This book is an ideal introduction to the Gospels, explaining why it is that scholars and lay people have such different understandings of the person of Jesus. The first half of the book looks at the main sources for the life of Jesus, principally the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but also the so-called apocryphal Gospels. By exploring the main emphases of each of the Gospels, it becomes clear that any reconstruction of the life of Jesus has to make a number of decisions about the relationships between the Gospels, what they were trying to achieve and the trustworthiness of their sources. The second half of the book begins with an examination of the criteria employed by scholars to determine the earliest and most reliable forms of the tradition. Several chapters show how such issues as personal commitments, church affiliation, social context and gender affect our interpretation of the Gospels, and consequently our understanding of Jesus, illustrated by discussion of a number of influential scholarly views, beginning with Albert Schweitzer and including such figures as Ed Sanders, Tom Wright, Marcus Borg and John Crossan. There then, follows a chapter on political and ethical interpretations of Jesus, concluding with a chapter on the presentation of Jesus in art, media and culture. This volume now includes: study questions at the end of each chapter, updated reading lists, and two new chapters bringing the scholarship up-to-date.