Joseph Ratzinger (aka Pope Benedict XVI) - Jesus of Nazareth

If you tire of the self-help literature that is found under "Christian Inspiration" at your local chain bookstore, I recommend this book.

It's not an easy read. But it's an essential read.

The deeper I dig into Catholic tradition, the more treasures appear. If you are looking to deepen your faith and tire of the cheerleader Christianity so prevalent among churches today, the direction you need to go is to dig into the past.

Contrary to much popular opinion, the Bible is not a history book. To go back and try and figure out what the early church did simply by reading the New Testament is simply not enough.

The early church's history needs to be balanced out by the writings of the Church Fathers, the Second Temple literature and other pseudepigraphal works of the age along with some historical views of the culture in which Christianity emerged. Only then do we begin to get some semblance of what the early church was like.

The "Acts church" out of context has a tendency to look like an American church.

I consider myself to be fairly well studied when it comes to Christian history/theology (though obviously there is always much, much more to be learned). But within the first 50 pages of the book I've already been enlightened. It flows into a paradigm I already hold but the knowledge enhances this paradigm.

Consider:

"Both Evangelists designate Jesus' preaching with the Greek term evangelion - but what does that actuallymean?

The term has recently been translated as "good news." That sounds attractive, but it falls short of the order of magnitude of what is actually meant by the word evangelion. This term figures in the vocabulary of the Roman emperors, who understood themselves as lords, saviors, and redeemers of the world. The messages issued by the emperor were called in Latin evangelium, regardless of whether or not their content was particularly cheerful and pleasant. The idea was that what comes from the emperor is a saving message, that it is not just a piece of news, but a change of the world for the better.

When the Evangelists adopt this word, and it thereby becomes the generic name for their writings, what they mean to tell us is this: What the emperors, who pretend to be gods, illegitimately claim, really occurs here - a message endowed with plenary authority, a message that is not just talk, but reality. In the vocabulary of contemporary linguistic theory, we would say that the evangelium, the Gospel, is not just informative speech, but performative speech - not just the imparting of information, but action, efficacious power that enters into the world to save and transform." (pp. 46-47)

Adds a bit of power to the term.

Get this book. It is not a papal view nor is it a Catholic doctrinal work. It is the man Joseph Ratzinger's search for the face of the Lord.