The Gospel in Brief (Dover Philosophical Classics)

Tolstoy goes to the original Greek texts and renders a striking and illuminating account of Christ's message from the four gospels. He purposely does not delve into Christ's miracles or divinity. Why?

Well, Christ himself was more concerned that people understand his message of how to live one's life in the spirit than to worship him because of his divine acts. Religion is dead if it is not lived continually. Tolstoy dared to explain with clarity how to live Christ's message. It is harrowing if you understand what is asked of you.

"...small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." -Matthew 7:24

I know why this was said now and is rarely emphasized in churches. Read this book if you want to change and are open to the idea that Christianity has been severely perverted.


A powerful book.... for those who like it....   September 25, 2000
J. Michael Showalter (Nashville, TN United States)
54 out of 67 found this review helpful

This is the kind of book either you like or you hate.

Three kinds of people will read this book. The first (and most moderate) will be Tolstoy scholars, etc. interested in his religious beliefs and influences, and there readings of this book will be value-empty and hygenic. The second group of people will be those akin of mind to Tolstoy, and they will love and cherish this book ahead of almost any other: when the philosopher Wittgenstein first read this book he decided that it was spectacular and went off into the countryside to begin to change the world (and failed... leaving Austria to go and study with Russell at Oxford....) The third group will be more traditional Christians-- for whom Jesus' particular authority and the authority of the Church handed down through the Fathers is paramount, and they, generally, will detest this work.....

I love this book. I find it splendidly written, insightful, and clever: I'm of the sort who would toss out the whole of the Bible excluding Ezekiel, Daniel, and James: I want Christ as a man and a social reformer. Unfortunately, Gandhi and Christ were not usually considered one in the same. For people like me, this book is a must-read and almost guaranteed as a world-changing event.

For more traditional Christians, this book is probably better left forgotten. It's going to be objectionable and even with his style being beautiful, there are better things to be read....


Just the Facts   March 20, 2000
41 out of 52 found this review helpful

Tolstoi, one of the five best novelists of all time, in any language, was born into a rich and powerful family (second only to the Tsar) and loved wine, women and song; was married and had fourteen children. In short he was a superstar! And suicidal, depressed and lonely until he learned to live like a Christian instead of living like his church would have him live. He leaves the "churches" contributions out of the Gospels and leaves Christ in (for which he was proudly excommunicated). If you have rejected Christ because of the hyprocisy of the church and the people who run it - get this book and get a life.


A Revolutionary Book   July 14, 2006
Nicholas A. Metel (Fort Wayne, IN)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful

Tolstoy's inspiring translation of the Gospels focuses on the problem of life while detailing Christ's instructions to man concerning the question of how we are to live. This work is revolutionary in the context that it summarizes all of Christ's instructions into 5 simple commands, all of which can be obeyed through one direct command: to love one another even as Christ has loved us.

In reading this book, I would recommend reading the body of the text before reading the introduction. As the text is potentially paradigm shifting for the reader, it is best to approach it with an open mind. Tolstoy's introduction, I have found, can be best appreciated after reading the text of the Gospel in Brief.

I would encourage everyone, Christian and non-Christian, to read this book to attain a clearer understanding of the teachings of Jesus Christ.


Gospels according to Leo Tolstoy -- good way to get a perspective on life   March 6, 2008
Kenneth D. Gartrell (Boston, MA USA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

Some nights ago, I picked up a copy of this book, which has been sitting on my bookshelf for a while.

I started into this by a separate interest in the syntopical reading of War and Peace, and that led me though many elements of Napoleonic history. Along the way, I added this book because of my growing interest in Tolstoy and his place in Russian literature. Hearkening back recently to my studies of the Russian language and political structure 40 years ago, this cumulative interest was pushed to the tipping point by the recent production of Utopia, the Tom Stoppard plays about the 19th century evolution of a Russian literary tradition after Tolstoy.

The bases of my review and recommendation are simply these:

1) Born into a Christian tradition, I was familiar with the Gospels, but I have to plead ignorance of them more or less because I have always approached the Bible as a mystical and mysterious document, revealed only with the help of clergy and only while sitting in the pews of my Episcopal Churches.

2) After my deeply moving reading of the book, it was revealed to me for the first time the essential elements of Christ's teaching, unadorned by evangelistic zeal or liturgical ritual. It provided me a justification to discuss the Bible, the teachings of Christ, and the search for the spirit in polite secular conversations.

I think The Gospels in Brief is a straight up and highly penetrating search for the truly integrated essence of the four canonical Gospels of Mathew, Mark, Luke and John.

I feel compelled to recommend the book, simply because it is the only book I have ever read from cover to cover when starting to read it myself at 2:30 AM as a sleeping pill. I was enthralled and I never put it down until finished at about 6:30 AM.

No matter how I may otherwise view the more elaborate telling of the complete Gospels, I found in Tolstoy that it is true that the spirit and body are separable, and that if properly observed, the spirit of God, nature, providence or the "force" is in fact already in all of us if we only know where to look and how to look.

My only regrets after reading the book are:
1) that I cannot translate the original Russian for myself, and
2) that I cannot do it all for myself based on the Latin text of the Gospels themselves.

Christopher Hitchins aside, the book has altered my thinking about spirit and its power. It leaves me, however, with the challenge of how much to follow the teachings in a literal or figurative sense. For now, I provisionally choose to believe that I do no one good to give away all my worldly belongings and ambitions in fact. I am convinced so far that if I use them all to feed the spirit, as well as the mind and body, I can reveal the spirit just as well -- maybe better.

It ultimately comes to this. This book strips the decisions of spiritual faith bare and allows me to gain perspective on the issues, confronting my soul and my life of the flesh. That is a pretty good accomplishment for Tolstoy. It warrants our attention no matter who we are or where we come from. The cost is small -- the benefits are big. In economic terms it is a high cost/benefit read. Especially if "the body is willing but the spirit is weak."