The Gospel According to Jesus
by Stephen Mitchell (Goodreads Author)
4.22 · Rating details · 575 ratings · 38 reviews
A pocket-sized gift edition of "The Gospel According to Jesus", the classic examination of the Gospels in which the accounts of Jesus' words and acts are distilled down the "essential" Gospel, minus the later additions by the early Church. (less)
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Darwin8u
Jan 03, 2020Darwin8u rated it it was amazing
Shelves: religion, nonfiction, philosophy, 2020, poetry
"We can't begin to see who Jesus was until we remove the layers of interpretation which centuries have interposed between us and him, and which obscure his true face, like coat after coat of lacquer upon the vibrant colors of a masterpiece."
- Stephen Mitchell, The Gospel According to Jesus
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[painting by J. Kirk Richards]
I'm a big fan of Mitchell's translation (interpretations). So, I was excited to see what approach he would take with Jesus from the Gospels. The first 1/3 of this book (pp 1-97; including about 35 pages of notes) is Mitchell's introduction to the project. He draws inspiration from the Jefferson Bible (aka The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth) where Thomas Jefferson cut the New Testament down to only include the saying of Jesus. Jefferson wanted nothing to get between him and Jesus. In many ways, that too is the approach of Mitchell. He uses modern biblical scholarship and textual analysis to narrow down the "authentic" Jesus from the sectarian passages, the polemical passages and myths added by the early church. One can certainly argue on the edges with what Mitchell includes or excludes, but he does make a viable case for creating a more consistent message out of the often contradictory narratives and teachings of Jesus. I tend to agree with both Jefferson and Mitchell, that "when the accretions are recognized and stripped off, Jesus surprisingly appears in all his radiance. Like the man in Bunyan's riddle, the more we throw away, the more we have."
Interestingly, the Gospel left by Mitchell is only about 25 pages (pp 101 to 126). It is followed by about 150 pages of commentary and finally an appendix of about 30 pages with writings on Jesus by Baruch Spinoza, William Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, Friedrich Nietzsche, George Bernard Shaw, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Ramana Maharshi. (less)
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Rachel
Dec 14, 2009Rachel rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: religion
I feel a kind of wistful envy toward people who have a clear image of Jesus. The images differ--wiry prophet of social justice; Son of God Incarnate, feet barely touching the dust he walked on; witty wandering sage; Buddha of the Mediterranean.
Mitchell has done his homework, reviewing what is known or conjectured about the provenance of each passage in the Gospels we have received. Scholarship informs his views, and helped his image of Jesus to develop. In the end, his image allows him to say of the reports of Jesus' life and action, "this is authentic" or "this is not authentic."
Mitchell's Jesus is a great spiritual teacher with a healing touch and a few unhealed wounds. I like him. He says things I need to learn and relearn.
But my image of Jesus, what I suppose the evangelicals mean when the speak of "a personal relationship" with Jesus, is still a little foggy. Perhaps too much light in the developing darkroom of my soul. (less)
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Jon
Feb 04, 2009Jon rated it it was amazing
If you have a Christian background, you may have noticed that while Jesus is an extraordinarily wise, kind, patient, and tolerant character most of the time, he will occasionally break out with some crazy stuff about people being damned to hell. That never made sense to me, and this book explains why: many of the sections that struck me as odd are actually written in a different style of Greek -- probably added at a later time by the founders of the Christian religion.
Mitchell's project is one that others -- including Thomas Jefferson -- have taken on before: to sort out the church propaganda and see what is left. Mitchell goes way beyond that, however, and cross-references his distillations with other mystic spiritual texts from around the world.
This book is really helpful for context in comparing Christianity with other systems, especially Eastern ones. (less)
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Randy Cauthen
Jul 22, 2012Randy Cauthen rated it liked it · review of another edition
OK, generally I really like Mitchell. I like the Gilgamesh, I like the Job, I like the Rilke. And to really do a decent job critiquing this, I'd have to go back and figure out exactly what his editing of the canon actually is.
But. He has a tendency here to say, regarding his own selection and translation, "Well what Jesus really means here is this," and this drives me nuts. Why not either re-edit to eliminate the supposedly problematic passages, or simply engage in dialogue? And the idea of a fundamental conflict with his birth family is overworked some. (less)
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Ryan Haczynski
Aug 11, 2012Ryan Haczynski rated it it was amazing
Excellent book chock full of exquisite scholarship. The edition I read is the full version, not the shorter one listed here on GoodReads. As a Religious Studies major who has always been fascinated with Formative Christianity, I found Mitchell's work to be informative and in line with many of my own thoughts on the subject. Additionally, the cross-cultural comparisons to other wisdom literature was enlightening and truly illustrate that Christianity's spiritual wisdom is not so different from other cultural expressions / understanding of the sacred. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in delving deeply into the topic while clearing away the dogmatic/doctrinal clutter that has been added to Jesus' teachings over the centuries. (less)
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Hugh
Mar 10, 2012Hugh rated it it was amazing
With the benefit of 200 years of additional biblical scholarship Stephen Mitchel recapitulates an experiment that Thomas Jefferson began while president and finished shortly thereafter - the result was known in the Jefferson family as "The Jefferson Bible." It now resides in the Library of Congress.
