| Title | : | Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0830825681 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780830825684 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 443 |
| Publication | : | First published January 11, 2007 |
Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels Reviews
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This book is amazing! Bailey lived for 60 years in the Middle East, and has literally lived through the Bible story. The book begins with a stunning study, which presents a convincing case that Jesus was actually born in a house (since many poor, Middle Eastern homes actually have mangers in the house!). I won't give away the rest of his argument, but I did want to share another tid-bit that lept out at me.
Speaking of the Magi, and who they might have been, he writes: "In the 1920s a British scholar, E.F.F. Bishop, visited a Bedouin tribe in Jordan. This Muslim tribe bore the Arabic name al-Kokabani. The word kokab means "planet" and al-Kaokabani means "Those who study/follow the planets." Bishop asked the elders of the tribe why they called themselves by such a name. They replied that it was because their ancestors followed the planets and traveled west to Palestine to show honor to the great prophet Jesus when he was born. This supports Justin's [Justin Martyr - ca. 165 A.D.:] second-century claim that the wise men were Arabs from Arabia," (Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, 53).
****
So, I've finally finished this! It took about three years to read, mostly because I had to fit into the cracks of my teaching and graduate school schedule. But, it was well worth it. Bailey's insights probably need to be digested over a long period of time, anyway, since they are so paradigm-changing. Nearly chapter had moments of truly deep insight, combined with pastoral applications throughout. I can't recommend this highly enough! Every pastor needs to read it, to avoid recycling some common misnomers about the Bible. -
A very illuminating and enjoyable read. Bailey approaches his subject with much knowledge and much humility. Sometimes he repeats himself, for example in his explanations of Biblical rhetoric or his fulsome praises of some of his favorite commentators. However that may have to do with the fact that some of the material was transplanted from his earlier writings.
He uses his knowledge of Middle Eastern culture, languages and Bible commentaries to clarify the meaning of specific selections of the New Testament. He pinpoints and explains details of the Christmas narratives, parables and other passages that had hitherto puzzled me or even escaped my notice. He shows how Jesus drew material for his teachings from the cultural and religious heritage of Israel. However, as Bailey demonstrates, Christ did not hesitate to challenge and overturn some of the prejudices and limitations of his times, particularly in his attitude to women and to people who were generally considered undesirable. -
This is a spectacular book. Well worth the investment of time and energy. It has revolutionized my view of Jesus and the gospel story
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This was an insightful read. Bailey explains the composition styles of the Middle East in the Biblical times, and walks through various parables and historical accounts, showing how the original authors and readers of the texts understood them. This information was very helpful, especially when it came to some hard-to-understand stories, like Jesus talking to a woman about feeding scraps to dogs.
I did feel that some of the literary/translation jargon became a bit repetitive, and there were a couple of instances where I felt Bailey was reading too much into certain texts, without anything to back up his thoughts, but these things were relatively minor. Also, the ending was very abrupt, as there was no concluding chapter.
I’d definitely recommend this book to all Western Christians to get a deeper understanding of Scripture passages which are so familiar that we take them for granted, and a better understanding of who Jesus was and is. -
This is my favorite kind of book- books that pay compounding interest because they help you better read the scriptures.
Bailey takes 32 different passages and seeks to uncover the Middle Eastern cultural realities that really open up the meaning of the gospel accounts. The author spent 60 years of his life in the Middle East and devoted his academic career to trying "understand the stories of the Gospels in the light of Middle Eastern culture."
Bailey leans heavily on Middle Eastern scholars and texts written in Arabic (that have yet to be translated into English):
"My intent is to contribute new perspectives from the Eastern tradition that have rarely, if ever, been considered outside the Arabic-speaking Christian world"
Because of this, his book is unique and full of "I have NEVER heard any of this before" moments.
But Bailey is not just a just telling you nifty insights -"Jesus wasn't born in a stable, but a house"- to impress your friends at parties. Bailey is teaching you how to read the Gospels.
The Gospels are "meaning tied intimately to history and to event. That is the way it is with Jesus - not neutrality, bare record, empty chronology, but living participation and heart involvement.
Christian faith is fact, but not bare fact; it is poetry, but not imagination.
