A BOOK WORTH HAVING

John Shelby Spong’s latest work Re-Claiming The Bible For A Non-Religious World, (HarperOne 2011) is an important book. It began as a series of lectures at a summer institute in South Carolina in 2006, developed into an online series of newsletters, and has now reached its published form. His intent is to give those interested in the Christian scriptures - and those dismissing it as nonsense – a clear sense of nature of the Bible as it is known to scholars who have spent their lives studying it in minute detail. In the preface, he writes, “… it will give those who engage it the sense of having completed a major university course on the Bible.”

A fellow of the Jesus Seminar, Spong adopts what can be defined as a consensus of current progressive biblical scholarship. Little of what he writes will be new to those who have maintained an active reading of current literature about how the Bible came into existence. Little will please those who cling desperately to the conservative, literal approach to scripture. He discounts the religious value of some of the less often read books of the Bible, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament.  Some of never appear in lectionaries designed for reading and preaching in worship of congregations.

Spong holds to what is now the traditional view, already some one hundred and fifty years old, of the so-called “five books of Moses” (the Hebrew Torah).  On the other hand, he breaks with the well-known theory of a document called Q, thought by many scholars to have been the common source shared by the gospels of Matthew and Luke. The Apostle Paul, he believes, gave not only one of the first but also the most influential interpretation of the meaning of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. At the same time, he does not regard the stories of Jesus’ birth or resurrection as believable in this day and age.  His alternate views on these narratives is worthy of serious consideration.

A particularly significant part of the book presents the first three gospels as set in the context of synagogue worship for a full year. Mark’s presentation of the Jesus story runs from from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, a period of about six and a half months. Matthew and Luke carry the cycle forward for the remaining five and a half months to the next Rosh Hashanah.

Possibly the most valuable part of this 400-plus page work of fifty-nine chapters in twelve parts is the religious and cultural background Spong cites for each book in the Bible. He does not believe that the Bible is in any sense the “Word of God.” He frankly states that “it is a tribal story, as this book will reveal – a pre-modern story, an ever changing and ever-growing story. It came into existence, as every other book does, out of the experience of human beings seeking to make sense out of the life they are living and the things they are experiencing.”

Without falling into the trap of supercessionism, Spong’s approach to the New Testament locates many of the stories and interpretations therein as the fulfillment of the Hebrew scriptures.  He ends his final chapter reassuring his readers that, despite what some will see as his extreme views, he still believes that God was in Jesus and therefore remains for him, Christ.

The publisher, HarperCollins (HarperOne, in Canada) anticipates a wide readership, particularly in small study groups found in many progressive churches. It is priced accordingly. Anyone looking for a suitable Christmas or Hanukkah gift for a spiritually searching friend or family member could find nothing better than this.

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