God's Beloved
Jesus' Experience of the Transcendent
Bernard J. Cooke

The issue of Jesus' self-consciousness remains at the forefront of New Testament studies. In this book, Bernard Cooke exhibits courage and tenacity as he reconstructs, with full acceptance of historical criticism, the religious self-consciousness of Jesus and Jesus' awareness of the divine.

Cooke focuses on the term "Abba" as descriptive of Jesus' relationship to the divine, considering it within the context of the Jewishness of Jesus' experience, Jesus' masculinity. Jesus' consciousness of being "eschatological prophet," and Jesus' awareness of healing by the power of God's Spirit. A concluding chapter deals with the question of what can reliably be said about the religious experience of Jesus.

Bernard J. Cooke is Professor of Theology at the college of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, and the author of Ministry to Word and Sacrament and The Distancing of God: The Ambiguity of Symbol in History and Theology.