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 PrintableVersion The longest weekThe truth about Jesus' last daysRun-up to EasterTHE LONGEST WEEK If you want something to challenge you in the run up to Easter, try The Longest Week. It looks at the events of Jesus’s life, from Palm Sunday through to Easter, from a purely historical point of view. It tries to avoid all theology, which, of course, is currently very fashionable. Because of this, its content can look rather lame at points and obviously the writer’s own agenda sneaks in instead. However, having said that, its thorough research into first century times makes it a fascinating read. The author highlights the financial power of the Jerusalem temple and the corresponding oppression of the poor, virtually excluded from worship. Behind the money-making was the family of Annas which provided a dynasty of high priests all the way from 6 to 43 AD with only two years’ exception. The Lord Jesus is portrayed as the champion of the poor. Nick Page argues for the Gospels as generally reliable. He flies a few kites, speculating, for example, that the young man who ran off naked from Gethsemane was actually Lazarus. His excursus into the position of slaves, as he considers Jesus’s washing of the disciples’ feet, suggests a kind of Christian socialism and he reasons that, as crucifixion was primarily reserved for rebels against the status quo, so the challenge to take up the cross is in part an invitation to become a social radical. But, though there is a tendency for the author to ‘go off on one’ politically from time to time, the book sticks to the story and remains fairly balanced. He argues strongly for the historicity of Christ’s bodily resurrection, ‘No Gospel writer claims that Jesus went into the tomb as a man and came out as a metaphor’. But he does conclude with a searing indictment of the institutionalised church. What happened to Jesus? ‘We turned him into…the head of a worldwide official church’, which outdoes ‘the Sadducees, the Romans and the Pharisees wrapped together. While he lived he was all about non-violence and love and poverty and justice; once he’d died he was all about authority and power and wealth and pomp and status…’ Rollicking stuff with perhaps half a point. Anyone for joining a small independent fellowship?John Benton© Evangelicals Now - April 2009 |
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