Why Write a Book About Mary?

Many of you have probably heard of or read the blog by Scot McKnight, Jesus Creed. Recently, Scot gave an open invitation to his readers to become a part of the street team for his most recent book, entitled The Real Mary: Why Evnagelical Christians Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus. Becoming part of the team meant one would receive not a single copy, but two copies of the book! Being a sucker for a free book, especially books by people whose writing I appreciate so deeply, and also being keenly interested in a Protestant reclamation of Mary, the mother of Jesus, I quickly volunteered.

My first duty as part of the street team is to post a link to the Paraclete Press website, so that my readers may take advantage of the 20% discount on copies ordered directly from the publisher between now and November 1.

Here's a small snippet of the introductory chapter:

"I have one final answer to the question, 'Why write a book about Mary?'

"Because the real Mary always leads us to Jesus. When we discover the real Mary, the one who lived in first-century Galilee with Joseph, who I believe nurtured other children, and who struggles at times herself, we also discover someone we can embrace because Mary embraced her son as we are called to do. When you find the real Mary of Scripture, the Mary of the first century, you'll discover that she'll be talking about Jesus and pointing us all to Jesus."

If you're interested in reading more, you can find the first 16 pages or so here. It's a .pdf file, so it might take a moment to load. What I've read so far is exciting and I look forward to reading Scot's book in the midst of my classroom assignments.

The release of the book is happening in early December around the same time that the movie "The Nativity Story" is being released across the country (December 1). The third part of my assignment as a member of the street team is to organize a discussion forum of both Scot's book and the film. More information to come...