Review of Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels

DANIEL BOYARIN'S BOOK THE JEWISH GOSPELS receives a quite sympathetic review by Simon Rocker at The Jewish Chronicle: Why a 'divine' messiah was not beyond belief: A new book by a leading Jewish scholar turns some of our preconceptions about Jesus and the origins of Christianity on their head. Excerpt:

But a daring new book by one of the world’s leading Jewish scholars challenges this simple contrast. The Jewish Gospels is a short work aimed at general readers by Daniel Boyarin, a professor of Talmud at the University of California in Berkeley. In ancient times, the borders between what Judaism and Christianity were far more porous than we conceive today, he argues: it was not until the fourth century that the doctrinal differences were clarified, not least because of the desire of the Roman-backed church to put clear water between the spreading new faith and those it considered Jews.

His most explosive contention is that the concept of a divine messiah was not an alien import but part of the cauldron of ideas that bubbled in the volatile world of classical Judaism. “The basic underlying thoughts from which both the Trinity and the incarnation grew are there in the very world into which Jesus was born,” he writes.

Background here and links, where you will see that Peter Schäfer's review of the book goes rather further than believing "that Boyarin overstates his case."