The Third Day

By Stefan Isaksson

The Third Day
Mark Graham
Invisible College Press
313 pages
ISBN: 1931468036

In The Third Day, two people, one of them a faithful Christian and the other a diehard skeptic, are given the opportunity to travel 2000 years back in time and participate in the teachings of Christianity as told by Jesus himself. Not surprisingly, this turns into one exciting trip, as they both become part of Jesus’ inner circle and together with his other disciples get a first-hand look at his rise to notoriety in the eyes of the Romans.

From time to time it’s an exciting book to read. However, especially Mariam’s character don’t feel credible at all since she acts and talks in ways that sometimes are just plain stupid. When travelling back in time she and Ford (the believer) is separated, and thus the story of the book is divided into two separate paths. In the beginning Mariam is somewhat interesting – that is, before you’ve gotten to know her and she spends some time wandering the desolate landscape on her own – but this interest quickly turns into boredom as soon as she’s no longer in any real danger.

Ford, on the other hand, both thinks and acts very credible, from the viewpoint that he actually is a 21st century man back in historical times. Early on his faith is put to severe tests, and his inner struggle against the belief that’s always been with him is very interesting to take part of.

The text is often made up of segments from Jesus’ preaching, but this doesn’t mean it’s all about convincing the reader of the rightness of Christianity. It’s not completely apologetic (the defence of the Christian faith against the arguments of the unbelievers), and even though large segments contain the words of Jesus the focus is more his spectators and how they reacted to his often controversial and insulting words. Fortunately the book is not a rerun of the most pointless movie of all time, The Passion of the Christ, and the end (for both Jesus and the book) arrives suddenly and is quickly dealt with. And that’s pretty good, because by this time it’s easy to be sick of the whole thing, and especially of Mariam and her stupid actions and thoughts. However, the strange fate of Ford is nothing but weird, and since he was the greatest thing this book had to offer this turns out to be very, very annoying.