“I guess you just had to be there.”
That’s what we say whenever we try telling an exciting story and the other person responds like a deer caught in headlights. If only they could be transported and see this whole thing with their own eyes—then they’d know how epic this story actually was.
I wonder if the Gospel writers would have a similar experience if they watched over us as we read through the Gospel accounts. Don’t get me wrong—the Scriptures are clear enough to give us everything we need for life and godliness. But I’m convinced there are beautiful things we won’t catch unless we dig—and some stuff we may never see.
Also let’s not pretend that telling a buddy about the time you dressed up in a Sasquatch outfit is the same thing as the Holy Spirit illuminating God’s Word to us. But at the same time, we do read the Scriptures with Western eyes. There are going to be certain idioms and cultural things that we simply won’t understand.
It takes a really good story teller to transport us from one world into another. Gary Burge has written A Week in the Life of a Roman Centurion with the hopes of doing just that. The book follows a Roman centurion (spoiler alert: he’s the one in Matthew 8). Along the way Burge paints a picture of what life would be like for a centurion in the first century. His aim is to help the Bible come alive for us—so that when we read Matthew 8 it’s as if were there.
Burge is a good story teller. But first and foremost he is a biblical scholar. I’ve read some who say the story falls flat. I don’t think so. Granted, he’s not Stephen King. But he’s an adequate story teller. I found myself engaged in the story. More than anything it did help the world of the Bible come alive for me.
This is one of those books that I think will impact you in ways that you really don’t realize. It’s like moving to a new town. You don’t consciously know when you finally remembered that the Walgreens was on the corner next to Taco Bell. It just kind of happened.
I think a book like Burge’s will impact our Bible reading in a similar way. You might not remember where you learned about what it would be like being a Roman solider—but now when you read of one in the Scriptures there is something for your mind to attach itself to.
And Burge is a helpful guide. I’m not a student of the first century as much as I am the Puritan and Great Awakening eras, but I know enough that I would have caught some red flags. Nothing really jumped out to me as inaccurate. In fact I learned a great deal.
I didn’t necessarily agree with every aspect of how he told the story (I’m not sure he nailed the “faith of the centurion”) but I still believe this is a valuable book. I would highly recommend this book to any student of the Bible.
You can grab your copy here.
