The Gospel in Brief: The Life of Jesus (Harper Perennial Modern Thought)

The Russian Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), best known for his novels, such as War and Peace and Anna Karenina, considered by many to have been the greatest novelist, had a spiritual crisis when he was fifty years old. He met with many wise individuals seeking answers to his questions, but was unsatisfied with their responses. So he turned to the study of Christianity and discovered a solution to his problems in his own unique understanding of the Christian Gospels.Tolstoy, like many other writers, such as George Bernard Shaw, was convinced that Jesus' teachings were perverted by the people who transmitted them and that the explanations of his teachings in the non-Gospel New Testament books and in the writings of the church after his death have little or no relation to what he actually said. All of Jesus' disciples, Tolstoy wrote, without exception, were illiterate and uneducated workmen who the New Testament itself repeatedly testifies did not understand what Jesus was saying. Those who followed the disciples wrote what they wanted to write using Jesus to promote their own agenda.The Bible writers, he says, inserted all kinds of miracles and superstitious notions that, being unnatural, could never have occurred.So Tolstoy decided to rewrite the Gospels as a single book and only include the ethical teachings of Jesus. He took statements from each of the four Gospels, without concern for chronology, mixing the wording of one Gospel writer into the discussion by another. By mixing the ideas, he erased the agenda of each Gospel writer, for each had his own program, and created his own. Additionally, the Tolstoy version of Jesus' teaching is totally unlike the teachings of the Christian churches.Why Tolstoy can say on the one hand that the Gospel writers did not understand Jesus while using their words in his own Gospel is difficult to understand. Be this as it may, the Tolstoy reading of the Gospel, as translated masterfully by Isabel Hapgood, is very thought provoking. Readers may accept his theology in whole, or in part, or reject it out of hand. But all who pay attention to his ideas will find them interesting.Tolstoy did not believe in the conventional notion of God. God is the name given to "the infinite source of being." This infinite source of being is incomprehensible. It is not involved in current human affairs. It created everything out of love. People are related to the infinite source in spirit, not in the flesh, for the source is not physical.People are the product or sons of this "father," another name that people apply to the infinite source. Thus Jesus is the son of what people call God, and so are all other humans the father's son. Jesus was not God; he was as human as all other people.However, Jesus understood what others do not, that everything that the infinite source created was created with love. Therefore, if people want to relate to God, as they should, they can only do so by being like God, showing love to all people, indeed to all that God created. Tolstoy writes, "The Gospel puts in the place of what men call 'God' a right understanding of life. Without this understanding there is no life; men only live in so far as they understand life." Thus, the basic human command is to love unconditionally, to "love thy neighbor as thyself." As stated in Matthew 5:44, "love not only your own countrymen, but people of other nations." Tolstoy emphasizes that loving means acting toward people with love, not just thinking or feeling, and not just celebrating religious ceremonies.Matthew 5 mentions five basic commands, and love is the fifth mentioned, but the first in importance. The others are (1) "Do not be angry, do not abuse; but having quarreled, make peace in such a way that no one may have cause for offense against you." (2) "Do not think that love toward woman is good; do not admire the beauty of women, but live with the one to whom you have become united, and do not leave her." (3) "Understand that every oath is evil" and therefore never swear. (4) "Do not resist evil, do not judge and do not go to law (courts), do not complain and do not punish."Tolstoy followed the dictates of the first and fifth commands by remarkably translating the New Testament phrase "Pharisees" as "orthodox." This is an extremely significant innovation. Unfortunately, beginning in the second half of the first century C.E., disputes arose among the traditionally-minded Jews and the Jews who accepted the teachings of Jesus and the non-Jews that they converted to their beliefs. These disputes led to insults thrown by both groups. Some of these insults made their way into the New Testament. As a result, the New Testament used the term Pharisees, a noun that described some of the Jews, Jews who later evolved into Rabbinic Judaism, to describe Jews as a whole. This usage led many New Testament readers to suppose that all the Jews of Jesus' time rejected him and has led some people to anti-Semitism. These readers ignored other New Testament statements that made it clear that many Jews accepted Jesus' teachings. An example is John 12:19, "And the orthodox high priest saw all this and said to each other: `See what this man is doing. The whole people are following him."Tolstoy removes this egregious problem by substituting the word "orthodox." This not only voids the text of anti-Jewish notions, but makes the writing clearer. The text is saying that from time to time, "orthodox" teachers, meaning those who held the ancient teachings, questioned Jesus' new instructions.By making this change, Tolstoy is illustrating Jesus basic teaching to show love for everyone.Years later, in 1903, Tolstoy showed his compliance with the first and fifth commands again when he wrote and published stories in aid of Jews who were made destitute by the massacres throughout Russia in that year. These very sensitive tales can be read in collections such as Twenty-Three Tales by Leo Tolstoy, translated by L. and A. Maude, Walking Lion Press, 2006.

