Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God

Rating:
Summary: Slightly irreverent but not irrelevant. An astonishing work!
Review: I know it seems passé once you have read enough of the reviews for this book, but I feel the books uniqueness is such an important theme to point out. If you are bored of the usual, almost never-ending arguments between the hopelessly rigid Jesus scholars, this book should be a real revelation. It is just a shame that so much of modern Jesus scholarship is locked in a really harsh struggle between all kinds of secular and religious historians. This schism, as it were, serves to overlook the artistic and intellectual connotations of the New Testament. As Miles did in his look at the Old Testament, this book concentrates on the actual story the Gospels tell. There is no mention of Q, no mention of glosses or redactions, it is just the story as the final compilers meant to put it to paper. For that, it is an amazing book.

Miles presents us with one of the most mysterious theological questions for modern day Christians. Accepting the claim that Jesus was the embodiment, son, of God, what reason does God have to kill himself? It really is unbelievably complex, and it does help to have read God: A Biography before reading this one. To examine the strange theological mystery, one has to except Miles overall premise that God is anything but a stable, all-powerful, omniscient being. No matter what the Old Testament says once and a while, it is clear that God can suffer from some pretty amazing mood swings. On a literary basis, God is a very dynamic figure, who matures in many ways. The birth of Christ is merely the ?final? stage in this maturation process.

Using an incredibly rich knowledge and use of the New Testament, Miles attacks all kind of subjects within the Bible. Like another reviewer pointed out, Miles interpretation of the Sumerian woman at the Well was outstanding. One concentration, that concerning Satan?s early attempted seduction of Jesus, was really enlightening. Miles seems to have this uncanny ability to point out new but really logical explanations and interpretations of passages. Of course, you do not have to believe them, but they are good reading nonetheless. However, most of the book concentrates on God reasoning, and this was great reading. The main, overall idea, is that God has ceased being all-powerful, or is at least unwilling to constantly protect Israel with sheer brute force anymore. To counter Israel?s extremely powerful new enemies, the Romans, God decides to commit the ultimate sacrifice, to show the world that the power of God is so transcendent as to make earthly tyrannies irrelevant. By conquering death i.e. Satan, God shows the world that by following Him, earthly suffering is null and void. By providing this option, God is kind of giving himself a break, while allowing all the people of the world to enjoy His grace.

Again, this is just is his interpretation, his literary look at the Gospels. Do not read this expecting some reinforcement of your own beliefs, or argument ammunition. It is what is, a wonderful look at one of the greatest stories of all time. If I had one problem with this book, it would be that Miles often fails to acknowledge the fact that various stories he sites come from different gospels, and those gospels have differing viewpoints. I felt Miles kind of gives the Gospels a false smoothness that really does not exist. Again, I can excuse it, because Miles does not portend to write a real structural analysis.

Fascinating.

Rating:
Summary: The New Testament As Never Before
Review: I know it seems passé once you have read enough of the reviews for this book, but I feel the books uniqueness is such an important theme to point out. If you are bored of the usual, almost never-ending arguments between the hopelessly rigid Jesus scholars, this book should be a real revelation. It is just a shame that so much of modern Jesus scholarship is locked in a really harsh struggle between all kinds of secular and religious historians. This schism, as it were, serves to overlook the artistic and intellectual connotations of the New Testament. As Miles did in his look at the Old Testament, this book concentrates on the actual story the Gospels tell. There is no mention of Q, no mention of glosses or redactions, it is just the story as the final compilers meant to put it to paper. For that, it is an amazing book.

Miles presents us with one of the most mysterious theological questions for modern day Christians. Accepting the claim that Jesus was the embodiment, son, of God, what reason does God have to kill himself? It really is unbelievably complex, and it does help to have read God: A Biography before reading this one. To examine the strange theological mystery, one has to except Miles overall premise that God is anything but a stable, all-powerful, omniscient being. No matter what the Old Testament says once and a while, it is clear that God can suffer from some pretty amazing mood swings. On a literary basis, God is a very dynamic figure, who matures in many ways. The birth of Christ is merely the ?final? stage in this maturation process.

