The Gospel in Brief: The Life of Jesus - Harper Perennial Modern Thought (Paperback)
Leo Tolstoy (author), Dustin Condren (author)Published: 01/03/2011
The four Gospels that begin the Bible's New Testament tell the life of Jesus. But each Gospel relates a slightly different version of events. Some stories appear only in one Gospel, while certain other stories are different in each. What Leo Tolstoy sought to do in "The Gospel In Brief" was to apply his tremendous skills as a writer to tell the life of Jesus in one seamless narrative, thus integrating the four Gospels. The result is a work that reads like a novel, complete with twelve chapters. The project was very important to Tolstoy. With "The Gospel In Brief", he sought to democratize access to the Gospel, making the life of Jesus accessible to everyone. (He particularly had in mind the Russian peasantry.) Tolstoy based his translation on his study of the original Greek versions of the Bible. Unfortunately the Russian Orthodox Church viewed the book as sacrilegious. How dare he re-write the sacred texts? The Church worked to suppress "The Gospel In Brief", and in 1901, it permanently excommunicated Tolstoy, Russia's greatest novelist.
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
ISBN: 9780061993459
Number of pages: 224
Weight: 177 g
Dimensions: 181 x 127 x 14 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
"Dustin Condren captures, in this fresh idiomatic translation, the dazzlingly audacious achievement of The Gospel in Brief, Tolstoy's daring synthesis the New Testament accounts of Jesus." -- Edward E. Ericson, Jr., editor of The Solzhenitsyn Reader "A fascinating and thoroughly unorthodox rewriting of the Gospels and restatement of Christianity." -- Booklist "This is the first English translation in more than a century; Condren worked from Tolstoy's original version and restored material deleted in previous translations. The result is not unlike Hermann Hesse's 'Siddhartha' - the story of a life that illustrates a path." -- Los Angeles Times "Newly translated by Dustin Condren, Tolstoy's Gospel in Brief offers us a Jesus stripped of the overlay of Christian dogma and ancient metaphysics: his Jesus confronts readers with a real challenge and a call to change their lives." -- George Pattison, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, University of Oxford, and canon of Christ Church Cathedral "The Gospel in Brief lives at the center of Leo Tolstoy's thinking about the meaning of life. ... Beautifully translated by Dustin Condren. ... Although little known, this book remains hugely important." -- Jay Parini, author of The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year "A fresh translation destined to introduce a new generation to a fuller understanding of Tolstoy's mind." -- Kirkus Reviews
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