Download or read book The Fourth Gospel written by John Shelby Spong and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-06-11 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling and controversial bishop and teacher John Shelby Spong reveals the subversive, mystical wisdom of the writer of the Gospel of John and how his teachings point us forward in the twenty-first century In The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic, Spong turns his attention to the Gospel of John, the fourth Gospel in the Bible. Contrary to what is most often believed, he writes that this gospel was misinterpreted by the framers of the fourth-century creeds to be a literal account of the life of Jesus. In fact, it is a literary, interpretive retelling of the events in Jesus’ life through the medium of Jewish worship traditions and fictional characters, from Nicodemus and Lazarus to the “Beloved Disciple.” The Fourth Gospel not only recaptures the original message of this gospel, but also provides us with a radical new dimension to the claim that in the humanity of Jesus the reality of God has been met and engaged. This book offers a fresh way to read the Gospel of John and a unique primer about how to be a Christian in the post-Christian twenty-first century.
Download or read book The Mystical Way in the Fourth Gospel written by L. William Countryman and published by Bloomsbury T&T Clark. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is a sustained literary-critical reading of John's Gospel in terms of mystical theology. Arguing that John "is guiding, perhaps at times impelling, the reader along a path that leads from conversion through Christian initiation to mystical enlightenment and union," Professor Countryman suggests that this concern controls the Gospel's literary structure and unity. He demonstrates this argument through a fresh and readable translation of the Fourth Gospel, offering a new way of reading John that has direct relevance to Christian life today. The chapters in the book follow the progress of the would-be mystic from initial conversion through baptism and Eucharist to mystical enlightenment. In addition to this mystical program, and integrated with the narrative of the Gospel, is a theological interpretation of Jesus which explains why he is centrally important for the mystic. "An appealing and attractive interpretation that deserves close attention." Adris Newsletter L.William Countryman is Professor of New Testament at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific and the author of many books, including Good News of Jesus, The Language of Ordination, and Biblical Authority or Biblical Tyranny all published by Trinity Press International.
Download or read book Re Claiming the Bible for a Non Religious World written by John Shelby Spong and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-11-08 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World, bishop and social activist John Shelby Spong argues that 200 years of biblical scholarship has been withheld from lay Christians. In this brilliant follow-up to Spong’s previous books Eternal Life and Jesus for the Non-Religious, Spong not only reveals the crucial truths that have long been kept hidden from the public eye, but also explores what the history of the Bible can teach us about reading its stories today and living our lives for tomorrow. Sarah Sentilles, author of Breaking Up With God: A Love Story, applauds John Shelby Spong’s Reclaiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World, writing that “pulsing beneath his brilliant, thought-provoking, passionate book is this question: can Christianity survive the education of its believers?…A question Bishop Spong answers with a resounding yes.”
Download or read book Why Christianity Must Change or Die written by John Shelby Spong and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An important and respected voice for liberal American Christianity for the past twenty years, Bishop John Shelby Spong integrates his often controversial stands on the Bible, Jesus, theism, and morality into an intelligible creed that speaks to today's thinking Christian. In this compelling and heartfelt book, he sounds a rousing call for a Christianity based on critical thought rather than blind faith, on love rather than judgment, and that focuses on life more than religion.
Download or read book This Hebrew Lord written by John Shelby Spong and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 1993-04-09 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In This Study I Found A Lord, a center for my being. Behind the supernatural framework of the first century...I discover a life I wanted to know; a life that possessed a power I wanted to possess; a freedom, a wholeness for which I had yearned for years."Illuminating the "figure who stands at the center of all the Christian Church is," John Shelby Spong explores Jesus under the light of the Hebrew tradition into which he was born. Candid, personal, and soundly argued, this is Spong's spiritual and intellectual pilgrimaged to the Christ he discovered in Jesus of Nazareth.
Download or read book Honest to God written by John A. T. Robinson and published by SCM Press. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On first publication in the 1960s, "Honest to God" did more than instigate a passionate debate about the nature of Christian belief in a secular revolution. It epitomised the revolutionary mood of the era and articulated the anxieties of a generation.
Download or read book Mystical Christianity written by John A. Sanford and published by Crossroad. This book was released on 1994 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Sanford opens a new door to the Gospel of John and discovers a treasure-house of psychological wisdom. The Fourth Gospel is the most mystic of all the gospels. And Mystical Christianity sheds light on its myriad meanings. It is a book that John Sanford was meant to write.
