Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus Book

Honestly, I don't even know where to begin with my review of this book. How about this:

Don't read it.

Seriously,
DON'T READ IT!

If you are searching for a scholarly work on the birth traditions found in the gospels, there is an abundance of great material out there. It doesn't matter if you are looking for evangelical, liberal, or even nonchristian scholarship. It is there to find. If you are looking for looking for something easier to read that popularizes the scholarship of others, again there is plenty to find no matter what perspective you are coming from (or seeking to read). This book is neither scholarly or honest. This book is simply a blatantly agenda driven piece of deceptive propaganda.

I really want to give him the benefit of doubt but it is all too clear that this is not possible. There are others coming from similar viewpoints that I love reading but it was a struggle for me to work my way through this piece of garbage. On pretty much every page I found myself shaking my head and saying, "That is simply not true... you know better than that... this has already been proven/disproven hundreds of times by..."

Spong isn't arguing against the Bible... not really. He isn't arguing against opposing Biblical scholarship. Not really. What he is mostly doing is arguing against some of the popular myths that are part and parcel of the Christmas story as it is told to our kids in the West. If he were to admit that were the case perhaps I would not be so frustrated.

The disinformation he is spreading is done in many ways. One of his most common is by using a false dichotomy. For example, he says, "Our 20th-century world, distorted by religious claims to possess objectivity and literalness, asks, "Did it happen?" The Biblical writers deeply involved in the Midrash tradition were attempting to answer a quite different tradition, "What does it mean?" Is he trying to imply that those who believe the birth of Christ was an actual fact of history don't care about the spiritual meaning behind the event? Do all those who believe there is a spiritual reason for a historical event have to automatically have to deny the historicity of said event? This and similar contrasts are presented over and over, probably at least 4-5 times a chapter.

Another very common trait is to present an apparent contrast as evidence to "prove" that one or both stories are "made up". Often there are easy or common explanations for this which he completely ignores. An example is an apparent difference in the two genealogies of Christ. There are three different commonly given explanations for these that are all suggested in the text itself. I would not have minded if Spong addressed each in turn and explained why he didn't agree with those explanations. Instead. he ignores all three completely and says "it is obvious" to any thinking person that somebody is making something up whole cloth. Sorry... no.

If this wasn't bad enough, he is also deliberately deceptive with his use of citations. One example near the conclusion of one chapter he writes: "The birth narratives that we now possess may well represent two quite distinct, even divergent, traditions." Then there is a citation number where he cites a particular scholarly article with the caveat that the author actually says the opposite but he disagrees with the author. Did you catch that? He is citing a work that specifically says that they aren't two distinct, divergent, traditions. Anyone who is just reading through and not checking the footnotes would just assume that he is citing someone who agrees with his unfounded claim. After I noticed this I started checking and found at least two other times he pulls this same dirty trick.

I could go on and on, but already this review is going longer than I would like. If I were to critique every false claim, incorrect assumption, or misrepresentation he presents I would end up writing my own book. Instead, I will point you to another book by a real scholar written shortly after this piece of propaganda: NT Wright's Who Was Jesus?