This Hebrew Lord

How does Jesus fit into our lives? The author addresses this fundamental question by attempting to depict Jesus free of the distortions of centuries of religious tradition. To know Jesus one must develop "hebrew eyes" so that one can return to the Hebrew tradition in which Jesus was born and allow that tradition to shed light on Jesus' thoughts, words, and deeds. The author is an Episcopal bishop.

If you ever thought mainstream Christianity has lost sight of God, this book gives you a good general explanation of how this has happened. It has been my catalyst to get my Masters in Theological Studies.

I will say right off that I write this review pretty much as an atheist. I certainly do not believe in much of what the Christian Scriptures have to say regarding miracles. I want to get that out so that any bias I have might be obvious.That said, I think this is an excellent book. Spong writes very well, in a conversational and engaging style. You never feel you are being preached to and you have no doubt at all of this man's intelligence in his writing. Regarding the book, it seems to be showing you Spong's view of Jesus that he has come to accept in order to be an intellectually fulfilled person in this day and age and yet still be a spiritual one. Is this a redefinition of Jesus? To many, that is how it will be perceived. I think to Spong he feels that his view of Jesus is one that actually gets back to what Jesus represented and how the early writers (such as the Gospel writers) were actually representing him. To that end, I would say that Spong does a great job convincing me of the veracity of his vision in the sense that he presents a wonderful life philosophy. The book would do nothing to convince me to believe in the veracity of Jesus, per se, except in so far that one might call this life philosophy by "the Christ". Spong manages to do this, in some fashion, without believing in all the miracle stories of the Bible. At least I feel this to be the case. After reading the book I am not exactly sure where Spong stands on all the issues regarding Jesus' life (he refers you to his later books, which I will definitely read now) but I get the impression that he seems to feel Jesus was certainly more man than some sort of incarnation of the Hebrew Yahweh.Regarding the book content itself, I like the idea of seeing Jesus through Hebrew eyes. I think that really was a mainstay of the book because you always have to look at people from the past in terms of what they represented in their cultural milieu. Spong makes a good case about the gospel writers (some of them, anyway) being influenced by Second Isaiah. That was interesting to me as I had never considered that. However, for myself, I disagreed (tentatively) with some of Spong's conclusions regarding how the gospel writers wrote. His interpretation of that, however, is definitely a good one and worthy of study. For myself, I do not think the gospel writers were as sophisticated as Spong seems to give them credit for but, then again, he does at least present the tendrils of a good case in that regard. I also do not feel that this book takes into account some of the notions that Jesus was part of the Zealots, which would undermine some of what Spong has to say.However, one has to remember that this book is not meant to be a treatise on scholarship regarding the actual life of Jesus. So if one expects it to succeed in that realm, one would be missing the point of the book. The book is the story of how one man has looked at a definition of Jesus that he believes is relevant to the twentieth and tw

This is not a world in which one reads and agrees on everything a mind like Bishop Spong's puts forth as proposition. If one did agree on every proposition, it would be agreement absent rationality and akin to the petrified belief structure of evangelical fundamentalism. As a catholic I am not bound to a literal interpretation of Scripture and in my past as mainstream and fundamentalist protestant, I could never bring myself succumb to such notions.Spong causes anyone who is not frightened by the venture to explore the Jewishness of Christ. He was-despite the typical Aryan images of him foisted on us from an early age-a semite, a Jew well-grounded in Jewish culture and belief. To understand him as a Jew is to know better the Christ whose name we claim to reverence. I cannot help but endorse Spong's conclusion that the mission of Jesus-ordained by God or otherwise-was to set us free to realize the fullness of life and in doing so to make our own choices. And I find his blend of existentialism with a freeing view of the meaning of scripture to be thoughtful and wholly palatable. Those who believe in the limitations of literalism, who accept the chains of fundamentalism, whose minds are threatened by demons of their own making, who stifle thought and make a jest of genuine goodness, will necessarily find Spong's book anathema. For them belief is a prison from which escape is impossible.

Anyone holding to an orthodox Christian faith should read this to understand the prevailing post-modern thinking about Jesus Christ, which Spong embodies so well as he follows in the tradition of Bultmann, Tillich and, more recently, John A.T. Robinson.His thesis is basically that Christ makes one "free to be, free to live, free to love." Spong's bibliography includes "I'm OK, You're OK." While most clergy desire to grow up to be like Luther or Augustine or St. Paul, my guess is that Spong wishes he would have been born as Copernicus, Darwin, or Freud, three men whom he seems to regard higher than any Christian thinker.Spong fails in several areas. He misuses the whole notion of Jewish midrash (read Jacob Neusner's "Midrash in Context: Exegesis in Formative Judaism"); he relies heavily on the theology of a man (Robinson) who mistranslates the Greek New Testament; and he makes some simply incredible statements (I won't spoil the surprises for you).What serious Christians need to take away from this book is this: post-modernists think that the New Testament is a Jewish, apocalyptic vision/midrashic construct, and that Jesus of Nazareth was an incredibly self-actualized man (but merely a man, mind you) who lived out what he "thought" was his Messianic mission (Spong never does quite address how Jesus manages to get himself crucified between two criminals as prophecy predicted).Read this book, then read II Peter 2, and then go out into the world and make disciples of all nations. Spong won't slow you down any.