Mitchell is a bible scholar of note, and translates from the Greek and Hebrew texts, to create his own 'Jefferson Bible' so to speak. (less)
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Olivia
Oct 15, 2013Olivia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Favorite quotes:
"The kingdom of God will not come if you watch for it. Nor will anyone be able to say, 'It is here' or 'It is there.' For the kingdom of God is within you."
"Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to suffering, and those who go through it are many. But the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to true life, and those who find it are few." (less)
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Ted
Jul 14, 2007Ted rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
One of the most insightful and profound looks into Jesus anywhere. The footnotes are just as interesting as the text. This is not a look at some historical Jesus in some long-ago past, but at a living, breathing believable human being. You'll find as much of yourself in this book as you will of Jesus. (less)
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Jim
Feb 08, 2008Jim rated it it was amazing
This is brilliant, fearless book, that makes sense of the often contradictory verbage appearing in the Gospels, clearing away the garbage left by evangelists with an angenda, to reveal the shining truth of Jesus' ministry. Jesus was probably the first person on this planet to "get it" that the spirit of God lives within us. All you need is love - "good news" indeed! (less)
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Joel
Sep 23, 2020Joel rated it it was ok
Shelves: nonfiction
Two stars because it is informative about current scholarship in places. Other than that it's pretty bad. Mitchell interprets Jesus according to his own idea of universal religious truth (plenty influenced by Zen Buddhism). The fact is that Jesus was of his time and place and that's why he expressed himself the way he did. He was not part of some fantastical line of religious masters. It's often unclear whether Mitchel has left a part of the gospel out because scholars agree it is a later addition, or just because Mitchell thinks "Jesus wouldn't have said that" based on his artificially constructed Jesus. So though he does cite scholars (certain ones repeatedly), he mostly comes off like Thomas Jefferson who simply snipped the parts of Jesus he liked out of the Bible. Except even Jefferson did not presume to lecture Jesus on where he fell short of universal religious truth and how he could have expressed himself better. (less)
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Edgar Trevizo
Jan 30, 2018Edgar Trevizo rated it it was amazing
Oh, this is such a beautiful book! A precious jewel both for believers and unbelievers, and perhaps much more beautiful for the latter. It is full of poetry, enlightment, joy and hope, here on Earth. I’ve always loved Jesus’ teachings, but this work of reading them from oriental philosophy broadened my perspective and gave me a lot to meditate about and to enjoy. I higly recommend it to everyone, especially to non believer seekers of truth.
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MG
Sep 26, 2018MG rated it really liked it
Shelves: 2018
This is really a fresh and insightful essay about Jesus coupled with a short translation of what Stephen Mitchell considers the core or authentic teachings of Jesus. I wish in the essay Mitchell would have spent more time saying positively what he saw as the foundation of Jesus's teaching. Still, his grappling with Jesus's family background--his illegitimacy, his tension with his mother and brothers--were enlightening, as were the other topics he covered. This book is well worth perusing. (less)
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Zach
May 22, 2019Zach rated it it was amazing
310 pages with notes and commentary and an Introduction. But the meat is similar to the Logia of Yeshua: just the scenes in the Gospel where Jesus speaks directly. Only his words and actions. No filters or obstructions. 25 pages. Double spaced. With High School Kid Trying to Fatten Up His Page Count margins. Imagine that. All the strife of the world caused by people waving the Bible as justification when they should just focus on those 25 pages. Shrug. Sigh. Sigh.
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Madi Eerung
Mar 12, 2018Madi Eerung rated it it was ok
Weird Freudian psychoanalysis of Jesus and Mitchell's airing of his personal drama. Did anyone else deduce from this book that his wife cheated on him? Also semi-related, did y'all know Stephen Mitchell doesn't actually know Chinese? A lot of feel-goodsy stuff in here but also some bad textual criticism. (less)
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Carol Painter
May 23, 2019Carol Painter rated it it was amazing
This is my 3rd time re-reading this...it is an amazing treatise on Christianity, and restores my own faith in the recognition of all spiritual traditions. I agree with Stephen Mitchell's separating the truth from the fables that have grown around this particular religion. (less)
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Perf
Jul 03, 2019Perf rated it it was amazing
read this 20 years ago, and keep meaning to reread. Good attempt to demystify the myths while retaining faith in the reality of the teaching.
