THOMAS THOMPSON previews his new book on the Bible and Intepretation website:

Creating Biblical Figures

I reconsider the theme of life�s victory over death through the perspective of the related themes of �new wine� and �blood of the covenant,�... is intimately connected to the fertility myth of the dying and rising god, from Tammuz and Ba�al to Dionysus.


By Thomas L. Thompson
Professor of Old Testament,
University of Copenhagen
May 2005

Job, in his utopian, king-like role in Job 29, provides me with a useful paradigm for the biblical figure of the messiah (Th.L. Thompson and H.Tronier, Frelsens Biografisering, Museum Tusculanum: Copenhagne, 2004, 115-134) and an internal coherence to my new book, The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David (Basic Books: New York, 2005), which provides the theme of a seminar this coming semester. ...

An online seminar, I hope? I've been interested in royal ideology in the Jesus traditions for a long time, so I look forward to reading this one. But if he really is arguing that Jesus never existed (as the Amazon reviews seem to indicate), he's got his work cut out for him. Note the review by biblioblogger Michael Turton in particular for a detailed commentary.