Rating: 
Summary: For a deeper understanding of Jesus' "Resurrection"
Review: A deeply sympathetic, even poignant view of ordinary people trying to cope with the loss of their beloved teacher through recalling and reinterpreting their faith. Skeptics and liberals (such as myself) may come away from this with a deeper understanding of belief in the Resurrection.
Rating:
Summary: a honest look into the ressurection
Review: a great bok for any christian or non christian to read. Spong goes into the minds of the writers of the gospels and explains theyre techniques and how midrash played an overimportant role in the gospels. a must read for early christian history
Rating: 
Summary: An utter waste of paper.
Review: Any book written by "Bishop" Spong should be rated a zero. The Midrash approach was used by all the ancient Fathers of the Church in interpreting the Old Testament and the Divine Plan. However, they knew more than anything that if Jesus was not raised, their faith was in vain. This is the typical trash derived from the Western scholastic tradition that wants to lead people astray from God's mystery, power, and majesty. All things are possible with God - even the resurrection of His Son. Why has the Episcopal Church not defrocked this false teacher, but allows him to perform the Sacred Mysteries while renouncing the Lord? Can someone please answer this question?
Rating:
Summary: interesting but i'm still seeking
Review: As a liberal Christian, I have always had quite a few unanswered questions about the event that is commonly known as Easter. Growing up in a conservative household, I was raised to believe that Easter meant a literal, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ that occurred on the third day after he gave himself up to be executed for the sins of the world. Although I had long ago dismissed the theory that Jesus died for the sins of the world, Spong changed my opinions drastically as I read "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism." In this previous book, Spong convinced me that a physical resuscitation of Jesus had never taken place at all; he argued that the resurrection stories are heavily symbolic and must not (along with the rest of the Gospels) be taken literally. Still, the event called Easter remained shrouded in my mind. It wasn't until I read "Resurrection: Myth or Reality" that I began to realize what Easter is all about. Spong took me on a thrilling journey through history and beyond Scripture as I arrived at an understanding of why the resurrection stories were written, why certain symbols were used, and most importantly, what this all means to Christians today.In order to reconstruct the Easter moment, Spong employs a Jewish literary device known as midrash. Much like a parable, midrash uses supernatural or otherwise incredulous events as symbols for a timeless truth. In essence, it captures the present inside the symbols of yesterday, preserving the inner meanings of the faith story for current and future generations. Midrash cannot be found in a literal reading of the text; one must read between the lines to capture the hidden (true) meaning of what is being said. When the traditional Easter story is examined under this midrashic lens, a whole new story emerges. The story that Spong recreates is much more believable and appropriate than the traditional tale. Spong's rendering of Easter begins when Jesus and the disciples travel to Jerusalem for Passover. During the Passover celebration, Jesus is recognized by the Jewish authorities as a rebel and a political threat, for which he is put to death. The disciples, shocked, flee to their homes in Galilee to mourn their loss. Over the course of the next six months, however, Peter and his companions realize that there was something about the life of their rabbi that made him divine. They understood that the spirit of Jesus transcended death because the way Jesus died was exactly like
they way he lived. He gave his life to others and for others. He loved wastefully and selflessly. In that living and
dying, the disciples concluded that Jesus revealed the meaning of God. God is not victory, their point of view stated. God is the presence of transcendent meaning in the midst of human defeat. God is not the promise of an infinite reward. God is the meaning that is present in the face of fate, tragedy, and undeserved pain. God cannot be seen in Jesus's escape from death at Easter until God is first seen in the crucified one who gives life as he dies, who offers forgiveness as he is victimized, who shows love as he is hated. Spong's rendering of Jesus as one who gave his life away to others also reveals the true meaning of Easter. Easter is not about believing in incongruent stories that have been disproved by the laws of science. Easter is about realizing that Jesus is the meaning of God. It is Easter that caused the disciples to travel back to Jerusalem six months later during the feast of the Tabernacles to proclaim that "He has risen!" and "Death cannot contain him!". Easter also caused the need for early Christian writers to capture the sentiments in subjective, nonliteral words so that we, too, can enter the text and experience the moment anew every day. We, too, can proclaim that Jesus lives on in each one of us as Easter becomes a timeless invitation to enter the meaning of God by living for others, expecting no reward, loving wastefully no matter what the cost. When we do that, we are Easter people and resurrection becomes real. I have the distinct pleasure of saying that "Resurrection: Myth or Reality?" is one of the most influential, spirit-giving books that I have ever read. Each time I read Spong, I marvel at the way that this one man can shatter all of tradition and yet make the new experience even more sincere and invigorating. I highly recommend Spong's books to all Christians searching for a new way to approach the Scripture. "Resurrection: Myth or Reality?" and "This Hebrew Lord" are the best two of the ones that I've read so far. But make no mistake, everything he writes is a gem and I can't thank him enough for giving me a religion and a strong sense of spirituality that I otherwise wouldn't have. All of Spong's writing is nothing short of an extraordinary blessing.
