Maurice Casey

Maurice Casey (1942-2014) was a British New Testament scholar and Professor Emeritus at the University of Nottingham who made significant contributions to historical Jesus research and early Christianity studies. Known for his expertise in Aramaic and first-century Palestinian Judaism, Casey challenged both conservative Christian and mythicist positions through rigorous historical-critical methodology. His major works include From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God (1991), which examined early Christological development, Aramaic Sources of Mark's Gospel (1998), and Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian's Account of His Life and Teaching (2010). Casey argued for a thoroughly Jewish understanding of the historical Jesus while maintaining that later divine claims represented Hellenistic influence rather than Jesus's self-understanding. His scholarship emphasized the importance of understanding Jesus within his original Jewish context, contributing to debates about the relationship between the historical Jesus and subsequent theological claims about his divinity. His final work, Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths? (2014), defended the historicity of Jesus against mythicist theories.