Jesus Christ - the biography

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Jesus Christ - the biography is a book published in 2009 by Peter Seewald about Jesus of Nazareth .

The author

The author was an editor at Der Spiegel magazine from 1981 to 1987 and a reporter at Stern from 1987 to 1991 . In 1990 he switched to the magazine of the Süddeutsche Zeitung , which he left in 1993. Today he is a freelance journalist. He worked on the 700-page book for seven years, three of them almost exclusively, which almost ruined him financially. He tried to portray the life of Jesus in its entirety and to visit the original locations of the stories of the four evangelists . Before his trip, he made a list of questions:

  • What should we think of the chroniclers Matthew , Mark , Luke and John ?
  • How did the Gospels come about ?
  • When exactly were they written?

The author breaks in the book with the taboo of biblical scholars that one can not represent chronological the life of Jesus, as the Gospels it is not, would offer the foundation. Today the gospel is seen as a hodgepodge of untrue statements and sometimes “presumptuous falsifications”. Biblical scholars had dissected the person of Jesus piece by piece, so that in their opinion the remains of his person could easily "find place on a saucer", according to the author in the foreword of the book. Therefore the author tried to write a "theology-free" book about Jesus, without missing depth and evidential value, and came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ was the best attested person of antiquity.

content of the book

The book is divided into four chapters.

First chapter

In the first chapter the author describes his arrival in the Holy Land on flight No. 354 of El Al , with a destination in the more than five thousand year old city of Jerusalem . In the nine sub-chapters of the first part, Seewald describes the current situation in Jerusalem and compares it with the time 2000 years ago, when the city was part of the Roman province of Judea. Most of the Jews had remained steadfast in their beliefs. For three months Pompey had besieged the Temple Mount and in 61 BC. Jerusalem captured. To secure power, the Romans stationed nine legions, each with 5,000 professional legionaries in the country. In addition, 60 to 70 auxiliary units made up of mercenaries were stationed. Rome, which can be reached via the port of Caesarea Maritima within ten days, became a city made of marble due to a sophisticated robbery and slave economy. But the occupying power in the province of Judea did not succeed in merging its Jupiter cult with the worship of YHWH . In the subsection “Flight No. 354”, Seewald also remembers the book Jesus Son of Man published in 1972 by his former employer Rudolf Augstein . In the book with which he wanted to comprehensively answer all questions about the person of Jesus Christ, Augstein came to the realization that Jesus Christ never lived.

  • Flight No. 354
  • The myth
  • Jerusalem
  • The secret
  • traces in the sand
  • Abundance of Time (I)
  • The Annunciation
  • Abundance of Time (II)
  • The birth

As the only people of the Roman Empire , Jews were exempt from the imperial cult and military service. Compliance with the Sabbath commandments was assured according to the collegia licita in Roman law . The collection and administration of the temple tax , which every male Jew between the ages of 20 and 50 had to pay, remained in the administration of the Jews.

Nevertheless, the relationship between the Romans and the Jews was tense. In the castle Antonia woke up a Roman soldiery about the activities of YHWH -Kultes. In this book Seewald tries to find a number of Roman philosophers, lawyers, writers and senators who expressed their aversion to the YHWH cult, Jewish customs or the Jewish people themselves. Cicero , one of the most influential people in the empire at the time, speaks of Judaism as a "barbaric superstition". Of the four million Jews, three million lived in cities like Massillia , Carthage , Rome or Alexandria . In the Egyptian Alexandria they made up 40% of the population and Philo of Alexandria sees them as the first world citizens. King Herod I , also known as the Great, was at the zenith of his power. Nine discarded wives remaining in the royal household (Doris, Mariamne , Cleopatra, Maltake, etc.) did not always make life easy for him. 300 oxen from his own stables were offered as sacrifices at the dedication of the Herodian temple .

The first chapter ends with the birth of Jesus Christ.

second chapter

The second part of the book is divided into six sub-chapters. It begins with suspicion and ends with a sub-chapter described as a secret revelation .

