Liberating the Gospels

by John Shelby Spong

Book Overview

In this boldest book since Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, Bishop John Shelby Spong offers a compelling view of the Gospels as thoroughly Jewish tests.Spong powerfully argues that many of the key Gospel accounts of events in the life of Jesus--from the stories of his birth to his physical resurrection--are not literally true. He offers convincing evidence that the Gospels are a collection of Jewish midrashic stories written to convey the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060675578
• ISBN13: 9780060675578
• Release Date: November 1997
• Publisher: HarperOne
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.4" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Interesting ideas, but problematic

The underlying premise of this book is that what the Bible says cannot possibly be literally true. The author claims, therefore, that it must just be allegory designed to incite feelings and sentiments. The claim is that specifically the Gospel accounts have no historical accuracy and were not intended to be eyewitness accounts. However, he fails to notice that Luke's gospel starts with exactly the claim that he is using eyewitness accounts to write an orderly history. His central idea that the gospels were written as lectionaries with the Jewish liturgy as the organizing theme is interesting and insightful, but his conclusion that this makes none of what they wrote literally true does not follow. Paul in particular makes the claim that these things really happened. While I found some of the ideas here interesting, the conclusions are an attempt to rewrite history and conflict with internal evidence from the texts he examines. This makes the book probably not worth reading unless you want to understand liberal arguments in order to refute them or want to be persuaded that the Bible is pure bunk.

Why Did The Gospel Writers Claim Such Unrealistic Events?

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.

Open Your Eyes Wide!

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...

A Liberating View of the Bible

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.

Excellent alternative explanation to the writing of the gosp

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.

A Jewish basis for understanding the Christian bible.

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