"This welcome book removes many of the barriers that separate thoughtful people from the wisdom of the Bible"--Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People

"In a literal-minded age, when people read texts only for information and have lost the ability to read scripture in the traditional way, this book will make an invaluable contribution. Borg's analysis is profound, challenging, and engrossing; it will enable readers to use scripture creatively once again and truly make it a bridge for the divine"--Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God

Conflict about the is the single most divisive issue among Christians in North America today. And because of the importance of Christianity in the culture of the United States, conflict about the Bible is also central to what have been called "the culture wars."

The conflict is between two very different ways of reading the Bible. In language I will use later in the book, it is a conflict between a "literal-factual" way of reading the Bible and a "historical-metaphorical" way of reading it. The former is central to Christian fundamentalists and many conservative-evangelical Christians. The latter has been taught in seminaries of mainline denominations for the better part of a century. Most clergy have known about it for a long time. In the last few decades, the historical-metaphorical way of reading the Bible has become increasingly common among lay members of mainline churches.

This book represents the historical-metaphorical side of the debate. In its pages, I describe a way of seeing and reading the Bible that flows out of my life within two communities: the academic community of biblical scholarship and the scholarly study of religion, and the religious community of the church.

For over thirty-five years, I have been studying and teaching the Bible in private and public colleges, universities, and graduate schools. From the beginning, my special area of study has been Jesus and the gospels. But I have always had an abiding interest in the Hebrew Bible and have consistently taught it as well as the New Testament at the introductory and more advanced levels.

This book contains the most important and illuminating insights that I have learned about the Bible from this experience. It has three parts. Part One (three chapters) analyzes the present conflict and lays the foundation for a historical-metaphorical approach to the Bible. Parts Two and Three apply this approach and introduce the reader to major parts of the Bible. In Part Two, I treat portions of the Hebrew Bible in four chapters: creation stories, the Pentateuch, the prophets, and wisdom literature. In Part Three I explore major portions of the New Testament in three chapters: the gospels, Paul, and Revelation.

Because much of the book comes out of the experience of teaching at the undergraduate level, I trust that it may be of use in college and university courses. But I am also writing for a Christian audience, and I hope that this orientation will not get in the way of non-Christian readers. Readers in the latter category will sometimes find themselves listening to an intra-Christian conversation (and may perhaps find it interesting).

My desire to relate the book to Christianity flows out of the other community in which I live. For an even longer time than I have lived within the academy, I have lived in the Christian world. I was nurtured in the Lutheran church and remained Lutheran until about age thirty. Then, for almost a decade, my involvement with the institutional church was minimal. My reentry into its life was through a Presbyterian congregation in which I was a "kindred spirit" for a few years. That experience was very nourishing, but I realized that I desired a more liturgical and sacramental form of worship, and so I joined the Episcopal church, a denomination and tradition that I am very happy to call home. I describe myself as a nonliteralistic and nonexclusivistic Christian, committed to living my life with God within the Christian tradition, even as I affirm the validity of all the enduring religious traditions.

Thus, in addition to treating historical and literary matters, I have sought to explore the religious significance of the Bible -- in particular, its significance for Christians. One of my central purposes in this book is to address the present conflict about the Bible within the church and to provide Christians with a persuasive way of seeing and reading their sacred scriptures, a way that takes the Bible seriously without taking it literally.

As I develop a historical-metaphorical approach to reading the Bible, I also offer an interpretation of the biblical tradition. What I present here is a way of seeing and reading the Bible that flows out of my total life experience: my education as a student of the Bible, my vocation as a teacher of biblical and religious studies, my journey as a Christian, and what I have learned from the journeys of others.

To say the obvious, the book reflects my own subjectivity. There is no point in pretending objectivity, as if I (or anybody) could have a vantage point outside of one's own personal and cultural history. The test of our subjectivities -- whether they are primarily provincial, individualistic, or even narcissistic -- is whether they make sense to others. And so I invite you into a way of seeing and reading the Bible that has made sense to me and encourage you to use your own discerning judgment about how much makes sense to you.

I am grateful to many people for what I have learned about the Bible. I am thankful for my socialization within the church. Though it included much that I have had to unlearn, it also instilled in me a love of the Bible and an abiding sense of its importance. I am indebted to professors from my past. In my undergraduate years, Paul Sponheim and Rod Grubb (both then professors at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota) were most responsible for generating my adult interest in religion and the Bible. In my graduate education, George B. Caird, my primary professor at Oxford, was immeasurably important.

I am also indebted to authors of books on biblical scholarship from the last few centuries and contemporary colleagues within the academic guild. Some are acknowledged in footnotes, but some are not. Because this book comes out of over thirty years of teaching, I can no longer remember the source of many of the insights that I report. In virtually every case, I learned them from somebody; a completely original insight is a rare bird. I apologize for not being able to credit each contributor by name.

I conclude with a comment about the dedication of this book to Tom Haller and the community at Ring Lake Ranch, an ecumenical retreat center near DuBois, Wyoming. There my wife, Marianne, and I coled a retreat for two weeks in late August, during which I also finished this book. On the first day of the retreat, Tom, a United Church of Christ clergyperson from St. Louis, was gravely injured in a horse-riding accident. For a day we did not know if he would live. His accident united the community of retreatants in a remarkably intimate way, especially as we prayed together for his recovery. In particular, I want to thank the staff at Ring Lake Ranch, especially Robert Hoskins, Ann Mebane, Elly Stewart, and its director, Joan Guntzelman. I am happy to say that Tom has recovered and very pleased to dedicate this book to him and the people with whom I lived for two rich weeks in the mountains of Wyoming.