The Gospel of Lie A Grieving Christian Searches the Bible for a New Jesus Joshua Lie Fady Riad 9781544901671 Books
Download As PDF : The Gospel of Lie A Grieving Christian Searches the Bible for a New Jesus Joshua Lie Fady Riad 9781544901671 Books
“An extremely personal book and an audacious journey into heresy. An intricate detective story that at times tests the sanity of an original thinker who offers his full consciousness to bring this ambitious labor to a satisfying conclusion.”
Lance Owens, host of gnosis.org
“...very well written, extremely intriguing, and conveys a huge amount of information on Gospel criticism and Gnosticism. A remarkable, if mystifying, work!”
Robert M Price, author of The Reason Driven Life
“A moving story—I was glad to read it.”
Elaine Pagels, author of The Gnostic Gospels
“A powerful story of a grieving man's search for spiritual solace that touches deeply into our hearts. The introduction alone contains hidden treasures.”
Rosamonde Ikshvàku Miller, Gnostic Bishop
“Developing a book that shares many themes with Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, Mr. Lie finds it perfectly normal to quote Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion side by side with obscure apocryphal gospels and even sprinkles some biblical criticism worthy of Bart Ehrman on the top. Luckily, his indiscriminate borrowings don’t shatter the tubes and his experiment turns out to be exactly as intended a fiendishly clever parody of conspiracy theories and the paranoia they breed.”
T. R. Demeglio, religious scholar and critic
In his last book, Joshua Lie examines how the Evangelists misquoted the Old Testament to prove Jesus was the Messiah and embarks on a journey where he misquotes the four Gospels themselves to advance a Jesus that no Christian has ever dreamt of.
The Nag Hammadi Library, the Gospel of Judas, the mysteries of the Manicheans and the Cathars, the alchemical endeavors of Carl Jung and the terrifying visions of Lovecraft and William Blake – all sources that he blends together to paint his personal savior.
Lie notices that many things attributed to Jesus in the bible make little sense and decides that the best way to pass his ideas is to offer them as new answers to old problems. By a sleight of hand, he offers shocking, yet convincing, explanations to some of the strangest things attributed to Jesus. We finally know why Jesus cursed the Canaanite woman, rebuked Mary at the wedding of Cana, and uttered his famous cry at the cross ‘God why have you forsaken me?’
Lie pretends to adopt the Gnostic exegesis of the bible, which maintains that Jesus was a divine being who descended to the earth to save his fallen lover Sophia. Lie argues that Jesus’ entire mission was one of spiritual wedding and claims that all the women that Jesus encountered in the Gospels were allegorical for Sophia, each representing her in one of the stages of her spiritual development.
And so Lie proceeds, following the steps of Jesus till the moment when the redeemer, crucified, hugs Sophia and submits his spirit in her embrace. A minor mistake, however, reveals the entire work to be the product of his grievance at the loss of his granddaughter. Sadly, it is at this tragic moment that his gospel comes to an abrupt end; for Lie, unable to comprehend the mystery of the resurrection and experience the solace it brings, abandons his draft to finally wither and die.
This could have very well been the end of Lie’s tragic story, were it not for his good friend Fady Riad who discovers the manuscript and takes an oath upon himself to have it completed and published.
“Your book will be finished, and your Jesus will be resurrected.” He promises his friend in a dream.
As Riad studies the draft, however, he soon realizes that it is riddled with various loose ends that make completing it virtually impossible. Nonetheless, Riad doesn’t give up, knowing that there is no price that he won’t pay to honor the legacy of his late friend...
The Gospel of Lie A Grieving Christian Searches the Bible for a New Jesus Joshua Lie Fady Riad 9781544901671 Books
I bought this book after hearing an interview with the author on Miguel Conner's podcast. I rarely give reviews, but this book is the exception. It's truly a unique, fascinating work and breath of fresh air for our times. Anyone interested in history, Gnosticism, esoteric Christianity, or who is just intellectually curious should give it a read.EDIT: In response to the commenter below, I would like to point out that while Jung is mentioned in the book, its always in the sense of "Jung touched on this or that theme and posited X, let's take a closer look" or "building on X alchemical symbolism first mentioned by Jung ..." (with relevant footnotes) - never in the content of "validation" (such as, "Jung agrees with my interpretation of X, therefore I am correct because of Jung's authority and stature"). In fact, such a claim indicates that the reviewer missed the point of the entire book, which isn't at all concerned with appeals to validation from authority - the opposite in fact!
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The Gospel of Lie A Grieving Christian Searches the Bible for a New Jesus Joshua Lie Fady Riad 9781544901671 Books Reviews
This book touched me and can msst likely be relatable to many born in christainty who have questioned the religious authority.
