The gospel according to Cahill.

Desire of the
Everlasting Hills
The World Before
and After Jesus
By Thomas Cahill
Doubleday, $24.95, 343 pp.

This is the third in Thomas Cahill's series of seven books called "The Hinges of History," a popular cultural history that focuses on "the great gift-givers" who shaped the patrimony of the West. How the Irish Saved Civilization and The Gifts of the Jews were best sellers. If the obscurity of its title can be overcome, the present book will undoubtedly do well also, not least because it is about Jesus, a brand name that sells almost as reliably as Prozac these days. Cahill writes a sort of fast-food history that is sufficiently nutritious to be consumed both rapidly and with guiltless pleasure. I read all three books not long ago while stuck on an interminably delayed plane in Atlanta and had huge fun when I should have been suffering.

Cahill's histories are popular in both style and substance. He follows the guidance of recognized authorities on his respective topics, modifying them mostly in the direction of liveliness and point. He allows himself the narrator's privilege of filling gaps in the evidence with lively but entirely imaginary scenes. His books bristle with big people and big ideas: In Gifts, for example, Abraham, Moses, and David all help create a historical world in which each moment provides the possibility of the new and surprising in response to a personal and living God; in Irish, Patrick and his successors save the West by copying the Latin classics.

Cahill constructs his stories as occasions for celebration more than critical analysis. He seeks to encourage a sense of appreciation for the gifts offered the present from the past. In each of the volumes, he follows the same formula: the situation in the world prior to the gift-giver, the shape of the gift, the impact on Western culture. His entry into these worlds is mainly through literature. He is a strong reader, and clearly delights in sharing some of the insights he has discovered. And if he sometimes gets a little too cozy in his comments or a bit too broad in his generalizations, each of his books also offers moments of genuine insight into the workings of culture, literature, and the human heart.

His books have slowly been increasing in size. The slender 218 pages of Irish was followed by 252 pages of text in Gifts; now Desire has 343 pages. The greater length of Gifts may have been due to the larger canvas. Ancient Israelite history is considerably longer and more complex than Irish medieval history. But the time-period covered by Desire is quite short, extending only from Alexander the Great to John the Evangelist. I think the relative length of the book has more to do with the problems Cahill faced in writing about Jesus.

The first problem is the extraordinary complexity of dealing with Jesus as a historical figure. Like many before him, Cahill has discovered that the writings of the New Testament-in particular Paul and the Gospels-are rich resources for the interpretation of Jesus by those who believed in him, but they are, for that very reason, difficult to reduce to a simple historical narrative. Unlike many before him, Cahill has had the good sense to remain modest in his reconstruction of Jesus' ministry, allowing room for serious consideration of the diverse witnesses to Jesus found in the writings of Paul, Luke, and John. A sound move, but one that takes up space.

A second factor contributing to this book's length-although it is still an easy read-is that Cahill is a bit more ambivalent about the "gifts" given by Jesus. Or, to put it better, he is ambivalent about the way the gift of Jesus has been mediated by Christianity. The story here is not as simple as that of copying manuscripts so the learning of antiquity is not lost; the contribution of Christianity to the heritage of the West is both complex and controversial. Cahill rightly refuses to improve the sources by speaking only of the features that are attractive to contemporary readers. He acknowledges the patriarchalism of some of Paul's letters and the slanderous polemic against the Jews in John's Gospel. To his credit, Cahill helps the reader see that, however offensive such elements appear to us, they arose out of real and difficult circumstances, and-more to the point- require honest engagement if the positive elements of the Christian heritage are also to be affirmed.

Some small irritating features of the earlier books continue to annoy in this one. A writer so capable of felicitous and even elegant phrasing needs to have his editor eliminate inappropriately colloquial diction, as when Cleopatra is called the "teen Queen," or when Cahill responds to Jesus' prohibition against lust in the heart with, "Earth to Jesus: Hello!" And on that same subject, Cahill remains adolescently preoccupied with the sexual. But perhaps the author is less to blame than the editor for these dips into the vulgar. Anyone who has tried to write for audiences other than the stodgily academic has heard the repeated urgings to "Punch up that prose! Generate some human interest!" A less happy tendency for the historian is asserting more than the evidence will allow. The fault is venial when small gaps are filled by the creation of vivid scenes, such as the meeting of Peter and Paul (complete with physical descriptions); it gets more serious when the latter days of the Johannine church are reconstructed with no more than wisps of evidence.