Using an incredibly rich knowledge and use of the New Testament, Miles attacks all kind of subjects within the Bible. Like another reviewer pointed out, Miles interpretation of the Sumerian woman at the Well was outstanding. One concentration, that concerning Satan?s early attempted seduction of Jesus, was really enlightening. Miles seems to have this uncanny ability to point out new but really logical explanations and interpretations of passages. Of course, you do not have to believe them, but they are good reading nonetheless. However, most of the book concentrates on God reasoning, and this was great reading. The main, overall idea, is that God has ceased being all-powerful, or is at least unwilling to constantly protect Israel with sheer brute force anymore. To counter Israel?s extremely powerful new enemies, the Romans, God decides to commit the ultimate sacrifice, to show the world that the power of God is so transcendent as to make earthly tyrannies irrelevant. By conquering death i.e. Satan, God shows the world that by following Him, earthly suffering is null and void. By providing this option, God is kind of giving himself a break, while allowing all the people of the world to enjoy His grace.

Again, this is just is his interpretation, his literary look at the Gospels. Do not read this expecting some reinforcement of your own beliefs, or argument ammunition. It is what is, a wonderful look at one of the greatest stories of all time. If I had one problem with this book, it would be that Miles often fails to acknowledge the fact that various stories he sites come from different gospels, and those gospels have differing viewpoints. I felt Miles kind of gives the Gospels a false smoothness that really does not exist. Again, I can excuse it, because Miles does not portend to write a real structural analysis.

Fascinating.

Rating:
Summary: Marvelous!
Review: I loved this book and I came here to find more books similar in style to Mile's book. Miles' analyzes the life of Christ and why God allowed Christ to be crucified. Or, since Christ was God, why Christ allowed himself to be crucified! Israel is under rule by the Romans and is awaiting the Messiah--however when the Messiah comes, He brings a new covenant with the Lord. Instead of guaranteeing Israel victory over its enemies, God breaks this promise and instead delivers the entire world victory over death!

Rating:
Summary: Captivating ... for about 150 pages. After that... overdone
Review: I suppose that readers who finished Miles' prior book, "God: A Biography" will be equally captivated by this new title - a sequel of sorts. But if this is your first exposure to Miles' "literary God" you might find, as I did, that your interest waxes, but quickly wanes.

The unusual approach he takes to his rather unique protagonist is really fascinating at first, but after a while it just wears out its welcome - a 30,000-word, tightly-edited piece in "The New Yorker" would have served the central idea better. While there is certainly a different artistic sensibility at work here, reading this book was something akin to watching "Rocky", then "Rocky II" and "III" all in a row. A relatively powerful theme and a stylistically new framework beats you up through repetition in too many guises. Imagine "Brother, Where Art Thou II"

Its hard to figure out who would enjoy this book end-to-end, as obviously quite a few have. A deeply and more traditionally Christian readership will be simply appalled by the diminishment of the central elements of their faith to historico-literary plot requirements. An agnostic, humanist or simply atheist readership will be put off by Miles' clear deep faith in the underlying reality of the story. I suppose "lit crit" types could enjoy it, but by eschewing the academic dryness of their genre, this book also steps outside their focus and stands as an implicit criticism of the emptiness of that approach.

The idea is intriguing enough at first take - to treat the biblical "God" as a literary character. Trace his (no Goddess here!) ups and downs from the perspective of how his collective authorship struggled to recreate a protagonist consistent with their culture's own diminishment and the failure of earlier 'chapters' to come true - eventually turning to the plot "twists" of the New Testament and the new character in the story, Christ.

But that collectivity or authorship was a source of one of my itching complaints that eventually had to be scratched. Why not just attribute the twists and turns of the main characters of this God story to the unusual fact that it was written over hundreds of years, and by authors in the thrall of faith and a belief that earlier "drafts" were holy writ ? That is, why not follow the more traditional analyses that consider either the theological or the historical growth and change of the idea of God ? Admittedly these have often been dryer than Sinai dust, but that only suggests that the real accomplishment of Miles is to tell the story a lot more engagingly - the David McCullough of a different era.

