Friday, March 4, 2011

"Jesus of Nazareth II" is Coming!


Since many of the discussions on this blog have been focusing on the upcoming NABRE release, I almost forgot that Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection is coming out next week. There has been a lot of news recently surrounding the various excerpts which have been released. Ignatius Press, the publisher of this book, has put together a website with information about the book, which you can view here. If there is interest, unlike my previous attempt at Volume 1, I would like to have a weekly discussion on the book. If you are interested, and would be able to get the book pretty soon after the release date, just RSVP in the comments.

4 comments:

Christopher W. Speaks said...

I'll be getting the book the day it's released, but I actually to plan to read a couple of books ahead of it.

Theophrastus said...

If you'll permit a bit of constructive criticism:

I think one of the reasons you got a limited response to your earlier blog series on volume one is that your posts simply summarized each chapter. That might be useful if the text of the book were difficult, but the English translation of the book was relatively straightforward (and not particularly lengthy). There was little advantage to reading your series as opposed to reading the original text.

One way to make those blog posts more interactive would be to use those posts as a chance to pose questions, critique the book, add additional material, or otherwise go beyond the boundaries of the book itself.

I felt that your previous summaries were more or less accurate readings of the book (and even if they differed slightly, there was little point in making comment.) That's fine for what it is, but it does not open itself up for any sort of interactive back or forth. If you want an extensive discussion in the your blog, I suggest you use a more "open" approach in writing your comments on volume two -- one that involves the audience. Otherwise, the readers are basically in the position of saying "yep, you summarized that chapter successfully."

Timothy said...

Theophrastus,

Point well taken. The format of the posts concerning Jesus of Nazareth II will strive to pose questions and critiques in order to stimulate discussion.

Stephen said...

I might be interested in participating in the discussion on the book periodically. I'm definitely interested in reading the book. No shortage of reading materials this Lenten season. My plan has been to really get into the four Gospels in the Ignatious Study Bible...but might be good to suppliment that reading with Pope Benedict's latest work. Don't know about you, but his Jesus of Nazareth book was one where you could go though it so slowly because each page contained such wisdom.... so I'm sure that the new book will be slow going too. (In other words, I might not be able to keep up with you all!).