Inventing the mythical Jesus

This is the best piece I've read this Eastertide. As another blogger has said 'Doug being brilliant'.

Inventing the mythical Jesus. 

Bishop Tom bows out

Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, gave his final speech as a bishop at General Synod today. +Tom will be returning to university based work in the near future, taking up a post as Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St. Andrew’s. This video shows +Tom making a barnstorming contribution to the debate on Women Bishops. Best line, quoting a London cabbie: 'If God raised Jesus Christ from the dead then everything else is just rock n roll, innit!'

 

+Tom is a leading Biblical scholar and his return to the academy gives him the opportunity to continue his prolific output of writing. He publishes his more popular works as Tom Wright and his more academic material as N. T. Wright. I for one am looking forward to him completing his major series: Christian Origins and the Question of God. The House of Bishops' loss is the academy’s gain.

The video was recorded by Ruth Gledhill of The Times and I am very grateful that she captured this significant contribution to the debate and that she is happy to share the recording.

Being Biblical

Enjoyed an interesting morning listening to Richard Burridge at the Bradwell area clergy study day. Professor Burridge, Dean of King’s College London, was speaking on the theme What does it mean to be Biblical? The first part of the presentation was a summary of Richard’s doctoral work on What are the Gospels? and his book Four Gospels, One Jesus. I’m very familiar with this material as we use Four Gospels on our Course in Christian Studies but it was helpful to have it summarised as a basis for what Richard went on to say.

The second part of the morning focused on Richard’s book Imitating Jesus and looked at the issue of being Biblical in exploring ethical dilemas. Much of this material was used extensively at the Lambeth Conference in 2008 and it was good to hear some of his insights and reflections on that experience.

Richard began by looking at two websites Anglican Mainstream and InclusiveChurch.Net to show how both, taking very different positions on ethical issues, nevertheless claimed to be Biblical in their approach. He then went on to consider two historical examples, slavery and apartheid, to show how opposing sides claimed positions grounded in the scriptures. The apartheid example was particularly interesting as both the Dutch Reform Church and those opposing apartheid used the same scriptures, the Exodus narrative, as a basis for their theological positions.

Unfortunately our speaker began to run out of time so the final part of the study was rather rushed. In this section Richard shared the basic thesis of Imitating Jesus. I’ll blog on the book at another time, but the key point is that though Jesus’ ethical teaching was rigorous his practice was an open acceptance  and inclusiveness of those considered morally questionable by society.
Some key thoughts from the session:

• Being Biblical is to hold words and deeds together.
• Opposing views can be genuinely seeking to be Biblical.
• We are called to be imitators of Jesus’ words and deeds.
• We need an open and inclusive community of interpretation.
• We must give attention to those who are most affected by our interpretation.

My one gripe about the morning, which finished with an excellent lunch, was the lack of time for discussion and Q & A. This was one time when I felt I would have been happy to go on into an afternoon session.

I’ve still to read Tom Wright’s Virtue Reborn and I understand he takes quite a different position to Richard Burridge; I look forward to comparing the two.

Update: a version of Richard's second presentation can be downloaded and is titled: Being Biblical: slavery, sexuality and the inclusive community.

Paxman interviews Jesus

I’ve just come across this interesting record of Jeremy Paxman’s interview with Jesus of Nazareth, recorded in a dead BBC scroll discovered by Michael Gove (yes, that Michael Gove).

JP: So, we're months into your campaign for the role of Messiah, and what are people saying about you? Here's just some of the comments we've heard from those who've seen you close up: "A jumped-up carpenter's son who thinks he's born to rule"; "born out of wedlock, an illegal immigrant as an infant, a known associate of prostitutes, wholly incapable of leading any sort of revival in our fortunes"; and, crucially, "a man who won't give a straight answer to a straight question". How do you respond to these damning criticisms of your record so far?

JC: Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

JP: So you don't deny that these criticisms have real purchase? Because we hear that the Pharisees and the Saducees, whose support you'd been counting on, are now turning against you. How can you possibly win in the country if you can't win over your own people? Aren't you just another of these failed here today, gone tomorrow prophets who've done so much harm?

JC: You have said so.

