The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? the Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus - Softcover

"This book is a probing, penetrating, and deeply spiritual journey into the heart of the gospels. It brings to the reading public many of the issues that are commonplace among Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish scholars, and might well become the means whereby the secularized post-Christian world discovers its own deepest roots."--The Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong, Episcopal bishop of Newark, author of "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism""At a time when the airwaves were full of televangelists touting the New Testament as God-inspired, inerrant...and supportive of right-wing views, here was a channel for another viewpoint..."The Five Gospels "said it loud and proud."--"Time""The Jesus Seminar is simply one of the most exhilarating developments in the recent history of scholarly books on the New Testament."--"Publishers Weekly"

A controversial bestseller argues that only twenty percent of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the New Testament were actually spoken by him and is based on a translation of original Greek and Coptic texts of the five gospels, including that of Thomas, discovered in 1945. Reprint.