Thursday, May 16, 2019
6:00 pm EDT - 7:00 pm EDT
The Gospel as You Have Never Heard It Before…
At a distance of twenty centuries, the figure of Jesus of Nazareth can seem impossibly obscure—indeed, some skeptics even question whether he existed. And yet we have an eyewitness account of his life, death, and resurrection from one of his closest companions, the sherman Simon Bar-Jona, better known as the Apostle Peter.
Writers from the earliest days of the Church tell us that Peter’s disciple Mark wrote down the apostle’s account of the life of Jesus as he told it to the first Christians in Rome. The vivid, detailed, unadorned prose of the Gospel of Mark conveys the unmistakable immediacy of a first-hand account.
For most readers, however, this immediacy is hidden behind a veil of Greek, the language of the New Testament writers. Four centuries of English translations have achieved nobility of cadence or, more recently, idiomatic accessibility, but the voice of Peter himself has never fully emerged. Until now.
In this strikingly original translation, atten- tive to Peter’s concern to show what it was like to be there, Michael Pakaluk captures the tone and texture of the sherman’s evocative account, leading the reader to a bracing new encounter with Jesus.
The accompanying verse-by-verse commentary—less theological than historical—will equip you to experience Mark’s Gospel as the narrative of an eyewitness, drawing you into its scenes, where you will come to know Jesus of Nazareth with new intimacy.
A stunning work of scholarship readily accessible to the layman, The Memoirs of St. Peter belongs on the bookshelf of every serious Christian.
“Michael Pakaluk offers a fresh translation that captures the vivid narrative of Mark’s Gospel along with a running commentary based upon his own careful and thoughtful study…. I recommend it for anyone interested in mulling over the Gospel, especially those who are open to taking it seriously as though true.”
Scott Hahn
Franciscan University of Steubenville
“Michael Pakaluk has produced a new and vivid translation which, together with his penetrating commentary, presents a narrative that is at once the most mysterious and the most true to life of the Gospels. This must surely be the definitive version of a great book—a book of astonishing literary power.”
Sir Roger Scruton
writer and philosopher
Michael Pakaluk is a professor of ethics and social philosophy in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and a member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas.
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