Strange Stories About Jesus

"There is something about the person of Jesus that attracts and fascinates us, as if incomprehensibly in Him lay the key to life itself. How else to understand, after so many centuries, the interest of so many in the enigma of Jesus?

Books, films, and songs about Jesus fill popular culture, such that each generation creates a character with His Name, as if in Him lay not only the answer to an enigma to be discovered, but the very reality of who we are. That is perhaps what explains the feeling of attraction and repulsion we feel for the true Jesus, the Jesus of history. When we read the Gospels, which are, after all, the oldest testimony we have about Him, there is something in them that shocks us and we find profoundly offensive.

It's as if we thought that Jesus must have been someone wonderful but, when we actually read His words, we discover something we really didn't expect.

The lives of Jesus—which so many authors have written throughout the centuries—therefore tell us more about themselves than about Jesus. They are a reflection of an era, the dreams and concerns of certain people, but we have to recognize that the Gospels are very different. In them, Jesus shows us not only who God is, but something about ourselves that we prefer to hide.

Perhaps that is why some of us cannot resist continuing to read His words, even desiring to live in their light. If this book intends anything, it is ultimately that: to bring us closer to that great question we all have to ask ourselves at some point in our lives: Who is Jesus?"

"I am drawn to the light of the scriptures, because it shows another side of me that remains hidden."

Bono, singer of U2"