An Appraisal of Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev’s Jesus Christ: His Life and Teaching, Vol. 1, The Beginning of the Gospel

This book is the first in a series of volumes in English translation of the Russian language Начало Евангелия (Nachalo Evangeliia), written by Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, chairman of the Department of External Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate. Alfeyev states that this series is not a conventional biography, while also claiming that the series has “a biographical character since its central theme is the human story of Christ” (xi, emphasis Alfeyev’s). Alfeyev explains that his aim is “to reproduce the living image of Jesus on the basis of the sources available and to present his teaching as it is reflected in the Gospels” (xii). He adds that it is important for him to “prove to the reader that Jesus was precisely the One whom the Church accepts him to be” (xiv), while also stating that he is “interested primarily in the human story of the Son of God, his earthly biography, which begins with his birth” (xv). Alfeyev pledges that his study of the Gospels will seek out above all “that which relates directly” to Jesus’s “person, character, biography, and teaching” (xiii).

Alfeyev opens the present book with an eight-page foreword and then divides the volume into eight chapters. Chapters 1–2 (In Search of the “Historical Jesus”; The Sources) primarily address Alfeyev’s approach to the Gospels and his views on gospel composition. Chapters 3–8 (The Son of Man; The Son of God; The Prophet of Nazareth of Galilee; Jesus and the Disciples; Jesus and His Opponents: The Beginning of the Conflict; Jesus: His Way of Life and Character Traits) survey aspects of Jesus’ life as understood by Alfeyev’s particular reading of the Gospels.

Alfeyev states that his series of books is written primarily for: [a] “non-believers, those who doubt and who are hesitant,” while also giving answers to “those who believe that Jesus never even existed”; [b] “those who admit that Jesus existed, but do not believe that he is God”; and [c] those who may identify as Christians “but relate to the Gospel narratives skeptically or view the Gospels through the prism of the criticism to which it [sic] was subjected in the works of Western specialists on the New Testament in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries” (xii–xiii).

Although Alfeyev (a specialist on St. Symeon the New Theologian [ad 949– 1022]) does occasionally give a nod to historical-critical scholarship on the New Testament (47), he regularly rejects the methods and positions held by the majority of New Testament scholars. Alfeyev promises to stand “firmly on the soil of the Gospel text as the fundamental source of reliable information on Jesus” (49), but a significant weakness of the book is that Alfeyev generally approaches Jesus and the four Gospels using an uncritical hermeneutic that is prone to harmonizing and historicizing disparate gospel material. Consequently, many of the historical and exegetical arguments that Alfeyev makes are unconvincing, while other such arguments exhibit imaginative conjecture rather than insightful New Testament interpretation. Given Alfeyev’s context in Russia, where the post-Soviet vestiges of atheism are still present, one might argue that Alfeyev’s intended readers and aims may be pastorally significant. But since Alfeyev’s context is unique to the Russian situation and does not correspond to any English-language audience, it is difficult to see how this translation serves as much more than an attempt to countermand the very methods and findings of contemporary New Testament scholarship.

Alfeyev asserts the four Gospels’ “essential similarity” and argues that the Gospels’ contradictions actually support “the reality of the events described,” whereas if the Gospels were a “hoax” the four evangelists “would certainly have made sure to check their information with each other” (13). Indeed, Alfeyev claims that the Gospels’ “differences bear witness to the fact that there was no collusion between the evangelists” (13). Alfeyev supports his position...