1. Pontius Pilate
2. The Flames of Rome

We recently received six of his books for children, and they’re outstanding.

1. The Real Story of Creation

2. The Real Story of the Flood

3. The Real Story of the Exodus

4. The Very First Christmas

Jenni warmly recalls reading this many times as a child.

5. The Very First Easter

6. The Very First Christians

The picture of Agrippa (p. 27) reminds me of someone I know!

Related: About a year ago, Jenni and I reviewed several hundred children’s books and highlighted our favorites: “Theology for Kids.”

I would not be surprised if both of these books become required reading for NT classes I may teach in the future. They’re that useful.

Related: “Pontius Pilate”: A Documentary Novel by Paul Maier

Once Nero’s power was firmly established, he plunged into nefarious vices and took up arms against the God of the universe. To describe his depravity is not part of the present work. Many have accurately recorded the facts about him, and from them any who wish may study his perverse and degenerate madness, which led him to destroy innumerable lives and finally to such indiscriminate murder that he did not spare even his nearest and dearest. With various sorts of deaths, he did away with his mother, brothers, and wife, as well as countless other near relatives, as if they were strangers and enemies. Despite all this, one crime still had to be added to his catalogue: he was the first of the emperors to be declared enemy of the Deity. To this the Roman Tertullian refers as follows:

• Consult your own records: there you will find that Nero was the first to let his imperial sword rage against this sect [Christianity] when it was just arising in Rome. We boast that such a man was the originator of our pruning, for anyone who knows him can understand that nothing would have been condemned by Nero unless it were supremely good [Tertullian, Defense 5].

So it happened that this man, the first to be announced publicly as a fighter against God, was led on to slaughter the apostles. It is related that in his reign Paul was beheaded in Rome itself and that Peter was also crucified, and the cemeteries there still called by the names of Peter and Paul confirm the record. So does a churchman named Gaius, who lived when Zephyrinus was Bishop of Rome (Eusebius: The Church History: A New Translation and Commentary 2.25 [edited and translated by Paul L. Maier; Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1999], 84–85; emphasis added).

Paul L. Maier [Wikipedia], Pontius Pilate (Doubleday, 1968; Kregel, 1990), 372 pp.

The book is outstanding! It is engagingly written from Pontius Pilate’s vantage point, starting with Pilate’s political life in Rome and appointment as prefect in Judea (AD 26) and continuing through the murder of Jesus (33 by Maier’s calculation, which is feasible though many scholars prefer 30), death of Tiberius (37), assassination of Caligula (41), and beginning of the reign of Claudius (41-54). The overall plot and every proper name used in the book is historically accurate, and Maier fills in this factual skeleton with colorful fictional details. It reconstructs many events described in the Gospels and Acts from the viewpoint of an educated, unbelieving Roman prefect.

God used this book to engage our minds even more with the Greco-Roman and Jewish history of NT times in a way that has helped us understand the NT better. It also has deepened our understanding of why Paul calls the gospel offensive foolishness to non-Christians (1 Corinthians 1). Praise God for a historically rooted faith and historically reliable revelation.

Next up: A historical novel during the reign of Nero (AD 54-68):

Paul L. Maier, The Flames of Rome (Doubleday, 1981; Kregel, 1991), 444 pp.

HT: JT