Download or read book Biblical Literalism A Gentile Heresy written by John Shelby Spong and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A global and pioneering leader of progressive Christianity and the bestselling author of Why Christianity Must Change or Die and Eternal Life explains why a literal reading of the Gospels is actually heretical, and how this mistaken notion only entered the church once Gentiles had pushed out all the Jewish followers of Jesus. A man who has consciously and deliberately walked the path of Christ, John Shelby Spong has lived his entire life inside the Christian Church. In this profound and considered work, he offers a radical new way to look at the gospels today as he shows just how deeply Jewish the Christian Gospels are and how much they reflect the Jewish scriptures, history, and patterns of worship. Pulling back the layers of a long-standing Gentile ignorance, he reveals how the church’s literal reading of the Bible is so far removed from these original Jewish authors’ intent that it is an act of heresy. Using the Gospel of Matthew as a guide, Spong explores the Bible’s literary and liturgical roots—its grounding in Jewish culture, symbols, icons, and storytelling tradition—to explain how the events of Jesus’ life, including the virgin birth, the miracles, the details of the passion story, and the resurrection and ascension, would have been understood by both the Jewish authors of the various gospels and by the Jewish audiences for which they were originally written. Spong makes clear that it was only after the church became fully Gentile that readers of the Gospels took these stories to be factual, distorting their original meaning. In Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy, Spong illuminates the gospels as never before and provides a better blueprint for the future than where the church’s leaden and heretical reading of the story of Jesus has led us—one that allows the faithful to live inside the Christian story in the modern world.
Download or read book The Sins of Scripture written by John Shelby Spong and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the history of the Western World, the Bible has been a perpetual source of inspiration and guidance for countless Christians. However, this Bible has also left a trail of pain. It is undeniable that the Bible is not always used for good. Sometimes the Bible can seem overtly evil. Sometimes its texts are terrible. Bishop John Shelby Spong boldly approaches those texts that have been used through history to justify the denigration or persecution of others while carrying with them the implied and imposed authority of the claim that they were the "Word of God." As he exposes and challenges what he calls the "terrible texts of the Bible", laying bare the evil done by these texts in the name of God, he also seeks to redeem these texts, hoping to recover their ultimate depth and purpose. Spong looks specifically at texts used to justify homophobia, anti-Semitism, treating women as second-class humans, corporal punishment, and environmental degradation, but he also delivers a new picture of how Christians can use the Bible today. As Spong battles against the way the Bible has been used throughout history, he provides a new framework, introducing people to a proper way to engage this holy book of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Download or read book Misreading Judas written by Robert Wahler and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2016-09-17 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book received The New Pinnacle Award The Gospel of Judas is the most important discovery in history. It bridges the gap between Eastern mystic teaching, Gnosticism, and the three Middle Eastern Abrahamic religions, informing all of them. Unfortunately, the Christianity-biased scholars assigned to its interpretation and those who have followed them do not understand it -- at all. They miss that Judas is the gnostic sacrifice, and that there is no traditional orthodox Jesus sacrificed - in the Gospel of Judas or in the Bible. Therefore, they miss the most important revelation of all time: that 'Jesus' didn't die to save anyone, and that he was in truth preceded and succeeded by other Masters of equal stature. Here from gnostic texts that only just recently arose from the desert sands of Egypt, phoenix-like, is the detailed story of how the New Testament canonical 'Betrayal of Jesus' became the inversion of the gnostic mastership installation story of James the Just, first-century savior. The true origin of the Christian message and its nullification of mystic Truth can now, at long last, be fully told. Connecting verses from the Gnostic Apocalypse of James to the New Testament narrative showing that Judas was James in the Canonical Inversions: First Apocalypse of James "I have given you a sign" (NHC 24:10) "gave them a sign" [the "kiss"] (Matt. 26:48). "Cup of bitterness to the sons of light" (25:15) "let this cup pass from me" (Matt. 26:39). "This is the second Master" (30:25) "Those who seek enter through you" (Second Apoc. 55:1) "I know whom I have chosen." (John 13:18). "Then the disciples dispersed, but James remained in prayer" (30:25) "he withdrew and prayed" (Luke 22:41). "I am he who was within me" (31:15) "I know whom I have chosen" and "I am he" (John 13:18-19). "You have embraced and kissed me" (32:5) "He said 'Hail Master!' and kissed him" (Matt. 26:49). "You are aware and stopped this prayer" (32:5) "Sit here while I pray" (Matt. 26:36). "The flesh is weak" (32:20) "the flesh is weak" (Matt. 26:41). "It will receive what has been ordained for it" (32:20) "thy will be done" (Matt. 26:42). "A multitude will arm themselves against you" (33:5) "band of soldiers with weapons" (John 18:3, Mark 14:43). Also by the author: The Bible says Saviors - Obadiah 1:21 from Xlibris Publishers
Download or read book The Fourth Gospel Tales of a Jewish Mystic written by John Shelby Spong and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-06-11 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Shelby Spong, bestselling author and popular proponent of a modern, scholarly and authentic Christianity, argues that this last gospel to be written was misinterpreted by the framers of the fourth-century creeds to be a literal account of the life of Jesus when in fact it is a literary, interpretive retelling of the events in Jesus' life through the medium of fictional characters, from Nicodemus and Lazarus to the "Beloved Disciple." The Fourth Gospel was designed first to place Jesus into the context of the Jewish scriptures, then to place him into the worship patterns of the synagogue and finally to allow him to be viewed through the lens of a popular form of first-century Jewish mysticism. The result of this intriguing study is not only to recapture the original message of this gospel, but also to provide us today with a radical new dimension to the claim that in the humanity of Jesus the reality of God has been met and engaged.
