Breakfast on the Beach: The Development of Simon Peter

Carino Casas • Jan 14, 2022

Review of a harmonized retelling of the Gospel through the eyes of Simon Peter

^{Breakfast on the Beach: The Development of Simon Peter}
^{By Johannes W. H. van der Bijl
Langham Preaching Resources, 2021.}

Reviewed by the Rev. Cariño Casas

Breakfast on the Beach book cover If you’ve watched The Chosen , the streaming series telling the story of Jesus of Nazareth, you know that they have made great efforts to authentically recreate first-century Galilee and Judea. More importantly, director Dallas Jenkins and his team of writers have made Jesus and the disciples, the Jewish leaders and Roman soldiers seem as real as your quirky neighbor or your brash cousin. The visuals take you into Second-Temple Israel and sit you by the fire between bickering James and John. Breakfast on the Beach , by Johannes W. H. van der Bijl, does that same thing with only words, and you are in Simon Peter’s sandals for the ride, from his being called to be a disciple to Jesus’ ascension.

Perhaps because I was in the midst of binging season two of The Chosen , I found van der Bijl’s novelized account dovetailing with the visuals from the show in my head. While Jenkins and van der Bijl imagine the personalities of the disciples a bit differently, their fleshed-out visions of Jesus coincide and link the two works in my mind.

Van de r Bijl writ e s in his preface that when first reading the New Testament he was baffled by the actions and reactions of the biblical characters because they lived in a time and place so different from his native Namibian context. Later he was able to fill in the voids with notes from study Bibles, but he was frustrated that those details were not in the text, in the flow of the story. While teaching in Ethiopia and later serving in South Africa , Van der Bijl began to learn how to contextualize the Gospel narrative and its Second Temple Period context. W hile serving with a discipleship ministry in greater Africa, he began to use Simon Peter as an example of how we develop as disciples of Jesus the Messiah. Then he traveled to Israel, where walking the land made the Bible pop into three dimensions. So, in Breakfast , we have the fruit of Van der Bijl’s own development as a disciple and teacher.

The author achieves his stated goal of not sounding like a commentary. The book reads like a novel but one is certainly learning along the way. The “commentary” is built into the conversations the disciples have as they try to figure out what Jesus is saying. In van de r Bijl’s telling, Simon’s brother Andrew is better versed in the Hebrew Scriptur es and o ften helps Simon along. Sometimes one wonders wh y van der Bijl made a certain creative c hoice, and usually there is a footnote to explain with a Bible reference, a bit of Jewis h background , or an admission of educated conjecture. I so appreciate that Bible referenc es are included throughout but that they are not paren theticals in the t ext. Then o ne ha s the choice to read the story through as one would a novel or to slow down and do a Bib le study.

Breakfast on the Beach is very readable as it is written for use among those for whom En glish is a second or third language. This m akes the book a great tool f or an entry-lev el Bible stu dy. It would work well for high -schoolers and maybe even motivated junior high students. It also makes a great person al devotional for tho se seeking to follow J esus the Messiah more cl osely.