Reading the Bible Again for the First Time Quotes

“The way of Jesus is thus not a set of beliefs about Jesus. That people ever thought it was is strange, when we think about it — as if one entered new life by believing certain things to be true, or as if the only people who can be saved are those who know the word "Jesus". Thinking that way virtually amounts to salvation by syllables.

Rather, the way of Jesus is the way of death and resurrection — the path of transition and transformation from an old way of being to a new way of being. To use the language of incarnation that is so central to John, Jesus incarnates the way. Incarnation means embodiment. Jesus is what the way embodied in a human life looks like.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally

“The same point is made in a story I once heard about a sermon preached by a Hindu professor in a Christian seminary several decades ago. The text for the day included the “one way” passage, and about it he said, “This verse is absolutely true—Jesus is the only way.” But he went on to say, “And that way—of dying to an old way of being and being born into a new way of being—is known in all of the religions of the world.” The way of Jesus is a universal way, known to millions who have never heard of Jesus.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“Postcritical naivete is the ability to hear the biblical stories once again as true stories, even as one knows that they may not be factually true and that their truth does not depend upon their factuality.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“The recognition that the Bible contains both history and metaphor has an immediate implication: the ancient communities that produced the Bible often metaphorized their history. Indeed, this is the way they invested their stories with meaning. But we, especially in the modern period, have often historicized their metaphors.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“three foundational questions about the Bible: questions about its origin, its authority, and its interpretation. The”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“On one side of the divide are fundamentalist and many conservative-evangelical Christians. On the other side are moderate-to-liberal Christians, mostly in mainline denominations.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“At the risk of repetition, I mean that God (or “the sacred” or “Spirit,” terms that I use synonymously) is a reality known in human experience, and not simply a human creation or projection.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“To see the Bible as a human product does not in any way deny the reality of God.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“Being Christian, I will argue, is not about believing in the Bible or about believing in Christianity. Rather, it is about a deepening relationship with the God to whom the Bible points, lived within the Christian tradition as a sacrament of the sacred.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“No longer are the riches of the Bible known only to an educated elite. But it has also had negative consequences. It has made possible individualistic interpretation of the Bible; and that, coupled with the elevated status given to the Bible by the Protestant Reformation, has led to the fragmentation of Christianity into a multitude of denominations and sectarian movements, each grounded in different interpretations of the Bible.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“The word “sacrament” also has a broader meaning. In the study of religion, a sacrament is commonly defined as a mediator of the sacred, a vehicle by which God becomes present, a means through which the Spirit is experienced.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“John Dominic Crossan wrote in the concluding chapter, “Mine Eyes Decline the Glory,” of his wonderful memoir, A Long Way From Tipperary [2000]. I’ll just read this:”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“in “the more” and not in the standards of my culture, not in the standards of my religious tradition, not in myself and how “well” I’m doing. To use Christian language once again, the primary fruit of centering in “the more,” according to St. Paul, are the four gifts of the spirit: peace, joy, freedom, and love. Now, who wouldn’t want a life filled with those things? And I see those fruits of the spirit to be the fruits of the spiritual life, in all of the major religious traditions. So, no, I don’t see this as peculiar to Christianity. I see Christianity as the revelation of a universal path, rather than its being the revelation or disclosure of a unique path.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“Because our socialization intrinsically leads to that kind of self-preoccupation, with how well the self is doing, the path of release and liberation from that self-preoccupation intrinsically involves dying to that way of being and being born to a life that is centered in the spirit, or in what William James in his wonderfully generic term for God called “the more.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“Namely, Christianity is the only major religion that finds the decisive disclosure of God in a person. Islam finds it in a book, the Koran. Judaism in a sense finds it in a book, the Torah. Buddhism finds it in the teaching of the Buddha and not necessarily in the person of the Buddha. But Christianity finds the decisive disclosure of God in Jesus. And that’s something that’s very interesting about Christianity. I also think that suggests something about the primacy of Jesus, even over the Bible itself.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“Jesus 2000.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“Jim Crace’s Quarantine [1997] and Norman Mailer’s The Gospel According to the Son [1997].”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“So these three, I am suggesting, are at the core of the biblical vision of life with God: a sacred Mystery at the center of life, with whom we are to be in a conscious relationship and who is passionate about the well-being of the whole creation. We are called to participate in the passion of God. This is what I perceive when I use the Bible as a lens for seeing life with God, when I think of it as a finger pointing to the moon, when I hear it as the foundation of the Christian cultural-linguistic world, and when I listen to it as a sacrament of the sacred.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“Within the framework of justification by grace, the Christian life is about becoming conscious of and entering more deeply into an already existing relationship with God as known in Jesus. It is not about meeting requirements for salvation later but about newness of life in the present. And living by grace produces the same qualities as life “in Christ”: freedom, joy, peace, and love.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“A recent study suggests that the majority of Christians were still Jewish in origin as late as the middle of the third century.3”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“Both Judaism and Christianity are about a “way.” Indeed, the word “repent,” so central to the Christian tradition, has its roots in the Jewish story of the exile. To repent does not mean to feel really bad about sins; rather, it means to embark upon a path of return. The journey begins in exile, and the destination is a return to life in the presence of God.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“This claim is also the central theme of Abraham Heschel’s The Prophets. Heschel”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“The meaning of “history remembered” or “historical memories” is obvious. Some events reported in the Bible really happened, and the ancient communities of Israel and the early Christian movement preserved the memory of their having happened. Indeed, the biblical story is grounded in the history of these two communities. The meaning of “metaphorical narratives” requires more explanation. In the Bible, such narratives fall into two categories. The first encompasses narratives in which an event that happened (or may have happened) is given a metaphorical meaning. The second covers purely metaphorical narratives.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“it has more than one nuance or resonance of meaning. In terms of its Greek roots, “metaphor” means “to carry with,” and what metaphor carries or bears is resonances or associations of meaning.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“Metaphorical language is intrinsically nonliteral. It simultaneously affirms and negates: x is y, and x is not y. The statement “My love is a red, red rose” affirms that my beloved is a rose even as it negates it. My beloved is not a rose, unless I am literally in love with a flower. Rather, there is something about my beloved that is like a rose.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“In the study of religion, a sacrament is commonly defined as a mediator of the sacred, a vehicle by which God becomes present, a means through which the Spirit is experienced.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“To be Christian means to live within the world created by the Bible. We are to listen to it well and let its central stories shape our vision of God, our identity, and our sense of what faithfulness to God means. It is to shape our imagination, that part of our psyches in which our foundational images of reality and life reside. We are to be a community shaped by scripture. The purpose of our continuing dialogue with the Bible as sacred scripture is nothing less than that.14”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“Thus the authority of the Bible is its status as our primary ancient conversational partner.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“The result: the monarchical model of biblical authority is replaced by a dialogical model of biblical authority. In other words, the biblical canon names the primary collection of ancient documents with which Christians are to be in a continuing dialogue.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

“I begin by noting that the books of the Bible were not sacred when they were written. Paul, for example, would have been amazed to know that his letters to his communities were to become sacred scripture. Rather, the various parts of the Bible became sacred through a process that took several centuries.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally