Customer Reviews

Through Mark's Eyes: A Portrait of Jesus Based on the Gospel of Mark

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The author has done a good job of simply rewording the Gospel of Mark. If you are looking for a storybook form of the Gospel, this maybe the book for you. However, if you are looking for genuine commentary - try something else.

I'm very dissappointed in this book. The gospel of Mark is "re-told" with lots of baseless or undocumented speculation by the author. In trying to bring a book "alive" to the modern reader, the author has taken gross liberties with the facts.
In all honesty, I've only read the first 7 chapters of the book. Seven is enough. I won't read the rest.

I am writing to tell you that I loved your book. I am someone who was (obviously) raised in the christian church, but never really developed "faith" in the christian sense. I have dabbled in all sorts of religions, prayer, meditation, you name it - and, like, most people, feel I understand what it means to be faithful.

I have always loved art, especially movies, for its power to convey real truth, the truth that transforms us and reminds us that there are experiences in the world we need to have if we are to know our true purpose. Movies like "The Motorcycle Diaries" and "On the Waterfront" made my heroes actors like Marlon Brando, and other activists and rebels, but Jesus was never a hero of mine. I just didn't know him!

What your book did was brought the story alive the way a movie does. I'd read and learned a while back that Jesus' teachings were "subversive" but I never dreamed they could "turn me on" in the way the movies about Che Guevara or other "rebels" did. In your book, every time Jesus spoke, aided by your skillful, wise and economic descriptions, there was that feeling again. You know the one I mean. The feeling of reality. The feeling of being addressed. This was a man so in love with life and with the world. And he meant business. Knowing this wonderful and humble fact makes his interactions with the truly faithful - the woman who anoints his head, the woman who touches his robe, the blind man - that much more stirring. What joy it is to live life fully, to be faithful, we are reminded!

Thank you for bridging the gap between "truth" and "religion" for me. I always believed in Jesus' teachings, but I think your book - oddly, in its attempt to humanize Jesus - broke through and showed me how truly amazing, and divine, this man was.

This book is outstanding. Rev Purnell while keeping true to the gospel of Mark has managed to place the reader in the actual setting that Christ might have experienced as he taught the word of God. You truly felt like you were there walking with him, hearing his words and experiencing his feelings. It made Jesus human and very real to me. The words of the Gospel were never more alive. I felt the heat and dust of Palestine just as Jesus must have. Thank you for this wonderful insight you have given me.