The Actual Jesus

""There is no one better suited to write this book than Professor Tina Pippin. Tina combines the scholarly rigor and insight, the empathy and imagination, and the wit and humor that are required to appreciate the actual Jesus, and she does this brilliantly. This book should be required reading for college courses, study groups of all sorts, and anyone interested in the questions that are Jesus. The actual Jesus is not the assembled fiction of modernist historical biblical scholarship, nor is he (or she) the eternal divine Word of Christian theologians. The actual Jesus is 'a manifestation of many imaginations, ' a plurality of Jesus Christs, endlessly resurrected into human lives."" --George Aichele, retired Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Adrian College ""Through her careful and creative reading of different representations and receptions of 'Jesus' in various media (including ancient Gospel texts, contemporary fictions, films, social media, and apps), Pippin helps us see the fascinating questions and surprising openings that searches for 'the historical Jesus' tend to ignore and foreclose."" --Tat-Siong Benny Liew, College of the Holy Cross ""The foremost feminist critic of Revelation has long moonlighted in the gospels and their cultural afterlives. Several of the resulting Jesuses are brought together in this book. When it comes to electrifying defamiliarization of the stultifyingly familiar, no one can hold a candle to Pippin. The Actual Jesus is actually a parade of Jesuses, each one a revealer (although not in the hallowed mode)."" --Stephen D. Moore, Edmund S. Janes Professor of New Testament Studies, The Theological School, Drew University