El progreso del peregrino: Un clásico cristiano ilustrado

El progreso del Peregrino, es una hermosa enseñanza de la vida de un cristiano en las luchas que enfrenta día a día y las bendiciones que tendrá al momento de llegar a su muerte . Solo por fe.

Fascinante clásico de la literatura cristiana. Lo que más me gusto fue la imagen de la feria de la vanidad y la imagen de la muerte como un rio por el que todo peregrino tendrá que cruzar antes de llegar a la ciudad celestial.

El camino que sigue un cristiano no es fácil, es duro y con retos que de no ser por el Espiritu Santo, sería imposible llegar al reino de Dios. Es un libro que insta a la santidad y fortalece un corazón desanimado.

A pesar de haber leído ya el libro en muchas ocasiones, fue una gran experiencia escucharlo mientras dedicas el tiempo en otras actividades. 10/10

Increíble sabiduría de Dios para hablar tan claramente sobre el camino de los peregrinos hacia la ciudad celestial .

Excelente narración e historia, muy útil y necesaria en la vida de todo discípulo de Jesús

Muy edificante, fué de mucha bendición para mi vida, puedo dar fé de que es inspiración del espíritu santo

De lo mejor que he leído
Léelo enriquece nuestra vida

Sublime obra. Una historia que muestra el duro tramo pata llegar a la corona.

July 5 2024: Just over a year ago I was at the Art of Shepherding Conference in Islington and they were selling copies of the attractive Banner edition of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress at a good price and so I bought a copy. Not much happened for a while but then I adopted the current policy of trying to read through the classics bit by bit and so this morning I finished the second part. I have read this second part at least once before and it is very good, though not as good as Part 1 which I have read several times. It is the sort of book worth reading several times in a lifetime. If not every year, every ten years at least. At present I am also reading The Holy War and one or two other things.

Bunyan crafted many profound and moving images, though the 17th century English is somewhat difficult to navigate.

I was forced to read this in ninth grade, and I only vaguely remember it now; because, I just could never get into. The idea of allegorically detailing the Christian journey was nice...as an idea. The actual detailing of it proved both tedious and confusing to me.

Insufferable. Period

I listened to this on Audible.

This was a great book, a great narration, and a great allegory. I'm more familiar with the modern abridged versions so it was good to go back to Bunyan's original.

There were a couple things I found wanting though:
1. as a story, it could use some editing to tighten up the pacing. Particularly at the end, there was a lot of "discoursing" back and forth.
2. some of the discourses the pilgrims had, especially with the misguided/evil individuals they met, felt very preachy. I don't know if that's because it was how people back then told each other they were wrong, or whether as a minister, he felt it was better to get straight to the point to care for someone's soul. But it felt as if they didn't really "love" these people, possibly because Bunyan knew they were destined for Hell anyway. There could have been more friendliness in the disputes.

Besides that, I'd recommend reading it. Bunyan sprinkles in relevant biblical allusions all through it, from passing sentences to characters and places. And though occasionally his allegory falls back down to earth in a few places and uses our experiences without translating them, most of the time it depicts real things in the Christian life in a very graphic, useful way.

In 2015 The Guardian published a list of the 100 best novels published in English, listed in chronological order of publication. Under Covid inspired lockdown, I have taken up the challenge.
The Pilgrim's Progress, published in 1678, is the first in the list.
I was underwhelmed. It is a Christian allegory, and has remained popular and recommended (although possible less read) ever since publication. I found the prose turgid and the content nonsensical.
The 17th century had Shakespeare and poetry, and I expected more of the prose fiction of the era, but the genre had not really been established. Five hundred years after the Tale of Genji, English literaure was waiting for its first novel.
The 17th century was also the dawn of the Enlightenment. Newton published Principia Mathematica 10 years after Pilgrim's Progress. In that context, Pilgim's Progress seems a last echoing cry of the non-rational world.

A lucid story that weaves and flows its way through inception to conclusion.

Recommended for everyone

Summary: In this allegorical novel, a pilgrim named Christian travels a journey in which he loses the heavy weight of his sins, is tempted to sin again, and eventually reaches paradise.

My thoughts: I’m not sure why this is the most printed book in English, other than the Bible. I love allegory generally, but this allegory beat you over the head with obviousness. Everyone and everything was given a name (like Christian) that said explicitly what the character or impediment represented. The story itself was interesting enough, I suppose, as a concept, I just wish it were more subtle. This is also not a book for non-Christians, unless they are reading for the sake of learning about classic literature.

I don't know if this is the worst book that I've ever read or if the audiobook was so atrocious that it made it into the worst thing ever. This book was a nightmare. I get it, I get it, I know it's supposed to be a Christian allegory, but listening to six hours of this (fully fucking dramatized) was hell. HELL. I wanted to bleach my ears. I couldn't handle it anymore, did Satan narrate this? This book made the Lord of the Rings trilogy look like a cake walk!! The Pilgrim's Progress was a long ass journey to heaven made by "Christian" and other people he runs into. They face all sorts of dumb shit and get into dumb trouble and make lots of dumb decisions but SOME FUCKING HOW still make it to heaven (spoiler alert). Christian loses lots of companions, walks into dumb scenarios every other page, but luckily for him, he had some faith so he made it. UGH. I hate everything. I'm glad this nightmare book is over.