JP: And you haven't yet produced a single fact to contradict me. Your campaign hasn't got a prayer.

JC: That's one thing we do have, actually. Our Father . . .

JP: Never mind all that personal stuff, dragging your family in. People have had enough of that. They want to examine your record so far. Judas Iscariot is one of your key supporters. His name is on your campaign literature. He's been with you since the beginning. But now he says you lack the necessary zealotry to transform Judea and Samaria for the better. That's a pretty damning criticism, isn't it?

JC: He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.

JP: More than just a heel - it's a body blow. You'll need a miracle to recover now. With your supporters deserting you, and apparently even your campaign manager Peter wobbling, the real focus is now on your words. Can they be trusted? When you said recently, and I quote, "the meek shall inherit the earth", was that a firm promise?

JC: It was a prophecy.

JP: A prophecy? But what's your timetable for that? In your first term? As conditions allow? What if there's a war? Or a flu pandemic? Or a plague of locusts? Won't that wreck your plan to hand over the earth to the meek - a pledge many might say was reckless in itself given how untested the meek are.

JC: Truly, I say unto you, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven .

JP: Oh, puh-leese. Here you are, spraying pledges around, or prophecies as you prefer to call them, promising people the earth one moment and then offering entry to Heaven the next. Let's get down to brass tacks here. You're an untested figure in your thirties with no experience of life outside the cosy world of Nazareth, you come to Jerusalem and after just one Sermon on the Mount you've got people saying you're something special, but under close questioning you've shown you're clearly not as clever, funny, aggressive or well-paid as me. How on earth do you think people will follow you if you can't even get the better of me?

JC: I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.

JP: Oh, come off it!

Well, He’s still got my vote.

h/t Julian Glover of The Guardian.

Is Jesus history bunkum?

One of the thoughts that struck me while reading Philip Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ was that it was all very familiar. That may seem a surprising comment given the rather contentious title and the central idea of the narrative, but it may also explain why Christian reaction to the book has not been as overtly hostile as some, including The Church Mouse, had expected.

Firstly, a great deal of the story is a fairly straightforward retelling of the gospels and in particular the parables and teaching discourses of Jesus. There are a few tweaks to some of the teaching and yet nothing which really alters the character of the discourses. I guess those unfamiliar with the teaching of Jesus won’t spot most of the changes made by Pullman and I wouldn’t be surprised if quite a few Christians don’t pick up the alterations either.

Secondly, despite the striking idea of Mary having twins called Jesus and Christ, the basic theory being played out by Pullman is nothing new. The Jesus presented by Pullman will be familiar to anyone who has studied the various quests for the historical Jesus going back to the scholarship of the eighteenth century. In these quests Biblical scholars have tried to get behind the gospel texts, the Jesus of faith, to the Jesus of history. The quests have taken various forms at different times but the basic underlying presupposition is that the Jesus we encounter in the scriptural texts presents a picture of Jesus heavily influenced, if not distorted, by the theology of the early church. Miracles, for example, are dismissed as natural events misunderstood or invented to make a theological point about the person of Jesus. This is the approach taken by Pullman, a good example being his retelling of the feeding of the five thousand which becomes little more than an exercise in teaching people generosity. The Jesus we encounter in the gospels isn’t the real Jesus, but a Jesus embellished and creatively reworked by the gospel writers and the historical Jesus has become obscured or hidden under all the gloss.

Now the question which arises with these quests for the historical Jesus is this: Can they ever find what they are looking for? The reason is quite simple; the Jesus discovered in many of these quests tends to look very like the people looking for him. I would suggest that Pullman is no different and that the Jesus he presents in his book is the sort of Jesus he would be quite comfortable with because Jesus looks quite a bit like him; a good, decent, moral man with a healthy contempt for political and religious institutions and establishment!

