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Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes
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In his boldest book yet, Bishop Spong draws attention to the thoroughly Jewish substance beneath the surface of the New Testament.
He challenges traditional Christian understanding by examining the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life and teaching through a Jewish lens. By connecting the Gospels to the style of the mid-rashic literature of Jesus’ era, he shows how the Gospel authors intended their stories to be perceived not as historic accounts of actual events but rather as interpretative narratives about the meaning of Jesus, using images and themes from the Hebrew bible.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.About the Author
John Shelby Spong is Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, and a leading proponent of liberal Christianity. His books include Living in Sin?, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, and Resurrection: Myth or Reality?
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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30 of 32 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Spong argues that the gospels, rather than being eyewitness accounts of the life and acts of Jesus, are constructions of Jesus' life based on the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). In the late twentieth century, as Spong says in his prologue, it is not possible to take many of the gospel writers' events literally. But when we relate incidents and statements to events in the lives of Moses, Elijah, Abraham et. al, and verses in the psalms, we can see that the gospels are "midrashic" interpretations of Jesus' life. That is, the Jewish authors of the gospel are interpreting the life of Jesus according to their original sacred scriptures--the Hebrew Bible. That is the key to reading the gospels: they are not literal accounts of actual events, but midrashic attempts to understand the life of Jesus by connecting it to Hebrew scriptures.
Far from trying to undermine faith in Jesus, Spong says in his final chapter, he is trying to bring back into the Christian fold all those who have left because they cannot rationally accept the gospels as literal history. Spong's book resolves the apparent contradiction between faith and rationality by refering the gospels to their source material in the Hebrew Bible.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
To know the work of Bishop John Spong is, it seems, either to love him or loathe him. This book is probably no exception, though in its introduction he comes across as a man genuinely and endearingly excited by the discoveries he's made in researching it. Drawing heavily on the work of English scholar Michael Goulder, Spong describes how the Gospels are effectively Christian midrashim (creative retellings) of existing Jewish scriptural themes, and can be fitted very closely to the Jewish calendar of the time and its `lectionary' pattern of prescribed Torah readings. So far, so consonant with recent readings of Jesus as a first-century Jew. However, Spong then goes on to show how this very literary approach to the Gospels can - perhaps should - be used (as a matter of some urgency) to move us away from literal readings of, for example, the nativity stories, seminal events like the Sermon on the Mount, and the resurrection. Such an approach, inspired as it seems to be by a genuine desire to make Jesus credible to postmoderns who find 'biblical literalism' impossible to accept, will appeal to some, while appalling others. This book definitely adds another dimension to the debate about the precise nature of Christianity's rootedness in first-century Judaism. Spong takes a very different view from that of scholars like Tom Wright as to the implications of those roots for faith in Jesus today, but is none the less thought-provoking for all that.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I found J. S. Spong's work well written and to the point. This was a persuasive treatise on how to interpret the Gospels. Although the premise isn't new, the presentation of this material is such that anyone interested in this topic will find this work quite readable. The concept and points are clear,but it is not the type of work one rushes through. I give it high grades for its thoughtfulness, logic and presentation.
The only question it leaves me with is how someone can take this view and profess to see Jesus more clearly and intimately. If what Spong says is true, then, we view Jesus only through midrashic glasses. We get a symbolic glimspe from people who never saw.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Spong is a fantastic communicator
I first read Shelby Spong's 'take' on the Bible many years ago in paperback form and am delighted to find so many of his books now available for Kindle (about to re-read them all... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Muzio
An example of bad New Testament scholarship
When I heard the central thesis of Bishop Spong's book - that the structure of the Gospels are based around the Jewish lectionary - I thought, `What a good idea! Read more
Published 9 months ago by JPJP
fascinating and thought-provoking
While some of what Bishop Spong says seems obvious in retrospect (how could the gospel writers have known what happened in closed sessions of criminal courts? Read more
Published 16 months ago by T. W. P. Esq
Christianity without the resurrection is impossible.
All the clever research doesn't get to the root of the fallicity in Spongs' thesis, that 20th century man is smarter than those of ancient times, and that since we KNOW that Jesus... Read more
Published on 20 Feb 2007 by Mark Bickston
Interesting, but doesn't go far enough
This was a very interesting book, but after reading it I was left wondering: why was Spong afraid to follow his thesis to its logical conclusion? Read more
Published on 18 April 1999
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