Paul: A Novel

Description

Walter Wangerin brings us a dramatic, fictionalized retelling of the life of Paul based on biblical texts and extensive on-site research. Readers gain a new appreciation for the sacrifices of the apostles and the early believers and gain new insights into the life of the early church.

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Saul of Tarsus, the impassioned rabbi and persecutor of Christians, had a Damascus road experience that changed his life and helped shape the future of the world. As Paul, writer of some of the meatiest chunks of the New Testament and zealous missionary to the Gentiles, he became one of the most controversial figures in history.

Yet what do we know about the man, other than what's in the letters that have fashioned the Christian church for 2,000 years? Unless you are a theologian or historian, the answer probably is very little--until now. Walter Wangerin, the highly acclaimed scholar and writer, has breathed new life into this fiery, enigmatic, and passionate creature in what should be celebrated as a seriously good work of literature.

The novel, which combines expert knowledge and prophetic imagination, charts the first exhilarating and dangerous years of the church after the death of Christ. It is seen through the eyes of the witnesses--Priscilla, who meets Paul in Corinth; Barnabus, Timothy, and Titus, his companions; James and Simon Peter, the "pillar" of the first Christians; and Seneca, the great Roman writer, statesman, and adviser to Nero.

Wangerin serves up a feast of color and detail that brings the first century--and, even more impressively, the Bible--alive. Whatever your religious persuasion, this book serves as a fine companion to the one of the greatest yet most puzzling stories ever told. --Brian Draper, Amazon.co.uk

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Customer Reviews

Paul, A Novel
Although this is a novel, it's based on Scripture, and gives a good insight to Pauls' travels and description of the problems of the culture and the interplay between the biblical characters, such as Barnabas, Titus, etc.

2010-08-27 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Historical Christian fiction at its best
Rarely have I encountered a book with such brilliant wordsmithing as this one. Wangerin, a Lutheran pastor and professor at Valparaiso University, is possibly the best storyteller I've ever read. Many times I re-read passages just to marvel at how beautifully written they were!

"Paul" is a novelized version of the life of the apostle Paul, narrated by those who knew him, including Prisca, Luke, Timothy, James, Titus, and Barnabas. While obviously a work of fiction, Wangerin has done a lot of research into the geography, lifestyle, and political landscape of Paul's time. While he has taken some artistic liberties in describing things left unsaid in Scripture (such as what specifically was the thorn in Paul's flesh mentioned in 2 Corinthians 12:7), most of the "story" is taken directly from the Bible and historically reliable extra-Biblical accounts.

Under most circumstances, I would frown on an attempt to write this sort of novel, but I believe Wangerin has done a masterful job. It's important to realize that this book is NOT written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but it has greatly helped my understanding of the New Testament and the early Church seem much more "real".

2010-05-05 (Cookeville, TN) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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A Great Book
I love how this is written. The beginning is so real. The story just opened my eyes to Saul then Paul, and told of his devotion and love for God. What a great book, as with all of Wagerin's books. What a gift to readers. I just finished the Book of God, and now I'm about to get "Reliving the Passion" and "Preparing for Jesus". I have read "Jesus", I did back in 2007 when I was on my way to Kuwait, and I loved it. The "Book of God" brought me to tears many times. I truly love how he told the story of Jesus' crucifiction. Wow, is all I can say. One of my favorite parts is where he told of the gratitude Jesus showed to Longinus, and how it changed his live to care for Barrabus' neice. My other favorite part, no matter how many times I read it, is the story of the other two who were crucified with Christ. Marvelous reading! I look forward to reading more. I have added Wagerin to my favorite authors like Orson Scott Card and Marek Halter. If you are like me and you love to read biblical fiction, but you want it true to the bible, read these authors. I want to add that the end of "The Book of God" has a great reference and study guide. I will use it after I also get it in Hard Back. My paper back has been just tortured because I travel so much. Thank you Mr. Wagerin.

2009-12-17 (Georgia) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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great book
This is a very well written book. The author keeps you guessing and still provides enough facts to make the book read so you feel you are a part of the events taking place.

2009-10-12 (Eugene, Oregon United States) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Absolutely wonderful book
Great book. I cried and cheered. My wife wondered what was going on as I read it and now she's doing the same thing as she reads it. After reading this I have purchased two more of Wangrin's books and am enjoying them too.

2008-06-28 (Creswell, OR) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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The Book of God

Description

Gifted storyteller Walter Wangerin Jr. brings the characters, places, and events of scripture to life in this best-selling, narrative rendering of the entire Bible.

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Customer Reviews

Item pictured was not the item I received.
The book delivered in very good condition but it was misrepresented by the picture. I thought I was ordering the newer edition with the blue cover pictured and I received the old gold edition. I returned it and am waiting for my refund.

