E-Book Extra: "Why the Gospels Are Not Gospel: The Jesus Who Is and Never Was" by Stephen Mitchell.
If you were to read *one book* about Jesus, *this is that book*. Jesus: What He Really Said and Did is concise; it is direct; and it will help all intelligent readers — whether they are Christians, Jews, agnostics, spiritual seekers, or merely curious — to better comprehend the authentic Jesus: the Jewish teacher who was born in Nazareth, was crucified by the Romans, and was perhaps the greatest religious genius of all time.
"The book you are about to read is a portrait of one of the most beautiful men who ever lived. He himself would probably not have considered himself beautiful or even special. He would have said that we are all beautiful, we are all special, because -- and he did say this -- we are all children of God. . . ."
"When you're able to look inside yourself deeply, you'll find that the teacher who taught Jesus will teach you."
Many people from traditional Christian backgrounds may find this book shocking and offensive. That is understandable. The traditional portrait of Jesus as the son of God, who died to redeem humankind from eternal damnation, holds their whole world together. The world wouldn't make sense without it, they think. I have no quarrel with anyone's religious beliefs.
If beliefs about Jesus can help make people kinder human beings, I am in favor of them. My advice to people who think they may be offended by this book is to close it immediately, or better yet, don't open it in the first place.
Other people from Christian backgrounds will find the book shocking but not at all offensive. There is a good kind of shock, which feels like a palmful of cold water on your face when you wake up in the morning. After The Gospel According to Jesus (written for adults) was published in 1991, many Christians, and many Jews as well, wrote to tell me how exciting and invigorating my portrait of Jesus seemed. Many of them said that it changed their lives. I was happy for them, happy that they had taken the book in so deeply. I felt we had shared a love for the presence that shines through Jesus' words.
Many people also wrote to ask me how I, a Jew, had come to write about Jesus. I sometimes had to explain that I was not one of the "Jews for Jesus" (Jews who have converted to fundamentalist Christianity). I love Jesus, but I don't believe what most churches say about him, and I don't respect some things that are taught in his name. I love Jesus, but I love the Buddha just as much, and Lao-tzu, and the wisest men and women from all the great spiritual traditions. Here are a few stories that may help you understand why I wrote that book, and now this one.
Two
In September 1952, when I was nine, my parents sent me to a new school. I had been happy at my public school, but my parents wanted to give me a better education. The new school was a private school for boys.
I was a middle-class kid, with a mind full of ordinary nine-year-old things: the New York Giants (not a popular choice in Brooklyn, but my father was a Giants fan), books, comic books, TV, drawing, carving, sleds and ice skates in the winter, animals of all kinds, music. But at my new school something out of the ordinary happened that changed my life. Not outwardly -- my parents never knew that there was a change. Something happened inside me.
Every Tuesday morning, all the students, from the fifth grade up through the twelfth, attended a Protestant service in the school chapel. We didn't have a choice; attendance was compulsory. I had never been inside a church or chapel before. My parents were Reform Jews. We went to synagogue a few times a year, but the rituals meant nothing to me, and the incomprehensible Hebrew of the prayers and songs sometimes stirred up in my younger brother and me, as we secretly glanced at each other, a surge of giggles that we could barely hold in.
Chapel was different. I liked the hymns. I liked the silences. I didn't understand the Gospel stories and parables, which were read in a dignified, stuffy voice by our headmaster, J. Folwell Scull, Jr., a man for whom I had an instinctive respect and whose name seemed to me a kind of weird poem that contained all the mystery of upper-class WASP America. But the readings touched me. They made me wonder about this Jesus.
Stephen Mitchell is widely known for his ability to make ancient masterpieces thrillingly new, to create versions that are definitive for our time. His books -- acclaimed by critics, scholars, and general readers -- include the bestselling
Tao Te Ching;
The Gospel According to Jesus;
Bhagavad Gita;
The Book of Job;
Genesis;
The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke; and
Loving What Is (written with his wife, Byron Katie).
He is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Meetings with the Archangel and The Frog Prince; his books for children include The Wishing Bone and Other Poems and The Nightingale; and his eagerly anticipated new version of Gilgamesh will be published in October 2004.
Stephen Mitchell's The Gospel According to Jesus, upon which Jesus: What He Really Said and Did is based, has been widely praised as "a masterpiece of immense power and permanence" and has changed the lives and perspectives of thousands of readers -- Christians, Jews, and agnostics.
Please visit www.stephenmitchellbooks.com and sign up for breaking news about Stephen Mitchell at www.AuthorTracker.com.
