Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God

Rating:
Summary: A Worthy Sequel to a Classic
Review: "In what follows, the text of the New Testament will be considered rather as if it were a stained-glass window. That is, it will be looked at and appreciated as a work of art, rather than seen through in an attempt to discover the historical events that lie behind it." [p.13]

To those whose profession is to either inflate or deflate the gospels as a representation of actual history, this literary critique of the gospel account of Jesus' life may appear to be asking all of the wrong questions. But while the historical scholars duke it out over whether the gospels can be treated as history, the meaning of the gospels, in the broader context of the relationship between God and the Jewish people (and, later by extension, to the rest of the world). After five centuries since the promise of a restoration of the kingdom was first offered and no hope of it yet being fulfilled, a redefinition of the relationship was in order.

The gospels portray a redefinition of this relationship in ways that shocked the conscience of the average Jew. Not only would God come down in the form of a man (something that hadn't been done since the days of the early patriarchs), he would come not to conquer the world, but to re-enact the Passover, only this time, God would play a completely different role: the Sacrificial Lamb. The literary methods highlighted by Miles depict a story in which Jesus reveals only a little at a time, sometimes speaking in parables and other cryptic language, in order to pique the curiosity of his audience so that they can fully appreciate what he said at the right time.

As with his earlier book, God: A Biography, Miles looks at the text without the theological gloss of later religious commentators, and analyzes the text solely for its dramatic and literary value. Miles expressly makes the point that in the gospels, everything is mentioned for a reason. For example, Miles points out that the Devil's temptation of Jesus indicates more is implied than just an interaction between the Son of God and his archenemy. The Devil's questions and tests resemble those that a people who had been waiting a long time for God to restore them would ask. The post hoc theological worldview and the misplaced emphasis on the need for historical authenticity have dulled this edge of this passage.

Miles closes the book with a defense of the literary criticism method of analyzing the gospels, which he admits is the exception rather than the rule in the historical-critical vs. Christian apologetic debate. While the paucity of helpful archaeological data does little to help solve (or refute) the historical meaning that orthodox Christianity has made the primary focus, Miles' literary method gives us an evenhanded glimpse of what the message in the gospels must have been like to the original audience, which bears much more fruitful meaning, at least to the question of why people would dedicate their lives to Jesus Christ even when they were not relying on a historical record of an actual event.

Rating:
Summary: A Worthy Sequel to a Classic
Review: "In what follows, the text of the New Testament will be considered rather as if it were a stained-glass window. That is, it will be looked at and appreciated as a work of art, rather than seen through in an attempt to discover the historical events that lie behind it." [p.13]

To those whose profession is to either inflate or deflate the gospels as a representation of actual history, this literary critique of the gospel account of Jesus' life may appear to be asking all of the wrong questions. But while the historical scholars duke it out over whether the gospels can be treated as history, the meaning of the gospels, in the broader context of the relationship between God and the Jewish people (and, later by extension, to the rest of the world). After five centuries since the promise of a restoration of the kingdom was first offered and no hope of it yet being fulfilled, a redefinition of the relationship was in order.

The gospels portray a redefinition of this relationship in ways that shocked the conscience of the average Jew. Not only would God come down in the form of a man (something that hadn't been done since the days of the early patriarchs), he would come not to conquer the world, but to re-enact the Passover, only this time, God would play a completely different role: the Sacrificial Lamb. The literary methods highlighted by Miles depict a story in which Jesus reveals only a little at a time, sometimes speaking in parables and other cryptic language, in order to pique the curiosity of his audience so that they can fully appreciate what he said at the right time.

As with his earlier book, God: A Biography, Miles looks at the text without the theological gloss of later religious commentators, and analyzes the text solely for its dramatic and literary value. Miles expressly makes the point that in the gospels, everything is mentioned for a reason. For example, Miles points out that the Devil's temptation of Jesus indicates more is implied than just an interaction between the Son of God and his archenemy. The Devil's questions and tests resemble those that a people who had been waiting a long time for God to restore them would ask. The post hoc theological worldview and the misplaced emphasis on the need for historical authenticity have dulled this edge of this passage.

Miles closes the book with a defense of the literary criticism method of analyzing the gospels, which he admits is the exception rather than the rule in the historical-critical vs. Christian apologetic debate. While the paucity of helpful archaeological data does little to help solve (or refute) the historical meaning that orthodox Christianity has made the primary focus, Miles' literary method gives us an evenhanded glimpse of what the message in the gospels must have been like to the original audience, which bears much more fruitful meaning, at least to the question of why people would dedicate their lives to Jesus Christ even when they were not relying on a historical record of an actual event.

