Which came first: a coherent Passion story or the Gospel of Mark? Contemporary biblical scholarship is divided over this issue of how, exactly, the Passion story developed.Whatever the shape of the story prior to Mark, it must have been imprinted with Christian experience as well as historical memory. Mark, in turn, felt free to retell and reinterpret that story for his own time and place. The Passion of Jesus was not only a story from the past but also, in the sufferings and hopes of the Christians of Mark's time, a living reality of the present.The readers of this insightful work will find that the Passion of Jesus as told by Mark continues to hold meaning for the present.

The Word of the cross is a living word, crying out for reinterpretation as life takes new shape and expression. Reinterpreting the Gospel was particularly compelling for Matthew's church because his Christians lived in a time of profound transition. The Passion of Jesus, then, was not simply a story of suffering out of the past but a point of identification for the Christians of Matthew's own time.For us twentieth-century Christians, who also know the peculiar suffering and hope of living in an age that is both dying and being born, the Passion of Jesus according to Matthew has special meaning.

The recent resurgence of scholarship on Luke's Gospel is due, in part, to this Gospel's special appeal for an age in which questions of economic justice, peace, and the prophetic role of the Churches questions all important in Luke are so urgent.Father Senior's exegesis yields a strong sense of what Luke intended to communicate to his readers and, to some degree, what may have been the circumstances that shaped his message. He reveals the Luke who presents Jesus as a champion of the poor and marginalized, whose message of justice is proclaimed with a sharp prophetic edge.

Which came first: a coherent Passion story or the Gospel of Mark? Contemporary biblical scholarship is divided over this issue of how, exactly, the Passion story developed.Whatever the shape of the story prior to Mark, it must have been imprinted with Christian experience as well as historical memory. Mark, in turn, felt free to retell and reinterpret that story for his own time and place. The Passion of Jesus was not only a story from the past but also, in the sufferings and hopes of the Christians of Mark's time, a living reality of the present.The readers of this insightful work will find that the Passion of Jesus as told by Mark continues to hold meaning for the present.

The Word of the cross is a living word, crying out for reinterpretation as life takes new shape and expression. Reinterpreting the Gospel was particularly compelling for Matthew's church because his Christians lived in a time of profound transition. The Passion of Jesus, then, was not simply a story of suffering out of the past but a point of identification for the Christians of Matthew's own time.For us twentieth-century Christians, who also know the peculiar suffering and hope of living in an age that is both dying and being born, the Passion of Jesus according to Matthew has special meaning.

The recent resurgence of scholarship on Luke's Gospel is due, in part, to this Gospel's special appeal for an age in which questions of economic justice, peace, and the prophetic role of the Churches questions all important in Luke are so urgent.Father Senior's exegesis yields a strong sense of what Luke intended to communicate to his readers and, to some degree, what may have been the circumstances that shaped his message. He reveals the Luke who presents Jesus as a champion of the poor and marginalized, whose message of justice is proclaimed with a sharp prophetic edge.