Unraveling the Family History of Jesus approaches Jesus as an historical figure and sheds light on the details of the settings, the circumstances, and the context in which His family lived. Steven Donald Norris-drawing upon a wide array of sources-brings to this work an historian's sensibility of the broad sweep of events and a genealogist's eye for capturing the fine nuances that make a family's own story unique. Typical theological treatments of Jesus tend to regard Him as the Messiah because the New Testament identifies Him as a "son of David." Unraveling the Family History of Jesus digs into the background and lineage of Jesus and, by uncovering the setting in life-Sitz im Leben-of His family, shows precisely how Jesus was a son of David and how He-by right-ought to be acclaimed "King of the Jews." In addition, this work documents the connections tying Jesus's extended family to several historical figures who played prominent roles in the destruction of Jerusalem. Norris' work provides fresh insights that arise from meticulous reexaminations of existing historical sources. It traces the family ties binding Jesus's forebears and His extended family to one another and to Jesus Himself and tells how this family's influence changed the course of human history.

Unraveling the Family History of Jesus approaches Jesus as an historical figure and sheds light on the details of the settings, the circumstances, and the context in which His family lived. Steven Donald Norris—drawing upon a wide array of sources—brings to this work an historian’s sensibility of the broad sweep of events and a genealogist’s eye for capturing the fine nuances that make a family’s own story unique. Typical theological treatments of Jesus tend to regard Him as the Messiah because the New Testament identifies Him as a “son of David.” Unraveling the Family History of Jesus digs into the background and lineage of Jesus and, by uncovering the setting in life—Sitz im Leben—of His family, shows precisely how Jesus was a son of David and how He—by right—ought to be acclaimed “King of the Jews.” In addition, this work documents the connections tying Jesus’s extended family to several historical figures who played prominent roles in the destruction of Jerusalem. Norris’ work provides fresh insights that arise from meticulous reexaminations of existing historical sources. It traces the family ties binding Jesus’s forebears and His extended family to one another and to Jesus Himself and tells how this family’s influence changed the course of human history.

Unraveling the Family History of Jesus is a scholarly attempt to identify all of the persons related to Jesus from 100 BC through 100 AD. Almost all of the significant persons mentioned in the New Testament were in fact related to Jesus in one way or another Starting with the earliest Kings of Judea from 100 BC Mr. Norris shows exactly which Kings were his great grandparents. In making this discovery he puts "flesh and blood" on the names = mentioned in the genealogy of Luke and Matthew. In particular, he discovered that "Matthat", the great grandfather of Jesus named in Luke's gospel, was in fact Antigonus Mattathias II, the last King of Judea. "Matthat" was his nickname, named after his Jewish name Mattathias, but his name in all ancient history, and especially in Flavius Josephus' works, was Antigonus. He thus has remained "hidden" from Biblical scholars for nearly 2000 years. Once this identity is known, however, it becomes clearer just how Jesus had a legitimate claim to the throne of Judea. By learning about the larger family of Anitgonus Mattathias we also learn about Jesus' great uncles and aunts and find that they were deeply involved in the events that led to the rise of Jesus, his death and resurrection, and the eventual destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Similar revelations are presented on the other side of Jesus' family, the extended family of his supposed father Joseph of Nazareth. In addition, Mr. Norris shows clearly that Joseph was not a "poor carpenter" but was in fact a rabbi and a scholar and was undoubtedly quite wealthy (his father was the Patriarch of Jerusalem who received tax funds from the Roman Empire). When this is all presented it shows a much clearer picture of the surroundings in which Jesus taught and explains how he was able to be an " itinerant preacher" and not have to work for a living.

Unraveling the Family History of Jesus is a scholarly attempt to identify all of the persons related to Jesus from 100 BC through 100 AD. Almost all of the significant persons mentioned in the New Testament were in fact related to Jesus in one way or another Starting with the earliest Kings of Judea from 100 BC Mr. Norris shows exactly which Kings were his great grandparents. In making this discovery he puts "flesh and blood" on the names = mentioned in the genealogy of Luke and Matthew. In particular, he discovered that "Matthat", the great grandfather of Jesus named in Luke's gospel, was in fact Antigonus Mattathias II, the last King of Judea. "Matthat" was his nickname, named after his Jewish name Mattathias, but his name in all ancient history, and especially in Flavius Josephus' works, was Antigonus. He thus has remained "hidden" from Biblical scholars for nearly 2000 years. Once this identity is known, however, it becomes clearer just how Jesus had a legitimate claim to the throne of Judea. By learning about the larger family of Anitgonus Mattathias we also learn about Jesus' great uncles and aunts and find that they were deeply involved in the events that led to the rise of Jesus, his death and resurrection, and the eventual destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Similar revelations are presented on the other side of Jesus' family, the extended family of his supposed father Joseph of Nazareth. In addition, Mr. Norris shows clearly that Joseph was not a "poor carpenter" but was in fact a rabbi and a scholar and was undoubtedly quite wealthy (his father was the Patriarch of Jerusalem who received tax funds from the Roman Empire). When this is all presented it shows a much clearer picture of the surroundings in which Jesus taught and explains how he was able to be an " itinerant preacher" and not have to work for a living.

