2020 Faculty Publications

 

The Gospel (Broadstone Books, 2020)

By H.L. Hix

If God and Jesus were not masculine, if stories the church suppressed were given equal time with those it claims, if a new translation listened more to our English than to King James’s, the gospel would be a whole new story. In The Gospel it is.

The Gospel tells a story of Jesus that for 2,000 years history has hidden away. It is not a novelization, but instead is composed exclusively of ancient Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac texts, selected, arranged, and newly translated. The Gospel is the good news like it always was, and like you’ve never seen it before.

                      — David Grand, author of Mount Terminus

 

Slangy, familiar, yet freshly strange, all embracing, challenging, reverently irreverent, H. L. Hix’s The Gospel is a faithfully non-canonical narrative of the life and teachings of Jesus.  The Story lives.  The Dance never ends.  Fear not.  Amen.

          — Joy Williams, author of Ninety-Nine Stories of God

 

I’m amazed that nobody has really done this, not in this way.  H. L. Hix, a first-rate poet and critic, has translated and edited the gospels with a deft hand, harmonizing the story in a way that brings the astonishing voice of Jesus to the fore. This is a brilliant piece of writing, make no mistake: a combination of Hix and the great gospel writers, whoever they were. I will gratefully keep this on my shelf beside the Bible.

            — Jay Parini, author of Jesus: The Human Face of God and The Way of Jesus

  

Reading The Gospel, I found myself like those at Emmaus whose eyes are opened suddenly, aware at last of all they have sealed their hearts against. I have been waiting all my life for someone like H. L. Hix to bring together the various gospels, canonical or not, into a singular account of the life and teachings of Jesus. What is this strange and wonderous book before us—newly translated, compiled, and composed for the first time as a single text, as new telling—if not good news?

         — Eric Pankey, author of Apocrypha and Dismantling the Angel

 

A review: https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/book-reviews/radical-gospel-h-l-hix-rob-vollmar

More info on both books at: https://www.hlhix.com/