Evolution of the Word: The New Testament in the Order the Books Were Written

By presenting the New Testament books in the order they were written, bestselling Bible scholar Marcus Borg reveals how spiritually and politically radical the early Jesus movement began and how it slowly became domesticated.

Everyone knows the New Testament begins with the Gospel of Matthew, but how many people know it was actually one of the later books to be written--it was not even the first Gospel! By re-ordering the New Testament books in the sequence of when they were written, Borg provides a wonderful tutorial of how the core ideas of Christianity took shape and developed over time.

With introductions and sidebars to each of the books of the Bible, as well the oral history of what Jesus said before it was written down, Borg reveals how what began as a radical Jewish faith transformed itself into Christianity.

From Paul’s authentic letters and the first dramatic telling of Jesus’s story in Mark, we see how an anti-imperial movement started a religious revolution. But we also witness how the next generation of writers slowly began to erode the movement’s radicalism.

Readers will rediscover documents they thought they knew well by seeing them in an all-new setting. Borg’s THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORD promises to change how we think about this historic work.