This is a fascinating book. Tolstoy has taken the Greek texts of the synoptic gospels and formulated his own gospel. It is written in twelve chapters followed by the first epistle of John the evangelist. Each chapter begins with Tolstoy's summation of the chapter (in italics) followed by the actual narrative. Each chapter has an epigraph from the Lord's prayer, suggesting that the sum of Jesus' teachings can be encapsulated in that prayer.The focus is wholly on Jesus' teachings. His resurrection, for example, is not discussed. Nor is the virgin birth, Mary's immaculate conception or her assumption. The teaching is the centerpiece; it is the story; Jesus is, in effect, His message and His role is that of a teacher.The summary comes at the end of John's epistle. This is the message:"Whoever believes that this spirit is the son of the eternal spirit and is the same as that spirit has eternal life. And for whoever believes this, there is no obstacle in life, and all that he desires, according to the will of the father, will all come to pass for him.And therefore, whoever believes that he is a son of God does not live in falsehood but is purified from evil. Because he knows that the earthbound world is a delusion and knows that within himself, within man, there resides the intelligence capable of comprehending all that truly exists.Only the spirit—the son of the father—truly exists (p. 163)."The core of the message is love—love for God and love for our fellow man. The world of the flesh is nothing; the world of the spirit is everything. Hence, there is a great premium placed on divesting oneself of the things of this world and focusing completely on the world of the spirit. The story of the rich man and Lazarus, e.g., is central to Jesus' vision, as understood by Tolstoy. So too is the aphorism about the camel passing through the eye of the needle (= the difficulty of the rich entering heaven).This is an austere message and one that might have been particularly meaningful for someone whose first name was "Count". I think it is particularly telling that Wittgenstein was influenced profoundly by Tolstoy's book. He did in fact give up his family fortune to focus on the world of the spirit.Bottom line: a very important book by a very important writer.

The Gospel in Brief was written roughly around 1890 by Count Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy, more known for his books War and peace and Anna Karenina, wrote The Gospel in Brief after an intense period of depression, with thoughts of death and suicide constantly being conjured up in his mind. According to the foreword, he was, from there, said to have hearkened back to the Christian teachings of his childhood in which he had found comfort, and began his attempts at understanding the real message behind the Gospels.In my ongoing attempts at trying to unravel the mystery of Jesus Christ myself, a challenge made more difficult through the man-made traditions and half-truths of the Church, I stumbled upon the works of Tolstoy, a man it seems, that was after my own heart. I purchased The Gospel in Brief along with The Kingdom of God is Within You and headed off to Turkey during the summer of 2012. There is something to be said for sitting with a traditional paperback book under the shade of palm trees, all the while hearing the Adhan (Islamic call to prayer) in the distance.Tolstoy's Christ figure in The Gospel in Brief championed the idea of turning the other cheek and giving away one's possessions for the greater good, with Tolstoy taking great precision in reviving the Christ figure that "churchianity" had locked away for so long.The four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, known for recounting most of the same events shared in the other gospels, are combined together in Tolstoy's book creating one continuous story. Some stories, especially those found in the Gospel of John that are not found in the others, are of course included here too, but Tolstoy's main purpose for combining all the Gospels together, was to give both himself and the reader a reasonably clear picture of what transpired. Extracting little details from one Gospel that may not have been included in another, and then piecing them into one fully detailed event brings us, finally, a more full narrative story. To be honest, it was always an idea that I hoped someone may eventually run with, and it is quite possible that many books have attempted this long before now, but to my knowledge Tolstoy, if not the only author to attempt this idea, is most certainly the grandfather of such an idea.One humorous thing the Christian anarchist Tolstoy injected into his book is that rather than call the Pharisees by their name, he instead called them "The Orthodox", as it appears he felt that the Orthodox Church in his day was acting in the same way as the Pharisees in Christ's day.Another thing I should point out about The Gospel in Brief is that Tolstoy is not a believer in miracles and believes that these things were added to the Gospels (and the Old Testament) to make it into a kind of "superstitious" dogma. So for example, there is no virgin birth, turning water to wine and so on. Most of it is explained away rationally. While I do respect Tolstoy's view on this, I personally, having undertaking extensive research over the past few years into alleged human abilities, cannot entirely agree on his outlook. In saying that, I am also of the impression that it is not at all necessary to believe in the miracles of Christ to understand the overall point of his teachings, since his teachings are based on giving your excess wealth to the poor and loving your enemies, thus creating peace and understanding for all (sadly perhaps a miracle in itself).For example, if the apparently unbelievable feats performed by Christ were enough to stop someone from being inspired both by his exemplary life and his teachings of seeking peace for all men, then the miracles themselves have become a hindrance, something which Tolstoy was quite adamant about.Each chapter begins with Tolstoy's commentary on why he has Jesus say a particular thing or react in a certain way, giving us a more full-bodied understanding of, possibly, how we were originally meant to read the original Gospels. All in all an enjoyable read.Some of the reviews have mentioned typos. I have not noticed too terribly many, at least not enough to distract me from reading it with ease

