Review of Reading the Bible Again for the First Time, by Marcus J Borg

Part I Marcus J. Borg is a Professor of Region and Culture at Oregon State University. Including Reading the Bible Again for the First Time, he has written the following books: The God We Never Knew, and Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. Borg has been studying and teaching for 35 years at various universities. His specialty is Jesus and the Gospels, but expresses an interest in the Hebrew Bible. Borg has taught both subjects, and much of his book comes from teaching undergraduates. He describes himself as a “nonliteralistic and nonexclusivistic” Christian who lives “within the Christian tradition”. Many of his ideas flow out of life experience. For example, when he was studying the prophet, Amos, in college, Borg says that is a turning point in his faith. He claimed to function as a “closet atheist” before learning of the extremes to which the prophets would go for their cause; he compares them to protestors in the 60’s. Therefore, studying the prophets allowed him to take off his “childhood lense” of the Bible, and see the people of the Bible in a more realistic way. By taking off that “lense”, he became more immersed in the Bible which encouraged him to go to seminary. Throughout Reading the Bible Again for the First Time, Borg calls his audience to also take off their “childhood lense”, or way of seeing the Bible, and begin reading it in a different way.

Part II Borg begins his book by stating his major claim that there’s conflict over the Bible’s origin, authority, and overall way of seeing the Bible. He believes it is the most devisive issue in Christianity in North America, and that the conflict centers in two different approaches to reading the Bible: literal/factual and historical/metaphorical. The literal/factual way of reading the Bible is common among conservative and evangelical Christians. This way of reading takes the Bible literally and factually meaning they believe everything in the Bible actually happened, and that all