WebMink
Simon Phipps's personal commentary

Religious Seasoning [PsychoReligio]

Dr Ronald Gray is lucky that Christendom does not have the equivalent of a fatwa, at least not outside the circles Jerry Falwell inhabits. In what appears to be his first published work (at least outside what seems to be his specialist area of German studies), an article in the Guardian this Monday entitled 'What Jesus Really Said', he touts the old canard about the inaccuracy of the Bible and suggests Salman Rushdie's explanation of them being 'satanic verses' - added by a scribe.

It's a canard, of course, because it relies on an interpretation and explanation of the Bible that treats all content as if it were purely intended for the reporting of facts. That's a dangerous enough assertion when you're considering newspaper reports, but when it comes to a written work created by cultures with totally different lives, assumptions, world-views and ways of expressing high intelligence, it's especially naive. Dr Gray gives superficial interpretations of a number of interesting Gospel verses and concludes with the extract from a (sadly unidentified) Stevie Smith poem that evidently inspired the article.

It's this superficiality that makes me suspicious. I obviously am not privy to Dr Gray's motives, but I suspect he's out to stick pins in religious belief as a counterbalance to the pseudo-emphasis it receives at this time of year. But if he's actually a serious seeker, I'd recommend he follow the well-trodden paths of others wanting to understand what's really going on here, such as those that led to 'The Lost Gospel Q: The Original Sayings of Jesus' [USA|UK].

For myself, reading three books by Marcus Borg - 'Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time' [USA|UK], 'The God We Never Knew' [US|UK]and most relevantly 'Reading the Bible Again for the First Time' [USA|UK] was mind-transforming. I'd suggest they would offer a much better starting point than the approach, perhaps sniggeringly inspired over academic coffee in Cambridge, that Dr Gray has used.

posted at 6:21 PM (UK) | |