The Gospel of Lie presents a meticulously crafted and extremely clever interpretation of the story of Jesus that has, in my opinion, made the canonical gospels vastly more interesting.
Riad and Lie (who remind me in some ways of a less overtly comedic Lon Milo Duquette and Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford) have managed to use a Gnostic mythological framework to reinterpret the New Testament without actually altering any of the text. Additionally, they have taken Gnosticism one step further by placing the relationship between Christ and Sophia directly into the gospels. Along the way, they have incorporated a wide variety of other elements, including alchemy, the writings of Carl Jung, Hermann Hesse, and Jorge Luis Borges, and a few hidden gems that I will not spoil in this review. Fellow fans of Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio will feel very much at home taking this labyrinthine journey.
Riad's writing style is witty and engaging. Whereas my typical approach to reading is to hop between about 5 or 6 books at any given time, once I started reading The Gospel of Lie, I was absorbed in it exclusively from start to finish. I kept wanting to see where they would go next, and I was never disappointed by the results. Riad's analysis of the images from the Rosarium Philosophorum alone seemed to blast me in the head with a pink beam while shoving a red pill down my throat and kicking me down a rabbit hole.
I anticipate I will be re-reading this book many times, and I truly hope Mr. Riad has more books in store for us.
A learned man’s take on the themes superficially discussed in The Da Vinci Code
I think it is virtually impossible to write a review that does this book justice without revealing the basic arguments behind it. Consequently, my review will contain spoilers. Proceed at your own risk; you have been warned!
It starts with a moving introduction by Riad where he tells us about Joshua Lie, an old man who lost his faith when his granddaughter lost her life to cancer.
The first half of the book is a draft authored by Lie that Riad discovered at his house shortly after his death. Lie argues that the Evangelists twisted the Old Testament to prove Jesus was the Messiah and then declares his intention to misquote the New Testament in return. He interprets the four Gospels in a very bizarre way to promote the Gnostic idea that Jesus was a heavenly being who descended to earth to save Sophia, his fallen celestial bride. In the last chapter, Lie mistakenly writes the name of his granddaughter instead of Sophia’s name, thus revealing his whole book to be the product of his spiritual crisis.
At this point, Lie’s draft comes to an end and Riad takes over. He briefly reviews it and, while quite sympathetic to Lie, he still voices his concerns about the inconsistencies and shortcomings of the draft. He then proceeds to ‘complete’ Lie’s book. One of the book’s greatest merits is the ending that Riad devised for it. Riad picks various loose ends from Lie’s draft and weaves them together to produce a truly fascinating ending that twists the book one more time and gives it greater significance.
*Major spoiler to follow*
At the end of the book, Riad arrives at the conclusion that Jesus’ mission of saving Sophia was inevitably going to destroy the world. God consequently had to intervene, saving the world by severing off all contact between heaven and earth. The way Riad quotes the canonical books of John, Paul and Peter to show their horror at the wake of a second coming that never materialized is reminiscent of the nihilistic works of many prominent existential writers.
By transcending the gnostic material that Lie drew on for his daft, Riad has turned this book into one that belongs to the same strain of intelligent books by renowned writers like Umberto Eco’s Focault Pendulum and The Illuminatus trilogy. This is a complex, deep book that is destined to be a classic
An interesting concept. It reminds me of a Nabokov novel -- I forget the title (not Lolita) -- in which he purports to publish the work of a fictional author. Is Joshua Lie a pseudonymous alter-ego? I hope he manages to get beyond the need to make the Cross mean something.
I found this book incredibly imaginative. It gives one insight into how a new religion could be created. Although in truth the authors at every point reiterate that this is an imaginative project they both get swept up in their own ideas.
Its rawness is part of its charm.
I bought this book after hearing an interview with the author on Miguel Conner's podcast. I rarely give reviews, but this book is the exception. It's truly a unique, fascinating work and breath of fresh air for our times. Anyone interested in history, Gnosticism, esoteric Christianity, or who is just intellectually curious should give it a read.
EDIT In response to the commenter below, I would like to point out that while Jung is mentioned in the book, its always in the sense of "Jung touched on this or that theme and posited X, let's take a closer look" or "building on X alchemical symbolism first mentioned by Jung ..." (with relevant footnotes) - never in the content of "validation" (such as, "Jung agrees with my interpretation of X, therefore I am correct because of Jung's authority and stature"). In fact, such a claim indicates that the reviewer missed the point of the entire book, which isn't at all concerned with appeals to validation from authority - the opposite in fact!
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