The Bad Jesus: The Ethics of New Testament Ethics

Did Jesus ever do anything wrong? Judging by the vast majority of books on New Testament ethics the answer is a resounding No. Writers on New Testament ethics generally view Jesus as the paradigm of human standards and behaviour. But since the his-torical Jesus was a human being must he not have had flaws like everyone else? The notion of a flawless human Jesus is a paradoxical oddity in New Testament ethics. According to Avalos it shows that New Testament ethics is still primarily an apologetic enterprise de-spite its claim to rest on critical and historical scholarship. The Bad Jesus is a powerful and challenging study presenting de-tailed case studies of fundamental ethical principles enunciated or practised by Jesus but antithetical to what would be widely deemed acceptable or good today. Such topics include Jesus supposedly innovative teachings on love along with his views on hate violence imperialism animal rights environmental ethics Judaism women disabled persons and biblical hermeneutics. After closely examining arguments offered by those unwilling to find any fault with the Jesus depicted in the Gospels Avalos concludes that current treatments of New Testament ethics are permeated by a religiocentric ethnocentric and imperialistic orientation. But if it is to be a credible historical and critical dis-cipline in modern academia New Testament ethics needs to discover both a Good and a Bad Jesus.