Jesus of Hollywood

Since the advent of cinema, Jesus has frequently been found in our movie houses and on our television screens. Biblical scholar Adele Reinhartz provides the first comprehensive study of the relationship of Jesus movies to the Gospels. Reinhartz focuses on the cinematic representation of Jesus, touching on such topics as Jesus' historical and cultural context, his biography, and his messianic identity. Her overarching theme is that the Jesus films both reflect and influence cultural perceptions of Jesus and the other figures in his story. Jesus films, she shows, provide a window to the profound changes in cultural attitudes, social institutions, and religious belief that Western culture has experienced in the first hundred years of film.