2010-03-29 | Cleaning freak (Johnston, IA USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 1

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Wonderful Book!
A must read! Author knows how to write well and will be purchasing more books from this author in the future.

2010-03-21 | Ashley (West Virginia) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Scripture Comes to Life!
The Book of God is truly an stounding book. If you are a Bible scholar, reading it daily, or if you have not opened a Bible for years, this book will give you a wonderful new way of seeing the word of God. I think it would be a perfect gift for a new believer, or for a Sunday School teacher of adults...or even a minister. I love it!

2010-02-23 | GrandmaBetty (Oregon, Ohio) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Great Book, Great Writter
I have bought a copy of this book for all my family members. A fantastic way to make reading the Old Testament easier than reading the Bible itself. Mr. Wangerin tells the story true to the Bible, although the New Testament is just the story of Jesus' life not a compilation of all the books. Some Old Testament stories are left out, but I believe reading this book makes you want to then sit down and read the Bible cover to cover with a clearer understanding of the stories that are written.

2010-01-17 (Canon City, CO USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Wonderful Read
I love how this is written. The beginning is so real. The story just opened my eyes to Saul then Paul, and told of his devotion and love for God. What a great book, as with all of Wagerin's books. What a gift to readers. I just finished the Book of God, and now I'm about to get "Reliving the Passion" and "Preparing for Jesus". I have read "Jesus", I did back in 2007 when I was on my way to Kuwait, and I loved it. The "Book of God" brought me to tears many times. I truly love how he told the story of Jesus' crucifiction. Wow, is all I can say. One of my favorite parts is where he told of the gratitude Jesus showed to Longinus, and how it changed his live to care for Barrabus' neice. My other favorite part, no matter how many times I read it, is the story of the other two who were crucified with Christ. Marvelous reading! I look forward to reading more. I have added Wagerin to my favorite authors like Orson Scott Card and Marek Halter. If you are like me and you love to read biblical fiction, but you want it true to the bible, read these authors. I want to add that the end of "The Book of God" has a great reference and study guide. I will use it after I also get it in Hard Back. My paper back has been just tortured because I travel so much. Thank you Mr. Wagerin.

2009-12-17 (Georgia) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Preparing for Jesus: Meditations on the Coming of Christ, Advent, Christmas and the Kingdom

Description

In this Advent and Christmas devotional, best-selling author Walter Wangerin Jr. takes the reader day-by-day through the major events and characters leading up to the birth of Jesus. (36 meditations.)

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Customer Reviews

Good book...BUT...
I was really enjoying this little book. It approaches the Christmas story from a slightly different point of view. You really get involved with the various people who are key to the nativity drama. BUT...then came page 129 when our illustrious author announces that Jesus was born on Christmas EVE!!!????? What's that all about???? Since Christmas is the birthday of Jesus how could He have been born on the Eve of his birthday? After a very detailed, graphic description of what the birth of the Christ Child could have been like, after Joseph places the baby in Mary's waiting arms, we read:

"It is Christmas Eve. Jesus is among us now. OH, how right and quite is everything in all the world, for the gift has been given. Oh, how peaceful are we. Then he breaks into a chorus of "Silent night, Holy night." Then he moves on to Christmas Day and the angels announcement to the shepherds heralding the Savior's birth.

Somehow, placing Jesus' birth on the EVE of His birth, is in my mind no small error. Especially since this book is all about the Advent (coming) of Christ. You'd think the author would at least know when he was born. My 3-year old granddaughter knows when Jesus was born. CHRISTMAS is Jesus birthday. Whether it was in the wee hours of the morning or the dark hours before midnight, it was still the day we call Christmas...though probably not Dec. 25.

I'm really surprised those who reviewed this book didn't mention this.

2009-12-18 | Keturah Joan (Ithaca, NY USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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Get JACKED about Christmas!
What a great book. If you read Wangerin's Easter book (Reliving the Passion) it is very similar in style and process. Suggested that you read a chapter daily during Advent. The chapters are SHORT and even I could muster the self discipline to read one a day, easily done during a cup of coffee in the morning or tv commercial in the evening. Be careful if you read this book. By the time Christmas comes you'll be so pumped about the birth of Jesus that every other gift you receive or give will seem like a disappointment. Excellent.

2009-09-22 (Atlanta, GA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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An excellent family tradition
This book contains a few pages of Scripture-based meditation for each of the 25 days before Christmas ("Advent") plus similar meditations for each of the traditional "12 Days of Christmas" after Christmas. You will learn more than you expected, and it will be relevant to the true meaning of Christmas. The book is small, and somehow bridges scholarly research and deep thought with relatively easy reading. Easily scaled down for family reading, it's an exceptional idea for a lasting family Christmas tradition. Highly recommended.

