The scandal of the Gospels : Jesus, story, and offense / David McCracken.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 183-191) and index.

Print version record.

This book argues that the gospels are in an important sense "occasions for offense." The Jesus of the gospels is a scandal (skandalon, in the original Greek) and he is never more scandalous than when he is speaking in parables. Interpreters of the gospels over the centuries have consistently labored to domesticate the offense or to eliminate it entirely. David McCracken, focusing on parables, Matthew's narrative contexts, and the gospel of John, seeks to recover the; gospels' sense of Jesus as skandalon. To this end, he enlists the help of Kierkegaard, the philosopher of offense, and to a lesser extent that of Bakhtin, both of whom prove to be surprisingly apt conversation partners for the evangelists.

The Offense -- Introduction: The Offense and Us -- Encountering and Suppressing Offense -- Some Contemporary Varieties of Offense -- Biblical Offense at Work: Defilement and Blindness -- The Pharisees and the Canaanite Woman -- Yahweh's Snares and Stumbling Blocks -- Jesus as the Stumbling Stone -- The Offensiveness of Offense -- Offense or Faith: The Kierkegaardian Choice -- Beguiling the Reader -- Stages on Life's Way -- Climacus on the Non-understandable -- Anti-Climacus's Dialectics -- Offending the Establishment -- Offense in Gospel Narratives -- Parabolic Lies, Parabolic Truth -- Parables as Obstructions and Revelations -- Parables as Lies -- Parables as Transforming Acts of Truth -- Collision and Crisis -- Toward Reading Parables as Scandals (A Critical Addendum) -- Training the Scribes of the Kingdom -- Substance versus Response -- Interpreting the Householder -- Interpreting Desire -- The Offensive and Inoffensive Jesus -- Writers, Readers, and Contexts -- Offenses from Within and Without -- How Does It Seem to You? -- The Sublime and the Bathetic -- The Unforgiving Slave -- Life in the Between: Nathan and the Good Samaritan -- Utterance and Response -- David and Nathan: Between I and Thou -- The Dialogic Samaritan -- The Official World and the Unseemly -- Between Stories -- Plot and Story in John -- Mythic Plots and Scandalous Stories -- The Beloved Disciple and the End of Interpretation -- The Narrative Progress of Offense -- The Divine Skandalon Enacted: God as Flesh -- Provocations and Passion.

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