You don’t want to read this if you haven’t formed your personal theology of Jesus. Otherwise, boy oh boy will Miles make you think. Wow! What an interesting perspective on Christ.

This follow-on the his Old Testament study of God was rather hard to read. It was hard in the academic sense because it was very stictly laid out and very detailed. Not a history, but a literary criticism study of the story of Jesus; not a study of the New Testament since it was only following the "life" of the main character of the New Testament. It helped to have read his earlier book on God.

A fantastic sequel (if it can be called that) to Miles' God: A Biography. His basic premise is that Christ, or God Incarnate, has been born in crisis, which crisis is the broken covenant Miles discusses so well in his first book. In order to resolve this crisis, Christ must humiliate himself (which is, as those of us who've read the New Testament, exactly what he does). For the believer, I feel like this book can do much to build faith; for the non-believer, this book can go far to explain (?) the irrationality that is Christianity.

This book also includes an epilogue where Miles discusses literary criticism and how its approach differs from historical criticism, which really helps to bring the two books together. Though I'm not sure Miles intended for this to be a sequel, I think having read his Biography prior to this made it a lot more meaningful, and would encourage anyone considering this book to begin there first.

Another interpretation of biblical text by an old white man. Nothing in it for women.

DNF

The fuck is he talking about? He starts banging on about the cross, the last shall be first, Neitzsche -- all for seemingly no reason. The story goes that Neitzsche finally went insane when he tried to stop a coachman from brutally beating his horse.

That horse was more worthy of a book than Christ.

He then starts with incoherent nonsense about lambs and horses being equal in symbolism, depending on which part of the world you live.

That's not true. That's NEVER been true. AND WTF DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH CHRISTIANITY? Even in the Prologue, he can't get to a Goddamned point.

Jack Miles must be insane. Don't waste your time with this shit.

No stars.

as with the first volume, it is extremely well written, but I disagree with the premises.

Disclosure: This review is written by my husband who has a MTh.
Rev. Mr. Daniel Laurita

"Three things in life are highly over rated" an old mentor once told me. Two are home cooking and a Harvard education--the third cannot be shared in a public forum. Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God suffers from both the Harvard education of its author Jack Miles and his home cooked ideas.

I really looked forward to this book. Mr. Miles had been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his first book, God: A Biography The lauds that were applied to that work had piqued my curiosity. However, Jack Miles is an ex-Jesuit. An "ex" anything is a red flag that someone has an agenda to unfold. He is also an ex-Catholic, an ex-Scripture scholar, and now an ex-journalist by his own admission.

This professor of humanities begin his "literary reading" of the New Testament by invoking the philosophy of Frederich Nietzsche. Abundantly quoted, we are reminded that, for Nietzsche "Christianity was a victory--a nobler outlook perished of it--Christianity has been the greatest misfortune of mankind so far." The nobler outlook is of course the divinity of man and his quest for power. Recall that Nietzsche's writings were later exploited by the National Socialist Party to advance their agenda.

From this start we are invited to look at the New Testament and consider it as a "stained glass window." Unfortunately the author only sees the dark shadings of the window and not the light that breaks through. Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God is in reality a revelation of the crisis of it author.

He puts aside hundreds of years of historical critical analysis of the Scripture, not to mention two millennia of religious tradition and scholarship. His first footnote is, "translations of biblical citations are my own except when otherwise indicated." This in itself allows him to do what he wants with the text. It establishes his self-proclaimed authority disregarding the body of work of various communities of scholars. These communities have given the various English translations are set aside deftly and rarely heard from again. For this author the Scripture is the revelation that God is guilty of abandoning his people and his creation. "The world is a great crime and someone must be made to pay for it," Miles says. Since God is the author of the world He must pay the price. That price is the "suicide" of God through the crucified death of Jesus--God Incarnate. "No one lacks a good reason for suicide," from the poetry of Cesare Pavese is added fodder for Miles.

Keep in mind that Nietzsche died a madman and Pavese died by his own hand. Miles home cooked reading of the New Testament is the end result of reading the Sacred Scripture as literature only. Totally disregarding the vision of faith Jack Miles is lost to his own musings. He reads the poetry of the John’s prologue as narrative and the narrative as historical. He has forgotten that the Scripture is the product of man's encounter with God. It is an attempt to explain the unexplainable "mystery of God."

Professor Miles wants us to accept that God's purpose is to redeem himself rather than to redeem mankind. God has fallen, not man. We are the victims, not of our choice or actions, but of the failure of God. Miles’ epilogue draws us further away from the purpose of Scripture, "To reveal that which is necessary for our salvation" (Dei Verbum , a document produced by the Second Vatican council of the Catholic Church).

He reminds us that in both his books, "god has been taken neither as the object of religious belief nor as a topic in ancient history but as the central character in a work of literature." If you must read this book keep this in mind. Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God is more fictional than scholarly, more dark than light, more pedantic than wisdom.

This writing from Jack Miles is an interesting one that turns God's character upside down for an alternative perception. What if God not only became human incarnate to save the world from sin, but to right his own wrong of cursing mankind in Eden and abandoning Israel to Rome? However controversial in parts, Miles has several interesting ideas that lend the Christian to entertain and some to adopt as a new understanding of the Gospels. Great read for religious and non religious alike.

Removed my single star. Not fair to rate a book I didn't finish.

Er wird festgenommen, vor Gericht gestellt, gegeißelt und verurteilt.

Der verstorbene Jorge Luis Borges sagt in einem posthum veröffentlichten Vortrag, daß die größten Erzählungen der Welt für ihn sind es die Iias, ,die Odyssee und das Evangelium - dazu einladen, immer wieder nacherzählt zu werden. Doch "beim Evangelium", sagt er, "ist es anders: Die Geschichte von Jesus Christus kann, glaube ich, nicht beser erzählt werden." Borges meint nicht, daß das Evangelium nicht nacherzählt werden sollte. Er weiß, daß es ebenso oft nacherzählt wurde wie die Ilias und die Odyssee, und er geht davon aus, daß es auch künftig nacherzählt werden wird. Und wahrscheinlich könnte man Borges mit der Frage: "Welches der vier Evangelien ist denn dasjenige, das sich nicht verbessern laßt?" in Verlegenheit bringen. Doch in einem hat er gewiß recht: Sollte sich jemand eingeladen fühlen, das Evangelium nachzuerzählen, so wird er rasch die Erfahrung machen, daß es seine Einladung zurücknimmt, daß es sich dem, wozu es herausfordert, widersetzt oder es gar vereitelt. Wer den Ver- such macht, es nachzuerzählen, wird das sofort merken.

This book was slow going for me -- it's very cerebral and often challenging. I took a long break and then read the last 100 pages in a week, and I enjoyed the end more than I had the rest of the book.
The overall thesis is very interesting (if I'm remembering it right: Christ's life and death and resurrection is God's attempt to work out the problem of why He doesn't lead Israel to conquer as He did in the days of Exodus, and He works it out by changing the role of the Messiah and redefining who His people are), but somewhat difficult to sink your teeth into.
Miles is an original and creative thinker, and I'm glad I read this book -- but I don't know if I read it in the right way to be able to engage with the thesis adequately or to fully appreciate the analysis.

Less famous than it's forbear, this is my favourite of the two Jack Miles works in which he approaches the bible as a work of art, and with the tools of the literary critic. The results are profound, and Miles is a deep and even minded thinker. One of the great, great works of theology of the last hundred years.