Paul: A Novel
Paul: A Novel is a little different from the style you may be used to when reading the lives of the saints. Great for people who enjoy a good novel, Paul tells the story of St Paul through the eyes of his friends. The author, Walter Wangerin, writes with a deep knowledge of the Roman world, bringing Paul’s teaching, journeys and adventures alive for the reader.
‘Paul, in short, is a happy marriage between meticulous research and historical imagination… The author has stuck an admirable balance between the light-hearted and the serious, the weighty and the entertaining.’ The Tablet
Paul is 441 pages long and has a prologue, five parts and an epilogue. It is published in paperback by Lion Books (Lion Hudson plc) ISBN 0 7459 5055 8 and is priced £8.99. It can be purchased from St. Paul’s Bookshop, Hinsley Hall, 62 Headingley Lane, Leeds, LS6 2BX. Tel 0113 275 4043 Fax 0113 275 3207.
Join the Spiritual Reading Groups around the diocese who try to read at the same pace. If you would like to join us, start reading the week beginning Monday 29th September. We aim to have read the prologue for the first meeting and then read one of the five parts every fortnight. Join us online by leaving a comment on the blog and reading our thoughts about the book.
Happy reading!
4 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.
I’ve started reading the book with the book club that meets at Hinsley Hall and am really enjoying it. However I found it confusing at first because the narrator changes every few chapters. Then I discovered that the name at the beginning of the chapter or group of chapters is the narrator. Now it makes mush more sense!!
How are other people finding it?
Comment by Josephine Stow — October 7, 2008 #
Like Jo, I found the book confusing at first because it seemed to jump about, but on reading further I am finding that ‘Acts’ is coming alive for me and I am going to look and see hat is written in the Scriptures about the characters. I am enjoying this book.
Comment by Pat Brown — October 7, 2008 #
I have very mixed feelings about this book. Some extracts were moving, for example the descriptions of joy when the community met together. And it can be helpful to have the different characters and places introduced – adding to the overall sense of the reality (?) of events that actually occurred, involving relationships (and fall outs) not a million miles from what we experience in ‘church’ today.
But there is a down-side. I’m not convinced that a novel like this adds to faith, or prompts prayer/ spiritual growth. Films like Jesus of Nazareth are very moving, but they print their own images (one person’s interpretation) on your mind, such that it’s harder subsequently to return to the original source and draw your own inspirations. (Are our children easier or harder to teach and inspire given prolific television and ‘reality’ games?)
I can’t now read Lord of the Rings again without seeing Peter Jackson’s cinematic pictures. I can remember from my first readings of the novel years ago the richness of one’s own imagination painting more vivid gripping pictures than the film. A film I think will entertain, but always disappoint. The word alone can give a richer more personal message. Lectio Divina is a wholly different approach to the Word and prayer, and developing relationship with the Lord.
There is also a danger, by writing a novel likes this, rather than opening up the Word, that it reads a bit like Laurence Gardener and Dan Brown type apocryphal novels which argue a conspiracy by the church to hide the real truth, that scripture and its interpretation have been (maliciously) edited, and end up for example arguing that Christianity as we know it came from Paul, not Jesus, and that Jesus was not divine.
At the same time it can stir you to go back to the scriptures and check out the assertions being made yourself. I was uncomfortable with the extent of the portrayal of Paul by Walter Wangerin as angry and aggressive. But then we get this morning’s reading from Galatians chapter 3 – ‘Are you all mad? … those who rely on the keeping of the law are under a curse’. .. and in chapter 5 ’Tell those who are disturbing you that I would like to see the knife slip!’.. and the (bitter?) condemnation of the Jews by Paul in I Thessalonians (2:14-16) ‘enemies of the whole human race’.
It raises many questions (which may not be a bad thing). Why did God choose Paul rather than one of the inner circle of 12 – like Paul, also Jews – to be the principal evangeliser of his early church? What are the details of how Paul got his version of the Good News? Is the Good News one/ whole? So although it may hinder (?) faith and prayer a book like this may help stimulate using reason and reaching a more mature(?) ‘truth’.
Comment by John Joyce — October 9, 2008 #
I’m really enjoying this book – once I realised that the name at the head of the chapter was the name of the narrator! I was particularly moved by Simon of Cyrene’s story; it’s one I’ve always been drawn to but this brings even more life to it. The portrayal of Paul is also brilliant and brings him alive while the descriptions of the tensions in the early church remind me that there’s nothing new under the sun!
I’m reading it on my own and find the comments of others extremly interesting. Thank you
Comment by Pat Carney — October 13, 2008 #