Customer Reviews

Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes: Freeing Jesus from 2,000 Years of Misunderstanding

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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.

...but a bit drier than some of Spong's other works. My favorite of his continues to be "Rescuing The Bible From Fundamentalism", but this one is certainly worth the read.

Spong's basic message is, essentially, that it is a mistake to try to force literal belief in the events of the bible; doing so is almost impossible for a modern, educated person, and the effort distracts us from the actual message of the book and of Christianity in general. The message of Christianity is love and joy and goodness; all else is window-dressing. This is a message that is difficult for most Christians to accept, and many who DO accept it come to a point at which they no longer define themselves as Christian, because the vast majority of those who call themselves Christian would not accept the commonality of their religious outlook. But this is the religion that Jesus taught, and Spong strives mightily to help people remember that the key to Christianity is to follow the teachings of Jesus, and that one cannot do that by blindly following what others have claimed were the teachings of Jesus. One must study the history of the writing of the Bible, in order to learn the truth of how certain passages came to be included, in order to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. If one doesn't do so, if one uncritically accepts what traditional teaching claims for the bible, one loses the power that originally led to the Christian movement, and is left with silly children's stories.

Not a book for those who wish to cling to a security blanket of a religion. But an excellent book for a mature reader who wishes to understand the real meaning of Christianity more fully.

I had long ago come to the conclusion that the Bible was not literal history but had been written as an expression of religious experience. However, I have never been clear about the particulars of this process. Spong presents the most common-sense and well-supported theory for how the Gospels were written that I have ever encountered. I am amazed by how clearly the arrangement and content of the Gospel stories fit into the liturgical calendar of the Jews. The use of Old Testament material to interpret the life of Jesus becomes obvious through Spong's unrelenting barrage of evidence. Spong makes such a strong case that only the most stubborn and narrow-minded fundamentalist could completely deny the theory put forth in this book. The book also sheds light on the writing of Acts and the epistles. I would love to see a future book dealing with the book of Revelation. By liberating the Gospels from a long history of cultural misinterpretation in a format for the popular reading public, Spong has done so much--through this and his other books--to liberate the Christianity and faith of so many in this secular age. This is a book to be studied as well as read. Like Spong's other books, it includes a detailed bibliography for those who wish to explore the subject further.

Most Christians read the Gospels as Gentile scripture, unaware that the authors and the intended audience were all deeply Jewish. Bishop Spong clearly illustrates how the Gospels originated as a continuance of Hebrew scripture, how they were developed in a uniquely Jewish literary tradition, how they functioned as a part of the Jewish Sabbath worship, and finally how they fell victim to an exile among the Gentiles.

Interpreting the Gospels in this context leads the reader to many new conclusions about the early days of Christianity, and further opens the possibility that the real value of the Bible is not in its accuracy as a literal historic document.

This was the first book of Bishop Spong that I have read and it is easy to see why he is controversial. People have been burned at the stake for saying a lot less than the good bishop. His is a radical but tightly reasoned scholarship which sweeps you along with him, like it or not. He begins with what should be obvious--the gospels are Jewish books, written by Jewish believers for other Jewish believers, at a time when the church was still a largely Jewish community. He presents the fascinating thesis that the Gospels were never written as--never meant to be--eyewitness accounts, but midrashic stories meant for use in the developing Christian liturgy. By this word--midrashic--he refers to a kind of Jewish teaching story, in which legendary accounts are used to convey deep spiritual truths. A story about Abraham and his father, for example. Or, what did Abraham tell Sarah after he returned from the "sacrifice" of Isaac. No one expects these stories to be factual accounts, that is not their purpose. Spong has done his homework and he draws the reader through a meticulous accounting of how the Gospel stories were constructed out of biblical (i.e. Old Testament) materials, to form a cycle of readings for the Jewish liturgical year. Along the way he shows how the developing rift between the young Jewish church and orthodox Judaism affected successive New Testament writers and laid the groundwork for centuries of bitter prejudice against the Jews.
Spong takes the same sharp knife to all the Gospel materials--the birth stories, Joseph, Judas, the passion, the crucifixion, and the resurrection. When he is finished there is not much left of the literal Gospel record. Not much that can be thought of as eyewitness accounts or factual history.
Yet he remains deeply spiritual, deeply convinced that someone named Jesus lived and taught and transformed people, set people free, lives among us still. Only he can't be captured in literal-minded thinking.
This is a disturbing book, and for some people it will be extremely threatening, but it is well worth reading.

