For Immediate Release >>
Sunday, November 28th, 1999
COVER (document 84) Jesus of Nazareth- An Untold Story
Reynolds Price Calls Jesus 'The Single Most
Powerful Figure' in All of Human History
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But Price concludes Jesus' followers have contributed 'heavily to the evils of national and religious warfare, institutional and individual hatred'
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Price, a Biblical Scholar, Rewrites Key Gospel Moments for TIME
New York, NY - "The single most powerful figure -- not merely in these two millennia but in all human history - has been Jesus of Nazareth," novelist Reynolds Price writes this week in a TIME cover story, "Jesus at 2000 ... A New Gospel Based on Archaeology and the Bible."
"One of the useful ways of recalling the past two millennia is by listing the people who acquired great power," Price writes. "Mohammed, Catherine the Great, Marx, Gandhi, Hitler, Roosevelt, Stalin and Mao come quickly to mind. There's no question that each of those figures changed the lives of millions and evoked responses from worship through hatred."
But, Price adds, "No one else's life has proved remotely as powerful and as enduring as that of Jesus. It's an astonishing conclusion in light of the fact that Jesus was a man who lived a short life."
"In the minds of billions," Price writes, Jesus is "a transnational Messiah who continues to care for individual humans and to save them from internal and external evil."
One teaching that Price himself cannot follow is Jesus's instruction to "Go then and make disciples of all nations." "Given the gleaming confidence of those words, and in light of the appalling failings of Jesus' followers," Price writes, "that last command goes on contributing heavily to the evils of national and religious warfare, institutional and individual hatred, imperialism and enslavement."
Price concludes, "Yet alongside that havoc, and in the same two millenniums, Jesus' meaning has resulted in the most far-reaching movements of mercy, tolerance and human freedom and in the high-water marks of Western art."
TIME asked Price, author of the scholarly Three Gospels (1996), to use his erudition and imagination to craft an updated version of the Gospel's key moments.
Reynolds Price Calls Jesus 'The Single Most
Powerful Figure' in All of Human History
---
But Price concludes Jesus' followers have contributed 'heavily to the evils of national and religious warfare, institutional and individual hatred'
---
Price, a Biblical Scholar, Rewrites Key Gospel Moments for TIME
New York, NY - "The single most powerful figure -- not merely in these two millennia but in all human history - has been Jesus of Nazareth," novelist Reynolds Price writes this week in a TIME cover story, "Jesus at 2000 ... A New Gospel Based on Archaeology and the Bible."
"One of the useful ways of recalling the past two millennia is by listing the people who acquired great power," Price writes. "Mohammed, Catherine the Great, Marx, Gandhi, Hitler, Roosevelt, Stalin and Mao come quickly to mind. There's no question that each of those figures changed the lives of millions and evoked responses from worship through hatred."
But, Price adds, "No one else's life has proved remotely as powerful and as enduring as that of Jesus. It's an astonishing conclusion in light of the fact that Jesus was a man who lived a short life."
"In the minds of billions," Price writes, Jesus is "a transnational Messiah who continues to care for individual humans and to save them from internal and external evil."
One teaching that Price himself cannot follow is Jesus's instruction to "Go then and make disciples of all nations." "Given the gleaming confidence of those words, and in light of the appalling failings of Jesus' followers," Price writes, "that last command goes on contributing heavily to the evils of national and religious warfare, institutional and individual hatred, imperialism and enslavement."
Price concludes, "Yet alongside that havoc, and in the same two millenniums, Jesus' meaning has resulted in the most far-reaching movements of mercy, tolerance and human freedom and in the high-water marks of Western art."
TIME asked Price, author of the scholarly Three Gospels (1996), to use his erudition and imagination to craft an updated version of the Gospel's key moments.