What Did Jesus Look Like?
by Joan Taylor
(Bloomsbury, £17.99 (£16.20); 978-0-567-67150-9).

“Jesus Christ is arguably the most famous man who ever lived. His image adorns countless churches, icons, and paintings. He is the subject of millions of statues, sculptures, devotional objects and works of art. Everyone can conjure an image of Jesus: usually as a handsome, white man with flowing locks and pristine linen robes. But what did Jesus really look like? Is our popular image of Jesus overly westernized and untrue to historical reality?”

Cross Purposes: Reflections for Good Friday
by Kevin Carey
(Sacristy Press, £12.99 (£11.70); 978-1-908381-11-8).

According to the Scriptures: The death of Christ in the Old Testament and the New
by David Allen
(SCM Press, £25 (£22.50); 978-0-334-05550-1).

“This book, a study of the way in the NT writers utilized the Jewish Scriptures in order to describe, articulate and evaluate the death of Jesus, takes Hengel at his word.”

Eat, Pray, Tell: A relational approach to 21st-century mission
by Andrew Francis
(BRF, £7.99 (£7.20); 978-0-85746-565-8).

“Jesus told his disciples to go to a town and to find someone who would receive them as a guest. They were encouraged to eat within the community, build friendships, make contacts and teach the gospel. In this exciting book, Andrew Francis urges us to notice the order. The disciples were to seek the welfare of others by praying for and healing them: in other words, by meeting their obvious needs. It was only then that teaching and telling about the ‘reign of God’ would begin. This was Jesus’ strategy for mission. Andrew Francis suggests that it should be ours today.”

The Language of Liturgy: A ritual poetics
by David Jasper
(SCM Press, £30 (£27); 978-0-334-05571-6).

“How language works in the worship of the Church has been vigorously debated during the period of liturgical revision in the twentieth century coming at the end of what is known as the Liturgical Movement. Focussing upon the Church of England and the Anglican tradition, this book traces the history of ‘liturgical language’ as it begins in the Early Church, but with particular emphasis upon the English Reformation liturgies, their background in the Medieval Church and literature and their long and varied life in the Church of England after 1662.”

Selected by Frank Nugent, of the Church House Bookshop, which operates the Church Times Bookshop.