Victorian Jesus

Victorian Jesus
Author: Ian Hesketh
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2017-10-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1442663596

Ecce Homo: A Survey in the Life and Work of Jesus Christ, published anonymously in 1865, alarmed some readers and delighted others by its presentation of a humanitarian view of Christ and early Christian history. Victorian Jesus explores the relationship between historian J. R. Seeley and his publisher Alexander Macmillan as they sought to keep Seeley’s authorship a secret while also trying to exploit the public interest. Ian Hesketh highlights how Ecce Homo's reception encapsulates how Victorians came to terms with rapidly changing religious views in the second half of the nineteenth century. Hesketh critically examines Seeley’s career and public image, and the publication and reception of his controversial work. Readers and commentators sought to discover the author’s identity in order to uncover the hidden meaning of the book, and this engendered a lively debate about the ethics of anonymous publishing. In Victorian Jesus, Ian Hesketh argues for the centrality of this moment in the history of anonymity in book and periodical publishing throughout the century.

Jesus in the Victorian Novel

Jesus in the Victorian Novel
Author: Jessica Ann Hughes
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2022-01-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1350278165

This book tells the story of how nineteenth-century writers turned to the realist novel in order to reimagine Jesus during a century where traditional religious faith appeared increasingly untenable. Re-workings of the canonical Gospels and other projects to demythologize the story of Jesus are frequently treated as projects aiming to secularize and even discredit traditional Christian faith. The novels of Charles Kingsley, George Eliot, Eliza Lynn Linton, and Mary Augusta Ward, however, demonstrate that the work of bringing the Christian tradition of prophet, priest, and king into conversation with a rapidly changing world can at times be a form of authentic faith-even a faith that remains rooted in the Bible and historic Christianity, while simultaneously creating a space that allows traditional understandings of Jesus' identity to evolve.

Jesus Made in America

Jesus Made in America
Author: Stephen J. Nichols
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2009-09-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830875816

Jesus is as American as baseball and apple pie. But how this came to be is a complex story--one that Stephen Nichols tells with care and ease. Beginning with the Puritans, he leads readers through the various cultural epochs of American history, showing at each stage how American notions of Jesus were shaped by the cultural sensibilities of the times, often with unfortunate results. Always fascinating and often humorous, Jesus Made in America offers a frank assessment of the story of Christianity in America, including the present. For those interested in the cultural implications of that story, this book is a must-read.

The British Jesus, 1850-1970

The British Jesus, 1850-1970
Author: Meredith Veldman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2022-04-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000565955

The British Jesus focuses on the Jesus of the religious culture dominant in Britain from the 1850s through the 1950s, the popular Christian culture shared by not only church, kirk, and chapel goers, but also the growing numbers of Britons who rarely or only episodically entered a house of worship. An essay in intellectual as well as cultural history, this book illumines the interplay between and among British New Testament scholarship, institutional Christianity, and the wider Protestant culture. The scholars who mapped and led the uniquely British quest for the historical Jesus in the first half of the twentieth century were active participants in efforts to replace the popular image of “Jesus in a white nightie” with a stronger figure, and so, they hoped, to preserve Britain’s Christian identity. They failed. By exploring that failure, and more broadly, by examining the relations and exchanges between popular, artistic, and scholarly portrayals of Jesus, this book highlights the continuity and the conservatism of Britain’s popular Christianity through a century of religious and cultural transformation. Exploring depictions of Jesus from over more than one hundred years, this book is a crucial resource for scholars of British Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination

Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination
Author: Richard Walsh
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2021-08-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567693856

Jesus films arose with cinema itself. Richard Walsh and Jeffrey L. Staley introduce students to these films with a general overview of the Jesus film tradition and with specific analyses of 22 of its most influential exemplars, stretching from La vie du Christ (1906) to Mary Magdalene (2018). The introduction to each film includes discussion of plot, characters, visuals, appeal to authority, and cultural location as well as consideration of the director's (and/or other filmmakers') achievements and style. Several film chapters end with reflections on problematic issues bedeviling the tradition, such as cultural imperialism and patriarchy. To assist teachers and researchers, each chapter includes a listing of DVD chapters and the approximate “time” (for both DVDs and streaming platforms) at which key film moments occur. The book also includes a Gospels Harmony cataloging the time at which key gospel incidents appear in these films. Extensive endnotes point readers to other important work on the tradition and specific films. While the authors strive to set the Jesus film tradition within cinema and its interpretation, the DVD/streaming listing and the Gospels Harmony facilitate the comparison of these films to gospel interpretation and the Jesus tradition.

Victorians and the Virgin Mary

Victorians and the Virgin Mary
Author: Carol Engelhardt-Herringer
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2013-07-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1847797156

This interdisciplinary study of competing representations of the Virgin Mary examines how anxieties about religious and gender identities intersected to create public controversies that, whilst ostensibly about theology and liturgy, were also attempts to define the role and nature of women. Drawing on a variety of sources, this book seeks to revise our understanding of the Victorian religious landscape, both retrieving Catholics from the cultural margins to which they are usually relegated, and calling for a reassessment of the Protestant attitude to the feminine ideal. This book will be useful to advanced students and scholars in a variety of disciplines including history, religious studies, Victorian studies, women’s history and gender studies.

Studies in Hinduism

Studies in Hinduism
Author: Amiya P. Sen
Publisher: MDPI
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2021-06-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3036507000

This is a collection of articles by established scholars in the fields of History, Philosophy, Literature and Religious Studies. These are original essays which address the issues and concerns that now dominate the study of religion in its multiple dimensions with a fresh approach. They critique settled opinions and raise new and engaging questions concerning cultural hermeneutics and the academic study of religion. Embellished with a substantive and topical introduction by the editor, this collection of articles will be of abiding interest to scholars and interested lay persons alike.

The Figure of Christ in the Long Nineteenth Century

The Figure of Christ in the Long Nineteenth Century
Author: Elizabeth Ludlow
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2020-07-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3030400824

This book is an interdisciplinary collection of essays that explores the variety of ways in which the interface between understanding the figure of Christ, the place of the cross, and the contours of lived experience, was articulated through the long nineteenth century. Collectively, the chapters respond to the theological turn in postmodern thought by asking vital questions about the way in which representations of Christ shape understandings of personhood and of the divine.