Pope Benedict XVI is getting ready to release the second book in his series on the life of Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week (the official release date is March 10). The first book was widely proclaimed as a classic, both by scholars and by laymen, and the second book promises to be just as good.
I’ll be making my way through a review copy of the book in the upcoming days, so I’ll post a more in-depth review soon. But for now, check out Fr. Barron’s excellent review of his advance copy. In each of the Pope’s books on Jesus–as in his recent Verbum Domini—he spends many pages discussing the historical-critical method for analyzing Scripture. This method interprets the Bible by probing each book’s authorial intent (i.e. What did Isaiah intend with his prophecies? What was St. Matthew trying to say to his first-century Jewish audience?)
The problem with this method comes through its limitations. As Fr. Barron puts it:
A significant limitation of the historical-critical method is that its hyper-focus on human authorship tends to leave us with a jumble of at best vaguely related texts, each with its own distinctive finality and meaning. We have, in a word, what Isaiah meant and what the author of the book of Job meant and what Mark and Paul meant—but not what God means across the whole of the Bible.
With all of that said, I strongly urge you to order a copy of Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week. Since the book focuses primarily on Jesus’ Passion, death, and Resurrection, it would be perfect spiritual reading during Lent.