Writings

—still in progress—

Popular-Level Books
My first book published for human (as opposed to scholarly) consumption was Jesus Asked. It came about because I knew that lots and lots of people had written about Jesus’ propensity to tell stories in his teaching, but very few people had written (or even seemed to notice) his almost constant practice of asking questions, even though most writers know that the very centre of the Gospels — what we call Peter’s Confession — is not a monologue by Jesus but rather set up with two of his questions: “Who do people say that I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?”

What people seemed to like best about the first book was the way that I opened up and retold the New Testament stories. So the follow-up book — Mealtime Habits of the Messiah — was designed around that. Now that I think about it, it was, in effect, my attempt to answer Jesus’ question “Who do you say that I am?” I explored stories that showed him as a great teacher and concluded that he was certainly a great teacher but that wasn’t all he was. I then explored stories about his ability to work miracles, but concluded that he wasn’t just a wonder-worker. Then I looked at the idea that he was a political and spiritual radical, but concluded that there was still something else that was more central to his identity and mission. The final section looked more closely at his crucifixion and resurrection, and found there the real core and identity.

My latest book is about Paul. Lots of people don’t like him and I get where they’re coming from. But something very strange happened to me when I studied one of his shortest letters. I saw a side of Paul I’d never seen before — I could hardly believe it was true. The book takes you there. It’s called How to Like Paul Again.

Scholarly Books and Articles
I’ve written a bunch of articles about this and that, I need to look into which of them are online and provide pointers to them and bibliography for the others.

Unpublished Stuff
As well as all that, I intend to put here some other things I’ve written for speaking engagements or even for my own amusement.