Another Fortuitious Find

It's not like I'm at a loss for reading material...

Saint Saul: A Skeleton Key to the Historical Jesus was yet another unplanned rescue from Half Price Books (I grabbed a like new copy of Bart Ehrman's latest book, Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are, too).  This book by Donald Harman Akenson is a marvelously detailed and compellingly argued assessment of what we think we know - and what little we can hope to know - about the early years of what became Christianity.  Akenson reminds us that the only source of information actually written down during the period between the death of Yeshua of Nazareth and the Destruction of the Temple was Saul of Tarsus, and he guides our search for our clues there.  In doing so he hews a path between traditional orthodoxy and reactionary fundamentalism and the wishful liberalism of the Jesus Seminar and what he calls the Q industry.  Very interesting stuff.  Akenson's earlier Surpassing Wonder sounds very interesting as well. 

With these constant additions to my "unread" bookshelf I continue to struggle with my 2011 reading list.