Rating: 
Summary: Life changing
Review: I have little to add to the other reviewers but this: Borg gives us an immensely powerful and personal book that, if taken seriously by a reader, can be radically life changing. He gives us Jesus as Jesus was (and is), not the candy-coated pollyanish version of childhood, or the rigid fundamentalist Jesus of television hucksters and political opportunists. I have used this book for adult education classes at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral (Sacramento, Calif.) and it has been a tool for questioning dogma, and addressing the doubts most of us hold but are sometimes afraid to express. Well worth the read
Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended
Review: Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time by Marcus J. Borg is a scholarly but deeply spiritual and understandable work about the "historical" Vs the "biblical" view of Jesus. The author is a Christian, although he was at various times agnostic and atheist. His work puts a radical spin on who Jesus was and what he had to say about God and while it pokes holes in some more commonly held conceptions of God and religion it is not, by any means, a cynical book. On the contrary it is deeply faith affirming! Borg's basic assertion is that our understanding of God and of the Christian life are benefited by understanding, not just the Jesus of faith but also, the Jesus of history. This book challenged and inspired me
Rating:
Summary: A faithful, insightful rendering of the ministry of Jesus.
Review: Marcus Borg, professor at Oregon State University and member of the United Church of Christ is associated
with the infamous "Jesus Seminar". Despite this, he has managed to distill the message and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth into a faithful and inspiring work, giving the Christian message new life without apology or dogma. This book is short, sweet, immensely readable for Christians and non-Christians alike. Borg's writing is enjoyably clear and logical. This is a theological text with serious meat, but "be not afraid" -
it's palatable for everyone.
Rating:
Summary: I gained much from reading this book!
Review: Marcus Borg is the most sensible and sympathetic of the Jesus Seminar scholars I have read. I found many worthwhile insights in this book: the way he links the Gospels and Paul's teaching on grace (though Jesus and Paul also call us to radical moral purity, and Borg sometimes makes meaning slave to etymology), his discussion of meta-narratives, parables, and aphorisms, and the contrast between "conventional wisdom" and "unconventional" wisdom, for example. But the criteria by which Borg judges whether or not a given teaching really is from Jesus are shaky. Does the "Gospel" of Thomas have anything of value to say about the life of Jesus? I doubt it. Why does Borg assume that only material from the Christian "tradition" before 60 A.D. can be trusted? If I were to write about the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, at a chronological distance equivalent to 93 AD, I could easily find eyewitnesses. Why should it have been so much harder for the Gospel writers in 70 AD? Borg's chief weakness may be his habit of working alternatives into what look like false dichotomies, or trichotomies: holiness versus compassion, individual versus political virtue, "belief" versus "action" versus "becoming." (Why not all three? "Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength!") Borg's method of exegesis is often to exagerrate one element in Jesus' teaching, then make that a principle by which to exclude other elements. Borg identifies JS pronouncements with the "scholarly consensus." But many first rank scholars (Wright, Hays, Johnson, Meier, Jenkins, and others) find the JS way of working quite flawed. Borg writes of "pre-critical" and "post-critical" naivitee; but he shows a great deal of what might be called "unidirectional" naivitee. He explains how, as a young man, he discovered Biblical criticism and lost his faith. He later recovered a faith, which, like John Blofeld's faith in the bodhissatva Guan Yin, seemed to have "nothing to do with belief." The problem is, while he learned to treat the Gospels critically, his seminary professors did not seem to teach him to treat their own ideas the same way. Thus, he makes little mention of another kind of Christian that might be called the "post-critical believer" -- the Christian who has read Borg, Crossan, Pagels, Mack, and more radical critics, and come to the conclusion that their methods and conclusions are badly mistaken -- not on theological, but on historical grounds. We post-critical believers can only feel marginalized and a bit ghostly, not finding ourselves among Borg's typology of believers. Borg also attempts to tie the radical compassion of Jesus to his alleged identity as a "spirit person" who experienced mystical unity with God: "There is an intrinsic connection between the boundary-shattering experience of Spirit and the boundary-shattering ethics of compassion." As a student of world religions, I think not. "All we shamans know that the spirits are happiest when we kill people," one Yamonamo Indian is quoted as saying; and certainly the most active spiritism can coexist with the most brutal denigration of women. East Indian advedic gurus and tantric Buddhists often rigidly oppress their followers, and a rich heritage of mystical science did not prevent India fromo sinking into a sinkhole of caste and gender oppression. In fact, the true source of reform and breaking down of social boundaries has far more often come from a strict monotheism -- among the Jewish prophets, Chinese sages like Confucius, the anti-slave movements in the Middle Ages and the Modern West, and even in India and Japan. In the end, as Dr. Borg shares his own story, he seems rather lost to me, following a "Jesus" who is a worthy enough sage, but incapable of inspiring the joyous songs he recalls with tears from his childhood. I feel for him. I think he is quite mistaken about the Gospels. The more I study world religions, the more I am persuaded that Jesus is the Lord of life, who died for the sins of the world, and rose from the dead. I think an honest assessment of the evidence leaves that as the most realistic assessment. I am tempted to echo Dr. Borg's own words, and say, "Dr. Borg, come home, and meet Jesus again, for the first time." author, Jesus and the Religions of Man / christthetao@msn.com
Rating: 
Summary: one of the best of it's kind!