Download or read book Short Stories by Jesus written by Amy-Jill Levine and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-09-09 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The renowned biblical scholar, author of The Misunderstood Jew, and general editor for The Jewish Annotated New Testament interweaves history and spiritual analysis to explore Jesus’ most popular teaching parables, exposing their misinterpretations and making them lively and relevant for modern readers. Jesus was a skilled storyteller and perceptive teacher who used parables from everyday life to effectively convey his message and meaning. Life in first-century Palestine was very different from our world today, and many traditional interpretations of Jesus’ stories ignore this disparity and have often allowed anti-Semitism and misogyny to color their perspectives. In this wise, entertaining, and educational book, Amy-Jill Levine offers a fresh, timely reinterpretation of Jesus’ narratives. In Short Stories by Jesus, she analyzes these “problems with parables,” taking readers back in time to understand how their original Jewish audience understood them. Levine reveals the parables’ connections to first-century economic and agricultural life, social customs and morality, Jewish scriptures and Roman culture. With this revitalized understanding, she interprets these moving stories for the contemporary reader, showing how the parables are not just about Jesus, but are also about us—and when read rightly, still challenge and provoke us two thousand years later.
Download or read book A New Christianity for a New World written by John Shelby Spong and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his bestselling book Why Christianity Must Change or Die, Bishop John Shelby Spong described the toxins that are poisoning the Church. Now he offers the antidote, calling Christians everywhere into a new and radical reformation for a new age. Spong looks beyond traditional boundaries to open new avenues and a new vocabulary into the Holy, proposing a Christianity premised upon justice, love, and the rise of a new humanity -- a vision of the power that might be.
Download or read book Divine Scapegoats written by Andrei A. Orlov and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the paradoxical symmetry between the divine and demonic in early Jewish mystical texts. Divine Scapegoats is a wide-ranging exploration of the parallels between the heavenly and the demonic in early Jewish apocalyptical accounts. In these materials, antagonists often mirror features of angelic figures, and even those of the Deity himself, an inverse correspondence that implies a belief that the demonic realm is maintained by imitating divine reality. Andrei A. Orlov examines the sacerdotal, messianic, and creational aspects of this mimetic imagery, focusing primarily on two texts from the Slavonic pseudepigrapha: 2 Enoch and the Apocalypse of Abraham. These two works are part of a very special cluster of Jewish apocalyptic texts that exhibit features not only of the apocalyptic worldview but also of the symbolic universe of early Jewish mysticism. The Yom Kippur ritual in the Apocalypse of Abraham, the divine light and darkness of 2 Enoch, and the similarity of mimetic motifs to later developments in the Zohar are of particular importance in Orlovs consideration.
Download or read book What Christians Can Learn from Other Religions written by J. Philip Wogaman and published by Presbyterian Publishing Corp. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book's ten easy-to-read chapters show readers what Christians can learn from different religions, achieving insight into love, sin, ritual, the importance of myth to convey truth, the foundational roots of Christianity, the dark side of Christian history and many other important ways to see and interpret the world and to understand God. Original.
Download or read book Unbelievable written by John Shelby Spong and published by HarperOne. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Five hundred years after Martin Luther and his Ninety-Five Theses ushered in the Reformation, bestselling author and controversial bishop and teacher John Shelby Spong delivers twelve forward-thinking theses to spark a new reformation to reinvigorate Christianity and ensure its future. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Christianity was in crisis—a state of conflict that gave birth to the Reformation in 1517. Enduring for more than 200 years, Luther’s movement was then followed by a "revolutionary time of human knowledge." Yet these advances in our thinking had little impact on Christians’ adherence to doctrine—which has led the faith to a critical point once again. Bible scholar and Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong contends that there is mounting pressure among Christians for a radically new kind of Christianity—a faith deeply connected to the human experience instead of outdated dogma. To keep Christianity vital, he urges modern Christians to update their faith in light of these advances in our knowledge, and to challenge the rigid and problematic Church teachings that emerged with the Reformation. There is a disconnect, he argues, between the language of traditional worship and the language of the twenty-first century. Bridging this divide requires us to rethink and reformulate our basic understanding of God. With its revolutionary resistance to the authority of the Church in the sixteenth century, Spong sees in Luther’s movement a model for today’s discontented Christians. In fact, the questions they raise resonate with those contemplated by our ancestors. Does the idea of God still have meaning? Can we still follow historic creeds with integrity? Are not such claims as an infallible Pope or an inerrant Bible ridiculous in today’s world? In Unbelievable, Spong outlines twelve "theses" to help today’s believers more deeply contemplate and reshape their faith. As an educator, clergyman, and writer who has devoted his life to his faith, Spong has enlightened Christians and challenged them to explore their beliefs in new and meaningful ways. In this, his final book, he continues that rigorous tradition, once again offering a revisionist approach that strengthens Christianity and secures its relevance for generations to come.
Download or read book Liberating the Gospels written by John Shelby Spong and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 significance of Jesus. This remarkable discovery brings us closer to how Jesus was really understood in his day and should be in ours.
