Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter serves as special lecturer in writing and rhetoric, liberal studies, and the Honors College at Oakland University and is the author of Death in Documentaries: The Memento Mori Experience.

• Preface: A Problem-Driven LifeAcknowledgments Introduction: The Problem of Explaining Jesus Part IChapter 1: Philosophies of Being a Person Like Jesus: Metaphysicalist, Dualist, Physicalist Chapter 2: Discourse About Jesus: From the Vernacular to the Scholarly and Scientific Chapter 3: Discourse About Jesus in Historical Scholarship Part IIChapter 4: A Turn to the Sciences: An Evolutionary, Physicalist Context for Explaining JesusChapter 5: “Jesus” as a “Person” with Special Features: Cognitive Psychological Applications Toward Explaining Jesus Chapter 6: Experiencing “Jesus” as Cultivated Social Practice: Behavioral Aspects of the PhenomenonChapter 7: Toward Explaining a “Personal Relationship with Jesus”: Isolating and Studying a PhrasePart IIIChapter 8: as a Sign in Complex SystemsChapter 9: as Glocal Sign of the People Chapter 10: Critiqued and Appropriated Chapter 11: The Hope of Resurrection: Beliefs, Fantasies, Misconceptions, Present-day Science, Speculation, Science Fiction, and Delusion Chapter 12: Lessons Learned, Including All That Is Not Explained, and Final RemarksReferencesAbout the Author

If for an answer we should turn to Jesus, what is the question? How to understand the emotional and spiritual meaning of a ‘personal relationship with Jesus’? In his interesting and well-developed book, Explaining Jesus, Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter addresses this topic, drawing on theology and the humanities as well as on behavioral and natural sciences. For those who understand themselves as standing in an intimate relationship with Jesus, reading this book will be a challenging—but not necessarily negative—exercise in self-understanding. For those who don’t see themselves, or Jesus, in that way, it is worth the effort to read it, to understand fellow humans in ways they might not have thought of before.