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    The Gospel in Brief
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    The Gospel in Brief
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    The Gospel in Brief
    Ebook188 pages3 minutes

    The Gospel in Brief

    By Leo Tolstoy

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Leo Tolstoy believed that the existence of God could be neither proved nor disproved and that the meaning of life lay beyond the limits of our minds. After much suffering and study, Tolstoy came to believe that the answer to the riddle of how we should live well can be found in the teachings of Jesus. The Gospel in Brief is his provocative synthesis of the four Gospels. Here, he believed, was the essential message of Jesus, a simple key to the good and purposeful life, with all the clutter and superstition of priests and theologians swept away.
    LanguageUnknown
    PublisherDarton Longman & Todd
    Release dateJan 30, 2012
    ISBN9780232528510
    Unavailable
    The Gospel in Brief
    Author

    Leo Tolstoy

    Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is the author of War and Peace, Anna Karenina, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Family Happiness, and other classics of Russian literature.

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    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      Most people who know more than the most cursory information about Leo Tolstoy know that he was a bit obsessed with religion. While Tolstoy is most famous for his epic novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, it was shorter explorations of religion that took up most of his time. Though Tolstoy had great affection for the teachings of Jesus, he had considerable disdain for the organized church itself and much of what Christianity had become.In an attempt to reconcile his belief with his conscious, Tolstoy set out to rewrite the gospels, focusing entirely on the teachings of Jesus without all the miraculous distractions. These includes the virgin birth, the resurrection, and the very divinity of Jesus. Theologically, The Gospel in Brief is a success. Much of Tolstoy's gospel is probably more indicative of the historical fact. Certainly, it allows the reader to see the compassionate, wise teacher that has been hidden under superstition and dogma. But strip Jesus of his miracles, force awkward phrases into this mouth that explain how being “the Son of God” merely means that he is enlightened, and his life becomes one boring and tedious story. One should not have to struggle with sleep while reading the gospels.Those interested in anarcho-pacifist Jesus or religious studies in general will likely find this book noteworthy. It's a wonderful study, but definitely not a story. The Gospel in Brief was Tolstoy's mission to give the left side of his brain a much needed rest.
    • 3/5
      The most interesting thing about this book is not that it omits "the miracles," but that it is a harmonization of the four canonical gospels; that is, it edits together material from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John without regard to the specific and differing agendas the authors of each of those works were pursuing in their specific accountings of the Christ myth to their specific audiences in their specific places and times, in favor of Tolstoy's own pet interpretation of what the Christian message is (or should be) saying. In doing so, multiple perspectives are collapsed into a single perspective, and the gospel loses the important dialectical plurality manifested in the canonical version in favor of a dogmatic, modernist "one true reading."