Christ: A Crisis In The Life Of God

Description

In this brilliant and original book Jack Miles explores the life of Jesus as an episode in the story of God. Writing neither as a theologian nor as an historian but as a literary critic, Miles has written one of the most original responses to the Bible for years, as much for readers who respect the New Testament as a cornerstone of world literature as it is for Christians. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning God- A Biography, Jack Miles offered a highly original approach to the character of the God of the Old Testament, addressing him as a character in a book, a literary charter. In Christ, reading the New Testament but hearing the Old echoing in its every verse, Miles tells the story of the agonising conflict that overtook God when he failed to keep his promise to his people, and the radical change in his character that this failure brought about. Coming after a large number of books pursuing the elusive 'historical Jesus', Christ- A Crisis in the Life of God offers a frankly mythological Christ, delivering a profound and dramatic companion to the story begun in God- A Biography.

The author of God- A Biography, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, Jack Miles is a former Jesuit. He studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at Harvard, and has lectured at various American universities, including the California Institute of Technology.

'So should we give Christ a rave? Just about. It brims with ideas, and Miles has a teacher's urge to find a profusion of ways to explain those ideas.' * Daily Telegraph * 'A wide-ranging, eloquent and arresting account that treats the Jesus of the new Testament as the most exceptional, alluring and enduring literary myth known to Mankind...As self-professed Christians in the West, including our own Prime Minister and the US President, take revenge for September 11, this readable and passionate book should give them food for thought.' * Daily Mail * Elegant and entertaining. * Karen Armstrong in The Times *