Wonderful book, full of insights and faith-affirming interpretations.

I followed Garry Wills for many years through his essays in the New York Review of Books - then read his Why I am a Catholic. I always like his combo of faith and scholarship, from a Catholic perspective.

Sharm and I read What Jesus Meant together. It's a perfect devotional books - very short and easy to read. I especially love Wills' own translations of New Testament verses - so warm and human and full of Spirit!

Wills' Catholic sensibilities meet my Mormon feelings on a number of levels. He challenges the hierarchy and exclusiveness of the Church - with obvious resonances for me and my faith. Food for thought!

Interesting, but only a few things that were new to me, mostly his comments on Koine Greek. It's quite short, so easy to read in a few days - you don't forget what he said at the beginning by the time you finish, the way it happens with some books. I'm not sure he really did a whole lot of explaining "what Jesus meant," which was what both the title and his foreword had led me to expect.

I re-read this for Lent and found it as profound and compelling as I did 14 years ago. Wills stresses how truly radical Jesus was and is and explores, not what he said and did, but what he actually meant. Although he is a devout Catholic, he doesn't hesitate to point out how hostile Jesus was to religious hierarchies nor how unnecessary the priesthood is. In Wills' telling, Jesus is not a Christian and did not come to found a church or religion - he came to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven and to make it available to all through him. It becomes all the more obvious that his message has been distorted, rationalized often rejected and the more challenging aspects largely ignored by the church.

This book reminds me of something I once heard Fulton Sheen say: "Many people claim to take the Bible literally, but too few take it seriously." The bottom line of the book is that we would live our lives very, very differently if we looked at what Jesus actually said and did and then DID what he said to do. Much of what so-called Christians do is based on rationalizing what they want to do, taking bits and pieces of commentary (including the various epistles) and mixing that with tradition. This book hypothesizes that we can get a pretty good idea of what Jesus meant by what he said and did; and I believe the author did a good job of showing it.

This is a great simple read. Mr. Wills takes a fresh view of the word of Jesus. Wills is not someone who holds the party line, he continues his reputation here. All in all, this work allows you to get closer to Jesus and his message without all the interference from the church.

Though I do not have the temerity to advocate for the abolition of all forms of institutional christianity (deliberately lower case for inclusiveness), I, myself, reject those institutional forms of faith. I believe that Wills brief exploration should serve as a moment of pause and a catalyst of course correction in the certitude of the faithful. I do not mean this opinion to be lofty or exclusive:
One should find things every day that give pause to certitude in anything, but foremost in ones faith. This book is an entertaining pursuit of - if not a doubt - a reason to re-think our faith. Wills makes assertions that undermine most directly the Catholic interpretations of passages from the bible, but this does not invalidate the book for anyone else.

The book is short and easy to read. It is accessible not least for the fact that passages are well marked for additional research. I would read this with a bible next to you as more is gleaned by looking up the myriad quoted passages to deepen their context. For some reason the only version I found on GoodReads are 176 or more pages. The paperback version that I read was only 143 and was not identified as abridged. Nor would it need to be, even at 176+ pages. I am not sure if there is something I am missing.

One last note - Wills certainly (especially in the last fifth or so) takes clear issue with the new Pope. I am not Catholic and consider the pope another politician, but I still took the sections regarding him as bias and worth taking with an extra grain of salt. As with any book about faith/religion/etc. the entire thing needs to be approached with stern caution as faith is the ultimate trump-card when it comes to rational thought.

A straightforward, sensible reading of the Gospels in the original Greek reveals a radical Jesus, who had no sympathy for the organized religion of his day, and no doubt, neither that of today.

“What is the kind of religion Jesus opposed? Any religion that is proud of its virtue, like the boastful Pharisee. Any that is self-righteous, quick to judge and condemn, ready to impose burdens rather than share or lift them. Any that exalts its own officers, proud of its trappings, building expensive monuments to itself. Any that neglects the poor and cultivates the rich, any that scorns outcasts and flatters the rulers of this world. If that sounds like just about every form of religion we know, then we can see how far off from religion Jesus stood.”

