes includes five new chapters.

Jesus in the Jewish Wold represents some of the seminal aspects of the lifelong research of Geza Vermes focused on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish Bible interpretation and the historical study of Jesus and the New Testament. Taken together the fifteen essays, the oldest of which dates from 1970 and the most recent from 2010, constitute an evocative cross section of the contribution to scholarship by Vermes who is equally celebrated as a pioneering Jesus In The Jewish World represents a synopsis of the most significant and Scrolls expert and, according to the Sunday Telegraph, the greatest Jesus scholar of his generation. Readers of the present volume are offered lively and often humorous accounts of the impact of Jesus the Jew on Christian and Jewish readers; of the value of Josephus as a historical source regarding John the Baptist, James the brother of the Lord, and Jesus; the historical implications of ancient Jewish biblical exegesis; of the inside story of the monumental recasting by Vermes and his friends of Emil Schurer's History of the Jewish People; and of the sacrifice of Isaac and the story of the first-century Galilean rabbi, Hanina ben Dosa. The final two essays, written in 2007 and 2010, are particularly noteworthy, the first propounding a fresh and revolutionary approach to methodology in the study of the historical Jesus and the second restating and reinforcing Vermes's stance in the half -a-century long Son of Man debate. Geza Vermes is Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies and Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford but continues to teach at the Oriental Institute in Oxford.

Contains biographies of all the major (and some minor) figures from Jesus' era. Gives detailed portraits of Jesus, John the Baptist, Pontius Pilate, Herod and other key figures of the age. Provides full information on the Jewish and Roman leaders often ignored in the Bible. Includes a brief account of Jewish history from 63 BC to AD 135, chronological and genealogical tables, a map of Palestine in the age of Jesus, comprehensive cross-referencing and a glossary to fully elucidate the complex links between people and stories.