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

Is being a Christian about believing and being good? That was the understanding that Marcus Borg grew up with in the Lutheran Church. He now sees the Christian life as a relationship with the Spirit of God on a journey of transformation.A professor emeritus of religion at Oregon State University, Borg describes the deconstruction of his faith when he attended seminary. There he learned that the gospels are not a transcript of God’s words, but a record of the developing tradition of the church. He also learned that Jesus had not always seen himself as God’s son who would save the world. “There was a sharp discontinuity (rather than a continuity) between the historical Jesus and the Christ of the Christian tradition.” His book addresses how modern biblical scholarship affects faith and spirituality.Borg learned about stark differences between the synoptic gospels and the gospel of John. In the latter, Jesus speaks mainly about himself and his divinity, while in the former he does not speak mainly about himself or claim divinity. John’s gospel, which was written last, is about the Christ of faith rather than the historical Jesus; the two were quite different. This led Borg into a scholarly career searching for the historical Jesus, whom Borg calls the pre-Easter Jesus.That Jesus was Jewish, his scripture was Jewish, and his disciples were Jewish. He saw his mission as within Judaism, not creating a new religion. The pre-Easter Jesus consistently pointed to God, not to himself. In other words, his message was theocentric, not Chistocentric. With a focus on the sacred and the Spirit, Jesus was in the Jewish tradition of other spirit persons such as Moses, Elijah and Ezekial. As a healer and exorcist, Jesus had the Spirit working through him.In addition to the Spirit, what mattered to Jesus was compassion. He said we should “be compassionate as God is.” While his culture emphasized holiness and purity, Jesus had a social vision rooted in compassion. Making compassion the core value of community was a radical challenge to the status quo. It has been called the politics of compassion because it was about how society should be run. His challenge to the purity system caused conflict with the Pharisees, who wanted to extend purity laws that divided the pure from the impure, the righteous from the sinner, the able-bodied from the handicapped.Borg summarizes the teaching of the historical Jesus this way: “Compassion, not holiness, is the dominant quality of God, and is therefore to be the ethic of the community that mirrors God.” Purity was a matter of the heart, said Jesus, not of outward appearances. The parable of the Good Samaritan attacked the purity system, since death was considered a source of impurity. The priest and the Levite were required to avoid contact with a possibly dead man. The Samaritan, however, was considered very unclean. Jesus regularly violated purity rules in order to show compassion with his radical inclusiveness to lepers, tax collectors and women. “Whereas purity divides and excludes, compassion unites and includes.”Some modern Christians lean toward purity in drawing a line between the righteous and sinners. Rather than using compassion as a paradigm for society, they view it as an individual virtue. Borg contends the Old Testament rejection of homosexuality stems mainly from concern for purity.Christians see Jesus as the son of God, though the doctrine of the Nicene creed had not developed in the New Testament period. Paul and John describe Jesus as the wisdom of God and the lamb of God. Borg points out that we don’t believe Jesus was literally a lamb or wisdom. Those terms were metaphors, he says, as was the son of God.Borg sums up his faith this way: To believe in Jesus need not mean subscribing to a set of doctrines. Rather it is “being in a relationship with the Spirit of Christ.” Discipleship is being on a journey in a community that remembers and celebrates Jesus. We are in a long-term relationship with God that transforms us into more compassionate persons.This book is only 150 pages and easy to read. More technical matters are found in detailed footnotes. Those whose faith is no longer based upon fundamentalist doctrines may find this work illuminating. -30-

Most of us (Americans) have been exposed to one or both of two images of Jesus, the popular image of God incarnate and the secular image of the great teacher. Marcus Borg asks us to meet the man those images were based upon, whom Borg also refers to as Jesus, but whom I prefer to call by his real name, Yeshua bar Miriam. (Greek has no /sh/ sound, so /sh/ got changed to /s/, then the Romans added the Latin inflection -us to make Iesus, pronounced yea-soose. By the time it entered Old English, the initial 'I' had been modified to 'J'. By our time the 'J' was no longer pronounced /y/, the Great Vowel Shift had changed /e/ as in 'yea' to the /ee/ of 'beet', the first /s/ had become voiced to /z/, and the /u/ had been shortened, leaving not a single sound of the original Aramaic 'Yeshua'.) It is Yeshua that Borg invites us to meet, and it is a rewarding meeting.Borg calls Yeshua a "spirit person," which he defines as "one of those persons in human history to whom the Spirit was an experiential reality." This seems to me to be a pretty good description of the Hasidim, and I think that If Yeshua were alive today, he would be a Hasid. I have known two Hasisic rabbis, and both are delightful people, as I think Yeshua, too, would be.I am not happy with the designation "spirit person," because the image it calls to my mind is of one who is not flesh and blood, but just of the stuff of thought. I realize that that is not what Dr. Borg is talking about, and I wish I could think of a brief phrase that would convey just the real phenomenon Dr. Borg is referring to.Borg fleshes out one's picture of Yeshua, so that one can feel toward him more as a real man, someone you would like to have known and respected as a personal friend, rather than just a legend. Yeshua turns out to have been a truly remarkable person, with a keen mind and an extremely charismatic personality. He was so far ahead of his time that centuries after his death, the men in control of the Christian church invented and spread a scurrilous lie about his chief disciple, the "apostle to the apostles," to discredit her, because the fact that Yeshua had chosen her instead of a man was unacceptable to them. Apparently, in their view, God (incarnate in Yeshua) had no business choosing Miriam of Magdala as chief apostle just because she was the best qualified; God should have had the decency to ignore her superior understanding of His message and choose a male instead. To borrow a sentence from Bertrand Russell, 'this view strikes me as curious.'The intended audience for this book is Christians and ex-Christians who find their faith challenged by modern knowledge of the universe, as Dr. Borg's was. Many who are open-minded enough to read beyond page 2 will find a faith they can accept. Others won't, but will still find (as I did) that the book is well worth [email protected]

This book cleared up a lot of messy areas for me. It is scholarly but readable, balanced and illuminating. I felt it brought my fuzzy image of Jesus into sharper focus - as if I was encountering a real live human being rather than a two-dimensional stained-glass image. My only disappointment - and it's unfair of me to be disappointed - is that Borg doesn't extend his story to include the post-Easter Jesus, and give us some insight about the whole resurrection and ascenscion thing, which is all still a bit problematic for me. I wish he'd written a book about all that. But if you want a book talking about Jesus the man, this is great.

I've seen many reviews of this book from a Christian perspective, but as someone with no faith but a curiosity about who Christ was and why he continues to resonate with humanity, I found this to be an interesting and thought provoking read. There is no sense of being preached to, just a very readable exploration of Christ from an angle that removes much of the organised religion "packaging" that has previously always presented a mental hurdle for me. I am investigating Borg's other work on the strength of this book.

This book is brilliant. For anyone interested in deepening their Christian faith this book is a must. It 'unpacks' Jesus in a way that is new, innovative and interesting. It will challenge one's perception of Jesus but if engaged with opens the possibility of a deeper and more unique relationship with him. From a Christian perspective this book should be read by all who call themselves Christian.

Wonderful book, he made me realise that it was OK to question scripture while still journeying towards the ultimate goal of awareness of God and peace of mind.

Im only discovering Borg now and I love his writing style and approach. I may not agree with everything he says but he certainly has made me think