A literary analysis of the Gospels from a first rate thinker and writer. Changed my way of thinking about the development of theological reflection of the Messiah.

excellent challenging absorbing

As good as God A Biography. Another spellbinding read!

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*!

using history and scripture, miles shows the evolution of God and our perceptions of Him from the beginning through Jesus' time, and how His different personalities formed and resolved the contradictions of his attitude towards his people. this was a tough read, there wasn't much of a flow, but miles makes some really interesting and exciting points.

I will begin this review by stating that Jack Miles, undoubtedly, is a learned man. It is clear that his knowledge of the biblical text, as well as secular history's interactions with it, are extremely commendable. The essays that he attaches as appendices to these books, which outline precisely his thought process and justification for having written this book, prove as much; that he is well-versed in the scriptures, in sociopolitical context that may be relevant, and even in contemporary commentaries on the scriptures.

However, all of these facts, to me, only serve as proof that his unorthodox babblings were not spouted in ignorance, but in complete pre-meditation.

In this work, Jack is clearly attempting to respond to a world that increasingly has very little interest for the biblical text. He believes that this is because, on the one hand, many are too focused on the historicity of the bible, and that others are focused on resisting it as a document which is used to make "theological impositions".

Responding to these two groups, seeking to gain the approval and draw the attention of secularists to the bible...he decides to desecrate and butcher the text altogether, offering the masses a diluted, and polluted, way to view the text which allows many to read it without having to subscribe to the fundamental assumptions that underly such a text to begin with.

From the epilogue and appendices, I found that his approach could be summarised in the following quotes:

"There is no single necessary or correct way to read the New Testament, as there is no single necessary or correct way to read any great literary classic"

"The biblical rule [...] was not the rule of deference to original intent but the rule of creative reuse"

"Why take so narrowly instrumental an attitude toward a work of the imagination?"

Herein lies the pitfall of this whole book. From Jack's perspective, the entirety of the bible is merely a collation of stories written by men, figments of their imagination, within which different authors, influenced by their own time period and struggles with the idea of God, project their own needs and desires into a fictional text which just so happens to maintain its coherence. To Jack, in this book at least, God is merely a grand character who undergoes His own character development as He learns to rule the universe.

The God Jack writes about is not God. Whoever He may be, He's mutable, subject to the passions, far from omnipotent and, most comically of all, clearly exists within time itself, since the God that Jack describes is one who seems to watch the events of the world unfold in real-time, having no foresight or foreknowledge of future events, because He is constantly changing the game plan and trying to salvage His Creation from the unexpected consequences of His own actions. Funnily enough, the character that Jack describes is not God, but a gigantic toddler with semi-divine power, a Hercules or Zeus of sorts who is in no right worthy of any worship or glorification.

I initially had bookmarked all the heretical claims in this book that come as a result of Jack's rejection of the essential characteristics of God in his reading of the Gospels, but I have neither the time nor the care now to write them, since I already wasted much time in the reading of this book. Suffice to say that among them include a complete denial of the Trinitarian God (claims that the Father is the Son and vice versa), that Original Sin is a fault of God on account of His overreaction to a simple act of disobedience and, thus, that Christ's death and resurrection are an expression of God's repentance towards humanity, that God made promises to Israel about an earthly kingdom which He later "realised" He could not keep, thereby deciding to "rebrand" His identity in the New Testament and, not only this, but that the plan for redemption through His death was only executed under a condition of philosophical duress whereby He had to somehow maintain His relationship with humanity, since "Israel is [only] Israel because of Him, and He is [only] Himself because of Israel".

All of this can be traced back to one simple decision that Jack made when writing this book. He decided to conduct an entire exegesis on the New Testament, referring to little to no other sources. The only times the early church fathers are mentioned, they are entirely misinterpreted; otherwise Jack seems to be getting his information on Christianity from the likes of Nietzsche. In fact, he took his "no external sources" philosophy to such a degree that, at the start of the book, he informs the reader that all biblical translations in the book, unless otherwise stated, are his own.

Whether he did this as an intellectual exercise, or in deluded arrogance, one cannot say, but I have my bets on the latter.

When a book about an ancient text with thousands of years of tradition and interpretation has a testimonial on the front by the "New Statesman" claiming that it is "Startlingly original", one should have noticed the red flags. But it is clear that Jack knew what he was doing, since in the very last lines of his book, under his acknowledgements, he states: "In some similar sense, having never taken an undergraduate course in the New Testament, I am both humbled by and remote from the mighty enterprise that is contemporary New Testament scholarship. Let me then acknowledge its greatness in the round n  but spare individual scholars from a paternity claim that might be most unwelcomen."

If you've made it this far, I'm sorry that you've had to even learn about this sorry excuse for biblical scholarship, but I've saved you much trouble. Read the fathers, seek the counsel of apostolic tradition, and avoid the likes of Harvard educated ex-Catholics and their misguided Perennialist secularism.

I'll be reading some Augustine to refresh my mind from this fool's babbling.

very interesting explanation of the history of Judeo-Christian Religous thought....but not a page turner as one can see by the looooong ago start date...something i come back to now and again...

This is the "sequel," if you will, to the book "God: A Biography." I actually read this one first, and it really doesn't matter. He briefly lays out his hypotheses from the first book at the beginning of this one. This is again a literary reading of the Bible. It just deals with the New Testament. Or more accurately, the changeover from the Old Testament and the New Testament, and all the contradictions that Jack Miles finds there. In short, his conclusion is that God changed his mind. He realized that he could not keep his promise to the Jews, and so the sacrifice of Christ was in some measure his apology for that. It was also his acknowledgement that things had to change and be different. It has to be, for many reasons that Jack Miles lays out here. It's been awhile since I read it, but many of them are still crystal clear in my mind. God's overpowering, thundering voice of the Old Testament is contradicted by his near silence in the New Testament. The jealous, warlike, angry, vengeful God of the Old Testament all but disappears in the New. Or at least is made much more subtle. Why? That's what Jack Miles answers. I almost don't want to give anything else away because that would detract from the reading experience. It's frankly amazing to think about, and once again left me with more questions than answers.

I'm thinking if you'd read something like this in the first place that you don't mind a little dryness, and that's good. Honestly, I found it very readable and read it in a week. Mostly because I was so fascinated by everything that he's saying. The opening of this one and God: A Biography are not dry at all. The majority of it isn't. There's just some times where he's bringing in a lot of evidence, is all. Which I find interesting, but some people might find a bit hard to push through. But really, it's worth it. If you have any interest in the Bible, this is really worth it.

The only caution I would really give is that you need to have some basic knowledge of the Bible to read it, obviously. The more the better, because Jack Miles was an incredibly learned Jesuit before he left the order. And it shows.

I listened to the audiobook. I tried to read it once and found it hard to follow, but I might find it easier to reread after listening to the audio version

I'm incredibly impressed by Mr. Miles' ability to thread the old and new testament together. A true talent for picking up the loose ends of story and weaving them into what the original authors may have trying to convey. This is a very scholarly piece.

This book picks up where God: A Biography left off.

It's difficult to paraphrase Miles, but God, having messed up relations with his chosen people, uses Jesus to give human experience to a spiritual being. Implicit here is the idea that God hasn't done that well with his creation. At the first transgression he has saddled humanity with death. Through Jesus he offers a wrenching sort of empathy that results in the overcoming of that very state which he imposed on humanity.

Miles zips back and forth between the Old and New Testaments to show where Jesus and his disciples are coming from. It's like a weaving, a beautiful tapestry of sorts.

Excellent on first blush. J Miles can really write and his analytical skills (not simply textual, mind) are filed to a fine, sharp needle