On today's Common Threads we interview Dennis Kennedy on his book Creating Jesus The Earliest Record of Yeshua of Nazareth which focuses on the Gospel of Mark --the earliest surviving witness of the life of Jesus.
Dennis Kennedy applies his expertise in literary and performance studies to examine Mark as a literary and historical document and describes in a straightforward style how it differs from the other gospels, what it meant in its time, and how it has been used in history.
He investigates the oral Jesus tradition before Mark, the radical act of writing about a crucified preacher from the hinterland, the expansion of the Messiah cult in the Roman empire, and the character of the faith that the earliest gospel proposes.
Interspersed with incidents from Kennedy’s own education, Creating Jesus seeks to reveal why Mark was written, the great influence it has had, and how it might question the nature of Christianity in the present.
Dennis Kennedy bio from Wipf and Stock Publishers:
Dennis Kennedy was born in Cincinnati, studied in California and Oxford, and is the Samuel Beckett Professor of Drama (Emeritus) at Trinity College Dublin. A member of the Royal Irish Academy and the Academia Europaea, he has published a number of award-winning books on literary and theatrical subjects with Oxford and Cambridge university presses. He has also worked internationally as a playwright and director, and his novel Fossil Light appeared in 2023. dennis-kennedy.com