Rating: 
Summary: The Easter Moment
Review: As a liberal Christian, I have always had quite a few unanswered questions about the event that is commonly known as Easter. Growing up in a conservative household, I was raised to believe that Easter meant a literal, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ that occurred on the third day after he gave himself up to be executed for the sins of the world. Although I had long ago dismissed the theory that Jesus died for the sins of the world, Spong changed my opinions drastically as I read "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism." In this previous book, Spong convinced me that a physical resuscitation of Jesus had never taken place at all; he argued that the resurrection stories are heavily symbolic and must not (along with the rest of the Gospels) be taken literally. Still, the event called Easter remained shrouded in my mind. It wasn't until I read "Resurrection: Myth or Reality" that I began to realize what Easter is all about. Spong took me on a thrilling journey through history and beyond Scripture as I arrived at an understanding of why the resurrection stories were written, why certain symbols were used, and most importantly, what this all means to Christians today. In order to reconstruct the Easter moment, Spong employs a Jewish literary device known as midrash. Much like a parable, midrash uses supernatural or otherwise incredulous events as symbols for a timeless truth. In essence, it captures the present inside the symbols of yesterday, preserving the inner meanings of the faith story for current and future generations. Midrash cannot be found in a literal reading of the text; one must read between the lines to capture the hidden (true) meaning of what is being said. When the traditional Easter story is examined under this midrashic lens, a whole new story emerges. The story that Spong recreates is much more believable and appropriate than the traditional tale. Spong's rendering of Easter begins when Jesus and the disciples travel to Jerusalem for Passover. During the Passover celebration, Jesus is recognized by the Jewish authorities as a rebel and a political threat, for which he is put to death. The disciples, shocked, flee to their homes in Galilee to mourn their loss. Over the course of the next six months, however, Peter and his companions realize that there was something about the life of their rabbi that made him divine. They understood that the spirit of Jesus transcended death because the way Jesus died was exactly like
they way he lived. He gave his life to others and for others. He loved wastefully and selflessly. In that living and
dying, the disciples concluded that Jesus revealed the meaning of God. God is not victory, their point of view stated. God is the presence of transcendent meaning in the midst of human defeat. God is not the promise of an infinite reward. God is the meaning that is present in the face of fate, tragedy, and undeserved pain. God cannot be seen in Jesus's escape from death at Easter until God is first seen in the crucified one who gives life as he dies, who offers forgiveness as he is victimized, who shows love as he is hated. Spong's rendering of Jesus as one who gave his life away to others also reveals the true meaning of Easter. Easter is not about believing in incongruent stories that have been disproved by the laws of science. Easter is about realizing that Jesus is the meaning of God. It is Easter that caused the disciples to travel back to Jerusalem six months later during the feast of the Tabernacles to proclaim that "He has risen!" and "Death cannot contain him!". Easter also caused the need for early Christian writers to capture the sentiments in subjective, nonliteral words so that we, too, can enter the text and experience the moment anew every day. We, too, can proclaim that Jesus lives on in each one of us as Easter becomes a timeless invitation to enter the meaning of God by living for others, expecting no reward, loving wastefully no matter what the cost. When we do that, we are Easter people and resurrection becomes real. I have the distinct pleasure of saying that "Resurrection: Myth or Reality?" is one of the most influential, spirit-giving books that I have ever read. Each time I read Spong, I marvel at the way that this one man can shatter all of tradition and yet make the new experience even more sincere and invigorating. I highly recommend Spong's books to all Christians searching for a new way to approach the Scripture. "Resurrection: Myth or Reality?" and "This Hebrew Lord" are the best two of the ones that I've read so far. But make no mistake, everything he writes is a gem and I can't thank him enough for giving me a religion and a strong sense of spirituality that I otherwise wouldn't have. All of Spong's writing is nothing short of an extraordinary blessing.
