Review : Jesus

Jesus

Jesus
David Edmunds
Indus Source Books, PO Box 6194, Malabar Hill PO, Mumbai 400 006. E-mail:info@indussource.com. 2009. xxx + 181 pp.Rs 195.

The scene is Gethsemane, an unfrequented garden on the Mount of Olives near Jerusalem. With only a few precious hours remaining before his destined arrest, Jesus has brought his three closest disciples to this favoured spot in order that they might pray together. Readers join him in this lonely setting and listen in whilst he reflects on his life and mission and ponders their significance. David Edmunds chooses to narrate Jesus’s story through the prophet’s own mouth, and this first-person narrative weaves a compassionate interpretation of the Gospel around well over a hundred snippets of Biblical text - taken mainly from the synoptic gospels - served up in sixty easily digestible segments. Edmunds’s Jesus comes across more as the Son of Man than the Son of God - tallying with the personal persuasion of St Thomas, whose church in India is professed to be older than even that of Rome and about whom the author speaks in his epilogue.

Acknowledging the inevitable differences amongst Christians regarding Biblical interpretations - that sprout from having a billion and a half followers - Edmunds admits his views are ‘slightly out of step with much of Christian tradition’. There is nothing within its pages that shouts controversy, however, and in leaving aside any trace of dogmatism he makes his book welcoming to followers of all faiths. The introduction, epilogue, and separate note regarding the relationship between the three ‘major’ Abrahamic faiths - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - give the main narration its context, and as a complete package Edmunds’s book offers a highly readable, universally accessible, and refreshingly innovative portrayal of this inimitable life.