Endings: Invitations to Discipleship

by Morna D. Hooker

In literary works, endings are critical; an author's conclusion to a story or an argument is intended to shape our understanding of the whole.

In this engaging and deceptively simple study, a companion volume to her much-praised Beginnings , Morna D. Hooker explores the final pages of each of the four Gospels and the book of Acts and attempts to uncover the specific messages that the Evangelists hoped to convey to their readers.

Nearly all of the Old Testament books have forward-looking conclusions. What, then, is the significance of the way in which these New Testament documents end?

Genres: Biblical Studies

104 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2003

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome quick read covering how each of the four gospels end, all, according to Dr. Hooker, in suspense, by design, open ended, signifying that the story begun at Jesus' resurrection was just the beginning of the life to come. Planning to read her "Beginnings: Keys that Open the Gospels" next.

[Henry Sturcke · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this slim volume, Morna D. Hooker examines the endings of the four Gospels and the Book of Acts as literary productions. She detects in them, as is often the case in well-told stories, correspondences between the beginnings and endings (the quotations from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets as superscripts and postscripts to each chapter are apposite). Nevertheless, these are not pat conclusions; the author characterizes them as suspended endings -- they leave loose threads, open questions. On one level this is no doubt due to each author's awareness that the story of the work Jesus initiated has not ended. On a deeper level, in the author's view, this openness is an invitation to the reader not only to fill in the continuation of the story but to be part of the continuation, hence the invitation of the book's title. Accessibly written, recommended.