2008-01-14 | Charlie (Philadelphia) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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Your were There: at the Manger ...
I enjoyed using this little book during this past Advent and Christmas. Walter Wangerin Jr. has used his wonderful gift writing to give us a series of daily meditations that are a great help in focusing the mind, heart and imagination of the reader on the deepest significance of Christmas. We follow the events of the first Christmas from with scripture accompanied by short writings, poetry and prayer. Wangerin's writing varies between dramatization, exposition and application of the Christmas story to our lives. If you relax and let the author and the Holy Spirit have their way, the book will help you break through the confusion and frenzied cultural activity that often accompany Advent and touch the deeper meaning of the season. It doesn't drop you after Christmas Day but carries you through the 12 days of Christmas, gently releasing you at the beginning of Epiphany. It will leave you feeling like you've been there: at the Manger and help you go and live out the significance of Christ's coming to us in your own life.

I highly recommend this book, I thought it was even more effective than Wangerin's similar--and also very good--book for Lent and Easter, "Reliving the Passion".

2003-01-06 (Columbus, OH USA) | Helpful Votes: 18 | Rating: 5

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The Book of God for Children

Description

An illustrated version with simplified text of the Old and New Testaments.

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Customer Reviews

best children's bible story book
There are many Bible story books for children. This is the best for the young reader (8years and older perhaps). Good from literary and theological perspectives. Very highly recommended.

2009-04-28 | Scott K (Rochester, NY USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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an excellent children's bible story book
I love this well-written narrative of the greatest love story of all time. It details the sweeping history of the Children of Israel told in an understandable, chronological, riveting story form, and then ties the New Testament into the Old Testament to help us see the Bible as a cohesive whole. I recommend it as a read-aloud for 8-10 year olds. You might find you understand the Bible as never before through this well-told story book!

2008-02-11 (minneapolis) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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Letters from the Land of Cancer

Product Details

• Outfit: New
• Notes: BUY WITH Self-assurance, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and secondment to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
• ISBN13: 9780310292814

Description

In Letters from the Land of Cancer, award-winning writer Walter Wangerin Jr. offers his profound insights into the greatest challenge we face: confronting our own mortality. 'Shortly after the cancer had been diagnosed I began writing letters to the members of my immediate family, to relatives and to lifelong friends. The following book will consist mostly of those letters. They will invite you into my most intimate dancing with the cancer, even as that partner and I have over the last two years swung each other around the tiled floors of ballrooms and bathrooms. Dizzy still, and day by day, I sat and wrote: This is what I'm feeling right now. This is what I think....' From afternoon to afternoon of radiation, Wangerin wrote about confronting his mortality, about living with the messiness of undone tasks and bodily weakness. He wrote about the medical procedures he endured, the wild mood swings that unbalanced his days, and the fragilities and strengths of the relationships that surrounded him. Letters from the Land of Cancer is made up of these writings. Cadenced within the letters are Wangerin's eloquent meditations derived from his pastoral experiences with the faithful passage of death to life. Seldom has the great adventure of life and death been as beautifully presented as it is in this testimony to faith, love, and the shocking reality of hope.

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Customer Reviews

Draws Us Into His Private Life, Not as Voyeurs but as Fellow Travelers
On December 26, 2005, with his adult children and grandchildren still gathered in for the holiday, Walter Wangerin Jr. discovered a lump in his neck that proved to be a malignant tumor, metastasized from his lung.

Three weeks later, he wrote the first of 22 letters --- updating friends on his prognoses and treatments, his physical and spiritual health, and his reflections on life in the shadow of death --- most of them sent out over 18 months. (A few are marked as being "never sent.") These are missives a younger writer might have posted on a blog site. I infer that he wrote them on a typewriter, engaging an assistant to format them for an email outbox. Halfway through the collection, he mentions the possibility of publication. (In the second half, his writing seems a little less intimate, as if he's consciously aware of his potential readership.) Indeed, the letters are presented here for a wider audience, interspersed with short meditations --- six by his own hand, a seventh by poet Robert Siegel.

In the prologue he explains, "I'll tell my story step-by-step from within the ongoing experience. I needn't draw from memory." Especially in the first half, that immediacy is evident. What will the doctor say tomorrow? How will he respond to this pain --- or this pain killer? "I contain pain," he writes. And "I am sincerely grateful that my adventure waited until there were therapies and drugs to serve this sort of thing [pain]" --- though it seems much of the pain is caused by curative therapies. How does this disease change his relationship with his wife, his grandchildren, and his garden? The book works because Wangerin is such a good writer. He draws us into his private life, not as voyeurs but as fellow travelers.

