An analysis that challenges the conventional Christian hierarchy of John the Baptist and Jesus of NazarethWhile the Christian tradition has subordinated John the Baptist to Jesus of Nazareth, John himself would likely have disagreed with that ranking. In this eye-opening new book, John the Baptist in History and Theology, Joel Marcus makes a powerful case that John saw himself, not Jesus, as the proclaimer and initiator of the kingdom of God and his own mi...

In the final nine chapters of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus increasingly struggles with his disciples’ incomprehension of his unique concept of suffering messiahship and with the opposition of the religious leaders of his day. The Gospel recounts the events that led to Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion by the Roman authorities, concluding with an enigmatic ending in which Jesus’ resurrection is announced but not displayed.In this volume New Testament scholar Joel Marcus offers a ne...

Jesus was a Jew. Yet nineteen centuries after his death, hatred inspired in part by the long-standing tradition of Christian anti-Judaism played a significant role in the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust.How are Christians and Jews to deal with this jarring historical incongruity?In Jesus and the Holocaust Joel Marcus—a Jew by birth, a Christian by choice—offers stirring meditations on the relationship between the deaths of six million Jews at the hands of...