Book excerpt: First, there was Jesus (Yeshua), the baby born in Bethlehem. Then the baby grew up and, for one year, led an itinerant, mostly rural ministry. Fast-forward 2,000 years. Jesus' teaching has become one of the world's great religions, but it also has fragmented into countless schools of thought. Somewhere along the way, the teaching was obscured by a wide variety of conflicting religious, political, and theological forces. Who was Jesus the man, and what did he actually teach? In The Gospel of Yeshua: A Fresh Look at the Life and Teaching of Jesus, veteran journalist Skip Johnson combines ancient testimony with modern Bible research to produce a richly detailed portrait of the life and teaching of Jesus. This biography presents Jesus' teaching as his disciples would have heard and understood it, and it focuses on how anyone can attain happiness beyond human imagination, regardless of present circumstances.