The introduction to the history of the writing of this translation of the Gospels is good, but Tolstoy has been very selective. He appears to not want to experience the supernatural side of Scripture. Just wants selective moral teachings, which is only part of the story.

I enjoyed this book and I strongly recommend it to students of christianity. It's interesting that it's taken me all these years to stumble upon it. I searched it out after I discovered that Ludwig Wittgenstein carried it with him in the trenches (WW1) and when I realized that it may have greatly influenced his life (and "The Tractatus").The book is brief, it was originally published in 1893, and it is a summary of the Gospels (a portion of a wider study)... where the author has tried to peer through the enormous overburden of the church's institutional teaching and the confusion of sources. In my view that overburden must be assumed to be very difficult to clear away. What is more, when that has been done, I strongly suspect that, even if we assume Jesus was extremely astute and articulate, he must have tailored what was said to his audience. So he must have simplified his message, and couched it in terms (father and son for example) that illiterate men could fathom. That would explain why (even if Jesus was absolutely authentic as a prophet, a son of God and a seer) this book lacks depth of analysis. To see Jesus through the intervening years is "to see through a glass, darkly".Even so, the book is startling insofar as it sets out a view sharply at variance with old testament thinking, and a view that I find very impressive (and true). For example, I agree with the view on marriage (if you marry, then don't divorce). I had not realised that Jesus lists 5 commandments (only). I had not realised that he says all men are sons of God. I had not realised that Jesus says time and space are illusions that don't exist in the spirit world.I advise anyone who is checking out the strands of Jesus's views as expressed here to read Jane Robert's book "The Nature of Personal Reality".

An amazing work that reconciles the teaching's of Jesus with modern faith. Rather than focus on all the 'procedures' set down by the subsequent church, this goes back to the core teachings and set's down the beautiful message that Christianity had to offer before it was taken into the 'Church', which had so little to do with it.As an example, for those who know about the miracle of the loaves and fishes, where Jesus miraculously makes more - Tolstoy explains it perfectly. It wasn't a miracle. It's a parable. It means that if we all share and share alike, we'll find we are in abundance. When one starts to give, other will too, and we'll find ourselves richer than ever before. The church's gospel just makes it seem like it was a cheap magic trick.There are many parts like this, which re-treads old ground and reinterprets what Jesus 'really' meant. I'm not christian myself, but i do believe that Jesus was indeed a very important spiritual leader and really had nothing to do in connection with the Torah, the old Testament or the Qu'ran. He was above all that, and this book will show you why.

But, like siddhartha or the beats' writings on buddhism, no substitute for the source material. But its tolstoy, so its well written, and pretty anarchistic