For our evening reading aloud, Lynda and I are looking at books on our shelves that look like good reads but which probably aren’t “keepers”, which, after reading, can be sold, donated, or discarded. Lynda found one such on our shelves, The Jesus I Never Knew y Philip Yancy. I said sure, let’s read it.

We did this over about two weeks. Our hardback copy has 275 pages not including notes. Yancy is not a writer I was familiar with, but the book sounded good and so we dove in.

Wow, what a good book! Yancy covered aspects of Jesus’ life, teaching, and ministry that I had never thought of. Makes sense, given the title. With chapters such as “The Jesus I Thought I Knew”, “Beatitudes: Lucky Are the Unlucky”, “Kingdom: Wheat Among the Weeds”, Yancy looks as the raw words of the gospel and, without an historical or political filter, tells us about the biblical Jesus.

I’m not going to quote from the book or give specific reasons why I liked it so. Instead, I urge everyone to read it [Amazon]. Published in 1995, it is still fresh and relevant in the third decade of the 21st Century.

One interesting anecdote about our reading it right now: I had never heard of Yancy. A new literary agent posted what she was looking for and said she was looking for the next Philip Yancy. Clearly, he has a degree of notoriety that escaped me for years. Not any more.

We intended to read a book that we would discard, but we are agreed that we should keep it and read it again sometime. Consequently, back on the shelf it goes. I give this an enthusiastic 5 stars.