For me personally, this was one of the five most influential books I've ever read. John Shelby Spong, Episcopal Bishop, has done the world of religious insight an enormous service. He forces open the eyes of our paradigms, and shows us that there are potentially new ways to read the bible that don't force us to throw reason out the window. The rational mind struggles to accept the almost absurdly miraculous world of the bible when it is so clearly unlike anything we experience today. The result is a culture torn between what it believes and what it observes, and we can't make sense out of the two. Spong points out that the Western mind has adulterated the Jewish books of the bible by asking the wrong questions: We should not be asking "Did these things really happen?" (i.e. if this can be shown to be a true historical account, then we can feel confident that it is likewise a true spiritual account). Rather, if we read the books of the bible, especially the four gospels, from the Jewish context in which they were written, we'll learn to ask instead the question, "What does this mean?" That way we are not required to wholesale believe that Elijah was fed by ravens, that Sampson's strength was actually related to the length of his hair, or that Jesus was born of a virgin, turned water into wine, or walked on water. We learn that it is absolutely not important whether or not these things happened in history; what matters is what was the experience of the early apostles as they encountered the divine in the man/teacher Jesus? What did they learn from that encounter, and how did it change the way they behave and how they view themselves in relation to God? To liberate the bible from the fundamentalist thinking of "a literal history is necessery for spiritual credibility," is essential for the Christian ethos to survive in a world where we know with a high degree of assurance that the historical possibility or scientific validity of so much of the bible, especially the miracles, just isn't there. But the meaning, the power, and the truth of the principles shines through, and THAT is what it was always intended to do.

This is not a hard book to read, and does not require a Ph.D. in history or theology. Spong is an easy writer to follow, and he explains himself clearly such that any lay reader can make sense of the insights he shares. If you have ever struggled with the disparity between "Old Testament reality" versus "New Testament Reality" versus "contemporary reality," this will be a book that frees your mind from many of the shackles and chains that have made the bible such a difficult element in your life. For me, it made the bible come alive...

Why did Mark, Matthew, Luke and John describe Jesus as they did? Were they simply under such euphoric idealism that they ignored reality, inventing stories that defy physical reality, acting as deception? This is not the case. And since this is not the reason, then why such miraculous stories of those such as a transfiguration and temptations by the Devil in the desert? There is an amazing answer that was formulated from a series of attempts by various theologians, B.W. Bacon, Austin Farrer, later scrapped, until Michael Goulder's thesis and later, John Shelby Spong's continuation of Goulder's analysis. Yet this thesis is not widely accepted as of yet among the mainstream theological community. That is, the seeing of the Gospels through Jewish eyes. It is here that one is revealed the midrashic method of description that correlates the story of Jesus to conform with the Jewish calendar and subsequent Jewish festivals that are so intrinsically bound to liturgical readings read in Synagogues each Sabbath, covering each (originally lunar) year. In Spong's Book, Liberating the Gospels, a full analogy on this thesis is presented, along with much more earlier and detailed writings of Michael Goulder.

It is an extremely enlightening look, an eye-opener, at why the Gospels were written and how they fit into the Jewish teaching and framework of liturgical life. It supports the fact that the stories were not literal, nor attempts to be so, but stories that repeat earlier ones in the Hebrew scriptures, acting as midrashic stories for liturgical purposes. John Shelby Spong is one of those writers that takes the mundane and brings it to life, in exciting vigor that forces one to think. A born writer.

I have grown up within the Roman Catholic tradition, and I plan to stay there. However, I guess I am a Cafeteria Catholic. For example, I don't believe that the pope or the Magisterium is infallible, that it makes any sense to ban women from the ordained priesthood, or that I literally munch on Jesus when I receive communion. Most Catholics don't believe those things. I believe the proclamations from Rome have become increasingly nonsensical in recent years.

I am aware that Catholic biblical scholars are among the best in the world, but as I visit parishes on my travels, I have become increasingly aware that essentially no priests show any awareness of this scholarship. Judging from their homilies, Catholic priests seem to be biblical literalists. I have actually heard priests muse over the "real" nationalities of the magi and rail against the evils of the Jesus Seminar. Surely, they must know better!