After all - how many literary characters have been created thus, by dozens of authors over centuries ? It seems hardly the same thing as traditional character-based literary analysis - tracing the development in David Copperfield's or Silas Marner's personae over several hundred pages. Furthermore, Miles' tracings are rather sweeping. By the time I got to the chapter exploring the plumbing of Christ's sexuality I was at about the same point I would be if a similar book were exploring Huck Finn's unstated masturbatory life! Unless lit crit is your field, such tracings can hardly hold your interest as much as the stories themselves. Eventually the distinctiveness of the approach loses its freshness and starts to seem silly. A frankly good-old-fashioned fiction such as Mailer's or Saramago's is ultimately more satisfying.

Rating:
Summary: Imaginative and thought-provoking
Review: I tried to read this same author's "God: A Biography" and for some reason found it heavy going ... but this seemed much shorter, and in fact I couldn't put it down.

As someone who preaches, I appreciate the talent that Miles has to take scripture and ask "why did it happen this way, and not some other way?" His insight into what it really meant for Jesus to die for our sins, and in some sense to atone for them, and why his father asked Jesus to suffer, is a brilliant perspective on a subject that can so easily be reduced to pious platitudes. God's relationship with us isn't a simple thing sometimes, and the usual explanations just often won't do.

I don't think you need to hold this to a standard of orthodox theology (which isn't its goal), but instead to a standard of whether it is a resource helpful for someone trying to come to terms with some of scripture's contradictions. I liked it a lot.

Rating:
Summary: Third Rate Posturing
Review: In the famous scene with the Samaritan woman at Jacob's Well, Miles' Jesus makes a comparison between his ejaculate and salvation. There's not much more to say when one understands that this is the level of the book's insight. Miles provides an extremely narrow reading of the gospels, almost as narrow as the most Bible-thumping fundamentalist.

Instead of reconciling the disparities in the four canonical gospels, he unsuccessfully tries to incorporate them all into his particular interpretation of Christ. The result is an extremely fragmented portrait, which relies mostly on John, the non-Synoptic gospel.

"Christ" reads like the lecherous lectures of that smarmy English professor who makes passes at all his students. Miles is trying too hard to shock his audience with information that is handled more deftly by scholars like Crossan and the Jesus Seminar. Best not to bother with this one.

Rating:
Summary: Get Serious
Review: It's my good fortune to have spent about a year in India over the course of the last three years, and I've often hosted first time visitors. Conversations invariably move to an overview of Hinduism, a religion that is quite foreign to Westerners. Almost without fail my guests have voiced the belief that Hinduism is all myth, and not to be taken very seriously. I've taken to asking these folks what makes Hinduism more a myth, or fiction, or literary construct than Christianity, and, to no surprise, they've failed to come up with an answer. I'm sure if any of these folks had been dyed in the wool Christians I would have heard something about the revealed word of God, etc., etc., but they've been open-minded enough to ponder the questions and the implications of judging another's belief system based on their own.

With both, "God, a Biography," and "Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God," Jack Miles has opened the field of discourse by presenting the Primogenitor as a literary character rather than a factual being; and Christ as the same, regardless of his historical reality. He has asked Christians to look at their God in much the same way we look at "foreign" Gods. Was Krishna born on July 19, 3228 BCE, in Gokula, India? Will he return at the end of the current age to usher in a time of peacefulness? Was Jesus born on December 25th, 1 CE. Will he return to judge the living and the dead? To Hindu's Krishna walked, talked, made love, performed miracles. To Christians Christ did the same (except, perhaps, made love.) How much credence we give to any story depends on our orientation, but regardless of belief, the stories themselves are wonderful.

One reason they're wonderful is they are rich in metaphor, and it's the metaphor that Mr. Miles explores to great effect. Who can deny the beauty of an infant, and the idea of an infant knowingly giving love? Who can deny the power in the story of God admitting an error and sacrificing himself in an attempt at rectification?

Mr. Miles's success is that he opens the metaphor, and forces us to think.

Although I'm not a huge fan of Mr. Miles literary style - in fact, I find it a bit stilted - what he has to say more than adequately compensates for the difficulty style presents.

