In Killing Jesus, Stephen Masnfield attempts to tell the unknown,
fascinating story of the death of the world’s most fascinating person – Jesus
Christ. Stephen Mansfield has written other books including The Faith of Barack Obama, The Faith of George W Bush, and Lincoln’s Battle with God. According to
Mansfield, “the execution of Jesus was a crime born of the streets, the
barracks, and the enclaves of the privileged and the smoke-filled back rooms of
religious and political power brokers. Its meaning lives in these places still”
There are twenty one chapters but
they are brief and fast paced. Each of the chapter titles are one word Latin
words with an English translation (e.g., Inceptum: The Beginning, Piaculum: The
Sacrifice, etc). The chapters are short and it is fast paced (in the sense that
you are moving along with the story quickly). Also, there are no footnotes to
slow you down or distract you. In the author’s own words, footnotes are “little
numbers stinging the eye and desecrating the text.” Instead, he has chosen to
put his sources and commentary at the back of the book where other scholarly
input is also listed. At the end of the book, he also lists the five earliest
and most attested references to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ by
non-Christian writers: (1) Josephus – Jewish-Roman Historian; (2) Cornelius
Tacitus – Roman Historian; (3) Lucian of Samasota – Satirist; (4) Mara
Bar-Serapion – Philosopher; (5) The Talmud.
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