What the Gospels Meant

Name: What the Gospels Meant
Brand: Penguin Random House
Availability: InStock
Rating: 5 (1 reviews)
Author: Garry Wills
ISBN: 9781429592581

Author: Garry Wills

Narrator: Garry Wills

Unabridged: 4 hr 59 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 02/14/2008

Categories: Nonfiction, Religion, Biblical Studies, New Testament, History

Synopsis

“A remarkable achievement—a learned yet eminently readable and provocative exploration of the four small books that reveal most of what’s known about the life and death of Jesus.” (Los Angeles Times)

Look out for a new book from Garry Wills, What the Qur'an Meant, coming fall 2017.

In his New York Times bestsellers What Jesus Meant and What Paul Meant, Garry Wills offers tour-de-force interpretations of Jesus and the Apostle Paul. Here Wills turns his remarkable gift for biblical analysis to the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Wills examines the goals, methods, and styles of the evangelists and how these shaped the gospels' messages. Hailed as "one of the most intellectually interesting and doctrinally heterodox Christians writing today" (The New York Times Book Review), Wills guides readers through the maze of meanings within these foundational texts, revealing their essential Christian truths.

About The Author

Garry Wills is a historian and the author of the New York Times bestsellers What Jesus Meant, Papal Sin, Why I Am a Catholic, and Why Priests?, among others. A frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and other publications, Wills is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a professor emeritus at Northwestern University. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Brian on January 28, 2021

Wills gives a patient, scholarly exploration of what the Gospels meant to contemporary Jews and Christians. At each turn of the story he explores the meanings people of that time drew, from associations they made with the whole Hebrew Bible. And being a Greek scholar, Wills does his own translations......more

Goodreads review by Kirsti on December 07, 2008

Discussion of the similarities and discrepancies in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I enjoyed Wills's translations, which he did not prettify in the way that many translators do--he kept the sometimes awkward constructions and tense shifts that others smooth out. I especially liked that h......more

Goodreads review by David on February 21, 2009

This is a quick read about a difficult and broad subject. Wills is a prolific writer, covering subjects as diverse as Lincoln, the Catholic Church and theology. Most of what Wills has to say about Jesus and the Gospels he gleaned from the theologian Raymond Brown, therefore feels condensed and water......more

Goodreads review by Miles on March 05, 2022

I must comment on the frequent typos in Gary Wills’ otherwise excellent (if quibble-worthy) commentary on the four canonical Gospels of the New Testament. The typos seem to get worse as the book goes along. At first it is just things like the missing “to” before what is obviously meant to be an infi......more

Goodreads review by Matthew on January 19, 2021

Beautiful! Although Wills wrote "What Jesus Meant" before "What the Gospels Meant", one could easily read 'Gospels' before 'Jesus'. 'Gospels' focuses more on what I wanted to know: who might have written what, when and why. 'Jesus', on the other hand, draws from the four gospels, irrespective of the......more

Quotes

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Praise for What the Gospels Meant:

“Full of riches . . . Wills brings to bear the skills that have justly brought him renown as America’s greatest public intellectual: encyclopedic erudition, concise prose and a polyglot’s gift for ancient languages. . . . This introduces . . . biblical scholarship as a whole to a wide audience of readers hungry for a sophisticated account of those eternally curious texts.”
—Chicago Tribune

“What readers will find here is an engaging look at the Gospels, informed by the best biblical scholarship, as well as by Wills’s own faith. . . . This eminently readable volume . . . underscores the attributes of each narrative to highlight truths more crucial than whether there were four discrete Evangelists.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Wills’s scholarship . . . is impeccable, placing the gospels within their original cultural and religious context . . . A book that offers profound spiritual and historical insight in an accessible and intriguing format.”
—BookPage

“Poetic, penetrating, and moving. General readers and scholars alike will profit from Mr. Wills’s basic contention, that reason and faith are not antinomies.”
—The New York Sun

“An engrossingly concise sequel to his Paul book. Wills . . . shows that [the Gospels are] theological statements, applying Jesus to the different situations confronting each writer’s community.”
—The Boston Globe

“Readers willing to have their impressions about these texts challenged by an erudite scholar will find this to be fascinating and worthwhile reading.”
—Publishers Weekly

“A remarkable achievement—a learned yet eminently readable and provocative exploration of the four small books that reveal most of what’s known about the life and death of Jesus.”
—Los Angeles Times