The Poems of Jesus Christ by Willis Barnstone

The Poems of Jesus Christ Reviews

• 
  David Crumm

  Restoring the Power of Jesus Words at a Perfect Time
  
  Willis Barnstone is a living testament to the power of pen over the frailty of flesh. In his mid-80s, when most of us are at least slowing down if not already long gone, he continues to publish major works in poetry, religion and translation that freshly inspire readers of all ages.
  
  Aside from his major works on poetry and world literature, just consider his books on biblical themes in recent years: The Gnostic Bible, a 900-page 2009 volume that he co-edited with Marvin Meyer; The Restored New Testament: A New Translation with Commentary, Including the Gnostic Gospels Thomas, Mary, and Judas, a 1,500-page 2009 volume that collected his own translations of biblical and gnostic scriptures; and, this spring, the closely related new book called, The Poems of Jesus Christ, which weighs in at a more comfortable-to-carry 288 pages. Meanwhile, Barnstone has two more big books about poetry and the art of translation nearly ready for coming seasons.
  
  Considering that Barnstone’s favorite cultural realm is thousands of years in our past—immersed in the works of poets such as Sappho, Deborah and Wang Wei—he has a remarkable talent for timeliness. There is no hotter topic in Christianity today than the words of Jesus. Beyond the decades-long debate over what Jesus actually said, a growing chorus of influential Christian writers are urging the deeply divided body of Christianity to reunite over the actual teachings of Jesus. This note is struck loudly and clearly in new books by John Dominic Crossan, Diana Butler Bass and N.T. Wright.
  
  Other leading Christian writers are going further than that. Campaigning for a specific spiritual focus on the words of Jesus are the matriarch of re-emerging Christian spiritual practices, Phyllis Tickle, and the barnstorming theologian popular on college campuses nationwide, Tony Campolo.
  
  Phyllis Tickle tried to capture the enduring power of Jesus’ sayings in her own book, The Words of Jesus: “Devoid of narrative context, the sayings come straight at us like so many bullets, piercing all our armor and destroying all our carefully thought-out prior convictions.”
  
  In his book, Red Letter Christians, Tony Campolo tried to give this particular spiritual movement a name, focusing on the sayings of Jesus: “By calling ourselves Red Letter Christians, we are alluding to those old versions of the Bible wherein the words of Jesus are printed in red. In adopting the name, we are saying that we are committed to living out the things that Jesus taught. The message in those red letters is radical, to say the least.”
  
  What all of these efforts lack, until now, is a fresh, artful and authentic rendering of Jesus’ words in contemporary language. Yes, accurate contemporary translations of the Gospels are widely available—but that authenticity is rarely coupled with the “fresh” and “artful” pen of a poet. Enter Willis Barnstone. These sayings of Jesus, now separated out and rendered in poetic typography in this new volume, also appear in the complete Gospel texts of his 2009 Restored New Testament. Or, well—almost—Barnstone tells us that, when this more compact new volume was prepared, he freshened the prefaces to set the tone of each gospel and he did tinker with a few lines here and there—perfecting them in this purely poetic format.
  
  Bottom line: If you care about reading the Bible in fresh ways—and especially if you find yourself among the broad movements encouraged by the many other Christian writers, described above, then get a copy of The Poems of Jesus Christ now.
  
  
  The Gnostic Bible: Revised and Expanded Edition
  
  The Restored New Testament: A New Translation with Commentary, Including the Gnostic Gospels Thomas, Mary, and Judas
  
  The Complete Poems of Sappho
  
  The Words of Jesus: A Gospel of the Sayings of Our Lord with Reflections
  
  The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus
  
  Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening
  
  How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels
• 
  June Avignone

  Absolutely beautiful.
• 
  Rob

  I recently bought my father Robert Alter's
  The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, in which Alter attempts to translate the bible to preserve both the literary integrity of the text and the theological soundness of the original. I haven't personally read Alter's translation, but my father, who is an amateur biblical scholar and conversant in Hebrew, has thoroughly enjoyed the book.
  
  When I discovered The Poems of Jesus Christ in a local thrift store, I thought it may be a similar undertaking, and the introduction makes such a claim, which is to say, this is an attempt to bring some literary gravitas to the immortal words of Christ (as attributed to him by a number of different writers).
  
  Therein lies the first problem with this work. No one actually wrote down what Jesus said as he said it. Jesus certainly didn't write any poetry. He may have spoken homilies in the same rhetorical style as the ancient prophets, but Barnstone's translations don't derive from Jesus's writing. The various gospel writers each had a unique voice that would more likely have reflected their aims rather than the integrity of the original speech of Jesus.
  
  The second problem I have with this book is that I find the King James Version of the text to be more poetic than Barnstone's poems. The poems in this text feel very low effort, though I am sure Barnstone put in his due diligence. I just felt that the blank verse and seemingly arbitrary line breaks did not enhance the words of Jesus for me.
• 
  Marilyn Letts

  The most interesting part of this book was to read the sayings/poems attributed to Jesus pulled from the context of the rest of the narrative. In just a couple hours you can read through all of them and compare the Jesus that is represented in each gospel.
  As for being a new translation? The line breaks, names of people and places were unique. Otherwise the word choices and phrasing reminded me of translations from forty (or more) years ago.
  One fresh change was the use of the word "student" to replace "disciple." And the one good laugh I got was reading "Yohanan the Dipper" for "John the Baptist."
• 
  Dave

  Intriguing. Barnstone has a refreshingly respectful and scholarly view of the Bible.
• 
  Sarah

  3.75
• 
  Sasha

  I liked this book it had many great passages, and parables that really open your eyes more. The metaphors and similes really show that Jesus really was a great poet!
• 
  Shiva Seven

  really made me ponder the teachings of jesus!