In this follow-up to his acclaimed Surpassing Wonder, Akenson recreates the world of Christ, a time rich with ideas, prophets, factions, priests, savants, and god-drunk fanatics. Saint Saul sheds light on Yeshua's birth and his relationship to his family, clarifies Yeshua's views on issues such as divorce and resurrection, and examines his sense of himself as Messiah. Throughout Saint Saul Akenson insistently stresses the Jewishness of Yeshua. He dismisses the traditional way of searching for facts about him by looking for parallels among the four gospels, arguing that the gospels were handed down as a unit by a later generation. In contrast Saul, although he did not know Yeshua personally, knew his most important followers and wrote immediately after his death. Saul's teachings were approved, though sometimes reluctantly, by Yeshua's brothers and other early leaders. Akenson sifts and probes the evidence for and against the historical status of Saul and Yeshua, a mystery as fascinating as a good detective story and one where readers must come to their own conclusions about the circumstances and texts that gave rise to two great world-faiths, Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism.

Donald Harman Akenson, Professor of History at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, is one of the -world's leading authorities on Irish history. He received his bachelor's degree from Yale and his Ph.D from Harvard. The author of twenty books, including five novels, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society (Canada) and of the Royal Historical Society (U.K.). He has held both a Guggenheim Fellowship and a writing fellowship at Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio, Como. In 1993 he received the prestigious Grawmeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, for his book God's People: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel and Ulster (1992). In 1996 he was named Molson Prize Laureate; this is Canada's highest cultural award.

Donald Harman Akenson's profile page

"Awe inspiring. This book will help to reorient the study of this period; it will revise our basic understanding of the relationship between Jesus and St Paul, and it will help to save the study of religion from the 'experts' by returning these important