On Good Friday, the hours between noon and 3 o'clock have traditionally been reserved for the faithful to reflect on Jesus Christ's great suffering on the cross. Churches encourage prayer, reflection, and silence. Your humble scribe is not good at any of those things. So, half a dozen years ago now, I went looking for help.
I found an indispensable aid in the form of a short book by the New Testament scholar Joel Marcus. It carries the highly improbable title (for the purposes of Good Friday reading, anyway), Jesus and the Holocaust: Reflections on Suffering and Hope. When I told a Jewish friend about my annual reading habit, he joked that it was mighty goy of me to give "equal time" to a rebuttal of the Gospel of John.
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