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.
Rating: 
Summary: A fine exposition of a humane Christianity
Review: The author begins this book by giving an overview of his own bouts with scripture from Childhood to adulthood. He grew up in rural North Dakota and was schooled in traditional Lutheran doctrines. He started to emerge from the state of precritical naivete in his teenage years and started applying the scientific method in discerning the accuracy of the bible for himself and came dangerously close to the notion that it was all merely a bunch of folk stories passed down by generations in ancient Palestine. He learned more about varying interpretations of the bible at his lutheran university and seminary school and eventually decided to devote himself to studying Jesus but his doubts remained. To make a long story short, he resolved those doubts many years ago. He is one of the premiere Jesus scholars in the country. In brief he argues that the evidence shows that Jesus was a mere human being who did not believe that he was divine or the son of god or preached that the world was coming to an end. Such was how the Christian community in the decades and centuries after Jesus's death chose to put down his messages in the gospels and elsewhere, adapted to their own time and spiritual experiences. Jesus was a spirit person, Dr. Borg writes, one who experienced another layer of reality than other humans, one who had visions of such reality. Such visions are common writes Dr. Borg, accross the great religions of the world, within the context of their own cultures. They all experienced god as he is found in nature and in other humans; he is all around us, not merely somebody up in the sky. Jesus was a spirit person. Throughout the bible, particularly Proverbs, the Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach, the spirit is spoken of as what translates into Greek as Sophia. Jesus is recorded in the New Testament as refering to himself as a child of Sophia. In Chapter 5 "Jesus, the wisdom of god" he connects the passage on "logos" in the book of John to the previous discourses about Sophia being with god during the creation of the world and imbibed with his wisdom and power since logos or "word" is spoken of in the same way as Sophia. The spirit of Sophia eventually "became flesh and dwelt among us." In other words Sophia inserted herself into human beings, there for inviduals to discover if they tried. He writes "Jesus is the incarnation of divine Sophia. Sophia became flesh. " Jesus is called the child of Sophia, a child of the spirit, as he is called "son of god," "lamb of god," "the word of god"and other metaphors. There is certainly no actual evidence that he was actually biologically descended from god or was a lamb or whatever. His vision is one of compassion. He is against applying the old Jewish purity system in Christianity; after all this is what Jesus fought against. He writes that what little the bible says about homosexuality, in Leviticus in the old testament, is rooted in that purity system of the second temple period. Jesus, in the tradition of the Old testament prophets was against conventional wisdom. Using the wisdom of Jesus and the philosophy of Paul, Dr. Borg advocates neither "believing" in Jesus nor following a bunch of rules to get into heavan. It is necessary to "know" God, to become a spirt person like Jesus. "To know" in Hebrew remarks Dr. Borg is the same word for sexual intercourse. One can feel something like the estacy people may or may not feel in the latter in knowing God. In cahapter 6 "Images of Jesus," he argues that the bible "priestly story" has been subverted into a tool of theological docility. This message of deliverance from sin is not meant to be a justification for pouring out one's soul to pastors and being absolved by them but one of personal freedom. Freedom from the burden of having guilt over one's past sins. God loves all of us no matter what. The same with the story of the deliverance from slavery of the Jews and their Babalonyan exile. The latter two tend to be downplayed in the Christian tradition; they talk about freedom from slavery, metaphors journey towards spiritual freedom freed by constraints and so on. Not that he was really a feminist, but Jesus was against the subordinate status of women in the second temple period. Women were to a large extent segregated from men in public life and adult women had to be veiled. They couldn't be educated. He had a large number of lady followers, whom he accepted on equality. Paul too did so; in an endnote, he writes that many scholars have come to believe that Paul did not write the "anti-woman" passages in 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. It may have been written several generations after Paul by a supposed disciple of him seeking to subvert his message. Jesus was a Jew, he notes. His early followers were Jews. Most of the authors of the New Testament were Jews. A small band of Jewish collaborators with the Romans played a role in his execution. He was in a line of tradition of the Jewish prophets of the old testament subverting the status quo and conventional wisdom. It seems quite amazing how many Christians do not know of Jesus's Jewishness. In an endnote, he quotes the author Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza on her experience in teaching an adult education class at her parish where she had a difficult time convincing her class of Jesus's Jewishness and one of her students responded "But the blessed mother for sure is not" i should say that I am well within the agnostic camp. This book did not change that. I was compelled to read this in a religous class at my secular Lutheran university. I'm not convinced about the divinity of the experiences of "spirit people." This is a scholarly book with a prose style that can be slightly dry in the second half of it.But societies could certainly not go wrong, certainly no worse than they are now, following the version of Christianity in this book.
