Pastor and theologian Zahl wants to restart the quest for the historical Jesus. Not the one just winding down, typified by the ranking of Jesus' sayings for authenticity and the portrayal of Jesus as merely a "Mediterranean Jewish peasant." Zahl has in mind the 1950s' Jesus quest, whose leader Ernst Kasemann sought for the Christian Jesus, a rabbi whose teaching upheld many Jewish beliefs and practices yet was radically discontinuous with Judaism. Starting where the Messianic Jewish prophet John the Baptist did, by calling people to repent, Jesus then proclaimed the kingdom of God, thereby altering the religious conception of history and announcing the good news of salvation--moreover, announcing it principally and pointedly to poor sinners, which Zahl insists was and is the most distinctive and evangelically effective Christian pronouncement. Of course, along with the good news came some that was pretty hard to take: that of original sin, which entailed a person's utterly contingent relationship to God, who would save one only because He would, not because of anything one did. Basic stuff, this, but Zahl, drawing on some marvelous resources, including the appreciative Jewish scholar of Jesus, David Flusser, restates it all so cogently and concisely (144 pages!) that this is the book anyone befuddled about Christianity should read to get a clear idea of the distinctives of Christian belief. --Ray Olson Copyright 2003 Booklist