Jesus, Life, Disciples, Middle East 

The popular stereotype depicts him as "gentle Jesus, meek and mild," but nothing could be farther from the truth. Jesus was a bold and outspoken man who rebelled against convention and trampled unmercifully on the tenderest sore spots of the religious and political Establishment. He was often blunt and sometimes brutally frank in speech, and possessed a prodigious capacity for igniting controversy.

It is this Jesus--no the popular misconception--that one of America's best-known writers on religion depicts THE REAL JESUS. and to do so, Louis Cassels goes back to the life story of Jesus as it is really told in the Gospels and other sources. He relates the story of Jesus the man, as the eyewitnesses say it happened--making no concessions to pious imagination on one side or to closed-mind skepticism on the other.

Thus we learn that Jesus loved parties, appreciated good food and good wine. That He had a sharp, satirical sense of humor, and characteristically radiated a contagious happiness!

From this unexpected portrayal of Jesus the man, Mr. Cassels turns to clarification of Jesus' teachings as recorded in the Gospels; the core of this book reveals what Jesus really meant to teach us...about God, about love, about true humility, about joy and courage, about money, about sex, and about prayer.

In a final section, the author offers a straightforward account of Jesus' last days on earth; then concludes with a discussion of the meaning of Jesus "as a companion for you today."

Throughout, Mr. Cassels quotes the Today's English Version of the New Testament, an American Bible Society translation with American idioms. He does this pointing out that the original New Testament was written in idiomatic, not "elegant" Greek. - from Amzon