Jesus of Nazareth by Benedict XVI: Joseph Ratzinger on the Lord’s Prayer, the Beatitudes and the Historical Jesus
In Jesus of Nazareth, Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, sets the Gospel account alongside the historical study of Jesus’s life, and explains the most varied questions that any Christian has ever asked, from the meaning of each phrase of the Lord’s Prayer to the commandments and the Beatitudes.
Author: Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI (1927–2022)
Title: Jesus of Nazareth (three volumes, 2007–2012); first volume: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration
Format: English Kindle edition (first volume), 404 pages
Scope: Theology and the life of Jesus
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/B000QEKMV2 (ASIN B000QEKMV2)
A New Image of God
The book explains how Jesus did not abolish the Law, but changed the way people saw God, as merciful and compassionate. He drew close to lepers and to the outcasts of society and preached by example, which drew criticism from some; in the end, his ways provoked the religious authorities of his time, and he was crucified.
The Great Questions
Who is God? Why did his Son come to earth and die on the cross? Who were the Apostles? The work also refers to creation and to the Book of Genesis. Benedict XVI clarifies many aspects of Christianity and the role of the Church in today’s world.
One Work in Three Volumes
The reviewer read the complete Spanish edition, which gathers all three volumes. In English they are published separately: the first, linked here, covers the Baptism, the temptations, the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord’s Prayer and the parables; the second, Holy Week, covers the Passion and Resurrection; the third, The Infancy Narratives, covers Jesus’s birth and childhood.
A Personal Search
Ratzinger began writing the book before his election as pope in 2005 and finished the first volume, published in 2007, during his pontificate. In the foreword he made an unusual point: the book is not an official act of the Church’s teaching, but the expression of his personal search for the face of the Lord, so that "everyone is free to contradict me". That modesty sets the tone for a work that discusses scholars’ arguments openly, even when he disagrees with them.
Faith and History
Benedict’s starting point is a concern he had held for decades: that modern biblical scholarship, for all its achievements, had separated the "historical Jesus" reconstructed by historians from the Christ of faith, leaving believers uncertain about what they could trust. He uses historical methods seriously but argues that the figure in the Gospels is more convincing, and more historically coherent, than many of the reconstructions offered in its place.
A Conversation With a Rabbi
One of the most striking chapters, on the Sermon on the Mount, engages with the American Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner, whose book A Rabbi Talks with Jesus imagines a respectful argument with Jesus as one of his listeners. Benedict treats Neusner’s objections with great seriousness, and the result is a model of dialogue between faiths.
Benedict XVI
Joseph Ratzinger (1927–2022) was one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century, a professor in several German universities and later head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office for more than two decades. Elected pope in 2005, he resigned in 2013, the first pope to do so in nearly six centuries.
How to Approach It
The chapters can be read separately, so readers interested in a particular theme, such as the parables or the Lord’s Prayer, can start there. A Bible at hand helps, as Benedict constantly refers to specific passages and invites the reader to look at them closely.
Why Read It
Written by one of the great theologians of the twentieth century, it is demanding but clear, and combines scholarship with personal faith.
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