Description
The Veil Is Torn
Volume 1: A.D. 30 to 70
Pentecost to the Destruction of Jerusalem
This 287-page volume recounts how a small rabble of Jews, followers of an executed leader named Jesus of Nazareth, planted the seed of a new faith called Christianity across the mighty Roman Empire. It describes in vivid narrative and pictures the founding of the church, the astonishing work of the apostle Paul, the origins of the Gospels, the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul under the sadistic emperor Nero, and the horrific siege and destruction of Jerusalem and its great Temple by the Roman general Titus.
(Click on the image below to view a reduced resolution sample chapter drawn from the book so you get a sense of its writing style.)
Chapter One
Madman or God? The first and continuing debate about Jesus
- Pilate: An ignominious end for history’s most-mentioned Roman
- River of history, river of God
- Who was to blame for the Crucifixion?
- Crucifixion: no death more hideous
Chapter Two
The unpromising Peter takes over
- A continuing puzzle: Why did Jesus choose Peter?
- The Sea of Galilee: Its great harvest was the fishers of men
- The Temple: Herod’s legacy in gold and stone
- The amazing faith of ‘Doubting’ Thomas
Chapter Three
Saul’s brutal campaign to wipe out Jesus’ followers
- The ancient suffering of the ‘Chosen People’
- To the Jews there could be no ‘good’ Samaritans
Chapter Four
The incident on the Damascus road that would change history
- Dogs, wolves, bandits, rivers and other terrors of first-century travel
- The controversial rite of male circumcision
Chapter Five
The two-man mission that set afoot the conversion of the world
- James the Just’s famous letter
- Was Apollos the author of the mysterious letter to the Hebrews?
- Cities without street names, streets without addresses
- The first Christian hymns
- Paul lays down the rules for how the Last Supper must be observed
- A living museum of the Christian past
Chapter Six
The trial and final triumph of Christianity’s greatest missionary
- A credible ancient historian: Luke, the man who tells Paul’s story
- First-century sea travel: Sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder on open decks
- The Pastoral Epistles: Paul’s last and most touching letters
- Paul of Tarsus lives on around us
Chapter Seven
The Synoptic Gospels: Three startling books that moved humanity
- A scholarly bishop maks the case for a much ‘earlier’ New Testament
Chapter Eight
Nero: The man who taught Christians the meaning of evil
- The Quo Vadis Legend of Peter’s last failure and last triumph
- What became of the other apostles?
- Peter and Paul in Rome: Here, there and everywhere
- The heroically defiant death of Jesus’ kinsman James
Chapter Nine
Jerusalem falls in a hideous siege and the old order comes to an end
- The controversial historian who documented Old Jerusalem’s final days
- How Jesus’ followers escaped
