Customer Reviews

What did Jesus Mean?: Explaining the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables in Simple and Universal Human Concepts

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Anna Wierzbicka is the first person who has managed to make me see what Jesus really meant. Unlike most Bible commentators, Wierzbicka does not paraphrase what Jesus said. That is, she does not just replace Jesus' images by other new images, but in plain and simple words she makes explicit the meanings of those images, the presuppositions contained in what Jesus said, the implied negations and refutations, the implicatures, in one word: the deeper intentions of God's acting in and through Jesus. Her greatest merit is that she does not lead us, readers and believers, away from Jesus' words, but again and again takes us back to them with the fuller understanding enabled by her explications. Both for lay people and theologians her universal language, which is based on years of detailed research in many different languages and cultures, is the key to open the meaning of it all

Wierzbicka has relly succeede to make sence of linguistics with this book. She has been able to take away the layers that writers and translators have put on Jesus' words; the layers that have been influenced by time and culture. The book is good for everyone who want to know what Jesus really meant and for anybody who is interested in semantics and theology.

Although this book is also concerned with linguistics, the meditation on Jesus' words is done with such evident spiritual care that the lay person looking for devotional reading will be amply rewarded. I read a lot of work on biblical criticism, and Wierzbicka is terrific on Jesus and women and on the originality of his admonition to turn the other cheek. Wierzbicka canvasses many of the arguments of biblical critics on all points and offers her own, reasoned assessment on the authenticity and meaning of the words.

This is one of the better books I've read on the parables of Jesus and the sermon on the mount. It has helped me in preaching. As I read about the parable of the Good Samaritan, I felt like I was hearing the meaning of the parable in a fresh, clear, and uncluttered way or as the author says, "in simple and universal human concepts." It helped me to preach a sermon on the Good Samaritan in a fresh, clear, and uncluttered way.

It distresses me not to be able to write a rave review for this book. Linguistics and religious language are two of the subjects that I am most deeply interested in, and I'm well trained in both; the need for clarity in religious language is a cause that matters greatly to me. I greatly admire the work of Wierzbicka, who is a superb scholar. I should have loved this book. Unfortunately, I didn't. That doesn't mean that it's not a valuable and important book, with all the necessary scholarly bells and whistles. It's all those things; I'm glad I have it on my bookshelf. But it is so meticulously detailed, and makes the same points so endlessly many times, that it's extremely difficult to read. I wish it had been edited as rigorously as it was written.

I am still reading this book, but have tremendous admiration for the author, being a Roman Catholic Slav, as she is, and an ANU linguistics student, with a keen interest in semantics.