Reading Jesus, Mary Gordon
Reading Jesus, Mary Gordon
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Reading Jesus
A Writer's Encounter with the Gospels

Author: Mary Gordon

Narrator: Renée Raudman

Unabridged: 6 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/30/2009


Synopsis

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.

About Mary Gordon

Mary Gordon is the author of the novels Spending, The Company of Women, The Rest of Life, Final Payments, The Other Side, and Pearl. She has also published the short story collections Temporary Shelter and The Stories of Mary Gordon and the memoir The Shadow Man. She has received a Lila Wallace–Reader's Digest Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 1997 O. Henry Award for best story. She teaches at Barnard College and lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Erin on August 10, 2010

A little slow and more like reading the author's diary than anything else. While reading the book I couldn't help but think that, especially in the sections that cross-compare similar Gospel accounts, the text could have profited from pulling in research, etc. from additional sources. The book is no......more

Goodreads review by Mary Helene on January 15, 2010

Why did I never think of this? To read the Gospels with the same kind of attention I give to poetry or a good novel! I had not expected this wonderfully piquant mixture of personal and critical. The first chapters and the last ones are the best, but she did her homework on all of it. There were no e......more

Goodreads review by Margaret on January 08, 2010

I was disappointed! I took a fascinating "Bible as literature" course in college (20+ years ago--gulp!) and thought this sounded like an interesting refresher course. But it was brief & didn't go deep enough. She presented the different gospels' varying versions of a story but often didn't fully dis......more

Goodreads review by Courtney on September 10, 2021

Felt like such an easy read to tear through. Gordon is so open with her thoughts - whatever they may be. While I disagree with many of her conclusions, I appreciate the questions she poses, as well as her openness to be changed in the process of reading and writing this work. A happy book to line my......more

Goodreads review by Edward on May 24, 2010

The essential question in this very readable book ("readable" for believers and unbelievers alike)that Gordon asks is why she is able to tolerate ambiguity and confusion in the Four Gospels when so many readers demand certainty. Christians, she points out, generally bowdlerize the Gospels, convenien......more