Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith [Paperback]

Marcus J. Borg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2013

Of the many recent books on the historical Jesus, none has explored what the latest biblical scholarship means for personal faith. Now, in Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Marcus Borg addresses the yearnings of those who want a fully contemporary faith that welcomes rather than oppresses our critical intelligence and openness to the best of historical scholarship. Borg shows how a rigorous examination of historical findings can lead to a new faith in Christ, one that is critical and, at the same time, sustaining.

"Believing in Jesus does not mean believing doctrines about him," Borg writes. "Rather, it means to give one's heart, one's self at its deepest level, to . . . the living Lord."

Drawing on his own journey from a naive, unquestioning belief in Christ through collegiate skepticism to a mature and contemporary Christian faith, Borg illustrates how an understanding of the historical Jesus can actually lead to a more authentic Christian life—one not rooted in creeds or dogma, but in a life of spiritual challenge, compassion, and community.

In straightforward, accessible prose, Borg looks at the major findings of modern Jesus scholarship from the perspective of faith, bringing alive the many levels of Jesus' character: spirit person, teacher of alternative wisdom, social prophet, and movement founder. He also reexamines the major stories of the Old Testament vital to an authentic understanding of Jesus, showing how an enriched understanding of these stories can uncover new truths and new pathways to faith.

For questioning believers, doubters, and reluctant unbelievers alike, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time frees our understanding of Jesus' life and message from popular misconceptions and outlines the way to a sound and contemporary faith: "For ultimately, Jesus is not simply a figure of the past, but a figure of the present. Meeting that Jesus—the living one who comes to us even now—will be like meeting Jesus again for the first time."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

All Christianity is, to some extent, idolatrous. Christian worship is a response to a worshiper's image of Jesus, and all images of Jesus fall short of his reality--in the same way that all biographies and portraits fail to depict a whole person. In Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, New Testament scholar Marcus Borg attempts to understand how popular images of Jesus connect Christians to their savior and isolate them from him. Borg writes about his own evolving ideas of who Jesus was, considers the scholarly and popular religious evolution of Jesus' public image, and investigates with special care the effects of Historical Jesus research on contemporary images of Jesus. Meeting Jesus Again is written in an affable, gracious, and unflinchingly honest voice. Borg's description of his own faith particularly exemplifies these qualities, and gives the reader a simultaneously safe and unsettling new perspective on the peasant from Galilee: "[T]he central issue of the Christian life is not believing in God or believing in the Bible," he writes. "Rather, the Christian life is about entering into a relationship with that to which the Christian tradition points, which may be spoken of as God, the risen, living Christ, or the Spirit. And a Christian is one who lives out his or her relationship to God within the framework of the Christian tradition." --Michael Joseph Gross

From Library Journal

Borg (religion and culture, Oregon State Univ.) provides an account of contemporary Jesus scholarship--told in simple language for lay readers--and of his personal struggle to find authentic, mature faith. Here, the historical pre-Easter Jesus and the post-Easter Jesus (whom other writers have referred to as the Christ of faith), or the Jesus revealed by scholarship and the Jesus of Christian tradition are brought together as Borg articulates his own struggle from doubt to faith. His struggle is grounded in contemporary scholarship, personal experience, and "an understanding of the Christian life as a relationship to the Spirit of God--a relationship that involves one in a journey of transformation." Highly recommended.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne (January 1, 2013)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060609176
• ISBN-13: 978-0060609177
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (101 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #232,681 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Marcus J. Borg is professor emeritus in the philosophy department at Oregon State University, where he held the Hundere Chair in Religion and Culture, and author of the New York Times bestselling Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, The Heart of Christianity, The Last Week, and Jesus. He was an active member of the Jesus Seminar when it focused on the historical Jesus and he has been chair of the historical Jesus section of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

150 of 166 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A new faith - for after the shipwreck!, October 11, 2000

By 

Peter A. Kindle (Kansas City, Missouri) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith (Paperback)

Conservative and evangelical Christians often attack the audacity and impiety of the Jesus Seminar. Just imagine - a collection of scholars proposing to vote on the authenticity of the New Testament record of Jesus life and words! As one once anchored in contemporary fundamentalism, I find it easy to understand this offense.

Borg challenges this reaction. He writes with a sensitivity, honesty and spirituality that is much to be admired. Like so many others, he found traditional and conservative beliefs about Jesus unsatisfying in early adulthood. His personal hold on traditional Christian beliefs waned as he embraced a modern worldview and liberal religious scholarship. He became a closet agnostic, then a closet atheist. Yet, Borg was somehow drawn to always keep searching. This book is a record of his search; a moving description of Truth as Borg has found it; a very personal answer to the question, "Who is this Jesus?"

