JESUS: THE GOD APP.

A debut novel that dramatizes the life of Jesus Christ.

Snow writes at the outset that Jesus is “the application that opens for us the possibility of an interactive life with the divine.” However, the author quickly dispenses with this computer-app conceit to settle into a far more traditional and effective enterprise: transforming the four Gospels of the New Testament into a novel. The narrator is “the Beloved Disciple,” and his story follows the standard outline of many similar works, from Taylor Caldwell’s I, Judas (1977) to Walter Wangerin’s Jesus (2005) and others. Readers meet John the Baptist and hear him preach the coming of the Messiah, then see Jesus begin his ministry and assemble his Apostles. Snow avoids the stilted language common to much biblical fiction, instead giving all his characters a clear, straightforward idiom—particularly Jesus himself, whose admonitions to his followers often sound distinctly pitched to modern readers (“First, you have to learn to sit still,” he tells a disciple. “Next, you have to finally learn to let go of all your own agendas and wait. Yes, wait, to be filled with your Father’s agendas”). Some doctrinal purists may quibble over the fact that Snow’s Jesus is very clearly depicted as a God-inspired man rather than as God himself. But what this approach may lack in Catholic theology, it more than makes up for in readability. When this human Jesus speaks to doubters, he sounds entirely believable as a passionate character: “It’s not the well person who needs a doctor but the sick,” he says at one point. “Think it through!” In order to add tension to the best-known plot climax in history, Snow introduces pages from the diary of Jerusalem’s chief priest Annas to the final act, and the gambit works: Readers will still be kept guessing, even in the midst of very familiar proceedings. The result is a first-rate historical novel that a reader of any faith will likely appreciate.

A fresh, gripping fictional rendition of “the greatest story ever told.”