Highly Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Opening the Field
Review: It's my good fortune to have spent about a year in India over the course of the last three years, and I've often hosted first time visitors. Conversations invariably move to an overview of Hinduism, a religion that is quite foreign to Westerners. Almost without fail my guests have voiced the belief that Hinduism is all myth, and not to be taken very seriously. I've taken to asking these folks what makes Hinduism more a myth, or fiction, or literary construct than Christianity, and, to no surprise, they've failed to come up with an answer. I'm sure if any of these folks had been dyed in the wool Christians I would have heard something about the revealed word of God, etc., etc., but they've been open-minded enough to ponder the questions and the implications of judging another's belief system based on their own.

With both, "God, a Biography," and "Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God," Jack Miles has opened the field of discourse by presenting the Primogenitor as a literary character rather than a factual being; and Christ as the same, regardless of his historical reality. He has asked Christians to look at their God in much the same way we look at "foreign" Gods. Was Krishna born on July 19, 3228 BCE, in Gokula, India? Will he return at the end of the current age to usher in a time of peacefulness? Was Jesus born on December 25th, 1 CE. Will he return to judge the living and the dead? To Hindu's Krishna walked, talked, made love, performed miracles. To Christians Christ did the same (except, perhaps, made love.) How much credence we give to any story depends on our orientation, but regardless of belief, the stories themselves are wonderful.

One reason they're wonderful is they are rich in metaphor, and it's the metaphor that Mr. Miles explores to great effect. Who can deny the beauty of an infant, and the idea of an infant knowingly giving love? Who can deny the power in the story of God admitting an error and sacrificing himself in an attempt at rectification?

Mr. Miles's success is that he opens the metaphor, and forces us to think.

Although I'm not a huge fan of Mr. Miles literary style - in fact, I find it a bit stilted - what he has to say more than adequately compensates for the difficulty style presents.

Highly Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Literary criticism of the Bible at its best!
Review: Jack Miles, author of the Pulitzer Prize - winning *God -a Biogaphy* has written an excellent literary analysis of Christ in the New Testament.

What is the "crisis" referred to in the title? The crisis is that God has not delivered his Chosen People from 500 years of oppression. How does God solve this problem? Answer: God/Christ commits sacred suicide. This is Miles' provocative conclusion from his stirictly literary analysis the Christian Bible. How does Miles arrive at the conclusion? You, dear reader, should read the book in order to appreciate how he develops his plot and arrives at his conclusion. And believe me, there is a plot!

A caution is in order. Miles writes and studies Christ from a strictly literary point of view. He is not interested in the historical Jesus. If one reads this only to learn about the fundamentalist Jesus, the traditional Christian Jesus, or the historical Jesus, then this book will not satisfy! If on the other hand, you want to experience a great Biblical reading adventure, then buy and read this book!

I also would recommend that a reader, who is unfamiliar with literary critism and postmodernism, study and read Miles' appendices. "Appendix I" deals with the biblical canon and "Appendix II" deals with the history of critcal analysis of the Bible (e.g. historical criticism, canonical criticism, literary critcism)and how to appreciate the Bible as art.

I did not always agree with the author, but I enjoyed how he told the story of Christ. As a postmodern Christian, I will not privilege my reading over his.

Have fun reading *Christ: a Crisis in the Life of God*!

Rating:
Summary: Well-written heresy
Review: Miles' book attempts to interpret the Gospels through formal literary criticism. Rather than attaching historical study to the Gospels' message, Miles treats Jesus and his message purely through the text, and comes to a startling conclusion -- that Jesus' death was necessary because God failed to deliver on God's promise to the Israelites, and needed a way to triumph on a metaphysical level.

Whether or not one agrees with Miles' premise, he writes brilliantly and understandably. Recent Biblical scholarship gets bogged down in dry-as-dust unintelligible "academicese." Miles understands the principles of clear and succint writing while still advancing complicated theories. I recommend this one for anyone seeking to stretch their understanding of what we have received as Scripture, as well as those interested in literature and how it relates to the Bible. Like him or not, read Miles to get your brain working.