Rating:
Summary: A sad book but something that is prevelant in this society
Review: Well this is yet another one of the "liberal Christian groups" kind of writings and works that confuse the masses and take them away from the true Freedom that the Bible speaks of by Jesus being the One and Only True Son of God and through virgin birth, life, ressurection, can bring salvation...and is the only one who can bring salvation... This book and many of its ilk say its ok to be Christian but you gotta believe that "most" of the Bible is false. If most of the Bible is false...if youre not going to believe Jesus is who he says he was in the Bible...then you have no right to call yourself a Christian or a follower of Jesus. This book is "comfortable" for those who want to be "comfortable" in their political correctness. Oh yes its ok to be homosexual, to have abortion, to not believe in the deity of Christ...that there's no such thing as the Devil or Sin...as long as youre all comfortable. That's what counts in the liberal Christian church of Borg and his cronies. Not that I am a hater of gays, not that I am someone who destroys abortion clinics---no that's not true Christianity. To be Christian you love the sinner but hate the sin itself. You dont judge or throw hate around but you also make a firm foundation of Biblical life and living. I mean I have had friends who are both gays and have had abortions, they know I disagree with those choices but I still am there to help them as a friend. Books like this one and those spoken about in the Jesus Seminar and giving backing to the Jesus Seminar are dangerous to those who might be brought to the fold of God. These kind of beliefs say that Jesus is just a Man, was a "holy teacher" but not perfection as the Gospels like to say. Of course they love the Gnostic books because the Gnostic books often spout out New Age beliefs and utter nonesense (if they were really that important they would have been a part of the Bible people!). Yes I have read Borg's works, and I understand that he truly feels and believes he is speaking true spirituality. But this kind of blindness is the most dangerous as his heart is in the right place in wanting to share his spirituality but his spirituality is fraud and filled with holes because they are not found on straight Biblical truth of createionism, on Jesus being the Son of God, of miracles and ressurection. To be a Christian is to be free by way of the blood of Christ. To be a real Christian you must believe not just because the Bible says or your Minister/Priest says its so...but because you have come to that intellectual and intelligent decision by weighing the evidence. Read books like How Now Shall I Live by C. Colson; read books like What if Jesus Had Never Been Born and Why I Believe both by D. James Kennedy. Books such as that show true Biblical truth. People like Borg, sad to say, may have their heart in the right place but they are the false wolves and the false teachers and AntiChrists that Jesus warned us about in the Bible. The Jesus Seminar is a joke. I mean really all they said that Jesus "really said" in the Bible was "unto Caeser Caeser's and to God God's"...well the Bible is truth. There is firm evidence supporting every single part of the New Testament. Archeology, history, etc. Dont believe me? Pick up J. Vernon McGee's Thru the Bible series books and McDowell's New Evidence that Demands a Verdict. Hate to say this, but the Bible is 100% true, from Genesis to Revelation. The Bible is the 100% word of God, from creationism to the final judgment of the sinners at the White Throne to the land of joy that will be a blessed gift to all who believe in God through Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. If you dont believe it, but you say your a Christian, sorry but you are only fooling yourselves. If you do call yourself a Christian but believe in Sophia, believe that Jesus was only a Man (I would suggest then that you read C. S. Lewis's work to correct you on that), then you have let Satan blind you. To be a true Christian you must believe what the Bible says. You must be born again, not of the flesh but of the spirit, and that you must not allow yourself to be lead astray by people like Borg and the Jesus Seminar. Just a note toward the person who mentioned that Jesus is the son of Sophia. That is goddess worship and thus Satanism. Sophia is a politically correst and New Age/Goddess worshipping adaption and "view" of the Bible. It has no clearness in what the Bible is. Wisdom as a "her" is being used as a proverb in itself. It is not as a "manifestation of a personality". Jesus is the Son of God, and Jesus is God...all man (all man in perfection as the second Adam) and all God. There is no manifestation of Goddesses or Goddess teachings in the Bible, except those mentioned as demon worship by those enemies of God and God's people. Some books that I do suggest you read on the other hand are the following: *Josh McDowell's The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict
*D. James Kennedy's Why I Believe & What if Jesus had Never been Born
*Morris's The Long War Against God
*Greg Laurie's Why Believe?
*Erwin W. Lutzer's Cries from the Cross
Rating:
Summary: Love is the answer
Review: I loved this book. I read it twice and took 10 pages of notes. Now I finally believe that Jesus really DOES love me! Phew! I'd always had a nagging little voice saying that maybe I am not good enough since there's no way I can live up to the fundamental literalists view of a "Good Christian" nor can I meet the idolatrous images that mainstream(secular)society puts on a pedestal these days. I now see that it is true that my place is OK, a middle ground where I can experience God's love and worship Him in the Christian tradition without all the human imposed condemnation and judgement that some churches still like to espouse. Those who continue to use the Bible to condemn and judge people who are different than they are, appear to be doing the same things that Jesus came down to dispel. They are choosing to adhere only to certain laws of the Bible and condemn those who look or think or act differently, just as the power/religious elite did in the time of Jesus. Jesus was crucified for his 'impurity' and hanging out with the "wrong crowd" and for his threat to, or disdain for, the status quo that elites had constructed.... After reading this book the Bible makes more sense to me and I look forward to reading the Bible with a fresh perspective. I already have a totally new reverence and love for the Eucharist which now to me means something that makes sense, it's a huge and loving symbol of Jesus/God's acceptance of all humanity at his table. I am a relatively new "believer"(4yrs)and have MUCH to learn, but this book helped me see that I too can take Jesus' hand and He will walk the path with me even though I have the "affliction" of homosexuality and am left handed! God is love and love is the answer.
