Must Read
I just finished reading a book by LeGette Blythe called The Bold Galilean. It was a biblical epic on the life of our Lord Jesus told from the point of view of the Roman centurion whose sick slave Jesus healed. It was a novel well-written. All of the elements of a good story are there--the accounts found in the Gospels with a few fictional embellishments here and there to move the story along.
Two weeks ago, I read a bio-documentary of another biblical figure Pontius Pilate written by Dr. Paul Maier. It is also under the label of historical fiction but at the end of the book, the author had notes on each chapter of all facts, events, and people that truly happened and existed historically that were documented extrabiblically.
Last week, I read The Flames of Rome by the same author. As the title implies, it is a novel about the reign of Nero and the persecutions of the Christians during Nero's reign. The novel depicted a beastly emperor and a morally-rotten Rome. You will go wide-eyed in unbelief reading about an empress who tricked her emperor husband into unwittingly approving her adulterous activities, a mother poisoning her stepson, a son plotting the murder of his mother, and every other weird murder a warped mind could come up with. You will be horrified at the needless deaths, cruelty and persecution. You will laugh at the ignorant conceit of an emperor who fancies himself as an 'artist' winning musical contests only because the judges feared for their lives. But that is not all!
You will be blessed by the courage of the first century Christians for standing firm even if their faith in Christ meant an unimaginable horrible horrible death.
For readers like me who like historical novels, I assure you that the Pontius Pilate, and the Flames of Rome won't disappoint. In the Bold Galilean, the author took more liberty at fiction but the former two are more of documentary novels than historical fictions.
It was my professor in Church History who mentioned the author Paul Maier in passing while discussing about the early Christian persecutions. As always, my ears are attuned to any talk about historical novels so I quickly wrote down the author's name and when I got home, I searched the internet to look up the author and see what books he wrote, and if the books are available at the National Bookstore or at ebay philippines for that matter. To my dismay, they're not. But I was so itching to read them that I forgot my school has a very big library. The next morning, I typed in the author's name in the library computer bracing myself that it will turn out zero results as I pressed enter. To my happy surprise, the books are available! Well, I went to the Fiction section but they were not there. So I patiently searched for them in every shelf, there are like more than a dozen of the longish, high, full shelves and then after checking half of all the libarary shelves, I found Pontius Pilate on the Early Christian Writings section together with the writings of St. Augustine, Tertullian and Origen. The Flames of Rome came easy...
Anyway, I think these are good reads....
Two weeks ago, I read a bio-documentary of another biblical figure Pontius Pilate written by Dr. Paul Maier. It is also under the label of historical fiction but at the end of the book, the author had notes on each chapter of all facts, events, and people that truly happened and existed historically that were documented extrabiblically.
Last week, I read The Flames of Rome by the same author. As the title implies, it is a novel about the reign of Nero and the persecutions of the Christians during Nero's reign. The novel depicted a beastly emperor and a morally-rotten Rome. You will go wide-eyed in unbelief reading about an empress who tricked her emperor husband into unwittingly approving her adulterous activities, a mother poisoning her stepson, a son plotting the murder of his mother, and every other weird murder a warped mind could come up with. You will be horrified at the needless deaths, cruelty and persecution. You will laugh at the ignorant conceit of an emperor who fancies himself as an 'artist' winning musical contests only because the judges feared for their lives. But that is not all!
You will be blessed by the courage of the first century Christians for standing firm even if their faith in Christ meant an unimaginable horrible horrible death.
For readers like me who like historical novels, I assure you that the Pontius Pilate, and the Flames of Rome won't disappoint. In the Bold Galilean, the author took more liberty at fiction but the former two are more of documentary novels than historical fictions.
It was my professor in Church History who mentioned the author Paul Maier in passing while discussing about the early Christian persecutions. As always, my ears are attuned to any talk about historical novels so I quickly wrote down the author's name and when I got home, I searched the internet to look up the author and see what books he wrote, and if the books are available at the National Bookstore or at ebay philippines for that matter. To my dismay, they're not. But I was so itching to read them that I forgot my school has a very big library. The next morning, I typed in the author's name in the library computer bracing myself that it will turn out zero results as I pressed enter. To my happy surprise, the books are available! Well, I went to the Fiction section but they were not there. So I patiently searched for them in every shelf, there are like more than a dozen of the longish, high, full shelves and then after checking half of all the libarary shelves, I found Pontius Pilate on the Early Christian Writings section together with the writings of St. Augustine, Tertullian and Origen. The Flames of Rome came easy...
Anyway, I think these are good reads....
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