This morning I read an interesting article The Jesus We’ll Never Know published in Christianity Today, in which the Biblical scholar Scot McKnight argues that the quests have failed and that it is impossible to find the real historical Jesus. McKnight makes a powerful case and with some authority as one who had devoted a great deal of his studies to the quests. The article gives a helpful brief summary of the approaches of what has been termed the new quest before unpacking why McKnight believes they are no longer tenable. What is most interesting is McKnight’s conclusion in which he makes the following comment in reflecting on a book he had written:

I had tried my best to see where the methods would lead if I sought to examine if and how the historical Jesus understood his own death. Some of my results disappointed, because I wanted to be able to prove some texts as authentic that I found stubbornly resistant to the methods available to us. Historiography, I concluded, can only do so much. One day, while editing the final draft, I came across these words from Romans 4:25: "He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification."

This is what I said to myself: As a historian I think I can prove that Jesus died and that he thought his death was atoning. I think I can establish that the tomb was empty and that resurrection is the best explanation for the empty tomb. But one thing the historical method cannot prove is that Jesus died for our sins and was raised for our justification. At some point, historical methods run out of steam and energy. Historical Jesus studies cannot get us to the point where the Holy Spirit and the church can take us. I know that once I was blind and that I can now see. I know that historical methods did not give me sight. They can't. Faith cannot be completely based on what the historian can prove. The quest for the real Jesus, through long and painful paths, has proven that much.

Fascinating stuff, but what is just as interesting is that Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham and another formidable Biblical scholar associated with the new quest for the historical Jesus, has responded and argues strongly that we do need historical Jesus studies. In his response Abandon Studying the Historical Jesus? No, We Need History Wright suggests that McKnight’s article actually proves his point and he concludes:

history cannot compel faith. But it is very good at clearing away the smoke screens behind which unfaith often hides. History and faith are, respectively, the left and right feet of Christianity. Modernism hops, now on this foot (skeptical "historiography"), now on that (unhistorical "faith"). It's tiring, dangerous, and unnecessary. Puzzle: I think Scot believes this too.

Those who know me will not be surprised if I say that I find myself leaning towards Wright, though I have a great deal of sympathy for McKnight and his critique. Here's the quote from Wright which gets to the heart of the issue:

How will we ward off the next generation's dangerous follies (not just Dan Brown, though he matters too) if we don't do history?

h/t Phil Groom for drawing my attention to the Christianity Today articles.

More Dark Materials?

I happened to have a book token in my wallet yesterday so acquired a copy of Philip Pullman’s latest offering The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ. In big letters on the back cover it says This Is A STORY so you can’t say you haven’t been warned. The book is an enjoyable and stimulating read, doesn’t take long to get through and much of the material is familiar, with an occasional twist that suddenly brings one up short.

A central theme of the book is that fiction, or at least a creative reworking of history, can help to reveal deeper truth. This seems to be what Pullman himself is seeking to do in his fictional account of the Gospels, seasoned with an underlying polemic against the institutional church. Not surprisingly Pullman’s Jesus turns out to be little more than the demythologised eunuch characteristic of the quests for the historical Jesus; a good man with a pithy turn of phrase and some acute social/religious observation. For me, such a Jesus is more a semi domesticated pussy cat, rather than the roaring lion of the Gospels who has consumed the lives of so many followers over two thousand years.

Pullman raises some challenging questions for the church about what we have done with the Good News of Jesus Christ. However, I can’t help feeling that the answer lies not in filleting out the uncomfortable and difficult bits, but in submitting ourselves again and again to the searing light of the Gospel in all its richness, diversity and fullness.

For a detailed review of the book check out Bishop Alan Wilson’s excellent The Goodman Philip and the Scoundrel Pullman? and his further reflections From Jesus to Church?

Update (8/4/10) I'd missed Rowan Williams superb review of the book in The Guardian which is well worth a read.

still broken

About 11:30am on Monday I glanced out of my diocesan office window and wondered what was going on as I watched various cassocked men heading for Chelmsford Cathedral. Then I remembered that on Monday of Holy Week the cathedral hosts the ‘alternative’ Chrism service. Each Maundy Thursday a Chrism service is held in the cathedral and all the clergy of the diocese are invited to attend. It is an opportunity to gather together; to renew ordination vows; to bless oils which will be used in parishes throughout the year and to celebrate the meal Jesus gave us. However, as I said, an alternative service took place on Monday.

