Chapter 1: A Voice from the Wilderness
A voice cries out: “Clear a path in the wilderness. Make a straight highway in the desert for our God. Let every valley be filled and every mountain and hill be made flat. Let the crooked places be made straight and the rough places smooth. Then the glory of the Lord will appear for all to see. The Lord himself has promised this.”
—Isaiah 40:3–5
Spring–Autumn, AD 29
A religious stupor rests upon the land. Seven centuries have passed since the prophet Isaiah predicted a voice would call from the wilderness to prepare Israel for the Lord’s arrival. Most people believe the old prophecies shouldn’t be taken literally, but some still look with prayerful anticipation toward the desolate lands west of the Salt Sea, where the prophets said a new exodus will begin. “I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her there,” the Lord told Hosea. “I will make the valley of trouble into a door of hope.”
This is a tremendous promise, but hundreds of generations have come and gone, and only the names of the oppressors have changed. “How long, oh Lord?” is the question on the lips of many as the poor become poorer and the weak become helpless. Recently there have been reports from the Jordan River of a Nazarite hermit who is reviving interest in the old predictions and announcing the arrival of the Messiah. “Repent,” John bar Zechariah demands, “for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Like the prophets before him, his counsel is blunt: prepare to meet your God—He will be here soon. To the poor, who are convinced that only the Lord can deliver them from their hopeless situation, John’s news is encouraging. To others, his words sound more like a warning. Maybe even a threat. John’s appearance is as startling as his message. He’s in his early thirties, but years in the desert have weathered him. His dark skin is cracked and leathery, his beard is long and matted, and his hair is uncut and cascades down his back in thick coils. His body, lean from a diet of honey and locusts, is clothed in a coarse camel-hair cloak that is cinched at his waist with a leather tie.
Son of Man: A Biography of Jesus Description:
Would You Like to Know Jesus as Those Closest to Him Did?
Son of Man is an honest-to-Bible account of Jesus and the world he lived in. Two things make this biography unique:
• First, it arranges the Gospels in a narrative arc with a clear beginning, middle, and end. It reorders the nonlinear storyline of the Gospels and tells the story chronologically to help the reader see how, and maybe more importantly, why things unfolded as they did. To create the you-are-there feel it is written in present tense.
• Second, it tells Jesus’s story in the context of his culture. The geography, climate, politics, racism, social norms, religion, traditions, economics, morality, language, and customs of the second temple era play key roles in this narrative. What emerges is a holistic, historically accurate dramatization that provides a 360-degree view of Jesus and his world.
No fictionalized elements or dialog have been added. All events and quotations are taken from the texts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts. All of Jesus’s recorded words and actions are included, and duplicate accounts have been harmonized.
Recent books about the life of Christ have been skeptical of the Bible and have used Jewish and Roman texts as their primary sources. Religious and secular history books provide valuable insights into Jesus’s world, but to understand the man himself, the best sources are the ancient narratives written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
An appendix is included to help Bible students study Jesus’s ministry years chronologically, pericope by pericope. For deeper research, Old Testament passages that are relevant to each event are cited.
If you are a student of Jesus’s life and times, or a follower of Jesus and his teachings, you will find yourself looking at Jesus with new eyes and new understanding. And you will gain a greater appreciation for what it must have taken for Jesus to do what he did: embody the Son of God in the Son of Man.
