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Jesus at Thirty: A Psychological and Historical Portrait | 
 enlarge | Author: John W. Miller
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishers
Category: Book
List Price: $19.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 1753083
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 177
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.8
ISBN: 0800631072
Dewey Decimal Number: 232.901
EAN: 9780800631079
ASIN: 0800631072
Publication Date: August 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Noble Attempt March 13, 2006
John Miller's attempt to develop a psychohistorical portrait of Jesus is a noble effort that falls short. Miller himself is neither a Psychologist nor a Psychiatrist, although he did work in a mental hospital in Chicago. His shortcomings show in his attempt to wade through psychoanalytic and neo-analytic theories to describe Jesus at age 30. Nonetheless, there are so few attempts of this nature, that his effort has to be commended and many readers will find it interesting if not completely convincing.
My main criticism of Miller's work is that he accepts at face value too many Gospel texts which we know are flawed. For example, he draws much of his analysis from the Gospel passages about Jesus and his family, especially Mark 3:20. Yet true biblical scholars know that the translation in Mark is incorect, and the comments here refer to his disciples and not his family, who do not show up for 10 more verses. It's clear that Jesus' family is completely involved in his life and ministry. Mary is there at Cana, in discussions with disciples, and at the end. His brother James took over the Jewish Christian sect that remained in Jerusalem. His cousins took over when James was killed in 62 A.D. etc. Most scholars now accept the fact that Jesus' family was deliberately written out of the Gospels because they controlled a sect which competed with the Gospel writing sects. Hence, Miller's study that looks at the problems in Jesus' family starts from a false premise and therefore can go nowhere.
Miller's appendix contains a brief summary of previous work on psychological analyses of Jesus, and this section is definitely worth reading.
Interesting But Not Germane July 17, 2005
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
A friend of mine has an expression "interesting but not germane." He usually says it when I get off the point, but believe I have something essential to say. As I read JESUS AT THIRTY I have to admit my friend's expression came to mind more than once. The book is at times engaging and is well written and thoroughly researched, but I'm not sure what it adds a great deal to the study of Jesus Christ. While it doesn't detract, which is something positive in and of itself, it doesn't add much either.
John Miller's JESUS AT THIRTY is one of the many volumes that was published in the 1990's during what could possibly be called "the Historical Jesus craze." A slew of books hit the stands and the findings of some of the writings made national headlines. Magazines such as TIME and NEWSWEEK asked the questions "Did Jesus really teach the `Our Father'?" and "Was there really a resurrection?" Millions purchased and read the magazines, so it did cause quite a stir. Since that time the methods of the scholars of so-called "Jesus Seminar" have been called into question and while their findings can be interesting and lead to debate, they are viewed by many as flawed at best.
As the subtitle "A Psychological and Historical Portrait" suggests, the book uses information about the historical Jesus to build a psychological portrait of Jesus. As I thought about it, I wondered if this would be possible. Since the historical Jesus debates debunk nearly everything he did and question whether he said most of what the gospels claim he said, I wondered if a psychological portrait was possible. I am not sure Miller achieves this goal but he does give some interesting tidbits in the book and debunks some popular theories on Jesus Christ supposedly based on psychology.
While I am not sure that some of the claims in the book can be substantiated, Miller does believe that Jesus is psychologically sound and parts of the book can be useful. For one thing, Miller does a good job at explaining many of the debates concerning the historical Jesus. He also provides an excellent bibliography of writings concerning scripture, theology, and psychology that will aid people in research.
Psychobabble meets the quest for the historical Jesus August 9, 2004
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
In Jesus at Thirty, John W. Miller attempts to psychoanalyze Jesus and explain His state of mind when, around the age of thirty, He began His public ministry. It is a solid, well-organized attempt to do just that. Miller looks at Jesus' relations to His earthly family (the item of interest which drew me to this book), His father and mother specifically, Satan, and by implication God. He also expounds upon the subject of Jesus' sexuality before bringing all of his observations together to offer ideas about if not a full-fledged portrait of Jesus the man on the brink of His public ministry.
