The Poems of Jesus Christ - Softcover

Willis Barnstone

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393347265 ISBN 13: 9780393347265

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014

Synopsis

Jesus Christ, whose teachings have been on the lips of millions for two millennia, is revealed here as one of the greatest poets of all time. What happened to deafen us to the poetic nature of his words? In migrating from Aramaic speech into written Greek translation, and later into English translation, the lyrics got locked up as prose. In The Poems of Jesus Christ Willis Barnstone unveils the essential poetry of the Gospels by taking the direct speech of Jesus from Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, and lineating and titling Jesus's words as individual poems. Jesus's poems are wisdom lyrics and narrative parables, rich with garden, animal, and nature imagery. Austere and poignant, they carry the totality of the Gospels' message through the intensity of a single voice--the Gospel of Jesus.

About this title

Review

Great and original... The writing in this form, as poetry, adds a new dimension to their beauty, conciseness, paradox, and mystery.--Gerald Stern

Like most early prophets, Jesus would have spoken in a form of poetry, albeit one based on patterns of sounds, repetition, and other devices of prosody quite different from the Greco-Roman forms. What Barnstone has now produced, he hopes, is a sequence of Jesus's aphorisms.

When I read such verses aloud, it does not matter to me whether a poem or poetic saying comes from King James, Douay-Rheims, New Revised Standard, New Jerusalem Bible, Revised English Version, or any of the dozens of translations I've read and loved. But, once again, Prof. Barnstone took our idea to a new level... After the second full reading and the third and fourth randomly-done peeks, I continue to recommend this book highly.--Mary Harwell Sayler

The vividness and beauty of the language emerge in a fresh way... with evocative simplicity.--Robert Alter

This recasting from the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, presents Jesus' words poetically and faithfully to their full power - that of poetry.

In restoring the words of Jesus to their rightful poetry, and making an excellent case for this necessity, Barnstone brings their music, passion, ethics and intellectual rigor into a more complete view.--Barbara Berman

About the Author

Willis Barnstone, a distinguished professor emeritus of comparative literature and biblical studies at Indiana University, is the author of The Restored New Testament (978 0 393 06493 3) praised by Margaret Reynolds in The Times: "The scholarship is exemplary, the attention to detail is meticulous, but most of all the feeling here is true."

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0393347265
• ISBN 13: 9780393347265
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288