The Silence of Gethsemane

An unordained monk and expert on Jesus Christ transposes his lifetime's research into fictional form, for a novel offering an intimate portrait of the man Jesus

On a Passover night, in the midst of an olive grove, a young rabbi from Galilee is waiting. He knows that his people have abandoned him and that he will be arrested. Alone with the stars, he relives the events which have changed his life—his meeting with John the Baptist, his stay in the desert, followed by his two years of wandering—and reiterates his personal message to the world, a message which was misunderstood by his followers, rejected by the authorities, and which ultimately leads to his betrayal and downfall. Based on rigorous research and analysis, Michel Benoît constructs a lively and entertaining novel, and gives voice to an ordinary man whose teachings, subsequently distorted by the church establishment, delivered words of hope on the eve of catastrophe.