A Biography of Jesus

Wilson is a good and well-respected biographer who has written other biographies of writers who have religious themes in their writings, namely C.S. Lewis and Leo Tolstoy. Jesus: A Life is a balanced look at the life of Jesus, especially for someone who is no longer a believing Christian. However, his main argument that Jesus is basically too Jewish to have been the Messiah is not particular original.
Wilson relies quite heavily on the work of the Jewish scholar, Geza Vermes.
Still Wilson is admirably sensitive to Christianity and Christians. Unlike John Dominic Crossan, he actually gives the benefit of the doubt to believers and allows for some veracity of the Christian mythos.
There are some specific issues that I think Wilson does not fully consider or develop.
If the Jewish followers of Jesus were "blasphemous", why is it hard to believe that they may have been harassed by the Jewish religious leaders?
Wilson asserts that the belief of the earliest Christians were different from later credal formulations, but he doesn't really back this up. Documents like the Didache show a remarkable similarity to documents like the Nicene Creed.
Wilson discounts the "agony in the garden" by appealing to Jesus' divinity? So why can't Wilson wrap his head around a fully human Jesus? I'm sure there is some ancient heresy that this falls under.
Even though Wilson has a background in Classics, he claims that any phrase or portion of the New Testament that cannot be translated back into Aramaic is probably not authentic? This is an odd standard and one that he needed to defend better.
He makes a rather thin claim about Jesus' belief in astrology because of Qumran, but doesn't definitively tie Jesus to the Qumran community or to astrology.
Wilson claims, as many do, that Jesus is not the founder of the Christian Church, but he also doesn't explain away the Petrine commission, the role of early disciples in first century controversies, and other similar scriptural passages.
He also seems to prefer John's Gospel to the Synoptics, but doesn't give any reason why this is so. I know this isn't a scholarly work necessarily, but I think that is a cop-out.
Wilson unnecessarily ties the institution of the Eucharist to the Church itself. Why? What about Jesus' ministry to the Gentiles, mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels that preceded John too. I also dont' but that Jesus didn't institute the Eucharist because he knew that he was going to be arrested.
Doesn't it make sense that if you were going to institute a New Kingdom and usher in the "reign of God" that this would be a good time to do so? How fitting a memorial this would be.
Wilson claims that there is no account of Jesus' crime, but fails to mention that both Josephus and Tacitus make reference to Jesus' death as a criminal as do the Gospels.
Finally, Wilson claims that Jesus was no a theologian, but there are various examples (the parables, Sermon on the Mount, debates with the religious authorities, where Jesus seems to be a quite able practitioner of theology and a sound religious teacher.

Czar