I work at a university with educated people, who find it amusing that Catholics and other Christians believe that Jesus popped into the world miraculously without damaging the hymen of his mother and that they are eating the literal body and blood of Jesus when they receive communion. I personally know the gospels make good sense, but not the way my Church represents the gospel to my colleagues of good will. My Church has served as a barrier to keep these people from even hearing the real gospel that Jesus preached.

I presume Christians who are not Catholics have experienced similar problems.

And so it was with a sense of relief and hope and joy that I read John Shelby Spong's Liberating the Gospels. Spong's basic tenet is that the gospels were written by Jews as Jewish liturgical readings to accompany the Jewish liturgical cycle that was prevalent at the time the gospels were written. This means that these texts cannot be understood without understanding that Jewish perspective, and Spong introduces us to that framework.

The main importance of Spong's thesis to people like myself is the realization that very little in the gospels was ever intended to be "true" in a literal sense without considering the original Jewish context. Spong's insight relieves people from the dilemma of having to either reject to choose between (a) believing simplistic nonsense and (b) rejecting the bible. Spong suggests the reasonable alternative of looking at what the gospel writers really intended to say.

The "truth" lies in the insight that arises from understanding what the authors meant by these texts. Spong pursues this thesis to its logical conclusion: not even the resurrection narratives are intended to refer to a literal resurrection event in which the dead Jesus came back to life in the same body in which he used to walk the earth. That will sound like a denial of faith to some Christians, but to Spong (and to me) it is a source of inspiration. It gives us a basis for integrating the true meaning of the bible with our modern thought processes.

Post-Jewish gentile priests, bishops, popes, theologians, philosophers, painters - all of these people have tried to build a "Christian" faith on a wrong basis, because they failed to take into consideration the Jewish framework within which the scriptures were written. The result has been a literalist interpretation of the gospels which has become increasingly nonsensical in the modern world. On the other hand, many Christians (including Catholics) have had the insight to realize that it is the spirit of the gospels that is important and that some of the erroneous conclusions (that women can't be ordained, that the Church leaders can never make a mistake in matters of faith and morals, that women cannot be priests, etc.) must be corrected. What Spong offers is a biblical basis for correcting some of these erroneous and even outrageous tendencies.

The chief flaw I saw in the present book is that it insists that the gospels can be understood only from a Jewish perspective. The problem is that it is simply not very likely that many modern Christians will know enough about that perspective to be able to read the gospels insightfully - or that they will want to take the effort to learn. Indeed, I am not sure it is worth the effort. At the end of this book Spong suggests that what to do next will be the topic of another book. I look forward to that next book.

I was born and raised as a Christian. I was a "Bible-banger" (if you'll excuse the phrase) for a lot of that time. But always, in the corner of my heart, there was a ton of unfocused doubt over whether I truly believed what the Church and the Bible had to say about the way Jesus was, and subsequently, the way that we were supposed to live. This book opened up both my mind and my heart to the possibility of a greater - albeit logical - understanding of Jesus and what it means to be a Christian. I can't say that the book brought me back into the fold, so to speak, but it's insight and FINALLY logical interpretation of the scriptures helped me to see that "there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy". It leaves room for not only intellectual debate (without fear) in Christianity - a VERY important development - but it allows for people drawing their own conclusions about what the scriptures and the life of Jesus means to THEM, as opposed to what someone else has told them it should mean. It freed me to begin my own spiritual search, away from the binding chains of what my childhood religion taught me. It was infinitely helpful in my continuing search for the One True God. I am very proud to have been raised in the Episcopal tradition from which the open and forward thinking of Bishop Spong has come. I owe my thanks to him for showing the Christian world that there is more than one definition of faith, and more than one way to find it.

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? He shows that many if not all of the events in the life of Jesus (as told by the gospels) are drawn from the Jewish scriptures. As are most of the characters in the gospels. At the end of a long chapter on Judas, Spong writes: "When we confront the results of our study -- which reveal that all of the biblical details of Judas' life appear to have been shaped by the Hebrew scriptures... - then we ask with renewed urgency whether Judas himself could still be thought of as a literal figure of history." Mind you, the thesis of the entire book is that all of the biblical details of Jesus' life appear to have been shaped by the Hebrew scriptures as well. Shouldn't this lead us to ask, "with renewed urgency" whether Jesus himself can still be thought of as a literal figure of history? No, according to Spong -- don't even go there. But that is, for me, the inescapable conclusion of this book: the Jesus character may be just as fictional as Judas.