Jesus is the music of the reality of God"
Some of Bailey's best insights are re women:
"In the stories Luke chooses to tell he makes it clear that this Savior came for both women and men. A careful examination of the book of Luke unearths at least twenty-seven sets of stories that focus in one case on a man and in the other on a woman. Among these is the parable of the good shepherd with a lost sheep and the parable of a good woman with a lost coin (Lk 15: 3-10). The first story emerges from the world of men and the second from the life experience of women.”
As this book is not a cohesive whole but 32 separate "studies" it's a bit repetitive. -
Rereading Kenneth Bailey’s classic book proved just as rewarding as the first time 12 years ago. Every chapter is packed with insights into the text and the Middle Eastern background of Jesus’ day. It’s like reading these parables and episodes for the first time. A bonus is the understanding Bailey brings from ancient Middle Eastern Christian commentators on the text who were much closer to the culture of the New Testament than we are both chronologically and culturally.
What really happened in the Christmas story, the importance of what the Lord’s Prayer does not say, why (in the parable) the employer’s actions are so astounding in hiring laborers throughout the day and in how he pays them—these and so much more offer rich and moving insights.
Just one key idea among dozens I will carry with me for a long time: Despite the deeply insulting refusal of guests to come to the master’s banquet (Luke 14:15-24), he does not send a force to destroy them. Instead he generously opens the banquet to the outcasts. He reprocesses anger into grace. I will long ponder how I can turn anger about injustice into acts of grace.
This is without a doubt one of those few books meant to be slowly chewed and digested. -
This gave me so much new insight into a lot of passages that I hadn't fully understood before. I appreciated how Bailey really delved into the structure of the Biblical passages, the multiple ways it had been translated into different languages, and especially the cultural heritage of the texts and the underlying assumptions that would have been made at the time they were written. I mean, what a delight to have him declare that a parable needs to be liberated from our capitalist lense! Or to highlight the use of both female and male metaphors for God in discussion of the Lord's prayer in tandem with an analysis of the parable of the Prodigal Son? Some of these chapters were absolutely invigorating. Most instances where I felt like certain elements of a story hadn't made sense, it was because my cultural understanding really didn't match up with what would have actually
been happening. It made the stories feel both more alive and more accessible. I'll be happy to check out other works by Bailey. -
Bailey uses his extensive knowledge of Semitic sources and his experience of living in the Middle East for 40 years to provide critical context and understanding for the gospel texts. His examination of the multiple uses of “ring composition,” or chiastic structure in the NT yields enormous insight for otherwise familiar gospel passages.
In the West, we have come to expect that the point of a story is revealed, as a climax, at the end. But in “Ring Composition” format, the critical point is given in the middle of the narration.
I have been hearing sermons and reading books about these passages for decades, but I found his observations to be consistently eye-opening, and for several sections (e.g., the stories of Zacchaeus, the woman at the well, the Syrophoenecian woman) his analyses are truly revelatory.
This is one of my favorite books of the year, and I’m sure I will be returning to this one again and again. -
Again another fabulous book by Ken Bailey. Don't let the length of the book cause you problems. It is 400 pages, but each chapter is pretty much stand alone.
Again, the insights that Dr. Kenneth Bailey gives to the culture during the time of Jesus is amazing. You will understand parables in a better way. You will understand why some sayings of Jesus offended the local Rabbi's in a way that you didn't catch with a casual reading.
This books helps me to dig deeper into the real lessons behind many stories of Jesus's healings, parables and inneractions with the local people.
You will not be disappointed. Enjoy the adventure with Dr. Bailey. -
Bailey’s insights on Middle Eastern Culture are a gift to the church, and should be lapped up by all those who are hungry to grapple with the historical Jesus.
There’s not a dull sentence within the precious tome.
—Tristan Sherwin, author of *Love: Expressed* -
Rich insights! Bailey gets academic, yet it is highly readable.
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The late Kenneth E. Bailey taught New Testament studies in the Middle East for decades. Thus, he brings to "Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes" an understanding of both the original language used in the Gospels and the culture in which Jesus lived.
