If Amanda Vuke’s Shaftesbury Society presentation earlier this week spurred your interest in religious topics, you might enjoy Paul Johnson‘s latest book, Jesus: A Biography from a Believer.
As the subtitle suggests, Johnson treats the gospels as true, and he attempts to combine common elements and themes from biblical texts to share both a narrative of Jesus’ life and a brief synopsis of his message. Among Johnson’s key points involves the notion of Jesus’ “new” Ten Commandments, including the development of a true personality and the cultivation of an open mind.
You’ll also encounter the application of Johnson’s trademark wit to the world within which Jesus worked:
Government, both spiritual and temporal, was supposedly a blessing, being based, on the one hand, on the Law of Moses and, on the other, on Roman law. There were codes, precedents, courts, parchments ? and plenty of lawyers. In practice it was corrupt, mendacious, grossly inefficient, and spasmodically cruel. It did not dispense justice so much as whim. It was run by men who were plainly inadequate and sometimes monsters. … Caiaphas, the high priest, was an evil man like Herod, with an added dimension of hypocrisy, spiritual pride, and a peculiar malice toward good men. Pontius Pilate was an archetype of the weaknesses with which we are daily familiar in our own political world: a pretense to uphold truth and justice and to heed public opinion, combined with indecision, cowardice, and a final tendency to bow to pressure groups, even when knowing them to be wrong. Every aspect of bad government we experience today finds its counterpart in first-century Palestine, not least the listless mediocrity which was its usual characteristic.
Amen.
