"In Postcards from Egypt, a novel, Vena asks daring questions. What would have happened if Jesus did not die on the cross? If he was married? If he had an effeminate disciple? If he felt that his voice has been stolen and used--through misrepresentation and sheer invention--to build a movement based on his alleged resurrection? These questions allow Vena to reimagine Jesus in a radical way. The Jesus who emerges in Vena's novel is free of dogmatism, and prejudices."
--Manuel Villalobos, Chicago Theological Seminary
"What if the message and the life of Jesus were meaningful even without his death on the cross and his resurrection? Just as Christians once imagined the life of the young Jesus in the legends recorded in Pseudo-Matthew, Vena imagines the life of the mature Jesus in a novella we might call Pseudo-Mark, challenging us to ask: What is truly at the core of the Christian faith?"
--Nancy E. Bedford, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
"In this fascinating novella, we meet Jesus as an older man who has grown in wisdom, humility, and grace. . . . As he looks back on his spirited and passionate youth and relates the events that unfolded, we hear the Gospel stories anew as we consider how he himself may have understood his life, his followers, his world, and his God. Through this compelling story, Vena has done what no biblical scholar has done: he has reclaimed the voice of Jesus to help us reconnect with his humanity--a humanity that has been largely obscured by the continuous remaking of his divinity."
--Melanie Baffes, author of Love, Loss, and Abjection: The Journey to New Birth in the Gospel of John