When the Church of England decided to ordain women as priests in the 1990s arrangements were put in place for those who could not support the move. These arrangements were set out in Appendix B to Ordination of Women to the Priesthood: Pastoral Arrangements and provide sacramental care as well as oversight for opponents of the ordination of women to the priesthood. Basically, provision is made in each diocese for a Provincial Episcopal Visitor, sometimes known as a ‘flying bishop’, who offers oversight to those who cannot accept the ministry of the diocesan bishop because of his acceptance of and participation in the ordination of women. It was these clergy who I saw going to the cathedral on Monday for their alternative Chrism service in Holy Week.

I thought back to another view through a window during Advent 2008. I was looking through the window of the small Franciscan church called Dominus Flevit on the Mount of Olives. The church is constructed in the shape of a tear and the view looks out over Temple Mount and the Old City of Jerusalem. This is traditionally remembered as the site where Jesus wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41).

So there you have it: Holy Week, when we remember what God has done for all of us through his Son the Lord Jesus Christ and we have two separate services because we can’t agree on what Jesus calls us to be and do in his name. We can’t even share together around the Lord’s table.

Jesus wept and we should hang our heads in shame.

"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." John 17:20-22

Crowd trouble

One of my favourite Holy Week hymns is Samuel Crossman’s My Song is Love Unknown. The third verse always stands out for me:

Sometimes they strew His way,

And His sweet praises sing;

Resounding all the day

Hosannas to their King:

Then ‘Crucify!’ is all their breath,

And for His death they thirst and cry.

Doug Chaplin has posted an interesting blog questioning whether the crowd that welcomes Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday is the same crowd that then turns on him on Good Friday. Doug comments:

Every year, on or after this day, someone – sooner or later – and usually in a sermon, draws our attention to the “fact” that the crowds crying “Hosanna” on Sunday were crying “Crucify” on Friday.

I’ve already noted that in Luke’s Gospel it is the accompanying disciples who cry “Hosanna”. Luke, for one, doesn’t make the psychologising identification beloved by preachers, but which is read into some kind of harmonised “gospel story”.

I happened to be reading the section in Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan’s book The Last Week yesterday, in which they reflect on the role of the crowd in Mark. They make an interesting comparison between the Gospels and stress that in Mark the crowd is supportive of Jesus, forcing the hostile authorities to abandon any attempt at a public arrest (Mk 14:1-2) and therefore dependent on Judas to betray Jesus. They note:

• Mark has five references to a supportive/protective crowd between Sunday and Tuesday (11:8-10; 11:18; 11:32; 12:12; 12:37)
• Matthew has three of Mark’s five (21:8-9, 26, 46)
• Luke three or four depending on how one understands ‘the whole multitude of the disciples’ during the entry. (19:37-38, 47-48; 20:6,19)
• John only has the entry into Jerusalem (12:12-18)
• They also cite Josephus for a pro Jesus crowd and anti Jesus authorities: Jewish Antiquities 18:63-64.

What is clear is the recognition of a supportive crowd forcing the authorities to abandon any confrontation in public. Even if Luke is only referring to the disciples for the entry into Jerusalem, the crowd are still identified as supportive early in the week. Is this the crowd that turns on Jesus? Crossan and Borg argue against this and suggest a smaller, different crowd provided by the authorities. They don’t give much support for this argument except to say that it is unlikely the crowd from earlier in the week would be allowed into Herod’s palace.

To return to the hymn. Why I find it so powerful is that it reminds me how fickle I am in my own faith. Times of passion, joy and dedication are so quickly followed by periods of apathy and complacency. I may not be shouting out ‘Crucify’ in open hostility but the blandness of my discipleship is still depressing. It is also sobering to remember that one of Jesus’ most dedicated followers may not have shouted ‘Crucify’ on that first Good Friday but he did deny any knowledge of Jesus when the crunch came.

So I make the last verse of the hymn a prayer for this week:

Here might I stay and sing,

No story so divine;

Never was love, dear King!

Never was grief like Thine.

This is my Friend, in whose sweet praise

I all my days could gladly spend.

