As a pastor, I found this book extremely helpful as I seek to help make the Gospels come alive for my parishioners. This book helps unpack the ritual stuff that lives behind the scenes in a majority of the Gospels, shedding new light on our understanding of a wide variety of well known scriptural passages. This book can help inform sermons but would also help guide meaningful Bible study on the topic of what the understanding of impurity in the ancient world means for our life today.

Whether you agree with the arguments or not this is well worth a read if you want to understand Jesus' attitude to the Jewish purity regulations in the New Testament in relation to first century Judaism. What is sometimes a difficult topic is handled with academic and clinical precision and while it's not one to rush through it will certainly get you thinking if you give it the time and patience it requires. Worth having in your library.

Thanks to NetGalley, Baker Academic and Brazos Press for ARC.