While the book represents a noble effort on Miller's part, I find the whole study highly flawed. I have never cared for psychohistory and feel it is essentially wrong-headed and heavily influenced by the supposed researcher's own ideas; the very method is best described as psychobabble. Miller is particularly influenced by Freudian analysis, expressing more faith in psychoanalysis than I thought existed in this day and age. This book rests on yet another flimsy foundation, I feel - the modern historical search for Jesus. This is problematic on two levels. For one thing, the author looks upon major portions of the Gospels as fictitious and thus historically useless. I as a fundamentalist Christian cannot possibly embrace Miller's grand theories for this reason alone (and it turns out there are many additional reasons why I cannot embrace it). More importantly, this viewpoint allows the author to basically pick and choose the Biblical passages he uses to make his arguments. If you are going to reject the very foundation of the Gospels, you can't convince me of anything by arbitrarily using Biblical sources to make your argument. Here is the problem in a nutshell - in my humble opinion. The Jesus scholars of today with all of their heretical ideas condemn evangelicals for losing themselves in the divinity of Jesus and ignoring the human Jesus. For their own part, they concentrate on Jesus as a man and deny His divinity. I do not think you can produce a definitive study of Jesus Christ without fully embracing both His humanity and His divinity.
Miller starts out by denying the Virgin birth, denying Jesus' identity as the Messiah, denying His complete lack of sin, and denying basically everything Christianity teaches about Him. He seizes upon tiny bits of information from arbitrary passages in the Gospels to delineate his own psychohistorical image of Jesus as a man. He puts great emphasis on Jesus' alienation from His family at the time of His ministry. Certainly, there is a sense of such alienation in the Gospels when Jesus refuses to see His mother and brothers when they come to see Him at Capernaum and even earlier, when His family sought to bring Him home for fear He was "beside himself." Miller, to his credit, does not see Jesus as insane or delusional (as a number of modern scholars have suggested); rather, from this beginning he puts forth a sensible argument to explain Jesus' attitude in this regard. Miller assumes that Joseph died while Jesus was in His early teens, making Jesus the ipso facto head of the household. The death of His father at such an age can explain why Jesus did not marry in His early twenties, as was the custom. It can also explain the estrangement that developed when Jesus set off on His own course over a decade later. It is Jesus' baptism, in Miller's opinion, that caused the break between Jesus and His strongly dependent mother. Only now, according to Miller, did Jesus find a purpose in His life, only now did He suddenly look upon Himself as the Son of God.
Miller's interpretation of Jesus' trials in the wilderness is particularly interesting (and, in my opinion, quite wrong). He sees Jesus being tempted, not as the Messiah, but as a man by the very thoughts of Messianic grandeur. He continues in this vein by arguing that Jesus never saw Himself as the Messiah. I can't deny the methodical nature of Miller's analysis, although I clearly think it is essentially baseless. His discussion of Jesus' teachings and maturity are equally well-presented. It is the inner conflict with hubris and Messianic grandeur that lies at the heart of Miller's Jesus, as he sees Jesus as emerging through the Oedipus complex in good fashion but then dealing with a number of family-related pressures and emotional issues brought about by the death of Joseph before breaking away from His family to discover His own purpose in life.
Jesus at Thirty does deserve credit and attention, no matter how much I disagree with all of this psychobabble, because it does represent one of the few rigidly psychohistorical analyses of Jesus' life. This is a study that can and probably will be built upon by other scholars in the years ahead, and the relative shortness of this book begs for a more detailed, comprehensive thrashing out of the issues Miller raises. He provides detailed footnotes and an impressive bibliography that helps pave the way for others to walk the same road after him.
Not without its own flaws January 7, 1999
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
A psychological study of Jesus is certainly a worthwhile endeavor. However, some of Miller's methods seem questionable. For one thing, he relies pretty heavily on Freud for his psychology. Also, he bases some of his conclusions on iffy biblical passages. For example, the account of Jesus teaching in the temple when he was twelve is found only in Luke and is regarded by many scholars as a Lukan creation. The book is worth reading - with a grain of salt.
 Provocative, well-grounded study of Jesus and his family March 23, 1998
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
Most psychological studies of Jesus have been fatally flawed either by lack of attention to historical accuracy or by a tendency to "pathologize" Jesus. Miller presents a carefully worked-out thesis, grounded in developmental theory, that seeks to explain some troubling factors in Jesus' relationship to his family. The appendix, tracing the history of psychological treatments of Jesus, is worth the price of the book alone for anyone interested in psychology and the Bible.
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