Salt & Light is the definitive statement concerning Jesus of Nazareth, history's most compelling figure.
Jesus was a poor man who taught for a few years in a backwater of the Roman Empire and then was killed for sedition 2,000 years ago. However, Jesus started the world's largest movement, and to billions of people now and in the past, somehow, he has served in some form or other as a model for our humanity.
For the first time, after years of research using the complete body of early Christian literature and recent modern scholarship, including new and exciting discoveries in many areas such as early manuscripts, science, New Testament studies, archaeology, and history, the real Jesus emerges. Dean offers an eminently readable yet powerful description of the authentic Jesus full of fascinating facts for both believers and sceptics alike.
Did Jesus even exist?
Did he rise from the dead?
Is he Peter's Jesus or Paul's Christ?
What does ALL the evidence point to?
Salt & Light doesn't shy away from addressing these and other tough questions.
So come along for a fascinating journey and meet the historical Jesus, learn about his mission, and discover his teaching!
Salt & Light is the definitive statement concerning Jesus of Nazareth, history's most compelling figure.
Jesus was a poor man who taught for a few years in a backwater of the Roman Empire and then was killed for sedition 2,000 years ago. However, Jesus started the world's largest movement, and to billions of people now and in the past, somehow, he has served in some form or other as a model for our humanity.
For the first time, after years of research using the complete body of early Christian literature and recent modern scholarship, including new and exciting discoveries in many areas such as early manuscripts, science, New Testament studies, archaeology, and history, the real Jesus emerges. Dean offers an eminently readable yet powerful description of the authentic Jesus full of fascinating facts for both believers and sceptics alike.
Did Jesus even exist?
Did he rise from the dead?
Is he Peter's Jesus or Paul's Christ?
What does ALL the evidence point to?
Salt & Light doesn't shy away from addressing these and other tough questions.
So come along for a fascinating journey and meet the historical Jesus, learn about his mission, and discover his teaching!
Introduction
Figure 1 Jesus Obscured.
This detail is from a wall painting depicting the story of Jesus (right) and his follower Peter (left) walking on water. Peter steps out of a boat onto the water with Jesus, but then Peter starts to sink—one can indeed see the waves starting to come up over him, and he is reaching out to Jesus to save him. This is a crude picture, taken from the house church in Dura-Europos, Syria; it could be the oldest datable depiction of Jesus. Archaeologists have dated the work to 233–256 CE, painted a mere 200 years after the alleged event took place. Image courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery.
I think this is a very appropriate picture to start the book. We see a story about Jesus, yet the figure of Jesus is shadowy and ill-defined. It sums up the starting point—Jesus obscured.
This book is a definitive and complete inquiry into the authentic Jesus. This Jesus is based on rational thinking, the simplest conjectures, and the best available sources of information. This project’s building blocks are ideas derived from the critical method of inquiry, often inspired by academic sources. The critical method is concerned with avoiding, in the case of religious writings, religious doctrine and human bias by applying a non-sectarian, reason-based approach to arrive at reasonable conclusions. As Christopher Hitchens put it: “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”[1] I do not want Salt & Light to be so easily dismissed.
The Three Questions
As with any journey, it is essential to be clear on the destination to keep us on course, so in the interest of clarity and brevity, I propose the Three Questions to be our guide. The purpose, then, of this book is to answer, as best as possible, the following simple questions:
1.  What did Jesus do?
2.  What did Jesus say?
3.  Who was Jesus?
But first things first. Do we need to engage in this project at all? The fastest way to read a book is to discover that you do not need to read it. Two scenarios need investigation before going any further, for if either is correct, then there is no need for this book.
First, I must tackle the minority scholarly view that Jesus never existed … that is, he is a myth. If this is true, this will be a very short book, and we need not proceed any further. So I must review this fascinating idea first before proceeding.
Second, if Jesus did exist, the next step is to review current opinions on Jesus to see if others have already completed this project. In other words, have the Three Questions been answered and are these answers reasonable and widely held? If there are excellent existing answers, Salt & Light is not needed, and I will not proceed any further other than to repeat the answers to the questions. Suppose there is general confusion within current opinions about Jesus? In that case, I will need to embark on this project by starting from ground zero, casting a wide net and examining everything about Jesus without bias, and then proceed to answer the Three Questions.
[1]Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â (Hitchens 2009, 258)
Salt & Light; The Complete Jesus is a book that will draw readers into its fold. There is no sitting on the fence with Jonathan Geoffrey Dean’s exemplary research and contemplation. This is a book for both fans and critics as a handy reference in Christian history.
With the look of an encyclopedia, this book has painstakingly gathered images, footnotes, and references. These elements make for engaging reading in between the text. The actual book content is no less enticing. It attempts to sketch a realistic profile of Jesus, the man, using historical and religious texts, particularly the Gospels, and Greek documents, like the Q. The author’s goal is to separate reality from myth using a practical research method.
The book has two distinct sections. Jonathan Dean spends the first half of the book explaining his technique for gathering and eliminating sources. He sieves through the parallelism in the four Gospels and draws up evocative sketches of the four disciples. He brings out stories and delves into the history, timelines, and places in the research material. The stories may repeat, but each time there is a deeper analysis and conclusion.
There are interesting facts. Peter is the only disciple to recount the baptism of Jesus, or that the Gospel of Mark reads like a dictated oral history. He provides insights into the hidden message in the Book of Revelation, as an allegory for the Roman rulers. In the second half of the book, Dean puts together the pieces of the puzzle. He answers the three questions that form the baseline of this book: what did Jesus say and do, and who he was?
You can devour this book in one go for the amazing details. The ultimate pleasure of this work lies in slowly wading through the reams of information and building your view of Jesus and his times. This book is for keepsakes; even for the skeptics, it offers food for contemplation and is a source of historical information.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and was not once overwhelmed by the content because it all flows smoothly, in the simplest possible narration. It brings to life the distant, dusty lands where simple people lived under oppression and sought in an outspoken and enigmatic man, the promise of redemption.