The renowned author of The Prophet creates a portrait of Jesus Christ through the observations of seventy-seven of his peers in this fascinating compendium. What if we had firsthand impressions of the son of God found not in the pages of the New Testament, but from the very people who surrounded him? This is what Kahlil Gibran imagined in this lyrical and inspiring book. He captured the observations of friends, enemies, commoners, and rulers in beautifully poetic passages. Anna the mother of Mary said of her daughter, "Sometimes it seems that my longing for Him is greater than hers. She stands as firm before the day as if she were a bronzen image, while my heart melts and runs intro streams. Perhaps she knows what I do not know. Would that she might tell me also." James, the son of Zebedee warned, "The only man among us who did not turn to behold Him in His aloneness was Judas Iscariot. And from that day Judas became sullen and distant. And methought there was danger in the sockets of his eyes." "It is as a fellow-countryman that [Gibran] approaches the Man of Nazareth. What we have in his case is not history but drama, a series of soliloquies, poetic in structure and beauty, which are attributed to the contemporaries of Jesus, sometimes authentic, like Mary Magdalen, sometimes imagined, as Philemon, a Greek apothecary. Of the immortal theme, here is a treatment, certainly unusual, possibly unique . . . The opinions about Jesus, whether appreciative or depreciatory, when attributed to his contemporaries, are often brilliant in phrase and accurate in perception." -The New York Times