Eckhard J. SCHNABEL, Jesus in Jerusalem: The Last Days. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2018. pp. xxiv+680. HC. $60. ISBN 978-0-8028-8. Reviewed by Peter C. PHAN, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. 20057.

Readers, be warned. Eckhard J. Schnabel, Mary French Rockefeller Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, is given to writing huge books. My first taste of his partiality to producing doorstop-size volumes was when researching mission in the New Testament and ploughing through his Urchristliche Mission, later published in two volumes, Jesus and the Twelve and Paul and the Early Church, totaling nearly 2,000 pages. Schnabel’s predilection for weighty tomes was repeated in his commentary on Acts, which runs to more than eleven hundredpages.(In this however he is roundly beaten by Craig Keener, whose four-volume commentary on Acts exceeds 4600 pages! Keener describes Schnabel’s Jesus in Jerusalem as “comprehensive, independent, insightful, and well documented, critically engaging a wide range of scholarship and other sources”—high praise indeed from someone who knows.)

Jesus in Jerusalem, albeit comparatively shorter, exhibits Schnabel’s trademark meticulous scholarship. The book contains179 pages of notes, and 49 pages of bibliography, a respectable monograph in itself. But it does not make for laborious and dry reading. It treats its subject matter—Jesus’ “last days” in Jerusalem during the Passion Week, from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday—in four chapters, each dealing with an important theme, laconically titled: “people,” “places,” “timelines,” “events.” These chapters are of extremely varied length: the shortest is chapter 3, “Timelines” (11 pages) and the longest is chapter 4, “Events” (223 pages). In fact, it’s best to use this book as an encyclopedic reference, to be consulted for historical information on anything and everything that can be known about Jesus and his world during the last week of his life.  The book offers information on 72 people or groups, 17 places, and 7 timelines. In addition, there are 21 tables and 13 excursuses. As for a continuous narrative of Jesus’ momentous last week one needs to read chapter 4, “Events.”

With historical books on Jesus, two questions are apt to come to the fore: First, how are the New Testament, in particular the four Gospels, used as source? Schnabel deals with the issue of the historical reliability of the Gospels as sources forthrightly in his Introduction. He views the Gospels as “essentially biographies of Jesus” and seeks to present “an integrated approach that draws from a wide array of specialized approaches” (8). The second question, which often comes from non-historians such as systematic theologians and lay readers, is “so what?’ Schnabel provides an answer in the last chapter, “Significance,” (22 pages), in which he discusses the messianic identity of Jesus, Jesus and the temple, the death of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, and Jesus’ mission and the mission of his followers. To some readers these reflections seem to be rather meager gleanings from such lengthy historical disquisitions, but unless one is willing to peruse another thousand pages, which Schnabel is more than able and perhaps willing to supply, one should not complain. Perhaps it would not be right to suggest that Jesus in Jerusalem should be required reading in every New Testament course, but certainly it should find a place in any self-respecting theological library. I for one am deeply grateful to Schnabel not only for his Urchristliche Mission but also for this latest offering of his, from both of which I have learned much.