More on Pope Benedict's book on Jesus

From Deacon Mike:

I have recommended for your summer reading the recently published book of Pope Benedict XVI – “Jesus of Nazareth”. It is to be noted that the book is not a ‘Magisterial’ text as an official teaching. The text is the personal search of the Pope for the Lord. He echoes Psalm 27:8.

The Pope provides a glimpse into his individuality as he reflects on the ways that scripture (the text) and tradition (the commentary) intersect and teach. For the readers, we learn about details not usually found in other commentaries. For example, in reflecting on the significance of the number ‘forty’ as used to denote a significant time interval in many of the scripture texts, the Pope offers this note.

He writes that “…The Fathers of the Church, stretching number symbolism in an admittedly slightly playful way, regarded forty as a cosmic number, as the numerical sign for this world. The four ‘corners’ encompass the whole world, and ten is the number of the commandments. The number of the cosmos multiplied by the number of the commandments becomes a symbolic statement about the history of this world as a whole. It is as if Jesus were reliving Israel’s Exodus, and then reliving the chaotic meanderings of history in general; the forty days of fasting embraces the drama of history, which Jesus takes into himself and bears all the way through to the end…” (Pages 29, 30)