Abstract:
This paper examines the attempt by Richard Burridge in his recent book, Imitating Jesus: An
inclusive approach to New Testament ethics (2007), to build an engaged Christian ethics starting with
the historical Jesus but taking full account of the insights into the perspectives of the four gospels
in their own right, based on their genre as Greek bioi. While Burridge’s approach is applauded
and regarded as a major step forward, it is critiqued here on his selectivity in his presentation of
the results of two decades of research into the Jesus of history. Burridge’s selection of the South
African experience in the struggle against apartheid as his ‘test case’ is also questioned, since
the issues in such struggles for justice appear more straightforward to outsiders than they do to
insiders and his analysis raises more questions than it answers.