This is an abbreviated version with fantastic illustrations. Probably very good to read to children but a bit too simplistic for adults. Enjoyable none the less.

I was looking forward to reading this version of the Christian classic retold in modern English. I vaguely remember being read the original as a child or maybe it was the junior version. Ford's version did not disappoint...well at least the first half.

The book should really be divided into two with Christian's journey separate from his wife Christiana's. The second book repeats a lot of the first and is really just going over Christian's journey from the perspective of his wife. There didn't seem to be a lot of unique material or new characters. I found myself getting a bit bored and a bit lost in some of the allegory by the end. If this version is faithful to the original then I guess it was Bunyan who wrote Christiana's journey in this way...I would still have given the second part three stars and maybe it would work better if a reader was to read the second part after a considerable break from the first.

That said, I loved The Pilgrim's Progress and I loved the first half of this version. I would definitely give it five stars or more if that was possible. The author has included all of the Scripture references for the narrative in the margins so the reader can see its origin. She has also added various italicised comments to help the reader understand the spiritual lessons and to draw the truth out. These were great additions.

So, five stars for part 1 and three for part 2 or try reading the two parts with a significant time gap in the middle. Regardless, every Christian should read a version of this classic book and Ford's is a good option. Recommended.

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan was written in 1678 and can be counted among the most significant works of English literature. It is an allegory, presented as a narration of a dream, and it is divided into two parts. The first part follows protagonist Christian from the City of Destruction, i.e. this world, to the Celestial City, i.e. heaven. Christian sets out on this journey, leaving behind his wife, his children and his home, because he is weighed down by a burden. On his way, he goes through several stages and meets various persons, some of whom accompany him on his journey and some of whom try to convince him of leaving the path he is on. The characters he encounters have, as he himself, very straightforward names that show their main character trait. They can be regarded as flat characters whose name already gives away what their character is like and what their role in the story will be. Examples of such names are Legality, Goodwill, Faithful, Ignorance, Giant Despair, and Mistrust, to name but a few. The same thing can be said for the stages Christian passes through. There is the Valley of the Shadow of Death, Vanity Fair, the Hill of Difficulty, or the Delectable Mountains. The second part of The Pilgrim's Progress relates the story of Christiana, Christian's wife, who sets out with her children and Mercy, another woman from the City of Destruction, to follow her husband's path to Mount Zion and the Celestial City.

Although the book was written in 1678, the text is very easy to follow as the language is quite simple with no complex sentence structures. Bunyan's writing style is very direct, which is probably due to the fact that the book was intended for a popular and not for a higher-educated academic readership. Being a Christian allegory it was aimed at a broad audience depicting Christian life as the only true way of life. The names of characters and places ensure that there is no trouble in deciphering the allegoric meaning of the novel. Yet, I have read that Bunyan, who is said to have traveled from Bedford to London, was influenced by his personal surroundings in the description of the places in the story. Generally, the book can be approached without much background knowledge, but you probably might get more out of it with a religious background.

On the whole, 3.5 stars as the second part was somewhat repetitive after having read the first one. Plus, I felt I was getting a moralizing lecture.

I finished! I finished!

I am glad I read this. I am very very glad I am done. And though it was not actually hard to read, it was generally very not interesting to me. And since I am not a Puritan nor other nonconformist--actually, I was raised Catholic, so Bunyan would hate my entire family (or at least the Catholic half, I do have a nonconformist branch c1750 in Somerset), ha ha!--I can't relate to much of it.

I did, however, very much enjoy the section with Talkative. The man who is all talk and no actionäóîwhich is one of my pet peeves. Not in the area of religion, but you know those people--the first to complain about ANY volunteer run event and give the organizers or just plain volunteers an earful, but who refuse to volunteer or organize. Very similar concept, though not exactly what Bunyan was referring to. But he gets an extra star just for Talkative.

This book wasn't bad or awful, per se, it was simply painfully dull and boring with absolutely no vested interest in what occurs with the characters. Which brings us to the characters! Look, I get that this is a biblically-woven highly religious allegory of personal salvation, that much is clear, but does the reader have to be blunted over the head with it? The lead player is named Christian? Really? Couldn't call him Bob? And his wife is Christina? You're joking, right? Pamela would've been better. The biggest surprise - and there are none - is that his children aren't named Christine, Christopher, and Jiminy Christmas. Also, did Bunyan HAVE to name everyone else exactly what they are in metaphor? I found that aggravating, and the slog-through was mighty difficult, and the sudden bursts of rhyme were ridiculous and often non-rhyming, but I'm all the richer for having read it, right? Wrong. Guess I'm going to hell.

I get it; it's an allegory. I think the concept is beautiful and some parts of the book are touching - but most of it is just tedious. This type of novel loses all power to mesmerize - it's had all the drama and excitement whitewashed out of it. I'm not sure if the language or the style is to blame. Bottom line - I didn't enjoy it.

