Queen’s University professor Donald Harman Akenson is known for his scholarship on Irish history and his probing questions about Christianity. In 1998, he produced the critically acclaimed Surpassing Wonder: The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds, in which he looked carefully at the intertwining of the Christian and Jewish religions through the origins of the books of the Bible and the Talmud. Now comes Saint Saul, in which he puts Saul – more commonly known as the apostle Paul – under the microscope, attempting to gain, through him, a deeper understanding of Jesus.

At the outset, Akenson makes clear that his ideal reader is the educated layperson. Indeed, anyone can be drawn into this book, provided they are ready for a challenging intellectual journey – knowledge of the scriptures is not a prerequisite. And Akenson’s accessible style captures the flavour of a conversation with the reader.

What some may not know, and what Akenson makes clear early on, is that Jesus, before being transformed into the Messiah after his death, was actually a man named Yeshua. And the problem is that no one who knew Yeshua personally wrote anything about him. Saul’s writings are full of details about Yeshua, but they have often been glossed over by theologians and scholars – for one, because they are stylistically complex and difficult to understand, but also because they create uneasiness. Saul’s writings evince hardline views on slavery and homosexuality – he accepted the former but not with the latter – and an ambiguous take on the role of women. And some scholars have wondered how self-serving he may have been.

But Akenson incites us to look beyond the view of Saul espoused by scholars and see how he can bring us closer to Yeshua or Jesus. What is enthralling about Akenson’s study is that it challenges the Christian notion of the Messiah and begins to assess Jesus as the person he was before he became mythologized as a saviour. It also encourages the reader to look both critically and open-mindedly at Saul, by probing his writings for their value while maintaining an awareness of his shortcomings.