I learned so much from this book. I learned that the way the Christmas story is presented in every Sunday school pageant is almost certainly wrong (it stems from a misunderstanding of the word translated as "inn"). I learned that the phrase in the "Lord's Prayer" invariably translated in English as "Give us this day our daily bread," could as easily be translated, "Give us the bread that never runs out." Either translation could be correct, but oh, the difference in meaning.
"Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes" is divided into sections, and the most interesting section to me consisted on chapters about Jesus' encounters with women. Even I know enough of the culture of the time to know that the manner in which Jesus treated women as equals was very counter-cultural. This becomes all the more real and astonishing in Bailey's careful analysis of seven texts.
My interest level dropped a little during the final section, on the parables. But I'm very glad not to have missed the chapter on Luke 12:35-38, which Bailey labels "The Parable of the Serving Master." I don't believe I've ever heard a sermon or teaching on this parable, and I think when I've read it I've just breezed through it without really considering it. It's so short -- how important could it be?
Well, Bailey freed me from that sort of thinking. It's an amazing little story, in which the master of the household walks away from a wedding banquet, goes home to see if his servants are on the job -- and then he serves them a meal! I wonder if Jesus' disciples thought of that parable on the night of that last Passover supper, when Jesus served them.
I was a little disappointed that this book had no section on the miracles of Jesus. It also had no section on the resurrection, although that is discussed in the introductory chapter on Jesus and women. I would love to have read a book by Bailey on those two subjects.
Instead, I'm already starting on "Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes," Bailey's study of 1 Corinthians. I'm excited to dig into it. -
Rarely does a book surprise me with new insight into the familiar Biblical accounts of Jesus and His teachings as this one has.
Years ago I stumbled across a book by Kenneth Bailey called The Cross and the Prodigal: Luke 15 through the Eyes of Middle Eastern Peasants which introduced me to the riches of this approach to understanding the New Testament. Bringing the culture of the Middle East into the discussion of the story scrapes off centuries of misreading or simply missing significant details - many of them strong Gospel insights.
Culture skews the way we understand so many things. As an example, in Japan there is a culture of worship of the dead. One of the hard things for Japanese followers of Jesus is to move against this culture. Then they observe the gift of flowers at American Christian funerals and their first understanding of this custom is that it is a form of worship of the dead! To an American Christian, that sounds foreign to our perceptions of grieving. Now imagine American Christians steeped in capitalism (as one part of our culture) reading the Parable of the Ten Minas (Luke 19:11-27). It's easy for an American to skip over all the details of the rich man "going off to be appointed king" and "his citizens hated him" and make the story about faithful stewardship of our gifts or our worldly goods. That would sound very foreign to someone in the Middle East who understands what is going on in this parable.
Bailey spent most of his ministry in the Middle East and immersed in the study of the ancient middle eastern Biblical translations such as Syriac and Aramaic. He doesn't just talk about culture - he backs up his observations with references to these texts.
The book is more scholarly than the Prodigal Son book, but even an amateur with no foreign language experience or familiarity with the theological terms Bailey uses will understand his analysis. Although I purchased a paperback copy of the book, I listened to an audiobook version which meant I couldn't look at the diagrams but I still benefited from digging deep into the Biblical text to bring up new insights. I look forward to consulting the book I purchased when I want to look at specifics.
A lengthy section of the book is dedicated to the parables of Jesus. In my training, we were taught to stick to the "point of comparison" of the parable - this was a corrective to allegorizing the details of the parables. The allegorical approach was very subjective to the interpreter and often pretty far-fetched. But limiting the interpretation of parables to the "point of comparison" sometimes strips the story of details significant to understanding the parable.
Besides the cultural insights, Bailey also points out a structure that is invisible to Western readers, but common in the literature of the Middle East. We are familiar with parallelism of the Psalm, but the New Testament also uses a story telling structure where the point is at the center verse and the verses on both sides are connected - a pattern like 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4 - it's amazing how much this pattern is there and yet after 40 years of working professionally with the New Testament text I was never aware of this structure!