Rating: 
Summary: A disappointment
Review: As a person who grew up in a very strict fundamentalist pentecostal church and have serious questions about fundamentalism I have enjoyed reading Spong's other books especially "Living in Sin?" and "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism". I don't agree with everything Spong says in these books but at least they have given me a different perspective. However, I found this book to be weak in argument and poorly written. What I don't understand about Spong's argument against the resurrection is he thinks its physically impossible for Christ to rise from the dead. If God is God then why should s/he be confined by natural laws. A God who has to conform to the laws of the natural universe is not truly God. This book has made me realise that Spong is not a Christian as he claims but a humanist, or worse, a Christian who has lost faith in God.
Rating:
Summary: Pretentious pseudo-scholarship from a dog-collared atheist
Review: Basically, as in all his books, Spong proclaims from his loftyperch that miracles are not possible, so don't bother trying to confuse him with the evidence. Instead, Spong must 'demythologise' then 'remythologise' the resurrection narratives. Spong's view presents a Christ who is a failure; the truly good man who was defeated by a cruel death. Bishop Richard Holloway of Edinburgh (himself quite liberal) rightly comments: 'Spong leaves us with a God who cannot save because he has no control of nature or history. He offers us a dead Messiah who only "lives" because of the wishful thinking of his first disciples.' It's no wonder that liberal churches which deny the resurrection are shrinking, while conservative (including 'fundamentalist') churches which accept the resurrection are the only ones growing. Spong laments this fact (p. 13), but he fails to see what most unbelievers can: that going to church is a waste of time if the resurrection is a hoax. They can find better sources of platitudes without the semantic gymnastics. It doesn't seem to bother Spong that he pontificates about science despite a complete lack of scientific qualifications. As usual, he ties himself in logical knots, e.g. on pp. 34-35 he claims: 'No word is objective; hence no word ever passes from the lips of one person into the hearing of another without being changed in meaning. ... Words are never the truth. They are only the medium of truth ... Words become the vehicles by which experiences are shared.' Yet Spong wants us to believe that *his* words are true and that fundamentalists are most certainly wrong. Such absolute and certain statements sound strange from a bishop who condemns a church for prescribing certainty and absolutes. Spong and liberal scholars usually argue that the Gospels were written long after the events they claim to record. Therefore they cannot be trusted to be reliable, because no eye-witnesses were around to correct false reports. However, Spong appears to be unaware of the cogent arguments of J.A.T. Robinson, who was a fellow liberal and Bishop of Woolwich, for redating the Gospels between 40 and 65 AD. It is ironic that Spong sees himself as a spiritual heir to Robinson (p. 13), yet ignores his conservative early datings of the NT. Spong claims the gospels contradict themselves about the time between Christ's burial and resurrection (Ch. 17). Christ was buried at about 6pm Good Friday (Lk. 23:54) and rose on the 'first day of the week' (Mk. 16:9) or 'on the third day' (1 Cor. 15:4). Spong claims that this contradicts Mt. 12:40: 'three days and three nights'. He overlooks that Jews distinguished the word 'day' in the sense of daylight hours from 'day' as 24 hour cycle, by referring to the latter as 'night and a day'. Further, in Jewish counting, a part of a day was counted as a whole day, e.g. 1 Sam. 30:12, where 'he had not eaten bread or drunk water for three days and nights' is equated in v. 13 with _hayyôm sheloshah_ ('three days ago') which could only mean 'day before yesterday'. Spong could also benefit from the NT Greek scholar John Wenham's book _Easter Enigma_, which comprehensively solves all the other alleged contradictions in the Resurrection accounts. The most glaring proof of his scholarly incompetence is on pp. 53-55, where Spong draws our attention to Gal. 1:15-16a which says: 'But