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An Excerpt From


READING THE

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BIBLE AGAIN

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FOR THE

FIRST TIME

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Taking the Bible
Seriously
but Not Literally


MARCUS J. BORG



Bible quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard
Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education
of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission.


READING THE BIBLE AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME: Taking the Bible
Seriously but Not Literally. Copyright © 2001 by Marcus J. Borg. All rights reserved
under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment
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Print edition first published in 2001 by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.


Contents


Preface v

Part One

FOUNDATIONS
1 Reading Lenses: Seeing the Bible Again

Part Two

THE HEBREW BIBLE
4 Reading the Creation Stories Again

Part Three

THE NEW TESTAMENT
8 Reading the Gospels Again

About the Author
Credits
About PerfectBound eBooks



Preface


Conflict about the Bible is the single most divisive issue among
Christians in North America today. And because of the importance
of Christianity in the culture of the United States, conflict
about the Bible is also central to what have been called "the culture
wars."

The conflict is between two very different ways of reading the
Bible. In language I will use later in the book, it is a conflict between
a "literal-factual" way of reading the Bible and a "historicalmetaphorical"
way of reading it. The former is central to Christian
fundamentalists and many conservative-evangelical Christians. The
latter has been taught in seminaries of mainline denominations for
the better part of a century. Most clergy have known about it for a
long time. In the last few decades, the historical-metaphorical way
of reading the Bible has become increasingly common among lay
members of mainline churches.

This book represents the historical-metaphorical side of the
debate. In its pages, I describe a way of seeing and reading the
Bible that flows out of my life within two communities: the academic
community of biblical scholarship and the scholarly study
of religion, and the religious community of the church.

For over thirty-five years, I have been studying and teaching
the Bible in private and public colleges, universities, and graduate
schools. From the beginning, my special area of study has
been Jesus and the gospels. But I have always had an abiding interest
in the Hebrew Bible and have consistently taught it as well


PREFACE

as the New Testament at the introductory and more advanced
levels.

This book contains the most important and illuminating insights
that I have learned about the Bible from this experience. It
has three parts. Part One (three chapters) analyzes the present
conflict and lays the foundation for a historical-metaphorical approach
to the Bible. Parts Two and Three apply this approach
and introduce the reader to major parts of the Bible. In Part
Two, I treat portions of the Hebrew Bible in four chapters: creation
stories, the Pentateuch, the prophets, and wisdom literature.
In Part Three I explore major portions of the New
Testament in three chapters: the gospels, Paul, and Revelation.

Because much of the book comes out of the experience of
teaching at the undergraduate level, I trust that it may be of use
in college and university courses. But I am also writing for
a Christian audience, and I hope that this orientation will not
get in the way of non-Christian readers. Readers in the latter
category will sometimes find themselves listening to an intra-
Christian conversation (and may perhaps find it interesting).

My desire to relate the book to Christianity flows out of the