Stories that take you to the heart of Jesus
Twenty-five first-person encounters with Jesus, combining imaginative storytelling, historical context, and spiritual reflection
When the woman heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” (Mark 5.27-28)
Asking who Jesus might be
What was it like to witness the life and teaching of Jesus from the edge of the crowd? How did people piece together the clues, before the narrative we know well from scripture was established?
My name is Terry Tastard. I’ve been thinking about these questions for a long time and in response I have written 25 short stories.
Each story is written in the first person. The range of characters includes a midwife, a physician, a religious expert, a spy, a bandit, an orphan and a waitress. They relate their encounter with Jesus as they piece together the clues and try to understand who he is.
Each story is followed by gospel passages, and an explanation of the cultural setting drawn from research of scholars into the historical Jesus. At the end there is a brief spiritual reflection about the challenge of Jesus for us today. The book is called Voices from the Fringe: Asking who Jesus might be and is available only from Amazon
Terry Tastard is a Catholic priest in London where he is chaplain to a care home. He has a PhD in history and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. This is his fifth book.
Extract 1: The Runaway
When my father died I was only 11. My mother had enough to do to feed herself and my two sisters, so my uncle took me in. He was not happy about having another mouth to feed. Before the year was out he apprenticed me to a tannery near Joppa.
It was a foul place. I had two jobs. One was to scrape the remaining fat and tissue off the cattle hides. The other was working at the tanning pit. I had to wade into the stinking waters to retrieve hides that had been soaking there in the stinking mixture of alum, bark tannin and fish oil. There was also urine. Yes, nobody tells you about that. As for the most expensive, supple leather, take it from me, you don’t want to know what goes into the making of it. For the first few days I vomited every time I went near the murky waters. The stench nearly overpowered me. The other workers laughed and told me that I would get used to it. If I had a small cut or bruise sometimes it would get infected and the skin took longer and longer to heal. The smell never left me. In the streets people shied away from me in disgust.
So a year later I ran away.
Extract 2: The Medical Officer
To: Commander, Antonia Fortress
As requested I certify the death of the so-called King of the Jews. I have examined the body and report the following as causes of death:
1. Hypovolemic shock. Evidenced by:
a) Loss of blood from flogging, as indicated by torn tissue on his back and patches of congealed blood running down to his legs. In places the lacerations have exposed and torn the skeletal muscles.
b) Loss of blood from the nails through his wrists and feet. Bleeding here was limited. I notice however that the man’s attempts to hold up his body meant that his wrists rotated around the nails attaching his arms to the cross. This increased the topical blood loss.
c) Loss of fluid from dehydration.
2. Asphyxiation caused by …
