An anthropological approach to the historical personage of Jesus, offering an intriguing and fruitful alternative to traditional historiographic methods.
The aim of historical Jesus research is to identify the authentic material from which the historical figure as a social type underneath the overlay is constructed. Pieter Craffert's anthropological historiography offers an alternative framework for dealing with Jesus of Nazareth as a social personage fully embedded in a first-century Mediterranean worldview and the Gospels as cultural artefacts related to this figure. This cross-cultural model represents a religious pattern that refers to a family of features for describing those religious entrepreneurs who, based on regular Altered State of Consciousness experiences, perform a specific set of social functions in their communities.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
List of Diagrams
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1: A Paradigm Shift in Historical Jesus Historiography
1. Historiography beyond Positivism and Postmodernism
2. An Analysis of Current Historical Jesus Research
3. A New Road for Historical Jesus Research: Cultural Bundubashing
4. In the Beginning Was a Social Personage and Cultural Artifacts
Part 2: A Model of Shamanic Figures
5. The Shamanic Complex: A Social-Type Model
6. Components of a First-Century (Shamanic) Worldview
7. The Shamanic Complex and Ancient Societies
Part 3: Jesus and the Shamanic Complex
8. Baptism and Spirit-Possession Experiences
9. Healing, Exorcism, and the Control of Spirits
10. Teaching, Preaching, and Prophetic Activities
11. Constituting a Galilean Shamanic Figure by Means of Infancy Narratives
12. Afterlife for Someone Like a Galilean Shamanic Figure
Conclusion: Someone Like a Galilean Shamanic Figure?
Abbreviations
Bibliography
