Author’s Note

I have never felt more indebted on a book than this one. Five years is a long time to work on a project, and I’ve required more than the usual help along the way.

My team at Tyndale has been beyond patient. We delayed the release of this book a few times, even completing a contemporary legal thriller while I continued to work on this one in the background. I am so grateful for Karen Watson, Jeremy Taylor, Jan Stob, and the rest of the team who believed in this book and helped make it exponentially better than the raw manuscript I first submitted. In addition to that, a team of advance readers and transcribers, including Mary Hartman, Robin Pawling, Mike Garnier, Jana Hadder, Alisa Bozich, and my wife, Rhonda, (the ever-fastidious teacher of grammar) weighed in with helpful thoughts and feedback.

I have newfound respect for authors of historical fiction. Learning how to speak, write, live, and think like a first-century Roman has not been easy. To the extent this book feels authentic, I owe enormous debts to the sources and people who helped me understand what the world was like when the Son of Man chose to invade history.

The seed for this book was sown when I read Paul on Trial, a nonfiction book by a friend and fellow lawyer named John Mauck. In it, John argues that the books of Luke and Acts are written like legal briefs that were intended as evidence in Paul’s trial in front of Nero. I took that premise and ran with it, developing the fictional story of Theophilus, the intended recipient of those two books of Scripture.

I am a former history teacher, and the historical details are both fascinating and important to me. Unfortunately, space does not allow me to sift the real from the fictitious here. Suffice it to say that I attempted to remain true to the historical accounts to the extent possible. I have put a full list of my sources, along with detailed notes about what is real and what is fictional, on my website. However, a few of the more prominent sources bear special mention.

This period in history came alive through two main sources. The first was a wonderful tour guide I had in Rome named Cinzia Cutrone. She was a first-class historian who patiently answered every question, never injecting her own opinions but always taking me back to the original sources.

The second is an author named Ann Wroe, who wrote a magnificent nonfiction book titled Pontius Pilate. Her vibrant writing made the events surrounding the trial of Christ leap off the page and helped me see the first-century world through a Roman’s eyes. In particular, scenes in my book where Theophilus visits Nicodemus and where Procula, the wife of Pilate, is healed in the temple of Aesculapius were inspired by Ann Wroe’s descriptions of that temple and by her vivid imagining of a possible meeting between Pilate and Nicodemus. She also did an excellent job describing the details of Pilate’s life, the politics that confronted him, and the quotes from Roman philosophers like Cicero and Seneca that would have helped him process the trial of Jesus, all of which impacted my story. I believe I used no fewer than five historical quotes that I first discovered in Wroe’s book, including a quote from Seneca that played a large part in the life of my fictional Theophilus and is the concluding quote for his story.

On the life and times of Nero, a book of the same name by Edward Champlin was most helpful. His insightful writing helped me understand the events during Nero’s reign and see the ruler as an actor trapped in an emperor’s body as opposed to just a one-dimensional persecutor of the early Christians.

In the same way, three sources brought to life the epic fire that destroyed most of Rome. The Flames of Rome by Paul Maier, The Great Fire of Rome by Stephen Dando-Collins, and The Apostle by Sholem Asch all contain gripping accounts of what that tragedy was like. These accounts formed the basis of my own description. Also, the novel Imperium by Robert Harris did a wonderful job describing what life was like for an advocate in ancient Rome —in particular for Marcus Cicero, a hero of my book’s protagonist. I relied on several of Mr. Harris’s insights when I wrote about the training of Theophilus and when I described the role of an advocate in the Roman legal system. For example, the life of Theophilus at the School of Molon and the description of the Asiatic School instructors as “dancing masters” were based on Mr. Harris’s book. In a similar way, I am indebted to Jeffrey Barr for his insightful analysis of the episode where Jesus was asked about paying taxes, an analysis I relied on in this book.

I tried to stay true to the original historical sources, and you can be the judge of whether I succeeded. I started with the writings of Luke and the other New Testament books including, of course, the letters of Paul. I also found great value in the ancient historians —Tacitus, Josephus, Suetonius, Cassius Dio —and in the writings of Seneca, who waxed eloquent on a great variety of topics.

I’ll end my thanks with the man who has guided my writing career for most of the past decade —my former agent, Lee Hough. I’m pretty sure there was nobody more excited about this book than Lee. After a long and courageous battle with brain cancer, he passed away just before the manuscript was submitted. Nevertheless, this book has his fingerprints all over it. They are prints of encouragement and persistence and faith.

And as good as Lee was as an agent —which was pretty darn special —he was even better as a friend. I miss him a lot. And I hope this book will make him proud.