The compelling case for Jesus' resurrection as a historical event is presented here with great clarity, precision, and colorful design.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The “paradigm-influencing” book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism—or in the words of one modern chaplain, with “a spiritual badass.” As acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism. Many of today’s evangelicals might not be theologically astute, but they know their VeggieTales, they’ve read John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, and they learned about purity before they learned about sex—and they have a silver ring to prove it. Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. And evangelical culture is teeming with muscular heroes—mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of “Christian America.” Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community. A much-needed reexamination of perhaps the most influential subculture in this country, Jesus and John Wayne shows that, far from adhering to biblical principles, modern white evangelicals have remade their faith, with enduring consequences for all Americans.

Margaret Starbird’s theological beliefs were profoundly shaken when she read Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a book that dared to suggest that Jesus Christ was married to Mary Magdalen and that their descendants carried on his holy bloodline in Western Europe. Shocked by such heresy, this Roman Catholic scholar set out to refute it, but instead found new and compelling evidence for the existence of the bride of Jesus--the same enigmatic woman who anointed him with precious unguent from her “alabaster jar.” In this provocative book, Starbird draws her conclusions from an extensive study of history, heraldry, symbolism, medieval art, mythology, psychology, and the Bible itself. The Woman with the Alabaster Jar is a quest for the forgotten feminine--in the hope that its return will help restore a healthy balance to planet Earth.

Thomas has been researching his family's Jewish background for the last thirty years. Herein he investigates how his Jewish grandparents, and aunt-defined as a nonprivileged Mischling, survived the war while living in the heart of Nazi Germany. This led Thomas to research Hitler's fear of having partial Jewish ancestry and expanded into a full-blown study of following Christianity’s understanding of the Jewish identity of Jesus of Nazareth throughout history. Not leaving matters here, Thomas outlines how Marian dogmatic theology, used at the time of the Shoah, brought to conclusion the Church's long journey in defining the "time" of ensoulment as articulated in the papal document Ineffabilis Deus, promulgated by Pius in 1854. This happened twenty-seven years after the discovery of the human ovum in 1827 by Karl Ernst von Baer. Years later, with the emergence of Nazi racial ideology, many anti-Christian Christians attempted to invert Christianity's core message of salvation through faith toward biological ends. This would not do. Roman authorities had consistently held throughout the centuries that faith is about salvation and not about biology. According to that same end, the "ideal" of ensoulment, since the time of the Church's renewed understanding of it—beginning in 1854—and indeed as it was first articulated through the writings of Aristotle and received into Christianity through the writings of Saint Augustine and later Thomas Aquinas—was newly preserved within the confines of Western civilization. This is the first book, the author knows of, that follows Augustine's concept of ensoulment, as well as Aquinas's thinking on the matter, while linking these to Karl Ernst von Baer's discovery of the human ovum in 1827, up until the events of Shoah and beyond. This study is phenomenological in nature in that it does "not" follow Jesus of Nazareth (the Virgin Mary) throughout history, but rather follows the "image" of Jesus of Nazareth (the Virgin Mary)—a monumental difference. This study supports the Second Vatican Council, the Church's latest and ongoing efforts in affirming the Jewish identities of both Jesus of Nazareth and the Virgin Mary, John Paul II's call for a purification of memory beginning in a year of Jubilee, as well as the many present efforts in Catholic-Jewish relations. This study builds upon the author's past article: "Following the Virgin Mary through Auschwitz: Marian Dogmatic Theology at the Time of the Shoah," published in Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, Vol. 14, winter 2008, No. 3, pp. 1-24.

In recent years, a number of New Testament scholars engaged in academic historical Jesus studies have concluded that such scholarship cannot yield secure and illuminating conclusions about its subject, arguing that the search for a historically "authentic" Jesus has run aground. Jesus, Skepticism, and the Problem of History brings together a stellar lineup of New Testament scholars who contend that historical Jesus scholarship is far from dead. These scholars all find value in using the tools of contemporary historical methods in the study of Jesus and Christian origins. While the skeptical use of criteria to fashion a Jesus contrary to the one portrayed in the Gospels is methodologically unsound and theologically unacceptable, these criteria, properly formulated and applied, yield positive results that support the Gospel accounts and the historical narrative in Acts. This book presents a nuanced and vitally needed alternative to the skeptical extremes of revisionist Jesus scholarship that, on the one hand, uses historical methods to call into question the Jesus of the Gospels and, on the other, denies the possibility of using historical methods to learn about Jesus.