The Shadow of the Galilean

Jesus never appears directly in this story, except in dreams and when he is dead. What would have been the logistical and ethical challenges of including Jesus as a central character? How does Theissen use the fictional Andreas to achieve an appropriate narrative distance from Jesus?

Why is fiction a useful tool for investigating the Political and Religious Upheaval of Jesus’s lifetime? What advantages does it offer to Theissen as a historian?

Consider the political perspectives at play in this story. How do the Essenes, the Zealots, and Jesus all espouse different responses to the problem of Roman oppression? Can their differences be reconciled?

How does Theissen’s account differ from popular imaginings of Jesus’s life? How is it the same? What significance do these differences have?

Consider your own relationship to religion. To what extent did Theissen’s text intersect with your experiences and beliefs, if at all? Write a personal essay explaining your answer.

Theissen asks whether Jesus’s story is universal, whether it should be seen as dependent on in its own historical and cultural context, or both. How does he resolve these questions? Can Jesus be both a product of his own time and a figure for all time?

Theissen grapples with the question of whether it is appropriate or possible to examine Jesus as a historical figure. How does The Shadow of the Galilean dramatize this question? How does Andreas understand Jesus’s relationship to history and the future?

What is the significance of Andreas’s apparent conversion to Christianity at the end of the novel? How does it relate to the themes of the story? How does it adhere to or depart from the patterns of Andreas’s character up to this point?