What we have heard and we’ve read in the Bible, well it ain’t necessarily so. So goes the old Porgy and Bess song. Perhaps they did not read Thomas Moore’s version, Gospel The Book of John, in which regardless of religion or atheism one discovers a deeper more meaningful spirituality hidden in the root meanings of the words used. Unfortunately, much of the work of John and others has been turned into moralistic dogma. But what we find in the root language is a more celebrative, deeply mystical and loving message. In Moore’s book we discover a different Jesus than the one described for us by earlier translations. This new rendition of Jesus is Dionysian in his urging us toward a full and meaningful celebration of living. He tells us that we are to remember who we are, and he guides us to that knowledge with his actions and words. Come learn of this new Jesus. See if you like him now.

Thomas Moore is the author of the number one New York Times bestseller Care of the Soul. He has written twenty-five other books about bringing soul to personal life and culture, deepening spirituality, humanizing medicine, finding meaningful work, imagining sexuality with soul and doing religion in a fresh way. In his youth he was a Catholic monk and studied music composition. He has a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Syracuse University and was a university professor for a number of years. He is also a psychotherapist influenced mainly by C. G. Jung and James Hillman. As a Gospel theologian and a non-aligned theologian, he has published his translation of the New Testament Gospels, Writing in the Sand: Jesus Spirituality and the Soul of the Gospels, and The Soul of Christmas.