McCracken argues that the gospels are in an important sense `occasions for offence', and that the Jesus of the gospels is a scandal (skandalon in the original Greek) and never more scandalous than when he speaks in parables. McCracken seeks to recover the gospels' narrative sense of Jesus as skandalon. 'The freshest aspect of the study is its brief concluding incursion into the Fourth Gospel, thought-provokingly portrayed as a narrative of offence ... a book to ponder, not least in so far as our residual experience of its emphasis has been reduced to the weekly hearing of liturgical snippets too often badly rendered.' Neville Clark, The Expository Times