Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters

by N.T. Wright

was celebrated annually at Passover and in other festivals too. But the Exodus, in turn, looked back farther, to the divine call to the original patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Their story in turn looked back farther still, to the mysterious but powerful story of creation itself, when Israel’s God had brought his beautiful, ordered, and living creation out of the primal waters of chaos. The God who brought order out of chaos and who brought his enslaved people out of Egypt would do it again. Creation and covenant: God made the world, God called Israel to be his people, and God would remake his world in order to rescue his people Israel. Every time the Jewish people told the story (and they told it often), that was what they were thinking and hoping and praying for. It was this hope, this story that generated the second great storm wind, the powerful high-pressure system, into whose path Jesus of Nazareth decided to walk. And, eventually, to ride a donkey.