“Classical exposition of messiahship” is my four words review of Herbert W. Bateman IV, Darrell L. Bock and Gordon H. Johnston’s 528-paged Kregel Publications coup d’état work, Jesus the Messiah: Tracing the Promises, Expectations, and Coming of Israel’s King (2012)
Answering who Jesus, the Messiah is, Johnston broke dawn by trace messianic trajectories from the Old Testament, Bateman captured the anticipations of this messianic figure and Bock took captive the twilight of coming messiah, leaving no stone unturned.
Jesus the Messiah is divided into three parts. In part one, Johnston went in a great detail through the Old Testament tracing the royal dynasty of the Israel King. Part two, Bateman pick up the expectation of the of this Israel eschatological King. Part three, Bock contended how Jesus is the Israel eschatological King.
In addition, Johnston delves into Proto-Evangelion (The promise in Genesis 3:15) in appendix. Johnston exposited Genesis 3:15, as he answered what the author of Genesis intended his original audience to understand. Although he agree that Genesis 3:1 has messianic potential, Johnston argued: “The conscious object of the faith of ancient Israel was not the expectation of the coming “head-crusher,” but Yahweh alone as their Deliverer and Lord”(p. 460)
The authors’ main aim,
[I]s […] to help those who fail to see any connection between promise in the First Testament and fulfillment in the Second Testament about messiah, as well as to nudge others to consider moving beyond the notion that all First Testament readings about “messiah” were fixed and only spoke directly about Jesus.(p. 35)
Colored charts, maps, graphs, figures et cetera made Jesus the Messiah not only informative but humdinger. I will recommend this work to those who are fascinated by the character of Christ Jesus. It is a heavy book, but worth reading and turning to again and again when needed.
Thank you Laura Bartlett at Kregel Academic & Ministry for proving me with a free PDF copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.
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Thank you for this review…looks like a work worth picking up!
I don’t know if you would be interested but there is an excellent book by Peter S Williams British Christian philosopher that deals with the historical Jesus and how we should take him. Book is called “Understanding Jesus”
He wrote some other equally excellent books that deal with Atheism and Faith. Two other books I have by the same author are “I wish I could believe in meaning” and second one is called “A sceptics guide to atheism” Obviously both books are written from Christian point of view. Another book I would recommend I would guess you would have this in your library is “Reinventing Jesus – how contemporary sceptics miss the real Jesus and mislead popular culture. This is collaboration of 3 authors J Ed Komoszewski, MJ Sawyer and Daniel B Wallace. Thoroughly recommend written simply but with significant depth.
Kind regards
Defend the Word