This article in the Boston Globe has several:
Words made freshMore of Gibson's book here. I have noted David Plotz's Bible project here, here, here, and here.
A look at the real Jesus, Judas, and how religion has shaped history
By Rich Barlow
THE FINAL DAYS OF JESUS: The Archaeological Evidence By Shimon Gibson
HarperOne, 272 pp., illustrated, $27.99
JUDAS: A Biography By Susan Gubar
Norton, 453 pp., illustrated, $27.95
GOOD BOOK: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible By David Plotz
Harper, 336 pp., $26.99
THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN EUROPE By G.R. Evans
Lion, 224 pp., $34.95.
Perhaps you're celebrating the Resurrection in church this morning. Or you may be catching "Meet the Press" and scoffing at those sitting in their pews. Either way, it's clear that the trial and crucifixion of the historical Jesus mark one of the pivotal moments in humanity's stay on the planet. Scholars - atheists and believers alike - doggedly hunt for what really happened during that last week in Jerusalem.
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Also in the Boston Globe, yet another review of Michel Faber's The Fire Gospel, the novel about newly recovered Aramaic scrolls about the life of Jesus:
In Faber's satire, ancient scrolls reveal another GospelBackground here.
Michel Faber has constructed a collection of beads hastily strung together, some paste and some precious.
By Richard Eder
April 12, 2009
THE FIRE GOSPEL
By Michel Faber
Canongate, 213 pp., $20
Michel Faber has devised some lovely notions for "The Fire Gospel," a kind of myth or allegory that starts with the discovery of nine biblical scrolls and goes on to satirize all manner of American ways. He has devised a fair amount of clunk, as well, in much of the satire and in a story that flies for a while and crash-lands. It is a collection of beads hastily strung together, some paste and some precious.
[...]
In Haaretz, a review of a historical novel in Hebrew:
Historical FictionThe aged Josephus is one of the characters.
Archaeologist of the soul
By Doron Bar-Adon
Tags: Haaretz book supplement
Natalie Mesika turns the remnants and fragments of the Roman era into a richer, more complete world that brings together Pompeii and the Galilee town of Yodfat
Adama Shehora (Black Earth)
by Natalie Mesika Dofen Publishers (Hebrew), 338 pages, NIS 78
Between 66 and 70 C.E., Romans and Jews fought each other throughout the Land of Israel, most significantly in Jerusalem. The Lower Galilee town of Yodfat was captured by Vespasian in 67. And Yosef Ben-Matityahu, the leader of the Jewish revolt, surrendered and moved over to the Roman side, becoming the historian known as Josephus Flavius. Twelve years later, Mount Vesuvius erupted, and the volcano destroyed the southern Italian city of Pompeii.
Fast forward to contemporary times, to Israeli archaeologist Natalie Mesika, who has excavated at both the Yodfat site and Pompeii. While excavating Yodfat, she tells us in the foreword to this historical novel, she met a Bedouin girl who had discovered ancient coins in a pile of soil that had already been meticulously sifted and checked by professionals. That woman, the author says, made Mesika realize she could follow her intuition - the wisdom of the heart that gives added strength to feelings, emotions and primarily, the imagination.
"Black Earth," Mesika's first book, retells the well-known stories of Yodfat and Pompeii, in a way that inevitably links their shared fates. The novel flits back and forth between the Land of Israel and Roman Italy, and the descriptions of each complement the other. It has three narrators, who switch off in the telling, but their connections and the full picture of the narrative become clear only at the end of the book, which not only tells a story, but also addresses questions of fate, the logic of war, the existential state, the psychology of nationalism, contemporary politics and the human experience of the individual.
[...]
