Valentina Following the Trail of Jesus

To answer a question her nine-year-old daughter asked her, she wrote a book. The question posed was not a very simple question: "Mom, did Jesus really exist?" That was how Valentina Alberici, 42 years old, with a degree in Business Administration and Management from Bocconi, working for a company in the IT banking sector, published a book, 'Gesù è davvero esistito?' (Did Jesus Really Exist?). It is now in bookstores, and was published by editor Edizioni Sanpaolo. Valentina, who was born in Piacenza and living in Parma, and has a passion for local history and literature, was the daughter of a professor in economics and a teacher of the humanities. She chose economics "perhaps because at the time I was more interested in this field, or perhaps because it ensured me better prospects for the future," she explains. But she never gave up her other interests, and locally she is known for her research in the arts and history, with complex works such as "Correggio's Frescoes in the San Giovanni Evangelista Church in the Context of Medieval Liturgy," or the series of encounters in 2010 on the figure of "Mary Magdalene in Art and History."

"I started working on the book to answer my daughter's question, and at the beginning it had a mostly 'household' aim. But the more I went ahead with research and writing, the more I realized that I was creating something interesting."

That's why she decided to propose the book to Sanpaolo without any prior connections in the publishing world, through a simple email. It was 2009, and after the publishing house responded favorably, she began working on the final draft. "It took almost two years before printing and distribution in bookstores," says Valentina, "but now I'm happy I went through the process."

The volume, which is aimed at young and old alike, is a long voyage around the world on the trail of Jesus, focusing on the places where these trails can be seen with the naked eye. "At each stop, from Florence and Manchester to Sinai and Ann Arbor, Michigan, and many others, there is a brief guided tour of the place, then the reader is guided to personally see the reason it was chosen as a stop, inviting them from time to time to dress the part of a papyrologist, archeologist or detective," continues Valentina. Valentina Alberici has been on this trip only virtually for now, even though she has traveled to some of the places, such as Egypt, in the past. "After all," she says, "if I think about, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, for example, where there are two very important papyri, you can see them through a very complete internet site, while if you actually go there, you need permits which are very difficult to obtain, otherwise the documents can't be accessed."

Did the book she produced, simple but not banal, suitable for adults as well who are seriously seeking an answer to this question, satisfy the curiosity of Valentina's daughter? "I would say so," explains the author, "even if reading it over she asked me lots of other questions, which could provide the impetus to write something else." And to answer the question of whether Jesus really existed and who he really was, Valentina doesn't actually answer: "The book has an open ending..." The only thing left is sit down and read it.