Customer Reviews

Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I am one of the people to whom Borg is referring when he states that a literal reading of the Bible has made it "incredible and irrelevant". I was brought up in a fundamentalist Christian environment, attending church in a denomination that purports to "speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where the Bible is silent", and indoctrinated similarly in a church operated school which censored its curriculum to exclude any view that contradicted its view of reality as seen through a literal reading of the Bible. As Borg stated, I experienced a growing inability to accept this view during early adolescence, which is for most people the time when critical (that is, discerning) thinking is developed. As I studied the knowledge accumulated by science and history, I came to reject the religious views of my childhood as contradictory to settled fact. Having no model of an alternate view available to me, I became atheist.

The peculiar situation I found myself in, however, was that I continued to have a fascination with and curiousity about the Bible. Surely, somehow, there was a way to glean some greater truth from the Bible without having to buy into fantastic and utterly unbelievable claims made by that book. With that purpose in mind, I bought this book along with several others in a similar vein.

This book has been very helpful toward reconciling my non-rational feeling that there is in fact a God or Higher Power and my rational rejection of the bibliolatry practiced by many churches especially here in the deep South. Viewing the Bible as a story of how pre-modern peoples experienced God rather than as a purportedly factual account of supernatural intervention in human affairs goes a long way toward reclaiming the Bible as a spiritual resource. This view can explain why the Bible appears to support such evils as genocide (for example, the extermination of the Amalekites), the subordination of women, and slavery. When such dicta are seen as the co-opting of God to support a cultural bias, rather than being the will of God, deeper messages of spirituality found elsewhere in the Bible can be salvaged. Borg's work encourages the reader to drop an 'all or nothing' approach to the Bible; the inescapable conclusion that portions of the Bible are false does not have to lead to a rejection of the entire scripture.

The introductory nature of this book, and therefore its occasional superficiality, cost it one star in my review. However, it remains an excellent resource for those struggling to rescue some relevance for the Bible and for those who are working to shed the negative religious experiences of their own past.

Highly recommended.

Despite his penchant for catchy titles, Borg is arguably amongst the most accessible Christian theologians writing today. He has the disquieting ability to read the poorly framed questions in my mind, state them crisply, and then provide clear, studied, and believable answers. And he is a careful researcher: in some chapters, the length of the notes section almost matches the length of the text itself.

Occasionally I was left with the sense that Borg rushed his writing in this book; some chapters ended before I was ready to leave the topic. And he made only passing reference to the NT epistles that were not written by Paul. Nevertheless, his discussion and interpretation of Revelation alone was worth the price of the book.

If you are new to Borg's work, I would suggest starting with Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. It will give you an excellent grounding in the central tenets of the faith. And you may find some surprises there. Reading the Bible...... then expands the beachhead to cover the core text of the faith.

I have read the books "The God We Never Knew" and "Meeting Jesus Again" by Marcus Borg and this new book is a wonderful addition to those. All of these works have been mind and spirit opening. I could not put this one down after I bought it.

This book is very intelligently written and the concepts are articulated in a manner that opens the Bible to deeper understandings. Borg brings the Bible to life and reading it in a metaphorical way, within the proper historical framework, enables one to unearth the deep spiritual treasures that are within.

I do not want to go into a deep theological discourse on my beliefs. This is not the place. But I will echo the author's words and agree with him when he says that God is bigger than, or trancends any religion, or any book. I want to move closer to an experiencial relationship with God, not one based on requirements of faith or dogmatic belief. My challenge remains the same. Read any of the books by Marcus Borg...it will change your life...if not that...at least your perspective.

