The Shadow of the Galilean

Content Warning: This section includes discussion of antisemitism.

The author, Gerd Theissen, thanks a colleague, Dr. Kratzinger, for a letter. Dr. Kratzinger has heard that Theissen wants to publish a book about Jesus’s life and has urged him to reconsider. A fictionalized life of Jesus might endanger not only Theissen’s scholarly reputation but that of the whole field of New Testament interpretation. Theissen appreciates Dr. Kratzinger’s concerns but does not share them. He explains that he is not making definitive claims about Jesus’s life; he is using the narrative form to reconstruct a plausible sequence of events leading up to Jesus’s death, taking the political and religious landscape of first century Palestine into account. He has chosen to use a narrative form because he feels it is more accessible for readers who would not read a nonfiction account.

Andreas, a wealthy Jewish grain merchant, is in prison in Jerusalem. He was arrested during an anti-Roman protest, though he was not a participant and was merely trying to find his friend, Barabbas. One of Andreas’s enslaved workers, Timon, was also arrested. Andreas is questioned in Greek: Like other educated Jewish Palestinians, he is fluent in this language. The protest was against Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judaea.