NONFICTION - Oct. 20, 1991

APPOINTMENT IN JERUSALEM: A Search for the Historical Jesus by Max I. Dimont (St. Martin’s Press/Thomas Dunne: $17.95: 194 pp.). Any exploration of Jesus as a historical figure is certain to tread on sensitive toes. Albert Schweitzer, who wrote “The Quest of the Historical Jesus,” noted that the attempt to explain Jesus in human terms is commonly thought an offense to religion; Ernest Renan, whose “The Life of Jesus” got this historical ball rolling in 1863, has long been criticized for being both anti-Christian and anti-Semitic. Max Dimont’s “Appointment in Jerusalem” follows this biographical tradition, and although he has no explicit agenda, his book suffers from being neither scholarly nor particularly even-handed. Dimont tries to examine with the historian’s neutrality what he calls the seven “faces” of Jesus--as Christian messiah, Jewish messiah, self-appointed messiah, political Zealot, ascetic Essene, Paulist symbol and Gnostic--but seems most taken with the third view, that Jesus orchestrated his own crucifixion in order to fulfill Old Testament prophecies. Considering the elusiveness of facts and incidents almost 2,000 years after they have occurred, it’s a little difficult to take Dimont’s rough-and-ready analysis seriously.