Bird has produced a model of solid research, literary clarity, and forceful argumentation. His arguments are exegetically rigorous and hermeneutically rich, employing everything from narrative analysis to a tempered and wise use of redaction criticism. He demonstrates remarkable knowledge of the literature of Second Temple Judaism and early Christian writings. The quality of Bird’s research and his interaction with current scholarship will also impress readers. While some may quibble with a textual interpretation here or there, Bird’s primary argument will still stand. In other words, readers will find that, for Jesus Is the Christ, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Bird has effectively shown us how to read the Gospels with Israel’s messianic hope in the foreground without deprecating the theological richness of other Christological aspects. He has integrated all the major theological themes of the Evangelists into the Gospels’ fourfold messianic witness. Jesus Is the Christ brims with such an array of exegetical and theological insights that it will be worth returning to again and again.
I loved the rejection of the claim that Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah – some add except in the fourth gospel. Some day I may write a book entitled “High Christology in the Synoptic Gospels.” Guess you could start with the reaction of Jesus to Peter at Caesarea Philippi. Sometime we might want to have a thread on the numerous examples.