Rating:
Summary: A Worthy Sequel to a Classic
Review: "In what follows, the text of the New Testament will be considered rather as if it were a stained-glass window. That is, it will be looked at and appreciated as a work of art, rather than seen through in an attempt to discover the historical events that lie behind it." [p.13]

To those whose profession is to either inflate or deflate the gospels as a representation of actual history, this literary critique of the gospel account of Jesus' life may appear to be asking all of the wrong questions. But while the historical scholars duke it out over whether the gospels can be treated as history, the meaning of the gospels, in the broader context of the relationship between God and the Jewish people (and, later by extension, to the rest of the world). After five centuries since the promise of a restoration of the kingdom was first offered and no hope of it yet being fulfilled, a redefinition of the relationship was in order.

The gospels portray a redefinition of this relationship in ways that shocked the conscience of the average Jew. Not only would God come down in the form of a man (something that hadn't been done since the days of the early patriarchs), he would come not to conquer the world, but to re-enact the Passover, only this time, God would play a completely different role: the Sacrificial Lamb. The literary methods highlighted by Miles depict a story in which Jesus reveals only a little at a time, sometimes speaking in parables and other cryptic language, in order to pique the curiosity of his audience so that they can fully appreciate what he said at the right time.

As with his earlier book, God: A Biography, Miles looks at the text without the theological gloss of later religious commentators, and analyzes the text solely for its dramatic and literary value. Miles expressly makes the point that in the gospels, everything is mentioned for a reason. For example, Miles points out that the Devil's temptation of Jesus indicates more is implied than just an interaction between the Son of God and his archenemy. The Devil's questions and tests resemble those that a people who had been waiting a long time for God to restore them would ask. The post hoc theological worldview and the misplaced emphasis on the need for historical authenticity have dulled this edge of this passage.

Miles closes the book with a defense of the literary criticism method of analyzing the gospels, which he admits is the exception rather than the rule in the historical-critical vs. Christian apologetic debate. While the paucity of helpful archaeological data does little to help solve (or refute) the historical meaning that orthodox Christianity has made the primary focus, Miles' literary method gives us an evenhanded glimpse of what the message in the gospels must have been like to the original audience, which bears much more fruitful meaning, at least to the question of why people would dedicate their lives to Jesus Christ even when they were not relying on a historical record of an actual event.

Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant Literary Study of Christianity
Review: -
This is masterful analysis of Christ and Christianity. If my Sunday School teachers at the Presbyterian church and the Episcopal church had made the story of Christ as interesting as author Jack Miles does, I perhaps would have had a clearer understanding of Christianity than I did have.

Whether you are a true believer, an athiest or an agnostic, this is a piece of literature that will enrich you mind, and perhaps your life!

Rating:
Summary: Borderline brilliant; A challenging perspective
Review: Although I can't necessarily say that I agree with the author's main premise that God made a mistake and is trying to correct it, I can say that some of the exegesis and original plays on perspective concerning certain passages and stories in the Bible are borderline brilliant. For instance, the woman at the well story that I've read dozens of times is looked at from the perspective of the woman in a flirtatious setting, showing the wiles of Christ. The author basically sticks to the basic premise of redemption from a Christian perspective, but through the perspective of God, or at least his perception of how God thinks. His approach is certainly unique among the books I've read and most of the methods and logic that drives the ultimate conclusion made by the author is at least to some degree understandable, regardless of my disagreement. If nothing else, this book is challenging and well worth the time. This is a book I will likely read again at a future date.

Rating:
Summary: Saint Jack's Passion: the Gospels as literature
Review: By Miles' own admission, his approach is strictly literary and he has even coined the term "theography" to more properly describe his approach. Miles attempted in his first book to view the character of God in the Tanakh (the Jewish version of the Old Testament, which is in a different order than in the Bible that Christians use) as one would view a character in any literary work. God goes through doubt, conflict, remorse, even depression in Miles' reading of the Jewish scriptures, ending in an uneasy peace and a centuries-long silence. It is almost as if God is trying to figure out what the hell he's going to do next.

In the "sequel," Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God, God breaks his silence. God had promised his chosen nation, Israel, that he would return them to their homeland out of exile and demolish their enemies with glorious military victory. This was the currency of the day for gods, and Jehovah was not one to be one-upped. However, the crisis in the title deals with the fact that God does not keep his promise. Being the creator of the universe, one does not suspect that he can not keep it, so the only other option is that he chooses not to. Indeed, a Nazi-equivalent holocaust will soon strike his people and his nation. God not only will go back on his promise--he will do so in spades. But why? The answer to this question is to be found in reading the whole book, and a synopsis cannot do it justice, but in a phrase: he has thought of a better way.