Some of Wangerin's more interesting comments have to do with the language we use about cancer: we battle against it. "Cancer really isn't an issue of defeat or victory. We are all going to die." He goes on to talk of blessings received as a result of his cancer. "Surely it's high Time --- isn't it? --- that we pay as much attention to the blessings of a long affliction as we do to the pain for which we curse it." He also interestingly works with words, turning slowth --- some combination of slow and growth --- into a noun that describes benefits of facing daily life at a reduced pace, not by choice but by forced circumstance.

Would I recommend this to a person of faith who has metastasized cancer? Yes, if that person has a solid familial network, for that is where Wangerin gains much of his focus and strength. The book ends with a two-line postscript, in which Wangerin states that his health was "stable" in April 2008. That's nearly 20 months before publication in early 2010. Though strangers to him, readers invited into his life would have welcomed a well-deserved, press-time update.

--- Reviewed by Evelyn Bence

2010-06-16 (New York, New York) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4

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Personal and forthright
I'm not a religious sort, and I'm generally not a fan of poetry, so whether on the spiritual or literary planes, any Biblical verses Mr. Wangerin cited were pretty lost on me. However, they could be precisely what another reader might like best.

I found that I skipped the meditations and focused on the letters. The letter on pain ("I contain pain.") is the most memorable. Other standouts: how some of his human frailties (i.e., flashes of anger) emerged at different times; his description of trying to get air; his sense of Time and paying attention; and his close examination of his grandchildren's hands.

The ending disconcerted me; its abruptness contrasted sharply with the careful thoughtfulness of all that preceded it.

For such a small book, it is meaty, and I recommend it.

2010-05-29 (Missouri) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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Letters From the Land of Cancer
This is a painfully beautiful book. Walter Wangerin Jr. is a children's author. However, he's also a Bible scholar and a university professor of writing. This particular book exposes his personal thoughts and experiences in a memoir. The title should give it away, Letters from the Land of Cancer.

Letters is a collection of actual letters Wangarin wrote to family and friends after he was diagnosed with cancer and while he endured treatments. They are honest and revealing, but poetic and beautiful. Sad, but triumphant.

The letters intertwine his expertise as a Bible scholar, his resolute faith in Christ, his stark transparency as a patient and his exquisite use of language.

If you enjoy peering into people's souls you'll love this book. If you long to empathize with someone you know personally who suffers from cancer or any other life-threatening illness, you'll cherish this book. If you enjoy poetic language for its own beauty, Letters will nourish your soul.

2010-05-13 (Indian Trail, NC United States) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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Touching and Compassionate
This book is not just for cancer patients. It can apply to anyone suffering an illness, whether terminal or not.
The author shares his pain, his sorrow, and his faith in God for his condition. The book opened my mind up to the possibly of death and how we can face it, knowing that God is in control and with the right attitude, we can and will survive and overcome the fear of death. Heaven is our final journey and with that will come complete healing and joy.

2010-04-11 (Duluth, MN) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Beautiful letters
In this powerful collection of letters and meditations, award winning author Wangerin writes with raw honesty and challenges all of us to think about our own mortality, and possibly rethink our view of cancer.

He starts by calling his 2 year long bout with lung cancer a "dance" and later on, an "adventure." He refuses to call it a "battle."

The reader finds out about half way through the book that although Wangerin can't bring himself to pray for his own healing, he is certain .."healing is surely to come; either healing of his body or his own weary spirit."

The book is really all about facing our own mortality, which Wangerin says .."brings out the child in us,the heart filled with childlike longings and an infant's perfect trust."

All of the letters, written mostly to family members and friends, are beautifully put together with the grace and eloquence associated with Wangerin. #9 and #19 are two of the best. In maybe the most poignant of all the letters, you get a sense of Phil 1:23 as the author writes to a former student: .."I don't pray for death. But I wouldn't mind an early visitation. There is just so much about this world and its leaders which is so disappointing it crushes my heart.."

The beauty of the book is perhaps summed up best by the last sentence of letter #15: .."It is a good day. Gladness is available. Christ is at hand."

This is a must read for all, for we all have to face what Wangerin so honestly, beautifully and courageously faces head on... our own mortality.

2010-01-31 (Vadnais Heights, MN) | Helpful Votes: 16 | Rating: 5

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Miz Lil and the Chronicles of Grace

Description

Miz Lil and the Chronicles of Grace weaves the compelling story of a pastor's call to the inner-city and the dramas of faith that he encountered there. First published in 1988, it is here expanded with an all new Afterword.

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