Evolution Of The Word

By presenting the New Testament books in the order they were written, bestselling Bible scholar Marcus Borg reveals how spiritually and politically radical the early Jesus movement began and how it slowly became domesticated.

By presenting the New Testament books in the order they were written, bestselling Bible scholar Marcus Borg reveals how spiritually and politically radical the early Jesus movement began and how it slowly became domesticated.

Everyone knows the New Testament begins with the Gospel of Matthew, but how many people know it was actually one of the later books to be written-it was not even the first Gospel!

Marcus J. Borg, esteemed Bible scholar and bestselling author, shakes up the order of the New Testament as we know it by putting the books in a completely new order-the order in which they were written. By doing so, Evolution of the Word allows us to read these documents in their historical context. For the first time, see how the core ideas of Christianity took shape and developed over time.

Borg surveys what we know of the Jewish community of Jesus followers who passed on their stories orally. Borg offers helpful introductions for each book so that as we read through these biblical documents, spanning over a century in time, we see afresh what concerns and pressures shaped this movement as it evolved into a new religion.

Readers will rediscover documents they thought they knew well by seeing them in an all-new setting. Borg’s Evolution of the Word promises to change how we think about this historic work.