Epiphany by the Queen of Vampires

One of my Christmas reads was The Road To Cana by Anne Rice, the author best known for her vampire and occult novels. This is the second book in her Christ The Lord series; a fictional novel continuing Rice’s exploration of the life of Jesus and covering the period leading up to his emergence into public ministry at the age of 30, culminating in the miracle of the wedding at Cana. An unusual feature of the series is that it is written in the first person, however, this allows Rice to explore the inner tensions that must have confronted Jesus as he came to terms with his calling and ministry. Jesus wrestles with the possibility of marriage, family tensions, the challenge to take up military opposition to Roman occupation and the other demands of messianic expectation.

The themes of The Road To Cana are not dissimilar to those explored in Nikos Kazantzakis’s The Last Temptation of Christ, though this book is more traditional and orthodox in its theology. Incarnation, vocation and revelation are at the heart of the narrative and Rice captures the humanity of Jesus as he confronts the evils of zealotry, bigotry, cruelty and the temptations of Satan in the wilderness following his baptism. The story is an epiphany as Jesus comes to a full realisation of his mission and his true nature, hinted at throughout his life, is revealed to family, friends and the wider community.

From vampires to Christ is my more detailed post about the Christ The Lord series and Anne Rice’s faith and Jonathan Evens has also written an interesting piece about The Road to Cana. I understand that Rice plans two more books in the series and one of the interesting questions Jonathan raises is how Rice will handle the more familiar material from the four gospels. The Road to Cana suggests she will handle the material with sensitivity, imagination and considerable theological insight.

from vampires to Christ

Anne Rice is perhaps best known as the author of The Vampire Chronicles including Interview with the Vampire, made into a film by Neil Jordan and starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. So I was surprised to discover Rice had written the first book in a trilogy about the life of Christ. The book is called Christ The Lord – Out Of Egypt and it is a fictional account of the life of Christ between leaving Egypt Matthew 2:19 and the incident in the Temple recorded in Luke 2:41-51.

Rice writes in the first person and so the reader experiences the narrative through the eyes of the child Jesus. This enables the author to explore the incarnation and the emerging sense of both Jesus’ humanity and divinity as well as his unfolding awareness of vocation. The story leads us towards the incident in the Temple where Jesus is separated from his parents. The climax of the story is the disclosure to the boy Jesus of the events surrounding his birth, including the slaughter of the innocents, and the revelation by his mother Mary that he is ‘the begotten of God’.

The story is fictional but Rice has sought to be as faithful to the Gospels and accompanying traditions as possible. It is clear from the book and her author’s notes that Rice has been meticulous in her research and has clear explanations for the choices she has made in the material she includes and the way she presents it. I found the recreation of first century Jerusalem and Temple, Nazareth and the surrounding landscape convincing both in geographical and cultural description. The book reminded me of Theissen’s The Shadow of the Galilean. However, I felt with Theissen that the theology and research got in the way of the narrative, it was theology trying to be literature. In Out of Egypt the research undergirds the narrative but doesn’t inhibit its flow; exploring important doctrinal themes without sacrificing pace and drama.

An uncomfortable but interesting aspect of the book is that it draws on the legend material, including the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which Rice justifies by commenting:

‘Ultimately I chose to embrace this material, to enclose it within the canonical framework as best I could. I felt there was a deep truth in it and I wanted to preserve that truth as it spoke to me. Of course this is an assumption. But I made it. And perhaps in assuming that Jesus did manifest supernatural powers at an early age I am somehow being true to the declaration of the Council of Chalcedon, that Jesus was God and Man at all times.’

‘In using some of these legends, I sought not to attack orthodox beliefs in any way, but to include legends that Christians for the most part have shared. For me the legends helped to imagine a concrete world in which our Lord lived and breathed as God and Man; I did not respond to any docetism in them whatsoever.’

What I have found most fascinating is Rice’s account of her own journey of faith.

In her notes Rice describes her study of the New Testament, between 2002 to 2005, as she researched and began to write the book. This was a particularly painful period in her life as her husband, Stan, was diagnosed with a brain tumour and died within four months.

Rice began with the sceptical critics of N.T. studies expecting their arguments to be ‘frighteningly strong’ and that they would reveal that Christianity was ‘a kind of fraud’. Surely, she surmised, she would find a Jesus who was liberal, married, had children, was a homosexual ….. . Rice looked at the Jewish scholars who presented Jesus as an observant Jew or a Hasid who ended up on a cross. Behind her studies lay the urge to know who Jesus was.