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Chris KP
Jan 17, 2021Chris KP rated it really liked it
This book seeks to unpack Jesus' teachings in two senses. First, Mitchell--with the help of contemporary scholarship--extracts from the Gospels the teachings that were likely expounded by Jesus himself, rather than those later developed by his followers (which were likely corrupted by the incentives inherent in building a new religion, by misunderstanding of his teachings, and by time). He offers a simple, accessible translation of these core teachings.
Second, he provides analysis of this core, translated text--applying his own insights, and using both the work of academic biblical scholars and the work of great thinkers who have written on Jesus' teachings, from Gandhi, to Tolstoy, to Blake, to Jefferson. He emphasizes Eastern traditions within his own analysis, which is often illuminating, but can also seem partial insofar as Mitchell's own thought is clearly so deeply indebted to Zen practice and history.
Do we lose something by universalizing Christian teachings so much, and finding in them only that which can be found through Zen? As someone who has already read and enjoyed Mitchell's translation of the Tao, I found the excerpts from Gandhi and Tolstoy and especially Emerson on Christianity to be more immediate, incisive, and germane to the actual text.
Takeaways:
(1) Jesus was full of love, joy, and compassion. He had a talent for communicating challenging moral concepts in simple, clear ways. I like to believe that he attracted followers through these qualities and not through fiery sermonizing or the promise of some extrinsic reward. It seems that the concept of a paradaisal afterlife, etc. was tacked on by later followers who fundamentally misunderstood his teachings. Jesus preached that the Kingdom of God was within.
(2) He did not speak of himself as THE Son of God.
- He did not position himself as someone who could forgive sins, though he preached forgiveness.
- He did not position himself as someone who would one day sit in judgement, but as someone who believed judgment itself to be a sin that came between men and God.
- He did not position himself as perfect, he affirmed that only God is perfect and that all, even the best men, have some sin.
- He was not enraged by sinners or those who questioned him, he welcomed both with maturity, grace, and love.
- The authors of the Gospels, especially Paul, introduced the petty, vengeful, violent, sectarian and even hateful tenor that degrades the New Testament, taking an approach that Jesus himself would've tenderly dismissed with a well-placed parable
(3) Sin literally means "mistake" in Hebrew.
(4) I was intrigued by the theory that much of Christian teaching comes from Jesus' experience as an illegitimate child in a small, traditional village in which he likely had to endure countless slights as a result of his parentage. It brings additional heft to his emphasis on forgiveness and God as "The Father."
(5) My favorite stories are those of the mustard seed, the Prodigal Son, and most especially the adulteress. The notion of warmhearted forgiveness, and joy that can bloom if we let it, is inspiring.
I worry that labels lead to dogmatic thinking, and often cloud that which they are supposed to clarify. But, I do believe the two fundamental Christian teachings that Jesus underscores, again and again in Mitchell's translation: Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself.
Can a person "love God" while remaining agnostic as to God's existence? The excellent commentary that Mitchell compiles at the end of the book points toward an answer. We love "God" by loving that which has been given us, by finding the miracle in each moment, by laughing in awe at the wonder of the world and our good fortune to have time in it. As Emerson writes, "The word miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is a monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain."
How do we love our neighbor as our self?
- By bringing compassion and joy to each interaction.
- By showing our neighbor the way when they are led astray, and allowing them to do the same to us.
- By seeing suffering, and working to ameliorate it.
- By acknowledging and making right our sins (our mistakes), and allowing others to do the same.
This all comes when we let go of self-centered thinking, and focus on others, finding joy with and for them. There is thus no need for rituals. Every moment we can find the love that is asked. This is what Jesus taught. (less)
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Mac
Dec 09, 2008Mac rated it liked it
I just finished this book. I thought that is was a clear, accessible, not-too-preachy book that allowed me to understand what Jesus stood for. I find that his beliefs and mine overlap in quite a few areas, with the exception of the "geneology" to his "father." The analysis was a little dry, but there were some gems of wisdom in there. (less)
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Tom
Jan 01, 2014Tom rated it liked it · review of another edition
Well worth reading. Downgrade one star for the title. There is no "gospel according to Jesus" as he wrote nothing we know of. All gospels reveal the prejudice of their authors. This version is Stephen Mitchell's and he relies on many others, especially eastern mystics, to inform his presentation. Still, well worth the read and contemplation. (less)
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Liaken
May 25, 2010Liaken rated it really liked it
Shelves: poetry, spirituality
Years ago, I got this book anonymously in the mail and was fascinated with it. There were little folded papers with notes and ideas on them tucked in the pages. The text itself was beautiful. Finally, it turned out that my brother had sent it through a used book company.
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Ellen
Sep 22, 2010Ellen rated it it was amazing
Shelves: dnf
The introduction was a fascinating portrayal of what Jesus's world was really like and why his message of forgiveness is so central to his teachings. I'd like to go back to this one again, but since it was an interlibrary loan, I had to return it. (less)
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