Reading Jesus: A Writer's Encounter with the Gospels

Written by Mary Gordon

Narrated by Renee Raudman

In the introduction to this remarkable book, Mary Gordon is riding in a taxi as the driver listens to a religious broadcast, and she reflects that, though a lifelong Christian, she is at odds with many others who identify themselves as Christians. In an effort to understand whether or not she had "invented a Jesus to fulfill my own wishes," she determined to read the Gospels as literature and to study Jesus as a character. What results is a vibrantly fresh and personal journey through the Gospels, as Gordon plumbs the mysteries surrounding one of history's most central figures.

In this impassioned and eye-opening book, Gordon takes us through all the fundamental stories-the Prodigal Son, the Temptation in the Desert, the parable of Lazarus, the Agony in the Garden-pondering the intense strangeness of a deity in human form, the unresolved more ambiguities, the problem posed to her as an enlightened reader by the miracle of the Resurrection. What she rediscovers-and reinterprets with her signature candor, intelligence, and straightforwardness-is a rich store of overlapping, sometimes conflicting teachings that feel both familiar and tantalizingly elusive. It is this unsolvable conundrum that rests at the heart of Reading Jesus.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Nov 30, 2009
• ISBN: 9781400185016

Mary Gordon

Mary Gordon is the author of seven novels, including Final Payments, Pearl, and The Love of My Youth; six works of nonfiction, including the memoirs The Shadow Man and Circling My Mother; and three collections of fiction, including The Stories of Mary Gordon, which was awarded the Story Prize. She has received many other honors, including a Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Academy Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She teaches at Barnard College and lives in New York City.

Reviews for Reading Jesus

[nmele_4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A great book, Mary Gordon has read the Gospels closely and wrestled with the words and stories. I wanted her to write about every word of the four Gospels.

[debs4jc · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A writer, who has always considered herself a Christian, is challenged one day by the realization that she has never read through the Gospels in their entirely. So this is the record of her thoughts as she read them. She exerpts the part she wished to reflect upon and then shares her thoughts. As a Christian of a different strain than her I did not agree with a lot of what she had to say, though it is always interesting to see how someone reading the Bible with fresh eyes reacts to what they read. I found her writing a bit 'dry' though--it didn't engage me or move me very much. So aside from the actual Bible excerpts, I found myself just wanting to get to the end of this. I would only recommend it if you want to read every memoir anyone writes about their experiences with the BIble (there seem to be quite a lot today).