The world that produced the Gospels
First-century Judea, painted vividly: pilgrimage, synagogue and school, Roman politics, and the messianic hopes of those “looking for the consolation of Israel.”
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Reading the Gospels in the school of Jesus
An Orthodox biblical scholar reads the Gospels with the ears of their first hearers — in the school of Jesus.
Expected · Late 2026
“They said unto Him, Rabbi, which means Teacher —
where do you live?”
About the book
About the author
Archpriest Leonid Grilikhes (b. 1961) is a Russian Orthodox biblical scholar and priest. He has taught at the Moscow Theological Academy, St. Tikhon's Orthodox University, and Lomonosov State University, and was for many years a member of the Synodal Biblical and Theological Commission. He currently serves at the Church of St. Job the Long-Suffering in Brussels, and is the author of numerous works on Scripture and patristics.
About Axios Books
Axios Books publishes contemporary Orthodox Christian writing with care and craftsmanship. The House of Jesus is the first English-language volume in our catalog.
Translated from the Russian by Vasily Chernov, with Vladimir Chernov.
Inside the book
First-century Judea, painted vividly: pilgrimage, synagogue and school, Roman politics, and the messianic hopes of those “looking for the consolation of Israel.”
In the Hebrew word bayit — house, household, school — Grilikhes shows how Jesus' community would have been recognizable as a school to its first hearers, and how the disciples themselves became “living books” of his teaching.
Where Jesus aligns with Hillel against Shammai, where he stands apart from both, and where he shakes the two pillars of Second Temple Judaism — the absolute authority of the Torah and the unconditional election of Israel.
Grilikhes draws the reader close to the people Jesus actually met — the leper, the tax collector, the Samaritan woman, the fisherman by the lake. The Gospels open up when you know who else is standing in the room.
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