As a pastor from a conservative, evangelical background, I have increasingly become uneasy with traditional ways of understanding the scriptures that I love. Marcus Borg has opened, for me, a whole new way of understanding and reading the scriptures. His "metaphorical" approach blesses something in me that has been jelling for a long time and is helping me find the scriptures more exciting, meaningful, and spiritual than ever before. The idea that everything does not have to be understood literally to have powerful metaphorical and spiritual meaning is something I find quite liberating. I can't say I agree with everything Dr. Borg writes, but I like a lot of it, and am still reflecting on much of the rest of it. Plus, he has freed me to reflect more meaningfully on the meaning of scripture and to preach more creatively in sermons, without feeling like a heretic for doing so. His approach to the scriptures has freed me to hear the scriptures spiritually in a way I never had before. If you're a Christian and not afraid to think new thoughts about the Bible, and you're hungry for some new angles on the faith, this book is fascinating. It is written with warmth and humility. Dr. Borg seems, himself, to be very spiritually minded, even though his approach to scripture and Christian faith may be quite new to many. This is a good book and I recommend it to those open to grow and reflect in new ways.

I have read a number of Borg books and find them all interesting. This book is, however, special. It is a very good overview of the Bible. His theme of taking the Bible seriously but not literally is right on. By getting to the real meaning I am able to get by the incredible parts of the Bible and to let the deeper truth inform my life. I would suggest that you read the Epilogue first. Borg confirms in this his deep belief in God and Christ. He hears and shares three primary convictions with the major voices of the Bible. 1. A deep sense of the sacred. God is not only real but knowable 2. Our lives are made whole by being in relationship with God. Christian Faith is not about believing but about faithfulness to this relationship. 3. God is a God of justice and compassion. Not just campassion for caring for victims but understanding and addressing why there are victims. His vision of the Christian life is tied up in the twin commandments of "love the Lord with all your heart and soul, mind, and strength" and "love your neighbor as yourself.

The first chapter of Borg's work lays down his framework. He distinguishes between natural and conscious literalism and points out that we need new lenses for viewing the Bible. "The older way of seeing and reading the Bible . . . has made the bible incredible and irrelevant for vast numbers of people." Borg highlights four factors contributing to why the older way of viewing the Bible has ceased to be persuasive: (1) religious pluralism, (2) historical and cultural relativity, (3) modernity, and finally (4) postmodernity.

After laying down the framework and pointing out the need for new lenses in the first chapter, in Borg's own words, the second chapter of his book seeks to "describe a way of seeing the relationship between the Bible and God." Borg focuses on four topics in the 2nd chapter: the Bible as (1) a human response to God, (2) as sacred scripture, (3) as a sacrament to the sacred, and (4) finally as the Word of God.

In chapter 3 Borg moves from ways of seeing the bible to "the more specific topic of reading the Bible." He develops a method which he calls a "historical-metaphorical approach." Borg sees the Bible as a combination of "history remembered" and "metaphorical narratives" (which includes "history metaphorized"). Borg also outlines and provides an example of viewing the Bible through the lenses of post-critical naivete in chapter 3. Post-critical naivete is being able to hear the stories as true even if one knows the primary elements of the story are not historical (to Borg 'metaphor is poetry plus, not science minus'). Borg cites the Infancy Narratives of Jesus as an example.

After laying down his framework and methods in the first three chapters, Borg goes on to apply his method to the biblical books in the next 7 chapters. He explores what it means to read the Bible as a combination of history and metaphor starting with reading the creation stories again and ending with reading Revelation again. In Borg's own words, we see "what it means to read the Bible as a true story (and as a collection of true stories) about the divine-human relationship." In the process we are provided with a mini-commentary on the Bible.

Fundamentalists and the more conservative Christians might not appreciate Borg's work because he does not accept the Bible as being directly from God and his notion of what constitutes a Christian is not concerned with the dynamics of believing or not believing. You will not see any "six-day creation" or "do you believe in the trinity" litmus tests from Borg. For Borg, to be a Christian "is not about believing in the Bible or about believing in Christianity. Rather, it is about a deepening relationship with the God to whom the Bible points, lived within the Christian tradition as a sacrament to the sacred." I suspect the reaction to Borg's work is different in the liberal camp and rightly so. Many liberals share his view that certain stories in the bible are not historical and Borg accurately notes in the first chapter that liberal Christians are often better at stating what they do not believe rather than what they do believe. Many who cannot accept the Bible as an infallible and inerrant divine revelation or as coming from God herself, have trouble defining the Bible and understanding its exact nature and relationship to the Christian life. This book helps alleviate a common difficulty by laying down a framework for viewing the Bible that respects it as a source of Christian authority even if it views it as only a human work. Borg helps provide a positive liberal framework for viewing the Bible and for that, I am indebted to him.

