Morna D. Hooker

In this slim volume, Morna D. Hooker examines the endings of the four Gospels and the Book of Acts as literary productions. She detects in them, as is often the case in well-told stories, correspondences between the beginnings and endings (the quotations from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets as superscripts and postscripts to each chapter are apposite). Nevertheless, these are not pat conclusions; the author characterizes them as suspended endings -- they leave loose threads, open questions. On one level this is no doubt due to each author's awareness that the story of the work Jesus initiated has not ended. On a deeper level, in the author's view, this openness is an invitation to the reader not only to fill in the continuation of the story but to be part of the continuation, hence the invitation of the book's title. Accessibly written, recommended.… (mer)