In “Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time,” Marcus J. Borg starts out by talking about how the images Christians have of Jesus influence the way they live their faith. Unfortunately, according to Borg, many of the images our culture has accumulated of Jesus are not authentic to who he really was. Drawing on research from the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars dedicated to determining the historicity of events and statements in the gospel, Borg attempts to create a picture of Jesus that more accurately represents the teacher from Nazareth. He breaks down this picture of Jesus into four components: spirit person (or someone in touch with the Divine,) teacher of alternative wisdom, social prophet, and movement founder. He discusses how each of these aspects of Jesus’ character can affect the way we view his teachings and how we can try to emulate his message.
This book wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but I enjoyed reading it. I think I got Marcus J. Borg mixed up with Bart Ehrmann, so I went into thinking it was going to be a much more historically-based scholarly work While Borg does refer to many scholarly sources and grounds his thesis in historical research, his conclusions are very much based in his personal opinions and spiritual beliefs. Borg is a Christian, though he doesn’t take the Bible literally or see Jesus as divine. He views Christianity as a way to enter a relationship with God within the framework of Jesus’ teachings. This position informs the way the book is written, because while he doesn’t view most of the stories about Jesus historical (such as the virgin birth and the resurrection,) he does view them through the lens of what they say about God. Again, none of this was a problem, just not what I was expecting from the book. It was well written and Borg comes to some interesting and inspiring conclusions about Jesus and his teachings.
