Jaroslav Pelikan (1923–2006), a renowned scholar of the history of Christianity, was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University. He was the author of more than thirty books, including The Christian Tradition, widely acknowledged as the foremost history of its kind.
"An enlightening and often dramatic story. . . . As a succinct
account of the image of Christ before faith began to falter, in the
indubitably Christian centuries, it is as stimulating as it is
informative."—John Gross, New York Times
"Mr Pelikan, who is the Sterling Professor of History at Yale
University, writes for a broad readership. What he offers us in
Jesus Through the Centuries is a rich and expansive description of
Jesus' impact on 'the general history of culture. . . . Jesus
Through the Centuries seems to me unique among current publications
in bridging scholarly and popular discourse on the prophet from
Nazareth over the past 2,000 years. Believers and skeptics alike
will find it a sweeping visual and conceptual panorama. Mr. Pelikan
is particularly adept at discerning the political implications in
various Jesus images."—John Koenig, front page, New York Times Book
Review
"Pelikan here draws on his commanding grasp of Christian history
not to try his own hand at one more 'life' of Jesus, but to lay
before us the principal images that have appeared, sometimes
recurrently, from the 1st century to the 20th. Starting with 'The
Rabbi' and moving with precision and balance through 18
well-crafted chapters, he uses stained glass and statuary, hymns
and doggerel, creeds and exposes, to carry the reader finally to
'The Man Who Belongs to the World.' The final chapter demonstrates
conclusively that if imaging Jesus ever was the monopoly of the
'Christian West,' it surely is no longer."—Harvey Cox, front page,
Washington Post Book World
"Celebratory study of Jesus' impact on Western art, thought and
culture over the last 2,000 years."—New York Times Book Review
"Writing for the general reader, eminent church historian Pelikan
proposes that, while the figure of Jesus provides the chief
continuity in the history of Christianity, each age has depicted
him in accordance with its own character."—Library Journal
"[Pelikan] offers an elegantly written and handsomely illustrated
account of the changing ways in which, over the last 19 centuries,
men and women have seen Jesus, and worshipped him as 'the
Christ.'"—Peter Fuller, New Society
"Jaroslav Pelikan is encyclopedic in learning and universal in
sympathy. . . . To read this study of Jesus is to receive a humane
education, and few will fail to make some new discoveries about the
richly varied story of reactions to him."—J.L. Houlden,
Theology
"This book, from one of the foremost historians of Christian
culture, is a delight to read."—Churchman
Winner of the 1986 Logos Bookstores Award given by the Association
of Logos Bookstores
"Jaroslav Pelikan has one of the most seminal minds in this
generation. Nowhere is this more evident than in his most
recent volume, Jesus Through the Centuries. It is not a doctrinal
study nor a volume on the life of Christ but, rather, an analysis
of some eighteen images of Jesus as he has been perceived through
the centuries, images running from the Rabbi to the man who belongs
to the world. Pelikan shows the enormous influence of Jesus
on human culture, illustrating this through history, literature,
philosophy, and art. It is a book that could only have been
written by a mature scholar, but it can be read with profit and joy
by anyone interested in the place of Jesus in the formation and
development of culture from the first century until today. It
is highly recommended."—James I McCord, Chancellor, Center of
Theological Inquiry, Princeton
"Like a master jeweler working with hard but valuable material,
Jaroslav Pelikan has given distinctive shape to a great
subject. He has chiseled eighteen surfaces, each with a
different image of Jesus Christ affecting human culture. The
result is an often glittering intellectual history that illuminates
important chapters of human sensibility with flashes of light and
color from Eastern as well as Western Christianity. Jesus Through
the Centuries invites us to go beyond narrow scholarship in our
study of that historical record and to reexamine what we are in the
light of what Jesus was."—James H. Billington, author of Icon and
the Axe and Fire in the Minds of Men
"With learned insight and readable style, Pelikan traces the
cultural incarnations of Jesus through nineteen centuries. . . .He
concludes that Jesus now belongs to the whole of humanity, far
beyond the reach of the organized Church and ecclesial
theology. And I agree."—Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C.,
President, University of Notre Dame
"Jesus Through the Centuries reflects the deep faith and
spirituality of the noted historian and theologian Jaroslav Pelikan
expressed with Apostolic simplicity and clarity. It expresses
sound scriptural doctrine and profound cultural history of the last
2,000 years which can also serve as a blueprint for examining the
images of Jesus through the study of politics, society, and
economic events in history. Through its contents, the book
evinces a profound understanding between tradition and innovation
through each particular age marked by intellectual vigor,
theological substance, humanity and warmth. Even more,
Professor Pelikan emits an historical faith that is unabashedly
Christocentric, straightforward and poetic, which will make the
book appeal to a wide audience because of its rich humanism, and
its informed use of references to writers and philosophers from
St. Gregory of Nyssa to Albert Schweitzer. His book
should be read by not only historians and theologians, but by all
Christians who wish to seek ways of coming closer to one another
through an understanding of Christ down through the ages."—His
Eminence Archbishop Iakovos, Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church
of North and South America
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