2023 Reprint of the 1896 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. The most celebrated novelist of all time, the author of Anna Karenina and War and Peace , retells "the greatest story ever told," integrating the four Gospels into a single twelve-chapter narrative of the life of Jesus. Based on his study of early Christian texts, Leo Tolstoy's remarkable The Gospel in Brief makes accessible the powerful, mystical truth of Jesus's spiritual teaching, stripped of artificial church doctrine. The Gospel in Brief is a synthesis of the four gospels of the New Testament into one narrative of the life of. It is notable in that it excludes many of the supernatural aspects of the original gospels, such as their claims of Jesus's divine origins and ability to perform miracles. Instead, the work focuses on Jesus's teachings to his followers, presumably those which Tolstoy found most compelling. The Gospel in Brief is thought by some to be deeply reflective of Tolstoy's own interpretation of Christianity.