Since its original publication in 1994 as a two-volume hardcover boxed set, "The Death of the Messiah" has lived up to early expectations and become the benchmark by which any future study of the Passion narratives will be measured. Raymond E. Brown's masterful study examines every detail of the four Gospel stories of the final agonizing days of Jesus' life. Where others simply describe the accounts of the death of the Messiah as if they were one seamless whole, Father Brown reads and explains each Gospel on its own terms and elucidates the themes that make each one unique. "The Death of the Messiah" is the ideal complement to Brown's Birth of the Messiah, as thorough and expert in its handling of the Passion narratives as his book on the infancy narratives of the Gospels.