  • The suspicion
  • The facts
  • The hidden years
  • The departure
  • Baptism
  • The desert
  • Secret revelation

Joseph and Mary flee to Egypt with the child. For enlightened Bible Students this passage of the New Testament in the narratives of the evangelists has always been suspect. A move to a neighboring country, flight and expulsion were not unusual in Jesus' time, says Seewald: It's 70 kilometers from Bethlehem to today's border town of Beersheba . Hundreds of thousands of Israelites lived in the Jewish colonies of Alexandria and Hermopolis Magna .

At the end of the second chapter the author states that the main task in the program of Jesus , the transformation was or conversion. He turns bad into good, enmity into friendship, and the old Adam into the new Adam . This also makes it clear that Jesus is not concerned with taking action against a particular school of faith or a group of high priests. The question of who murdered Jesus, the Jews or the Romans, goes, according to the author, completely past the core of Jesus' work of salvation.

The transformation is followed by the transfiguration of the person of Jesus, his so-called transfiguration on Mount Tabor. The change appears modified again in the process of transubstantiation of the Holy Mass .

third chapter

The third part of the book now focuses on the actual life of Jesus. It is divided into nine sub-chapters:

  • Fishermen of men
  • The wedding
  • Lord of the Temple
  • The city of Jesus
  • World of healing and miracles
  • In the name of the father
  • Sign of the new covenant
  • Scribes and Pharisees
  • The Torah of the Messiah (I)
  • The Torah of the Messiah (II)

Jesus met the fisherman Simon Peter and his brother Andrew at the Sea of ​​Galilee . He asked them to follow him. And so the story began. The chapter ends with two treatises on the Messiah's Torah.

Chapter Four

Marie Madeleine au désert
( Mary Magdalene in the Desert)
oil on canvas by Pierre Cécile Puvis de Chavannes (1869)

The fourth part of the book deals first with the story of Mary Magdalene . Jesus also had large numbers of women among his followers. The Chuza's wife and a certain Suzanna were, in Seewald's words, something like modern charity ladies . Mary of Magdala, prostitute and sinner or widow of John, plays a very special role in the stories of the evangelists. Sometimes she was put in the position of a secret playmate of the Messiah. Further interpretations go in the direction of feminist and mother courage of faith, the first emancipated woman in the world. Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus , now Emperor of Rome for 28 years, wanted to stop the moral decline in the empire. A senate resolution from AD 18 banned the wearing of see-through silk robes. In the remote province of Judea, Jesus' message was different. He preached chastity in lust-oriented society . He opposed Baccantic orgies with mercy , charity and the protection of marriage . The women loved Jesus for it. "Blessed is the breast that you drank on," they called out to him.

  • The story of Mary Magdalene
  • Son of man and kingdom of God
  • Bread of life
  • The decision
  • light of the world
  • The trip to Jerusalem
  • The Passion of Christ

The book ends with the suffering and death of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem.

Bibliographical information

Peter Seewald: Jesus Christ - the biography. Pattloch Verlag, Munich 2009, 704 pages, ISBN 978-3-629-02192-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rheinische Post : Peter Seewald in the footsteps of Jesus ( memento from November 17, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) from December 25, 2010, accessed on September 28, 2010
  2. ↑ Church journal for Roman Catholic parishes in the canton of Solothurn: Im Schatten des Kreuzes Issue Interview Peter Seewald / Reto Stampfli ( Memento from December 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.9 MB) Issue 7/2010
  3. ↑ Christof Rohde: A Jesus in whom one can believe. in e-politik.de ( Memento from May 10, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) from May 5, 2010
  4. ^ Liboriusblatt - weekly newspaper for the Catholic family: The best attested personality of antiquity. ( Memento from December 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) 2009
  1. ↑ p. 29
  2. ↑ p. 5
  3. ↑ p. 91
  4. ↑ p. 91
  5. ↑ p. 92
  6. ↑ p. 85
  7. ↑ p. 266
  8. ↑ p. 267
  9. ↑ p. 266
  10. ↑ p. 476
  11. ↑ p. 477
  12. ↑ p. 479
  13. ↑ p. 480