The historicity of Jesus is now widely accepted, but this assumption disarms biblical texts of much of their power by privileging an historical interpretation, effectively sweeping aside much theological speculation and allusion. The assumption of historicity gathers further assumptions to it, shaping the interpretation of texts, both denying and adding subtext. We are now faced with an endless array of works on the historical Jesus few of which question what has been lost through this wide-spread assumption of historicity. "Is This Not The Carpenter?" offers readers the most up to date overview of how the historicity of Jesus is examined in contemporary scholarship. An international range of scholars - with divergent views on the historical Jesus - present a literary re-reading of the New Testament, arguing that the gospel evidence is to be discovered not in oral tradition but in the written literature of the ancient world.