God comes to earth, in the form of a baby, turning his sublime Self into the ridiculous humiliation of an infant being born with all that blood and pain, entering the world to the smell of manger droppings -- the Lord of Hosts, completely dependent on the world just to stay alive. And it is just that dependence that is the point God (and Miles) is trying to make. God doesn't just want to kick military butt for his people, he wants to win a greater victory--he wants to conquer Satan, which means he wants to conquer pain, sorrow, shame and, ultimately, death itself. God wants to identify with his people by becoming a person. And not only that, he wants to suffer the most horrific, humiliating death imaginable so that he can relate to all of his children, not just Israel.

Miles does Christians an immense favor by starting his book with the reminder that the Crucifixion is supposed to be one of the most disgusting scenes imaginable. While it has been sanitized in most popular religious artwork (even to the point of calling the day we commemorate it "Good" Friday), the truth of the matter is that God is butchered like a lamb who, unlike a lamb, walks into his death with full knowledge of what is happening to him. The French subtitle of the work is "The Suicide of the Son of God" drawing attention to what some recent French theologians in an Appendix call Suicide Theology. The purpose again is to shock, not for the sake of shocking, but to re-create what the disciples must have been going through to see their God going through the death of a criminal.

Speaking of the Jews of the time, much attention is given these days to what is called "the Historical Jesus." While much of this scholarship and research may be valuable, the more and more we try to track this misty figure down, the more diminishing seem the returns. One wonders what the actual effect would be if we were to have a documentary of the life of Christ filmed in living Technicolor. Would it increase our faith? Or would it disappoint? The reactionary reaction to the radical re-thinking of Jesus of History is to focus on the Christ of faith. Whereas conjecture and history are the guides of the former, the church and tradition are the guides of the latter. Doctrine and dogma, rule and questions are eschewed in exchange for the comfort of faith. This is the Christianity that most people are familiar with, yet, as Jaroslav Pelikan in Jesus Through The Centuries has shown so cogently, there is no one Christianity that you can point to; no Christ of faith that exists, but many Christs. No matter on either side of the debate, Miles says, what we have is a book (a series of books, actually) that shows a third way (as genius often does), leaving the two bickering schools in his literary dust.

In an Appendix to his work, Miles compares the two schools to people who try to see through a rose window in a cathedral, one school trying to remove the stain, the other trying to stain everything. Miles prefers to look at the window: the Gospel story, taken as a whole. The work of art this is the Bible is, after all, what captured the imagination of the world. Neither the Jesus of History nor the Christ of Faith is nearly as worthy of our attention as the character Jesus Christ of the Bible.

Miles writes that he was first inspired to write his two books by Bach's brilliant masterwork St. Matthew's Passion. Which brings us back to the half-facetious title of this review. Is Jack a saint? Perhaps. Perhaps not, but he is, in my estimation, performing as important a translation job as did St. Jerome back a thousand and a half years ago. By bringing the story (and both of the contending schools must remember that this faith has always been based on storytelling) of Jesus Christ back into focus, Miles has given us a Newer Testament: something fresh, despite the age of the story, something creative despite the re-hashing of familiar scenes, something that can truly bring the Spirit of God as close to us as our breath.

Rating:
Summary: Slightly irreverent but not irrelevant. An astonishing work!
Review: For anyone interested in the life of Christ (God Incarnate), whether Born-Again Christian, Muslim, Mormon, or Catholic this book should be read for its beautiful and fascinating research into the life of this extraordinary God-man. I have read so many books that present Jesus as a figment of the author's own imagination. Jack Miles doesn't gloss over anything that Jesus said or did, he presents the gospels almost verbatim and explores his relationship to human beings courageously and boldly. His chapter on the sexuality of the Son of God was quite shocking and reads to much into the story of Jesus and the woman at the well. I felt that this chapter was brave but not insightful; whether or not Jesus had premarital sex, and if he will have a wife in the heavenly kingdom is unfounded. He was tempted in all ways as we are but without sin, this would seemt o include sexual relations outside of marriage, which Christ so highly esteemed and commanded.

This book did open my eyes and opened my heart to see Christ in a way that I had never done before. I learned many new things from this magnificent work, though I do not agree with some of his speculations, I do find his insights engaging and worth heavy consideration. This book should win a Pulitzer Prize like his first book did. A very interesting book indeed!

Rating:
Summary: Small Mind, Small God
Review: God is a sinner, according to Jack Miles, the author of God: A Biography and Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God. And God atones for His sins by dying on a cross.

