THE LAST HOURS OF JESUS.

offwhite embossed cloth hardbound 8vo. dustwrapper in protective plastic cover. fine cond. nice clean copy. binding square & tight. covers clean. edges clean. old bookplate inside front cover, othw. contents free of all markings. dustwr. fine cond., minor wrinkling and chipping at spine top,bit of soiling on the back, not price clipped. first edition. first printing ( nap). nihil obstat. imprimi potest. imprimatur november 23, 1959. viii+277p. b&w map of jerusalem at the time of jesus. religion. history. history of judaism. history of christianity. roman empire. "For the general reader, the problem is not that there are too many books on the Passion of Our Lord, but that there are too few good ones ~ at least for him. Studies by scholars for scholars are happily growing in number and importance. Journalistic treatments of the Passion, unhappily, are also increasingly numerous, and books which deal with the subject in terms of a purely private (and unrooted) piety continue to tumble off the presses with dismaying regularity. The value of The Last Hours of Jesus lies precisely in the fact that it Was written for the general reader ~ that convenient abstraction who has neither the time nor the background to follow the scholarly studies, and is rightly repelled by efforts to turn the most meaningful incident in history into either a "news story" or an invitation to an uninformed and unreflective piety. Father Gorman, as the long~time editor of The Sign, knows the needs of the general reader ~ and has filled them admirably. He knows the scriptural and archaeological scholarship surrounding the Passion, but he spares the reader the pains of acquiring it because he presents in clear but authoritative terms those factual details of time, place and persons necessary to a full realization of What actually happened during "the last hours of Jesus." On the other hand, Father Gorman realizes that the Christian has always found in the Passion an abundant, indeed a necessary spring of devotion, but that the spring may well turn into a trickle if only the purposes of scholarship are served. Father Gorman always treats the historical or archaeological details of the Passion in such a way that the thoughtful reader is stimulated to meditation, but never made the victim of an intrusive sermonizing. The result is a valuable contribution to our literature on the Passion. Father Gorman writes with a quiet authority which provides at once both illumination for the mind and Warmth for the heart of the reader as he relives, through the pages of this book "the last" hours of Jesus.".…