Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy
by John Shelby Spong
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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 show more 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 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. 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. show lessTags
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Ah, the great Spong does it again. I thoroughly enjoyed the insights into Matthew's gospel that come with viewing it as structured around Jewish liturgy rather than literal history. And I simply love the way Spong popularizes Biblical study to make it matter. He was one of the original inspirations for me to become a minister (with his thematically-linked book, Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism). May he continue to write!
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Author Information
46+ Works 8,759 Members
Scholar, author and bishop, John Shelby Spong was born in 1931 in Charlotte, North Carolina. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1952 and received his Master of Divinity degree in 1955 from the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in Virginia. That seminary and St. Paul's College have both conferred on him show more honorary Doctor of Divinity degrees. Ordained in 1955, he is now bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Newark, New Jersey. As the most-published member of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church in the United States, Spong is the author of 14 books and more than 90 articles, including Honest Prayer (1973), Dialogue ? In Search of Jewish-Christian Umderstanding (1975), The Living Commandments (1977), Into the Whirlwind: The Future of the Church (1983), Living in Sin? A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality (1988), Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture (1991), and Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (1994). With an active interest in football, basketball and baseball, Bishop Spong was at one time a play-by-play announcer for radio stations in Tarboro, North Carolina, and Lynchburg, Virginia. In addition, he served as sports editor for The Daily Southerner in Tarboro. Bishop Spong resides in Morristown, New Jersey. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Canonical title
- Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy
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- Reviews
- 1
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- (4.31)
- Languages
- English
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- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
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