Balderdash in the most reekest form!

First off, God (or whatever name you prefer) cannot sin. Sin is defined as a transgression against the laws of conduct laid out by man who tried to deduce what God might desire, not the other way around.

Second, whatever man thinks is godly is wrong. With God, there is no right or wrong. With man, right and wrong are relative concepts. For example, it is wrong to murder your neighbor in peacetime, but it is a fantastic right thing to do during war. And, the Old Testament is full of God (READ: human interpretation) demanding that His people kill everything alive that opposed His people.

Third, no person can judge whether an act attributed to God is right or wrong. We held a convention in Berlin while the wall was still in place. Many people questioned why God allowed the Holocaust to occur. I declared that it was done according to the Will of God. Talk about lines in the sand being formed! My argument merely stated that as long as God has given man a free will-even to the point where man decides to destroy himself-all things that happen in this world are according to God's Will. It does not matter that we think the Holocaust was terribly wrong. It was an object lesson to the rest of us and for future generations. But it was not wrong in God's eyes. He took care of those souls.

Now the Christian religion has evolved to a state of belief that Christians should be living a good life here on Earth. They were never promised that by God or Christ. Many preachers have become millionaires simply because they co-opted the Word and made people believe that way. If you believe and are godly, you will be rich. If you are not rich, then you need to believe more. Now, pass me that collection plate for my good-er, godly-advice.

Lastly, Jack Miles obviously does not have a clue as to how the Bible was put together. With the exceptions of the two accounts of David and Solomon's reigns-one to glorify, and the other to show political condemnation-the Old Testament was borrowed from older traditions and more ancient myths. You might just as well use the Arabian Nights as the basis for making the Bible.

The God that appears in the Pentateuch is not the same God throughout the Old Testament. When the Israelites were languishing in captivity under Babylon and Assyrian whips, their religion was in danger of being swept aside by the religions of their captors. These Israelites merely borrowed myths and tales of the times that referred to the acts of various gods and made them their own.

This God of the Old Testament was as loving as Mammu, the goddess who helped Enki create the first humans, as sneaky as Enki who saved mankind from the great inundation, as angry as Enlil who loved to see mankind be utterly destroyed, as blood-thirsty as Inanna who delighted in using humans to destroy civilizations and cultures, and finally as cunning and underhanded as Marduk, in whom we can find strong traces of the historical-yet mythological-Satan.

The "I am" who allegedly spoke to Abraham and Moses is poorly represented in the Bible. You really have to look for Him to find Him. He is the small voice that spoke to Elijah.

The Christ was merely a covenant between God and man. It was not to atone any sins of God but of man. Under all the other covenants God made with mankind, mankind could not live up to their side of the bargain. Christ was, in essence, a "free pass out of jail card." Mankind does not have to do anything except believe. The rest takes care of itself.

And guess what? Mankind cannot even do that one simple thing. Instead, it wants to believe along the lines of Jack Miles, bringing God down to our stinking level, that we have to work for our release from this hell we call life.

Rating:
Summary: misconceived
Review: how can a book which starts out from the premise God has made a mistake bring anyone into closer contact with Christ? all the other inspiring and illuminating statements of Christ and God and truth just don't seem satisfying. i couldn't understand the basis for the premise we are re-established to God because God felt guilty. my understanding remains we are transformed by influence of divine love.

Rating:
Summary: Get Serious
Review: How seriously can we take this book - not very. Although the author presents the material in research fashion, with footnotes referring to biblical translations, the book is largely just the thoughts of Mr. Miles and I am not sure if he is fooling himself or trying to fool his readers. The first clue is his first footnote: "Translations of biblical citations are my own, except when otherwise indicated." What about the hundreds of years of research by biblical scholars one might ask? This vast expanse of information is rarely referred to by Mr. Miles. With that out of the way Mr Miles can write as he pleases.

Look at Mr Miles analysis of one section of biblical text (Luke 7:36-50 when the woman of bad name cried and washed Jesus' feet with oil and dried them with her hair): "A woman weeping for an unknown reason attracts all eyes to herself. If while she weeps she begins to undress (the meaning in this culture, of letting down her hair), her behavior becomes obscene, an obscene demonstration. But of what? Jesus interprets her action, quite apart from what it may say about her relationship to him, as a statement about Simon."

Mr Miles states that "God has been taken neither as the object of religious belief nor as the topic in ancient history but as the central character in a work of literature."

I would agree with Mr Miles not to take this book as serious research, but I would state it differently: This is modern fad spun in trickster like fashion to represent the past.