Gradually the conclusion Rice reached was that the arguments of the sceptics lacked coherence, were full of conjecture, piled assumption on assumption and drew absurd conclusions based on little or no data. She comments:

‘In sum, the whole case for the non divine Jesus who stumbled into Jerusalem and somehow got crucified by nobody and had nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and would be horrified by it if he knew about it – that whole picture which had floated in the liberal circles I frequented as an atheist for thirty years – that case was not made. Not only was it not made, I discovered in this field some of the worst and most biased scholarship I’d ever read.’

‘And I had also sensed something else. Many of these scholars, scholars who apparently devoted their life to New Testament scholarship, disliked Jesus Christ. Some pitied him as a hopeless failure. Others sneered at him, and some felt an outright contempt. This came between the lines of the books. This emerged in the personality of the texts.’

A key turning point for Rice was reading John A. T. Robinson’s The Priority of John and his arguments for an early dating of the Gospels. Also John Wenham’s Redating Matthew, Mark and Luke. Rice is very suspicious of those arguing for a late dating based on the Fall of Jerusalem. Her argument is that if the fall had taken place before the Gospels were written then the events surrounding the fall would have had a greater impact on and in the texts. She finds the late dating based on a rejection of prophetic utterances about the fall unconvincing. In her notes Rice cites a host of other Biblical scholars and it is clear that her appetite for reading on the subject is voracious. The scholar she particularly credits is N.T. Wright.

‘N.T. Wright is one of the most brilliant writers I’ve ever read, and his generosity in embracing sceptics and commenting on their arguments is an inspiration. His faith is immense, and his knowledge vast.’

Rice sums up her approach to the book as follows:

‘The true challenge was to take the Jesus of the Gospels, the Gospels which were becoming ever more coherent to me, the Gospels which appealed to me as elegant first person witness, dictated to scribes no doubt, but definitely early, the Gospels produced before Jerusalem fell – to take the Jesus of the Gospels, and to try to get inside him and imagine what he felt.’

But for me the most interesting comments come in Rice’s note to the paperback edition in which she details her personal return to faith.

‘I returned to faith in Christ and to the Roman Catholic Church on December 6, 1998. It was after a long struggle of many years during which time I went from being a committed atheist, grieving for a lost faith which I thought was gone forever, to realising that I not only believed in Jesus Christ with my whole heart, but that I felt an overwhelming love for Him, and wanted to be united with Him both in private and in public through attendance at church.’

In one of the most powerful testimonies I have recently read, the author goes on to explain her wrestling with deep personal and theological questions:

‘How could I join with fellow believers who thought my gay son was going to Hell? How could I become connected with Christians who held there is no evidence for Darwinian evolution, or that women should have no control over their own bodies? How could I affirm my belief in a faith that was itself so characterised by argument and strife?’

And then Rice recounts her response:

‘Well what happened to me on that Sunday I returned to faith was this: I received a glimpse into what I can only call the Infinite Mercy of God. It worked something like this. I realised that none of my theological or social questions really made any difference. I didn’t have to know the answers to these questions precisely because God did…… What came over me then was an infinite trust, trust in His power and His love. I didn’t have to worry about the ultimate fate of my good atheistic friends, gay or straight, because he knew all about them, and he was holding them in His hands. I didn’t have to quake alone in terror at the thought of those who die untimely deaths from illness, or the countless million

s destroyed in the horrors of war. He knew all about them. He had always been holding them in his hands. He and only He knew the full story of every person who’d ever lived or ever would live; He and He alone knew what person was given what choice, what chance, what opportunity, what amount of time, to come to him and by what path.’

‘Did this mean that I thought doctrine and principles didn’t matter? No. Did it mean I thought everything was relative? Certainly not. Did it mean I did not continue to ponder a multitude of ideas?

God forbid. What it did mean was that I put myself in the hands of God entirely and that my faith would light the pages I read in the Book of Life from then on.’

The second book in the trilogy has recently been published: Christ The Lord – The Road To Cana.