Jesus the Central Jew, His Times and His People J. Harold Ellens Early Christianity and Its Literature. By André LaCocque, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2015. 337 pp. + xii, pb, $35.00. André LaCocque has given us another stellar example of his notable scholarship. He is Emeritus Professor of Hebrew Bible at Chicago Theological Seminary and Founding Director of the Center for Jewish‐Christian Studies. This volume stands in line with the superior work that we have learned to expect from him. He has graced us with many previous imaginative volumes including: (1) The Trial of Innocence: Adam, Eve, and the Yahwist, (2) Onslaught Against Innocence: Cain, Abel and the Yahwist, (3) The Captivity of Innocence: Babel and the Yahwist, and (4) Jonah, A Psycho‐Religious Approach to the Prophet (with Pierre‐Emmanuel Lacocque). He begins his present volume with two defining quotes from Martin Buber and Harold Bloom. Buber declared regarding Jesus, “the most Jewish of all Jews … I have found in Jesus my great brother. That Christianity has regarded and does regard him as God and Savior has always appeared to me a fact of the highest importance which, for his sake and my own, I must endeavor to understand.” Bloom said simple, “the Jew‐of‐Jews, the Jew proper!” LaCocque intends in this volume to address the historical Jesus of the first three gospels, not the mythical one. He rules out John's gospel, therefore, and the Pauline reference to Kyrios (Lord). This book does not deal with Christology and steps back from Boyarin's point that Jesus and Christ were one from the beginning of the Jesus Movement. LaCocque focuses only on Jesus. His sequence in treatment of his subject is somewhat predictable, but appropriately comprehensive. Following a stimulating introduction, he presents us with sixteen chapters. These include first, the Gospel as Retrospective, and then, surprisingly since he wishes to avoid Christ and Christology, a chapter on Jesus the Messiah, for which Hebrew term the Greek NT has Christ (Meshiach). This is followed by his development of the crucial issue of Son of Man and Son of God. Surprisingly, he makes no reference to the two definitive and recent studies on the Son of Man (Ellens, 2009, The Son of Man in the Gospel of John, and Waddell, 2013, The Messiah: A Comparative Study of the Enochic Son of Man and the Pauline Kyrios [Jewish and Christian Text]). Obviously, LaCocque's avoidance of these studies arises from his announced focus on the Synoptics, considering John and Paul “somewhat off limits” (1). However, he intends his volume to address the historical Jesus and many scholars are now persuaded that John is the most historical of the four gospels. Moreover, one can hardly treat the Son of Man in the Synoptics without taking into consideration the fact that they simply adopt the Son of Man story of I Enoch, plug Jesus into the narrative in place of Enoch, and are therefore condemned by John's gospel as having gotten the story all wrong (Jn 3:11–13, Cf Ellens, 139–68). From that point on chapter four through ten and twelve through fifteen are predictable topics in that they treat the familiar elements of the Jesus narrative, albeit in a bright and innovative perspective. The list is interesting: Jesus as healing, Jesus and the Torah, Moses, Israel, parables, nativity, betrayal, trial, Ego Eimi, cry of dereliction, and Resurrection. Interestingly, many of the Synoptic stories about healing are really about the keeping of the Sabbath. LaCocque's purposes would have been served well with a sturdy reference at this point to the work of Donald Capps, Jesus the Village Psychiatrist (2008, WJK). Jesus seems to take every opportunity to confront the authorities with their rather rigid and wooden notions of the Sabbath and suggests that the spirit is quite different from the law, literally observed. Jesus takes each of the Ten Commandments, indeed, and affirms its real meaning and importance by setting the interpretation of the Pharisees on its head in each case. In fact, LaCocque argues that Jesus entire approach to the Torah is similarly reconstructive, as is indicated by the trans‐ethnic implication of the parable of...