Dr. Perkins in her always lucid yet comprehensive and profound scholarly manner explains the central teaching of Jesus Christ, to love one another, and explores several aspects of that historical and theological phenomenom. She sets the historical and sociological context in which such commands emerge, and she discovers such a commandment and commissioning not so unusual in the time and place of Jesus, as it draws not only form the Old Testament, including the decalogue, but also from the hellenistic code of ethics widespread across the eastern Mediterranean, including the region of the childhood home of Jesus in northern Israel. We today now find it most odd and unheard of that Jesus commands us to love one another, including loving our own enemies and doing good to those who harm and insult us. It strikes us as oddly as reading the Bill of Rights as a central document of our government. But indeed the central comandment of our faith is to Love one another, including our own enemies.
