Jesus of Nazareth and the Kingdom of Weeds: Book One: Αρχή – By Robert L. Maddox

The Gospels are magnificent, classic, world-shaping, reverent sketches of Jesus of Nazareth, who, to his followers, became the Christ. The Gospels have many tantalizing gaps in the story of the Jesus who lived, walked, and loved among family members, Galilean friends, and tyrannical religious and political systems. The Gospels are essentially memories of memories of a cadre of devoted followers of Jesus. That said, the four Gospels are all we have of the telling of the Jesus of Nazareth story from about 4 BCE to about 30 CE. Through careful, reverent, well-researched twenty-first-century flights of informed imagination, Maddox aims to fill in some of the historical blanks in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, this unique person, in the words of John Shelby Spong, “full of God.” Volume one imagines the Αρχή (beginning) of Jesus of Nazareth. Volume two trumpets the call of Jesus to serve his beloved kingdom of weeds. As the late Marcus Borg had a way of saying, “It may not have happened exactly this way, but it’s true anyway.” Meet Jesus again for the first time as he grew and served among God’s beloved “weeds” in his own time. This is the first of a three-part series. Book Two: The Kingdom of Weeds is available here. Book three has not yet been published. Learn more at GoodFaithMedia.org.