This book is not for everyone. The fundamentalist Bible reader will be completely turned upside with cries of "heresy".
The new Bible student may become even more confused. The conservative would not read it anyway, and the more liberal person would exclaim, "It's about time!"
The author takes the reader on a Bible-reading adventure that will land at places familiar and yet, somehow, profoundly changed. It is not as though the author challenges the validity of what many have deemed "Holy Scripture" for
centuries. Rather, he challenges the validity of modern man's understanding of what was written centuries ago.
To be sure, this book is for the serious Bible student who is firm in faith and eager to explore the treasures of Scripture from an entirely different perspective. For instance, the story of the Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth are not, as the author contends, literally true historical accounts and yet, he insists that these stories, and so many others, are "profoundly true."
Mr. Borg relates his own
experiences while growing up in church, hearing the stories we call "familiar", and somehow never quite being able to embrace the concept. For the author, there were far too many gaps that demanded to be filled. Thus begins his life-long quest in search of not only historical fact but theological reality as well.
The author makes no pretension about objectivity. He invites the reader to follow along as he teases and tantalizes the reader with his own experiences and new "lenses" through which to read the Bible "again for the first time."
The challenge from Mr. Borg is like the illustration his offers his students. If one is studying the moon and uses one's finger to point the moon out, the focus of the study has not shifted from the moon to the finger. Rather, the finger (the Bible) is being used in such a way as to help focus on the moon (the Lord).