For those too lazy to read the Bible or too dumb to form even a surface level interpretation of Christianity, there’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. The journey of the Christian spirit cloaked in the thinnest of allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress is a book in two parts, the first part dealing with a man named Christian making his way to the celestial city (heaven, obviously). Part two follows his wife Christiana making a very, very similar journey. The names are indicative of the level of both subtlety and creativity that Bunyan put into this book.

The lack of subtlety is perhaps an unfair criticism, as Bunyan was clearly writing this book for the absolute lowest common denominator, but that proves to be a problem in its own right. For instance, Bunyan writes about brothers Passion and Patience to illustrate that patience is a virtue and that rash passion is bad: this is the 1678 precursor to the kid shows that nowadays run on the Christian TV channels to teach young children how to behave. Though Bunyan litters the book with Bible quotes, this book doesn’t contain any hint of the moral complexity that the Bible often explores: these lessons are black-and-white, the completely one-dimensional characters identified as on the side of good or evil immediately once their names are revealed (Goodwill, Faithful, and Old Honest are all good, surprise surprise). Not only does Bunyan make everything as simple as possible to promote mass consumption, but he also tries to gussy up the lessons by adding action scenes throughout the journey. In part 1 Christian fights a demon, and then in part 2 no less than four giants are slain, and the beast from the Book of Revelation is driven off as well (suggesting that Bunyan never grasped any of the symbolic meaning of the Book of Revelation at all). This is the Hollywood blockbuster of its time, designed to entertain and make the ideas within palatable to as broad an audience as possible, not to challenge the reader in any way. Unfortunately, the Bible isn't something that can be reduced to this type of bland and bite-sized entertainment without losing much of what makes it great.

What makes this book so painful to read is that Bunyan’s purpose in writing it, to set out the path a person needs to follow to get into heaven, has been done so much better elsewhere. Specifically Dante’s Divine Comedy puts Pilgrim’s Progress to shame in every way that I can think of, not to mention the Bible of course. Dante’s Divine Comedy is the closer parallel, as Dante is also using the journey of a man to illustrate the necessary traits and steps for getting into heaven and what steps to avoid. Dante not only wrote of the circles of Hell, levels of purgatory, and spheres of heaven to illustrate how a person should act, he was also doing a myriad of other things as well: writing about Italian politics at the time, merging the classical myths and teachings with the Christian system of morality, writing a moving letter to his deceased first love Beatrice, redefining the Italian language, and mapping the heavenly cosmos in detail. Not only did Dante do all of this, but he also did it all exceptionally well. For instance, each of the three stairs at the entrance to the mountain of Purgatory has a specific meaning- nothing is added at random, everything is in its place. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, in comparison, seems slapdash and lazy. Bunyan isn’t trying to do very much, just sketch some moral lessons that lead a soul to heaven in the least nuanced manner possible. Why is the Slough of Despond located where it is? Or the arbor called Slothful’s Friend? And why does Christian run into Atheist when he does? And why doesn’t Christiana run into Atheist at all? The answer seems to be that Bunyan decided to put those challenges where they are because that's when he thought up the lesson while writing the story, not because he had a clear concept of a soul’s journey, or that the placement was particularly symbolic, or any other good reason. He could have switched around the challenges the pilgrims faced in their journeys and nothing would have been lost. Thus, you finish Pilgrim’s Progress and feel nothing comparable to the unified vision of the universe that you get with Dante, just a bunch of disjointed lessons that are mostly mind-numbingly simplistic. It doesn’t help that Bunyan decides to go over the same journey twice, with only slightly different challenges the second time around.

Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress is a story of the soul’s journey to heaven that delivers only the simplest lessons, told in an uncreative way, and which seems thrown together instead of set in a specific order for a specific purpose. Despite the action added by Bunyan the journey isn’t a particularly interesting one- it's lacking all subtlety and moral complexity- and it’s rendered even more boring by the journey happening twice. There is no reason to read this book while there are still copies of The Divine Comedy and the Bible left in the world. Your time is much better spent reading one of those- a few pages of either have more worth than the entirety of The Pilgrim's Progress.

Great. Wonderful. Terrific! I cannot express how wonderful this book was. I loved it. My kids loved it. And now they want to read the "grown-up" version of Pilgrim's Progress.

Also, the curriculum to go with it is AMAZING! Looking forward to going through the book again!

This book is ancient! As an allegory of the Christian life, it still makes (almost?) perfect sense today. The second part with Christian's wife and children was kind of boring, probably because it's the retelling of the same story.

This is a Christian book. But its principles of not getting tricked or waylaid off your chosen path as a baseball player or President. We get off our goals just as easily as a Christian apparently gets away from his or her goals in life.

I started it once and put it down. Too boring. I picked it up a few years later and found it interesting - the tedious journey no longer seemed so. A puritanical pursuit of the good.

I can appreciate why John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress," an allegory of the Christian faith, was beloved by Puritans. For me, it was incredibly tedious and a 1,001 book just to try and get through.

I failed in that... after it became clear the second half was going to be pretty much a retelling of the first half, I finally gave up.