Listen to John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal Bishop:
Bishop Spong is a prolific author and you may want to check out some of his books:
Eternal Life: A New Vision: Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell (2009)
Jesus for the Non-Religious (2008)
The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love (2006)
A New Christianity for a New World: Why Traditional Faith is Dying & How a New Faith is Being Born (2002)
Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers In Exile (1999)
Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (1995)
Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture (1992)
I read one of Spong's books and liked it and learned from it, except toward the end where it got too deep for me. I remember he was saying that Mark read like a liturgy or something with the 24 parts of the day. Sorry to be so vague, but I just think he was saying Mark was like something they would read in the synogague because of the way it's laid out. Have you heard of this?
ReplyDeleteAlso Spong struck me as someone who actually looked at the Bible with fresh eyes and truly put some thought into it, instead of reading it with all the prejudices, etc. that are in our heads that make us see it in a particular way.
It's a little un-nerving to think that you've misunderstood a lot of the Bible your whole life and tried to follow something that you really didn't even understand correctly!
Yeah, sounds like Liberating the Gospels. One of my professors said that was speculation---the idea that Matthew is divided according to the Jewish liturgical year. But I wonder if Spong got that idea from the New Testament scholar, Michael Goulder.
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