There are also many things to applaud in the book. As in his earlier works, Cahill enhances our appreciation for the "gift" given by his subject by means of contrast to "the world before" and by means of continuity to "the world after." His reconstruction of the world of Greco-Roman empire, and of Jewish resistance to empire, establishes the conquering Alexander as the model human and concentrates on the patterns of aggression, power, possession, and revenge that characterize a world defined by conquest. His depiction of the world after Jesus, in contrast, uses as its example the Community of Sant'Egidio, an ecumenical lay organization founded in Rome in 1968 by a handful of high school students to live lives of full discipleship in service to the world's suffering ones, including aids patients. Cahill's Jesus, as we might expect, represents by his teaching and by the manner of his life the reversal of the values of self-assertion in favor of the values of self-donation. If anything must be chosen as the key gift of Jesus to the culture of the West-Cahill's expressed interest-this is a good choice.

The title for the chapter in which Cahill sketches Jesus' ministry is cunningly called, "The Last of the Prophets: The Jesus the Apostles Knew," for it enables Cahill at once to say something definite about Jesus' work among his people and to recognize that even this reconstruction is based on tradition. As always, Cahill is generous in his citation of texts, so that readers less familiar with these matters can learn from the rhythms of the compositions themselves. The device of placing subdiscussions within separate boxes-as when Cahill refers to John Dominic Crossan and Barbara Thiering-enhances the journalistic feel of the book and enables Cahill to keep his main narrative lean. The sketch of Jesus' ministry itself is brief, moving quickly from John the Baptist and Jesus' baptism to the call of disciples, the Sermon on the Mount (with particular emphasis on its reversal of cultural values), and the way in which Jesus' association with the marginal made him distinctive among Jews of his day.

The succeeding chapters take up the theme of Jesus-as-interpreted more explicitly. The treatment of "Paul's Jesus" is particularly welcome now, when so much of the attention to the historical Jesus begins by eliminating Paul from consideration. Yes, there are the overly casual (indeed, irresponsible) characterizations like this one, to distract the reader: "It seems that Chloe and her people attended a Eucharist led by a flamboyant male transvestite and a strange woman who sported a butch haircut." And if in earlier generations, one might think that Paul only wrote Galatians and Romans, so obsessive was the concern for the "religious" issues of law and grace, Cahill joins those who read Paul almost exclusively through 1 Corinthians, as though "social" issues were alone important.

Similarly, by agreeing with the dominant hypothesis that all the patriarchal elements in Paul are to be found in pseudonymous letters and that Paul himself is unswervingly egalitarian, Cahill misses the chance to engage what is perhaps the most important of the social gifts Paul has given. Egalitarian ideals must always struggle to find expression within stratifying structures, and the way to advance that struggle is seldom clear. The fact that Paul shows us both the ideal and the social realities and, however clumsily, attempts to honor both, makes of his letters not a set of answers to impose on our world, but the beginning of a conversation that we can continue in our world.

Nevertheless, on the single biggest point, Cahill gets it right, which is Paul's insight into the implications of Jesus' suffering, death, and Resurrection: "The man Jesus' teaching and all the acts of his life (such as his healing miracles) had been given definitive approval by God himself, who has raised this Jesus from the dead. Jesus is, therefore, not only the promised Messiah of the Jews, but has shown forth in the words and deeds of his life what God expected of each human being. He is the model whom we all must imitate." For Paul, it is not the accidental details of Jesus' past that matter, but the fundamental pattern of Jesus' existence, that outlook on the world that Paul calls "the mind of Christ" (1 Cor. 2:16), and that mode of compassionate service that he means by "the law of Christ" (Gal. 6:2).

Cahill also makes unusually good use of the Lucan narratives, the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. He uses Luke's Gospel to bring out the theme of Jesus' mercy and compassion, which are so richly illustrated by the distinctively Lucan parables. Luke also stresses both prayer and the use of possessions, enabling Cahill to note the way in which the Christian tradition sees both prayer and social action as part of the same prophetic witness in the world. His treatment of Acts, under the title, "The People of the Way," gives him the opportunity to speak of the Resurrection appearances and Pentecost (correctly, in my judgment) as part of the same Easter experience that transformed Jesus' followers and enabled them to follow new patterns of life (such as the sharing of possessions) and-in continuity with Jesus' outreach to the marginal-to invite even Gentiles to the table of fellowship.

Despite his basically celebratory tone, Cahill cannot entirely shake his ambivalence concerning the heritage of the New Testament. What thoughtful person among us can? Cahill sees and laments the ways in which the self-interest of the church as institution and the twisted ways of the human heart have manipulated and misshapen the precious gifts it contains. He sees as well that the potential for such abuses is found within the texts themselves. But every word of this book suggests that Cahill is more pleased than not that the world has been visited by this Jesus, has been shaped by these texts, has been engaged by this church. His book does no real damage and does some real good. For a book about Jesus and the early Christians, that is itself a gift.

Luke Timothy Johnson is the Robert W. Woodruff professor of New Testament at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. His most recent book is Living Jesus (HarperSanFrancisco).