Table of Contents Part One The Ancestors 1. Abraham 2. Rebekah 3. Jacob 4. Joseph Part Two The Covenant 5. Moses 6. Sinai 7. The Children of Israel Part Three The Wars of the Lord 8. Joshua 9. Ehud 10. Deborah 11. Gideon 12. Jephthah 13. Samson 14. The Levite's Concubine Part Four Kings 15. Saul 16. David 17. Solomon Part Five Prophets 18. The Man of God from Judah 19. Elijah 20. Amos, Hosea 21. Isaiah 22. Jeremiah Part Six Letters from Exile 23. Ahikam Utters a Curse 24. Ahikam Must Make a Decision 25. Ahikam in Jerusalem Part Seven The Yearning 26. My Messenger 27. Nehemiah 28. Ezra 29. The Yearning Part Eight The Messiah 30. Zechariah 31. Mary 428 32. John the Son of Zechariah 457 33. Andrew 471 34. Mary Magdalene 491 35. Simon Peter 516 36. Son of Father 535 37. To Jerusalem 548 38. Jesus 577 39. The New Covenant 605 Epilogue 631

About the Author

Walter Wangerin Jr. is widely recognized as one of the most gifted writers writing today on the issues of faith and spirituality. Among his books are The Book of God; Paul: A Novel; Whole Prayer; Reliving the Passion; Preparing for Jesus; Mary's First Christmas; Peter's First Easter; Ragman and Other Cries of Faith; Miz Lil and the Chronicles of Grace; Little Lamb, Who Made Thee? Mourning Into Dancing; The Book of Sorrows; A Miniature Cathedral; The Orphean Passages; and Crying for a Vision. He lives in Valparaiso, Indiana, where he is writer-in-residence at Valparaiso University and holds the Jochum Chair.

Reviews

'[Wangerin's] aim was to produce a clean, continuous story free of repetitions and genealogies, and to add in bits of cultural and historical background based on his own travels and scholarship. Sometimes he switches the narrational perspective so as to veiw biblical events through the eyes of minor characters. In all this he succeeds....'
*Financial Times*

'An immensely readable and well-organized text and may be an acceptable and more enticing alternative for some people, especially those who -- like me -- always meant to get around to reading all of the original.'
*Belfast Telegraph*

'Considering what he has attempted, Walt does a remarkably good job, and he writes a lot of conventional scholarship in the form of narrative.'
*Manchester Evening News*

'I was hooked...passages such as the account of Solomon's reign, seem to me to work exceptionally well....'
*Church Times*

'Powers along with great stamina for hundreds of pages....The pain of the crucifixion itself is memorably conveyed in terms of lungs, ribs, separating bones. Terse and punchy...it will be read and enjoyed.'
*Time Out*

'Reads like 'Gone With the Wind' (of the Holy Spirit) or 'Pride and Prejudice' (plus prophets). Wangerin has done for the biblical kings what Shakespeare did for Macbeth and Richard III....Imaginative, stimulating and fresh....Bubbles with creativity but above all is the work of a craftsman.'
*Glasgow Herald*

'Whether the stories are familiar from childhood or encountered here for the first time, you will be struck by their palpable power. And the sweep of the narrative, like a vast fresco, allows us to see the big picture of God's providence in a way that we rarely do in our fragmented reading of Scripture...exhilarating, but also disturbing.'
*Christianity Today*