Who Do You Say I Am

The publication of the King James version of the Bible, translated between 1603 and 1611, coincided with an extraordinary flowering of English literature and is universally acknowledged as the greatest influence on English-language literature in history. Now, world-class literary writers introduce the book of the King James Bible in a series of beautifully designed, small-format volumes. The introducers' passionate, provocative, and personal engagements with the spirituality and the language of the text make the Bible come alive as a stunning work of literature and remind us of its overwhelming contemporary relevance.

Do you know Jesus as He really is? We can speak in abstracts all day long. We can ponder who Jesus is and what it means to follow Him. But he wants our confession. He wants to know, “Who do you say that I AM?” How we answer defines our lives both now and forever. This 8-week study in the “I AM” statements of Jesus will help women move from knowing about Him to knowing Him personally. Guiding them through significant questions Jesus asks in the Gospels—and the answers He himself provides—it will help readers: Realize the truth of who Jesus really is Grow in their ability to trust God and rely on Him fully Find the calm and peace promised in Scripture despite life circumstances Becky Harling has years of experience as a Bible teacher and women’s ministry leader. She empathizes with women and knows how to make Scripture come alive. Who Do You Say that I AM? will draw women deep into the Word for a true encounter with Christ, helping them become more confident, calm, and courageous in the faith.

LIFE Books managing editor, Robert Sullivan, has twice been awarded the Wilbur Award for best religion feature in a national magazine and has authored LIFE's New York Times best-selling biography of Pope John Paul II. He brings to this book his expertise on the subject of Christianity a long with text informed by the world's great scholars, theologians and religious figures. Jesus emerged from nowhere to become, in his short life-perhaps as few as 32 years-a thinker, teacher and preacher whose words and deeds would change the world and become the foundation for the world's largest religion. But the biography as outlined in the New Testament and apocryphal writings only tells us so much. LIFE's editors go, in words and pictures, in search of Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter's son who would one day influence all. The great photographer Denis Waugh once made a thorough, colorful and moving pictorial pilgrimage to the Holy Land exclusively for LIFE, and those images will anchor our quest. We will travel, as well, to the Vatican, to the missions of Africa, to the Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco-to all that has risen in Jesus, name. In the book's final section, we will look at Christianity today: Its still vastly influential place in our tumultuous world.

"I believe that research on the historical Jesus need not be a threat but can be a spiritual resource for us Christians," says the author. Drawing on the highly acclaimed work "The marginal Jew" by John Meier, he helps us sift the evidence to discover what we can know with historical certainty about Jesus. But he leads us beyond the facts of history to an encounter with the risen Jesus, sharing both his own experience of prayer as well as the stories and accounts of other contemporary Christians who have come to know the risen Lord. He guides us in a prayerful dialogue that bridges the gap between the Jesus of history and the Jesus we experience in faith.

Human existence is a bodily existence. A first principle of historic Christianity has been that Jesus assumed our humanity and everything essential to it in order that God may redeem all of our existence. Christ is the revelation of God and the revelation of true humanity. As we seek to understand our embodied experiences of the world and one another we do so in light of the embodied life of Jesus Christ. Jesus's humanity shows us what it means to live an embodied human life rightly and how we, as embodied human beings, can relate to the world around us. In this book we invite readers to explore with us why the humanity of Jesus is central to the Christian understanding of community, society, salvation, and life with God. Over the span of these ten chapters this book draws from biblical, historic, and cultural discussions as it enters into the breadth of the significance of the humanity of Jesus and explores how the reality of the Incarnation challenges and redeems our broken social structures, racial and ethnic divisions, economic systems, and sexuality.

"In this volume some of the most prominent international biblical and theological scholars suggest new and exciting ways of understanding the Christology of every major witness in the New Testament canon. Along with essays addressing the significance of Christology for systematic theology, ethics, pastoral ministry, and preaching, the volume offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the New Testament."--BOOK JACKET.

"More and more Christians, in their quest for meaning to life and for personal orientation to Jesus Christ, are becoming aware of the refreshing source of the Biblical Word. This work demonstrates that critical scholarship does not have to be dull and academic. Adapting sound Biblical scholarship the author provides an excellent introduction to reading or studying more profitably the Synoptic Gospels. The author's purpose is to utilize the best critical tools, methods and conclusions of contemporary scholarship -- applying these in such a way that the ordinary layman will better appreciate the power, vitality and freshness of God's Word. This book is aimed at helping the reader to better answer the question directed to every disciple of Jesus: 'And you, who do you say that I am?" [Back cover].