Zeitlin, Irving M. Jesus and the Judaism of His Time. Cambridge: Polity, 1988. Print.

In order to find my book in Skillman, I used the Lafayette Library website catalog. To find the location of my book I searched keywords like “bible” and “Jesus” . That helped me come across the section in the basement where I found this book and a bunch of other ones like it. I was originally searching for another book but found this one to be more interesting at first glance because of the title and the cover art.

The book I chose is called Jesus and the Judaism of His Time. This book explores what life would have been like during the time Jesus was alive.  A lot of the research in this book focused on trying to discover what Judaism in the first century was like. The book also attempts to explore how Jesus understood himself and his role in religion. Charisma and its role in Jesus’s life is also brought up in relation to how Jesus came into his role in early Christianity. The sources used in this text to uncover more about Jesus’s life and Jewish traditions were ancient writers such as Josephus who lived during that time. Other than discussing life in the first century, this book evaluates the legitimacy of certain authors in the New Testament such as Matthew. The straightforwardness of the title kept true to the contents of this book.