Audiobooks by Jack Miles

Religion as We Know It: An Origin Story Audiobook

A brief, beautiful invitation to the study of religion from a Pulitzer Prize winner How did our forebears begin to think about religion as a distinct domain, separate from other activities that were once inseparable from it? Starting at the birth of Christianity-a religion inextricably bound to Western thought-Jack Miles reveals how the West's 'common sense' understanding of religion emerged and then changed as insular Europe discovered the rest of the world. Finally, in a moving postscript, he shows how this very story continues today in the minds and hearts of individual religious or irreligious men and women.

Jack Miles (Author), David Cochran Heath (Narrator)

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God in the Qur'an

'Reading this book could be a crucial step out of ignorance at a time of rising Islamophobia.' --Ron Charles, The Washington Post From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of God: A Biography, an erudite, hugely informative portrait of the God of Islam, the world's second largest, fastest-growing, and perhaps most tragically misunderstood religion. Who is Allah? What makes Him unique? And what does He ask of those who submit to His teachings? In the spirit of his Pulitzer Prize-winning God, a trailblazing 'biography' of the protagonist of the Old Testament, and Christ, his brilliant portrait of biblical Jesus, acclaimed religious scholar Jack Miles undertakes to answer these questions with his characteristic perspicacity, intelligence, and command of the subject. Miles depicts a 'character' less mercurial than Yahweh, less ready to forgive than Christ, and yet emphatically part of their traditions. The God of the Qur'an revises and perfects: His purpose is to make whole what had been corrupted or lost from the practices and scriptures of the earlier Abrahamic religions. Setting passages from the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qur'an side by side, Miles illuminates what is unique about Allah, His teachings and His temperament, and in doing so revises that which is false, distorted, or simply absent from our conception of the heart of Islam. Miles writes, 'I hope [that by reading this book] you may find it a little easier to trust the Muslim next door, thinking of him as someone whose religion, after all, may not be so wildly unreasonable that someone holding to it could not be a trusted friend.'

Jack Miles (Author), Peter Altschuler (Narrator)

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God

What sort of "person" is God? Is it possible to approach him not as an object of religious reverence, but as the protagonist of the world's greatest book--as a character who possesses all the depths, contradictions, and abiguities of a Hamlet? In this "brilliant, audacious book" (Chicago Tribune), a former Jesuit marshalls a vast array of learning and knowledge of the Hebrew Bible to illuminate God--and man--with a sense of discovery and wonder.

Jack Miles (Author), Michael Prichard (Narrator)

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Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God

The God of the Bible's Old Testament differs significantly from the God of the New. Jack Miles is fascinated by both, and delights in exploring this endlessly intriguing subject from various provocative angles. Miles regards the New Testament, in which God has become a man—that is, Christ—as an epilogue to the Hebrew scriptures. The "crisis" in the title of this unconventional reexamination of the four Gospels is that God-as-Christ is brutally executed to atone for promises unkept. Despite his divinity, his powers of salvation are limited, a fact made appallingly obvious when he is crucified. A former Jesuit priest, Jack Miles brings his theological background to bear on questions that defy conclusive answers. In language that is both erudite and accessible, he encourages reflection and stimulates further investigation of age-old mysteries.

Jack Miles (Author), Grover Gardner (Narrator)

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Christ

With the same passionate scholarship and analytical audacity he brought to the character of God, Jack Miles now approaches the literary and theological enigma of Jesus. In so doing, he tells the story of a broken promise–God’s ancient covenant with Israel–and of its strange, unlooked-for fulfillment. For, having abandoned his chosen people to an impending holocaust at the hands of their Roman conquerors. God, in the person of Jesus, chooses to die with them, in what is effectively an act of divine suicide. On the basis of this shocking argument, Miles compels us to reassess Christ’s entire life and teaching: His proclivity for the powerless and disgraced. His refusal to discriminate between friends and enemies. His transformation of defeat into a victory that redeems not just Israel but the entire world. Combining a close reading of the Gospels with a range of reference that includes Donne, Nietzche, and Elie Wiesel, Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God is a work of magnificent eloquence and imagination.

Jack Miles (Author), Grover Gardner (Narrator)

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