when He who had set me apart, even from my mother's womb, called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His son in me ...' From v. 16, 'to reveal His son in me', Spong claims: 'This was not a physical body recalled from the grave. The word for "reveal" in this text is _ophthe_, the same word used in the Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures to describe the appearances of God (theophanies) or angels of God (angelophanies). ... What was the nature of a theophany? Was it really "physical"? What was the means of hearing God's voice speak? Was it audible to any ear? Was it capable of being recorded or objectified?' Spong is wrong about _ophthe_, because it is often used in the NT in an objective sense. But even worse, the Greek word for 'reveal' in Gal. 1:16 is actually _apokalupsai_, not _ophthe_! It is shocking to see that Spong was trying to attack traditional Christian belief by appealing to a mis-translation of a Greek word which is not even in the passage on which he is pontificating! Roman Catholic scholar, Prof. Gerald O'Collins was undoubtedly referring to this blunder when he wrote: 'What is said about a key verb St. Paul uses in Gal. 1:15f. shows that the bishop [Spong] has forgotten any Greek that he knew.' Spong should have heeded O'Collins' kindly 'advice for his next book [which] is to let some real experts check it before publication.' Prof. O'Collins' also stated that Spong's 'work simply does not belong to the world of international scholarship. No genuine scholar will be taken in by this book...
Rating:
Summary: The Resurrection versus Bodily Resuscitation
Review: Do not be mislead by those who, upset at the arguments presented here, therefore give this book poor reviews. Spong does not, as they claim, deny the Resurrection. (Neither would Spong ever disrespect the Jewish religion, as one reviewer here seems to do.) Indeed, to deny the Resurrection is to deny Christianity; this Spong agrees. But he does differentiate between the Divine Resurrection and mere bodily resuscitation. Read the book to find out why.
Rating:
Summary: Too difficult to be relevant
Review: I am persuaded by much of what Bishop Spong argues in this book and I was genuinely moved by the penultimate chapter when he speculates on the purely spiritual experience that Peter must have had that formed the cornerstone of Christian faith and that later led to the New Testament mythological formulations of the empty tomb, angels, physical appearances, etc., that according to Spong collectively tried to point to that original experience. What bothers me about this book is that his argument is so demanding and dependent on technical scholarship that the actual truth behind Christianity that he attempts to uncover is, in this day and age, too inaccessible to inspire the masses of humanity. I mean, why should we have to master something as arcane as Midrash in order to get at the underlying truth of Christianity?
Yet Spong's argument remains strong. What this tells me is that the nature of God is such that He is unable to provide us with a definitive revelation that will be valid for all times and places. This is not news to students of general religious studies, but it will be a hard pill to swallow for Christians. All of this "searching for the historical Jesus" stuff that Spong is deeply committed to is probably necessary, but not to salvage Christianity or to inject it with new life. It is necessary to force this issue, that Christianity has had its day, and our religious conscience needs to come up with new conceptions of God that are more in tune with what we know about the nature of history and the nature of the universe. It boggles the mind how tenacious writers like Spong are in holding on to something that has so obviously faded into obsolescence.
Rating:
Summary: Faith in Vain
Review: I don't want my money back, I really don't. I was just wondering if someone would refund me the life I spent reading this book? I may be an ignorant savage, but I do know without a resurrection, there is no Christanity and there is definatly no reason for me to believe in its validity. I might as well go back to Judaism if Sprong is right. So please, will someone give me back the life I just spent on this drivel? Please??
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