At first glance, it seems a little egotistic of the author to write a book called "What Jesus Meant." I mean, didn't Jesus say what He meant? Wasn't Jesus capable of expressing Himself clearly? Well, this book does not attempt to reinterpret Jesus' words to say something that Jesus never said; it places the stories of Jesus in their historical and literary context so that it is easier to understand the implications of the teachings and actions of Jesus in the minds of His first-century listeners. Why would Jesus first balk at helping out when they ran out of wine at a wedding, and then turn around and produce far more wine than the wedding party could possibly consume? What was Jesus' involvement in political causes? What's all this stuff about people and things being "clean" and "unclean", why did Jesus keep bringing it up, and why did He consistently ignore and break the religious rules by making contact with people who were "unclean"? Why did this kind of stuff seem to matter so much to the people around Jesus? Are there spiritual truths which are important in the 21st Century behind those actions of Jesus' which are culturally irrelevant to us? The book does a great job of exploring some of those questions.

I listened to the audiobook version, read by the author. At first I found his voice distracting, because he sounds quite a bit like Stefan Rudnicki who often performs the audiobook versions of Orson Scott Card's books - I kept expecting him to start talking about Ender and Bean instead of Paul and Peter! But all personal distractions aside, the reading is clear and easy to listen to, and I enjoyed the experience.

The book makes critical mention in a number of places of practices within the Catholic church. As a lifelong Protestant/Evangelical, in my mind those parts are probably less controversial and challenging, and more informative and interesting, than they might be to a dedicated Catholic. In those spots, it almost felt like I was reading something meant for someone else.

This book certainly gave me a lot to think about! Wills clearly knows his history in great detail, and he is clearly also very well-versed in Theological thought (he cites G. K. Chesterton quite often). I have no doubt that the ideas in this book will influence my streams of thought about the New Testament for many years to come.

A very simple, straightforward explication of The Gospels, providing a very practical, working solution for many challenges of faith.

At least Wills makes it clear from the start: "This is not a scholarly book, but a devotional one." Fair enough. Having read a number of his other books and articles, that is not quite what I expected it to be, but it is not particularly surprising either.
In fact, Wills is slightly misleading in his comment above. The book spends much effort refuting organized (that is to say, hierarchically structured or episcopal, in the actual sense of the word) religion. His argument is not an unusual one today: Jesus did not mean to create a new religion, but to usher in God's reign (what is generally called "the kingdom of God")on earth. Wills points out that both Paul and the later writers of the Gospels insist on this.
(Wills's critique of formalist religion is developed more fully in his most recent book, "Why Priests: A Failed Tradition.")
Wills notes: "Jesus did not come to replace the Temple with other buildings, whether huts or rich cathedrals, but to instill a religion of the heart, with only himself as the place we encounter the Father." Again, this is not a radical thesis today, but in a religious world of televangelists and grand cathedrals (and priests!) it is worth reiterating.
I found one part of Wills's discussion disconcerting. He takes time at the beginning of the book to offer criticism of and curtly dismiss the Jesus Seminar and its work. The Seminar is a group of distinguished scholars who over the past decades have made an exhaustive and intensive search into the historicity of Jesus and his message. Their work is illuminating, provocative, insightful and fascinating. Wills seems to think that researching the historicity of Jesus and the early church is a fool's errand, that only through faith can the real Jesus be known. Apart from allowing him to make a circular argument for his own findings, by obviating historical research it is terribly unfair to the Seminar itself.

Given Wills's massive reputation as a scholar and writer, I'm getting tired of being disappointed by him. OK, I've only read two of his books so far, so maybe I'm being a bit harsh. This one is better than the first, which was a history book. Here he puts on a different hat. Although the theological observations were pretty pedestrian, the book was interesting for the observations about Greek and Wills's original translations of N.T. passages. In general, his translations were far too loose for my tastes, but I didn't see anything that I could call flat out wrong. In fact, some of the translations were quite brilliant. I especially liked "Dire is your plight, scribes and pharisees" in numerous places rather than "Woe to you …". The latter makes it sound like Jesus is pronouncing a curse, whereas the sense of the Greek is more like a statement of fact: "Alas, scribes and pharisees", although Wills's translation is a definite improvement over the archaic "alas".