His essential premise involves the importance, even primacy, of our personal image of Jesus. Is Jesus the savior who requires faith? Or, is Jesus a great teacher of moral ideals? Borg rejects both in chapter one. Borg imagines Jesus as one to whom spirit, and the experience of spirit, was foundational. Accordingly, Borg does not understand the Christian life to be "about believing or about being good .... It is about a relationship with God that involves us in a journey of transformation."

Reconstructing the pre-Easter life of Jesus with historical criticism, Borg explains that Jesus was a spirit person (chapter two), a social prophet and movement founder (chapter three), and a teacher of wisdom (chapter four). In these chapters he does not heed the consensus opinion of the Jesus Seminar, but provides his personal conclusions with sensitivity to their implications for the Church and Christian life.

The concluding chapters (five and six) deal with the metaphorical use of language in Christology and the macro-stories of Scripture as imaginal material for contemporary living of the meaning of Scripture.

In 1 Timothy 1:18-19, two are mentioned by name, Hymenaeous and Alexander. Their faith had become a "shipwreck" (KJV). Today their name is legion. I recommend this book for anyone who feels the water leaking in. There is more to the experience of God than conformity to denominational patterns and the exaltation of obedience. Let Borg point the way for you, too.

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I gained much from reading this book!, March 11, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith (Paperback)

I am glad I read this book. I think it has helped to redirect my search for God and to help me rebuild my faith in Him, so that I move from a fearful relationship with an angry Supreme Master to one with a loving Supreme Parent.

I first read the Bible cover-to-cover on my own as a youngster. This was probably not a good thing, as I mostly came away with an impression of an Angry God. And I certainly was in no position to understand at the tender age of 11 the cultural background of the world of the Hebrews or Jesus.

The trouble is that in some ways reading about the life of Christ is a bit like reading a mystery. Sure you can read the book again, but you already know whodunit the next time you go back to it, and having that knowledge changes the way you see things from then on. "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time" has clarified for me the difference between pre-Easter and post-Easter Jesus. Before this when I reread the Gospels and looked over what Jesus said or did prior to his death and resurrection, I looked at it as though He was the post-Easter Godly Jesus the entire time, that He was always God right from the get-go. Now I am looking at Him more in the sense of His humanity as it was recorded in the first 3 gospels. When I stop to think about it, I expect He was a pretty normal kid, and I am not sure that He really saw Himself as God as that point waiting around to be worshipped. Rather I do think He was very much a man constantly in touch with His Father, so I am giving more consideration to the example He set where he showed me how to live and how to be in touch with the Father all the time. (Or at least try to be.)

Also, as a woman who was raised in a Baptist church, I was always hurt and angry at the way women seemed to be second class citizens, and folks always seemed to back up the reason for this with Scripture. But Borg's book showed me that there was a possibility that God has a feminine side (His Wisdom or Sophia) and that this idea of femininity was dropped in translations made from the Greek texts. Perhaps that does not mean much to some, but to a girl who heard most of her life how everything was Eve's (and therefore women in general) fault, it meant a lot to me.

I also appreciated Borg's information about purity codes and particularly about how Jesus confronted the Pharisees about their mile long lists of who was ok and who was not and how badly they treated those on the "not ok" list. I can see that this type of thinking is still present in many churches today, which is too bad. A relationship with God should not be about following rules, rules, and more rules but rather about his Grace. I wish I had known this years ago, so that I might have actually _felt_ God before now.

So I would recommend this book to people who feel that they are just going through the motions at church (or have given up on church altogether) but could use some fresh insight to get their search for God jumpstarted again. It's also good for folks who are just starting out on the path of Biblical scholarship. However, people who believe the Bible is inerrant may be uncomfortable with some of the ideas presented in this book. It doesn't mean they should not pick it up, but they should be forewarned that they may find their beliefs tested.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Gospel Study Companion, March 9, 1998

By 

Shawn Cheadle ([e-mail]) (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith (Paperback)

In addition to its insightful and new views of the historical versus Biblical Jesus, Marcus Borg's book serves as an excellent companion to beginning Bible study. What I found most helpful was Borg's explanation of "how" Jesus taught, especially the in-depth study of the aphorism and parable formats. Sermons across the globe have connected Jesus' teachings to life as we know it, but rarely do they explain how Jesus taught. Also, Borg helps us to understand the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), and how and why they are different from John. The understanding of the larger picture, that is, the relationship of the four Gospels and the tools Jesus used to teach, necessarily preceed one's understanding of "what" Jesus taught, and continues to teach. At least one United Methodist Bible study group here in Denver, Colorado, is actually studying Mr. Borg's book in addition to the Gospels. Thanks to Mr. Borg for an outstanding book!