The historical novel series, Cry for Jerusalem, could just as well have been called The Story of Josephus. The story behind the story is now out on this new video trailer.
Cry for Jerusalem—it’s not about modern Israel; it’s not about what’s going on today. This series captures the time period that’s arguably the one of the major turning points in Western Civilization. The destruction of the Jewish Temple, the dispersion of the Jews; it’s Christianity’s beginning that launched out of this context. The first century AD is hugely important in terms of history. And the Temple Mount is arguably the most contested piece of real estate in the world. I found a lot of people with different ideas about it kept quoting this historian named Josephus. So I thought, well okay, I’m going to try to read Josephus for myself—to see if I could figure out what he said, and maybe that would help me figure out where the Temple was. So, I started reading this and I was amazed at all of the detail and the drama Josephus recorded. I had been going to church for over 40 years. No one ever told me these stories.
Josephus was one of the most notorious traitors—ever. When the war broke out, he was put in charge of defending Judaea in Galilee. But he was captured there by the Romans. Oddly as it turned out, the Romans didn’t kill him. They knew this guy was smart. He spoke fluent Latin and Greek. He knew about Jerusalem. But his goal was to save Jerusalem. He knew the Jews could not stand up against several legions of Roman soldiers. His idea was he needed to help convince them to surrender and save Jerusalem and the Temple. It didn’t work. And it looked really bad for him. I began to think—if someone put this into historical novel form, and made it interesting and dramatic, I bet people would read this. It really follows four or five main characters, and what life was like for them. The great thing that I like about historical fiction is you’re getting a great story that you can’t put down. But you’re learning so much history at the same time. I find myself saying—did that really happen? And then I have to Google it, and realize—yeah that really happened! It’s so much better than reading history out of a textbook. This series really fills that gap.
All four books available at Amazon as paperback, Kindle, or audiobook.
