John Shelby Spong: Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World
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Author: John Shelby Spong
Number of Pages: 432 pages
Published Date: 25 Nov 2013
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
Publication Country: New York, United States
Language: English
ISBN: 9780062011299
Download Link: Click Here
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For over 200 years, scholars have been debating, analyzing, and exploring one of the most important books ever written - The Bible - and overturning much of what we know about this sacred library of books. However, a large group of people who actually use this book, mainly lay Christians, aren't aware of this larger, deeper conversation. It is for these people that Spong writes Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World, a primer on the history and significance of the Bible. In this thorough, substantive guide, Spong explores the origin and essential meaning of each of the individual books in the Bible, examining the background, the context, the level of authenticity and even the trustworthiness of the messages found there. He explains why these particular books, written between two and three thousand years ago, came to be regarded as authoritative and preserved as sacred; he traces the pathway that biblical religion has traveled as it evolved through the centuries, and he shows how people have misused many of these texts in the service of their prejudices. Reaching far beyond the familiar Sunday-school stories that have provided the content of most people's biblical knowledge, Spong's journey into the heart of the Bible is his attempt to call his readers into their own journeys into the mystery of God. One does not, he asserts, have to twist one's brain into a first-century pretzel in order to take the Bible seriously in this increasingly non-religious world.