Review: Finally a book that helps bridge the gap between the two worlds: Faith and history / science. Very impressive work!
Rating:
Summary: Very good book
Review: I must say, I was a little bit disappointed with this book, not that it was bad, just that it didn't quite meet my expectations... until I read the last chapter. Wow! The 3 images he gives of the Bible as a whole and how each of those can be viewed as an aspect of a relationship with Jesus was VERY powerful and persuasive. While many seem to be recommending this book to "those who are not satisfied with the images of Jesus they have been exposed to", and while I think that is a worthwhile suggestion, I believe the realization that Jesus is not a figure to passively affirm and believe in... that the historial Jesus would much rather you learn about yourself and your nature and what you can do to become a more spiritually intune person than nod your head yes and keep parroting "I believe, I believe" is a message that everyone could benefit from. Borg succeeds in conveying this idea of a relationship with Jesus as a superior alternitive to faith that is caught up in legalism or literalism. Give this book a chance... You might discover Christianity truly can be as flexible and refreshing as Jesus's teachings themselves.
Rating:
Summary: Allows contemporary Christians to believe with integrity...
Review: There is a deep irony in attempting to interpret thehistorical Christian creeds literally. Those who do this, out a of sincere desire to "follow God", end up committing a grave disservice to those same creeds and scriptures. That is because they are ignoring the larger historical context of those beliefs. Far from
being ingraved tablets of stone that have fallen from the sky, scripture and creeds have a deeply rooted history within growing and evolving communities of faith.
In this book, Marcus Borg explores the cultures in which scripture was written. In this way, we can gain a further understanding of what the texts mean, and why the authors used the words and metaphors they did. Otherwise, we risk reading the Bible into our own subjective and culturally biased set of meanings. By re-exploring the "pre-easter" and "post-easter" Jesus, Borg paints a picture of Jesus, based on scripture, that is relevant and meaningful to contemporary Christians who find little meaning in archaic definitions of God and spirituality.
Rating: 
Summary: A 60's view of Jesus
Review: This wasn't a book that I would have chosen on my own. So, why did I read it you ask? Well, I took a college course and was assigned a paper on Mr. Borg. I actually read three of Mr. Borgs' books (don't ask me how), and feel qualified to give an expert opinion of Borgs' work.
First one must consider Mr. Borgs background. He was raised in a christian home and came of age in the 60's. This would explain his interesting journey through agnosticism, atheism and finally liberalism. Since this book was about his view of Jesus I will not go into the Jesus Seminar, etc. Perhaps the most disturbing viewpoint to me was his view of Jesus as a Sage (Spirit person), like Buddha, and others. Jesus was one who had these moments in another reality or dimension and then was able to share this with others. People around Him, Jesus, could feel this and flocked to Him. I won't even go into the whole Sophia manipulations, etc. I just don't understand how someone can claim to be a Christian and yet deny the deity of Christ. If all of the Bible is not true, then how do you know which parts to believe? I guess you just operate as Mr. Borg does, pick the parts you like. Just suffice to say that I would not recommend this book to anyone, not even to do a research paper on Mr. Borg.
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