There is a danger into reading too much into the text of a parable. We distinguish between applying the commands contained in God's Word and applying descriptive language which is not intended to be a command. For example, the fact that Abraham lied about the identify of Sarah is not intended to teach us to lie. Occasionally Bailey's analysis of the details may find moral teachings where Jesus was only telling the story, but he rarely crossed that line and far more often revealed how a parable had the gospel of the Lord emptying Himself in grace for the sake of sinners. This is clearly a theme in the teachings of Jesus that I hadn't seen in so many of the places He tells a story.
This is a long book! (And for me, a long review!) It is worth the read. As I downsize my library in the years ahead for the sake of my family, this is a book that will make the cut every time! -
Never thought I would finish this book, but I finally did after many months. This book was full of cultural history and was extremely informative and taught me a lot. I would not say this was an easy read, but I definitely took a lot away from it. My favorite chapters were on the birth story of Jesus and the in-depth studying of the parables. I wouldn't recommend this book for all people... probably just those who are interested in culture history or older people who are looking for deeper knowledge about Jesus. I don't think I would ever take the trek to read this book again, but there are some parts I will read back on.
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To be honest I found this book to be a real slog... but I’m glad I persevered. You will trawl through pages of tedium, but just as you’ve nodded of for the umpteenth time, you’ll stumble upon a revelation that makes it all worth while. One such example for me is how clearly he shows radical aspects of the teaching of Jesus that escaped my western worldview. Here’s an example:
P147
The inauguration of Jesus' ministry
[Jesus' and remixing the Bible]
Luke 4:16–31
Jesus unrolled the scroll to Isaiah 61 and proceeded to read the text, which in Luke's Gospel shows careful editing. ... the text of Isaiah is changed or interrupted. In the first of them the phrase "to bind up the brokenhearted" is left out. The second is after an entire phrase has been brought in from Isaiah 58:6.… The word "to call" has been upgraded into a word that means "to proclaim a message."… a verse has been cut in half with the second half omitted. Both the selection of the text and its editing are important. Why this particular text, and why these editorial changes?
[Isaiah revised? Jesus takes a text which is well understood by the Jewish people to emphasise their superiority over the Gentiles, and intentionally remixes it to take away this emphasis and instead to replace it with an emphasis upon the whole world inclusive of Gentiles, this is why they wanted to kill him when he finished this reading]
It is often assumed that Luke (or his source) did the editing. It is also possible to trace the editing to Jesus.
...
For a long time English language versions have translated Luke 4:22–30 in a manner that presents a pleased audience that quickly turned into a howling murderous mob. Yet it is possible to understand the Greek text describing a congregation which is upset from the beginning.
[Depending on how this is translated the same words can be understood as being framed as people speaking of Jesus with pride, or speaking of him with contempt, what follows is the more likely way of understanding the opening passage]
In this case the question: "is not this Joseph's son?" Means "Didn't this young man grow up here!? Doesn't he know how we feel and how we understand this text?" Jeremias suggests that the congregation was angry because Jesus quotes "to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord" but leaves out the second half of the verse, which reads "and a day of vengeance of our God."
Jeremias writes: "Luke 4:22 exhibits no break in the attitude of his audience towards Jesus. On the contrary it records that from the outset unanimous rage was their response to the message of Jesus. The good news was their stumbling block, principally because Jesus had removed vengeance on the Gentiles from the picture of the future."
...
A careful look at the verses in the first section (stanzas 1-4) clarifies what Jesus read and what he left out. As noted, he omitted the phrase, "he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted." Two lines later he borrowed a sentence from Isaiah 58:6 and added it to the reading. Finally he cut the final verse in half and deleted the phrase "and the day of vengeance of our God." ... His omission of the second half of the verse in 4 no doubt deeply angered the crowd in the synagogue. But his total omission of the second and particularly the third stanza in Isaiah was in all likelihood even more infuriating.
The second section (stanzas 5–6) ensured comfort and gladness for the mourners. Leaving that material out could have disappointed some but would not have given offense. -
Dr. Bailey laments that “Middle Eastern Christians evaporated from Western consciousness after the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451.” Because Westerners interpret Scripture through the lens of our own culture, we miss out on the riches of a full cultural understanding of the context of Jesus’ words. In his book Bailey takes his personal experience in the Middle East and combines it with his scholarly studies of Biblical languages and historic Middle Eastern Christian sources. He applies this knowledge to selected topics from the New Testament.
