Missing: Three days in Jerusalem
Sonia Falaschi-Ray
Matador £9.99
(978-1-78306-042-9)
Church Times Bookshop £9 (Use code CT877
)
RETELLING Bible stories remains a popular way of casting new
light on familiar episodes. From the quirky vignettes of Trevor
Dennis to the majestic tome that is Walter Wangerin's The Book
of God, Christian writers continue to enjoy the challenge of
bringing alive the people and places of scripture and bypassing
"tea-towels-and-sandals" clichés.
Missing brings together the three days when 12-year-old
Jesus (Yeshua) goes missing in Jerusalem with the events that take
place between the night in Gethsemane and Easter morning. For the
most part, the book aims at faithfully reproducing an ancient Near
Eastern setting, including details of contemporaneous food,
clothes, home furnishings, transport, and so on. The descriptions
of flogging and crucifixion are harrowingly vivid.
We meet a large cast of individuals, some of whom are additions
to the Gospel accounts (the parents of the Bethany family, for
example), while others whose names we already know (such as Joseph
of Arimathaea and Mary Magdalene) are given imaginative
back-stories. The biblical sequence of events is preserved, but
also creatively expanded to explore the might-have-beens. A Good
Friday encounter between Peter and Judas is particularly
thought-provoking.
The book also, however, includes a Harrowing of Hell chapter,
with sneering devils, sulphur, branding irons, suffering souls -
including children - and Yeshua sounding rather too much like
Gandalf the White ("We meet again, Satan, or should I call you
Lucifer, you fallen angel?"). Including such Dante-esque horror in
an otherwise more-or-less historical narrative could have the
unfortunate effect of implying that this is what most Christians
believe.
Naomi Starkey is a commissioning editor for BRF, and edits
and writes for New Daylight Bible-reading notes. She has
also written Good Enough Mother (BRF, 2009) and The
Recovery of Love (BRF, 2012).