Borg argues that the Bible is not divine but points to the divine. It is a lens to see the world. He shows how some passages in the Bible "don't work" or are outdated or proved to be plain wrong. While not being a literalist, he does believe a sacred life can be found in the Christian tradition. One of his major beliefs is that the Bible lays down a struggle between the common man and greedy empires, what he says started in Isreal's revolt against the "agrarian Empire Egypt." For Borg, Christianity rocks the status quo. It cannot be politically conservative and side with those in power if it is to be authentic.

My favorite section is his analysis of Ecclesiastes in which he rejects both the nihilism and "common wisdom" many attribute to this profoundly ambiguous book. He argues that Ecclesiastes, like the Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu in The Tao is encouraging us to celebrate life and live in the present: "To do whatever you do with your might suggest living strongly, not tentatively; living fully, not holding back."

This captures Borg's life-affirming interpretation of the Bible, which must be lived. Belief for Borg is secondary; it's only valuable if it points to a sacred way of living.

I will now read his other books.

Marcus Borg's work should appeal to all who view the Word of God as inspired by the Holy Spirit to reveal religious truths about God, His activity in salvation history, and the manifestation of His Glory in the physical world.

It will not appeal to fundamentalists who insist on viewing the Bible as biography, or history and science texts.

For years I've searched for a book or books written for laymen that intelligently expains the historicity and meaning of scriptures. Well, as you guessed by the title of this review, I found such a book -- Reading the Bible Again For the First Time, by Marcus J. Borg.

The book totals just 321 pages, including three indexes: Subject, Modern Author and Scripture Indexes.

Divided into tree parts, beginning with three chapters specifying Reading Lenses; Seeing the Bible Again; The Bible and God; and a critical chapter for lay-Christians, History and Metaphor.

In Part Two, four chapters are devoted to a fresh modern interpretation of the Old Testament, explaining the Creation stories, the Pentateuch, the Prophets and Israel's Wisdom--each essay an insight into the scriptures as seen through Borg's Reading Lenses.

Part Three focuses on the New Testament, with three chapters looking at the Gospels, writings of Paul and Revelation.

Raised in the Protestant faith and having attended numerous churches and denominations I've never encounter a more refreshing viewpoint, an outlook, a vision that relieves the painful doubts that have haunted me most of my adult life.

Borg's personalized analysis captivates the reader, allowing those of us fortunate to read and study Borg, to read the Bible again for the first time, understanding the true essence of our Christian faith, our Christian life for the first time.

Highly recommended. The book deserves 10, 50 a hundred stars.

This book impressed me in so many ways that the best I can do here is give an overview. Firstly, Borg's attempt to contextualize the historical-metaphorical reading of the Bible is both brief and clear -- he succinctly relates mainstream Christianity's difficulties in reading the Bible literally to the rational approach of modernist thought. Though Borg believes that many of the stories in the Bible are not factual, he sees them as still being profoundly true -- packed with spiritual insights and vividly describing the essence of human interactions with the divine. Ultimately, _Reading the Bible Again_ demonstrates that believing in unlikely or impossible things is not the essence of faith at all. Instead, it recontextualizes faith as a passionate and dynamic relationship with God and cites the Bible an invaluable tool in shaping that relationship.

In the course of the book, Borg successfully shows how putting the Bible in its historical context can, surprisingly, make it much more relevant to the present. The chapter on the prophets is particularly insightful -- he portrays them as God-intoxicated social reformers who are deeply invested in the well-being of their society, much as we now see modern prophets such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. At the close of the book, Borg takes even Revelation -- the book that has perhaps been most co-opted by a fundamental interpretation that strays far from the original intent of the text -- and makes John's message newly meaningful to a society still struggling with imbalances of political and social power.

_Reading the Bible Again_ could easily revolutionize mainstream Christianity's flagging faith. I highly recommend it to anyone who feels they lack a personal connection with the Bible. If literalism is the problem, Borg is certainly the cure.