Rating:
Summary: Soften your heart
Review: This is a profound book, though its simplicity and easy reading blinds us to that reality. The customary saying is that "it's eye opening," but the deeper truth, if you meditate upon it, is that "it's soul opening." Maybe even better, "Spirit Releasing." To come to a humble conclusion about Jesus is not a vice but rather a virtue. A humble Jesus is what we all can become, just a human being, a human being in touch with the Spirit, the Divine. In truth, this is the Kingdom: To Know to Whom You Belong. Read it and for God's Sake, meditate upon it. Don't let its simplicity cause you not to hear what is really being said. Soften your heart.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: Marcus Borg has written a fascinating and accessible book in "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time," which offers a new approach to the Gospels. Some of this comes as the result of the controversial Jesus Seminar. Personally, I've never understood why the Jesus Seminar is controversial, since it seems a intelligent and historical approach to the Scriptures is the way to go. What the Jesus Seminar has brought to light -- and it's about time -- is that much in the Gospels may well have not happened, and the real message of Jesus may well have been obscured by 2000 years of Christian church leaders trying to control its message. Some scholars reject Gospel stories that appear in only one or two Gospels, while reinforcing those stories and accounts that appear in all 4, or in 3 of the Gospels. If they appear in 3 or 4, that indicates a strong possibility of accurate oral history (the Gospels themselves, of course, weren't written down until 35-70 years after Jesus died.). Almost 90% of the fire-and-brimstone rhetoric comes solely from Matthew, for instance. Try as I might, I can't understand why this fact is threatening to people. If you sat on a jury with four testimonials, and only one focused on the violent threats of the person in question, wouldn't you consider a balanced version when considering the other three de-emphasized that? Having said that, I still think Borg is just the flip side of conservatives trying to control the image of Jesus. Yes, it's possible that Jesus was closer to Buddha than to Jerry Falwell, but how can we really know that? The problem lies in the texts themselves, which can be interpreted in such diverse ways. Borg has just as much right to his viewpoints as anyone else, I'm just not sure he's any more "right" than they are.
Rating:
Summary: Deconstruction with a heart
Review: This was the first book I have read by Borg. It will no doubt strike conservatives as radically liberal and at the same time rause eyebrows among dyed in the wool liberals. For this reason it is a good investment.
Borg allows the reader a glimpse into his personal life before beginning his work. I enjoyed the autobiograghy of his faith because it gave an insight into the author's agenda. I usually read with one eye on the text and the other eye on sketches of the author. The following chapters provide a brief overview of the Jesus Seminar only with a refreshing dose of spirituality mixed in for fun. Borg challenges his readers to carefully question the dogma and theology surrounding Christianity and the Gospels. The objective here is not to disprove the reality of Jesus, but rather to re-examine and reconcile the big unanswered questions that impede spiritual growth for many. The process consist of a major deconstruction yeilding a dramatically scaled down Jesus. This Jesus may not have believed he was the Son of God, that he died for our sins, or that he was the only way to the Father. This Jesus was a spiritual healer and prophet who's followers communed with in spirit after His death. This communion caused many of the NT writers to alter the historical (or pre-easter) Jesus into the Christ (post-easter) Jesus. It takes very little faith to believe this concept, so it could serve as a point of return for many believers.
The book provides a refreshing catharsis for true believers who secretly doubted conservative theology, however my fear is that many of the readers will not begin a process of reconstruction. I would recommend reading "Jesus: Two Portraits" (co-authored by Borg and N.T. Wright) for a limited debate on Borg's ideas.
Rating:
Summary: Heresy to the bigot, fresh water to the disillusioned
Review: It's easy for the evangelical-educated eye to see what those of young or narrow christian faith find offensive in Borg's accessible and readable book. Still, such views also miss the point in insightful humour like "Life of Brian" or personal reflections like "The Last Temptation". Borg tries to paint a word-picture of the real Jesus, asking what he personally taught and believed and what, based on his own sayings, lay at the heart of his ministry. The distinction is made between the pre-Easter Jesus - the flesh-and-blood man who taught by word and deed - and the post-Easter Jesus, the focus of organisation of the new christian church. Borg asserts that Jesus' own view was of the need for compassion derived from a daily experience of the living God rather than legalistic purity derived from the rules of the religious status quo. He bravely asserts that Jesus was less concerned about what people believed than about how they allowed the rule of the Spirit and of compassion in their lives. His careful, educated and well-supported analysis leads the tired christian to a new view of Jesus that can reinvigorate faith without demanding the legalistic focus of either liturgy or dogma. I'd recommend this book to anyone who has been involved in the christian church but grown weary of the limited scope of evangelicalism yet knows that God is and that the Hound of Heaven continues to pursue them. It has given me the encouragement to carry on in my faith - maybe it will help you too. There are things to agree with, things to disagree with but the style is gentle and you, after all, are an adult who can make up your own mind...
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