Jesus Before God: The Prayer Life of the Historical Jesus

Jesus Before God examines new ways the historical Jesus can teach us to pray. The prayer that emerges is very different from the prayers of Jesus’ contemporaries, from traditional church prayers, and from new fashions of spirituality. The surprise that awaits the reader may be as unsettling as that experienced by Jesus’ audience two thousand years ago. Hal Taussig is a skilled biblical scholar who pursues a trail of evidence leading closer and closer to the historical Jesus. At the end he finds the Q Jesus Prayer—the earliest known form of the so-called Lord’s Prayer. In analyzing this prayer he discovers fragments that may well come from Jesus himself.