This book made some fascinating points. Reading it was also hard work. There were several reasons. One: It’s a series of essays, and therefore lacks overarching momentum. Two: The author spends a great deal of time discussing things like “modified prophetic rhetorical template” and “ring structure” and deduces all kinds of things from a passage’s formatting. Part of me wants to think he’s making stuff up, and part of me suspects I simply don’t have the background to fully “get” and evaluate what he says. Three: I struggle with whether or not his approach to Scripture borders on the historical-critical method (more on this later).
I especially appreciated Dr. Bailey’s discussion of the cultural context of the Christmas story. He points out that even though certain imagery surrounding Jesus’ birth is deeply ingrained in Western culture, it is not entirely accurate. Some of the details we see in paintings and nativity sets come not from Scripture but from The Protevangelium of James, essentially a Christian novel written 200 years after Jesus’s life. Interesting stuff. Some of the background he brings to the parables of Jesus is also enlightening.
I found myself scratching my layperson’s head over other passages. He discusses Mary’s Magnificat and points out that it includes no reference to God punishing the Gentiles even though such a phrase would balance the poetic format. He says, “In like manner, Jesus exhibits no hostility against the Gentiles, as is demonstrated in Luke 4:16-30. Did Jesus absorb these attitudes from his mother?. . . . Regardless of one’s views on the origins of this hymn of liberation, it links Mary and Jesus. The text of Luke affirms the sentiments in this text to be the views of Mary. Thereby the reader is led to understand that Jesus was raised by an extraordinary mother who must have had enormous influence on his attitudes toward women.”
Does it disrespect the accuracy of Scripture to suggest that even if the Magnificat reflects “the views of Mary,” it was arranged in its present poetical format by someone else? [And does Bailey believe this himself, or is he simply acknowledging the academic scholarship in his field?] Is it overly naturalistic to contribute the Savior's outlook to his human experiences? Where exactly lies the line in the sand between “acceptable speculation” and “not-so-acceptable speculation”? Stuff like this forces me to realize how little I know about the nitty-gritty of hermeneutics. I’ve asked my pastor to recommend some reading on this topic and am looking forward to clarifying things a bit in my own mind.
Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this book to everyone. I’m glad though that I read it--if nothing else, it forced me to ask myself new questions about Scripture and theology and to realize how much more I need to learn.
(That rating: perhaps 3.5? Not sure). -
This book is not exactly what I was expecting. It was less a study of the way Middle-Eastern perceptions of Jesus differ from Western ones, and more a Biblical commentary on a random collection of stories and parables found in the four Gospels from a Middle Eastern perspective. But it still does the job of giving a different perspective on those stories.
There were a lot of things in this book that I had legitimately never heard before, so it was certainly worth the read. His perspectives on the birth of Jesus with "no room in the inn" and the "wise men" were legitimately fascinating and compelling. His perspective on the Call of Peter was completely new to me, as was his explanation of the Syro-Phoencian woman. And his insights on "The Parable of the Unjust Steward" and "The Parable of the Pounds" were worth the price of the book.
His chapters on the Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer dragged a bit for me. They were not bad, they just didn't have many insights that I wasn't already reasonably familiar with. Additionally, while he is clearly familiar with Middle-Eastern culture, I would have preferred to see more citations. This was particularly problematic in areas where he appeals to ancient Middle-Eastern culture. I don't necessarily think he is wrong, but for a book that resembled a Biblical commentary, he didn't go out of his way to show his work most of the time.
All in all, despite this book being different from what I expected, I really enjoyed it. It has been really beneficial to me to learn about and consider Biblical perspectives that differ from my own. I found this book instructive in that way. It was more interesting than practical, but would likely be a good resource for preachers and teachers who want to explain a passage in a fresh new way. -
Kenneth E. Bailey’s Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels is a treasure trove of cultural insights on the life and teachings of Jesus the Christ. Bailey pulls together writings, traditions, and perspectives both ancient and contemporary to help us better understand Scripture. Though it is written more for the academic, I would recommend this to anyone wanting a deeper understanding of Scripture. He writes that neither separating “the exact words of Jesus from the careful editing of the Gospel authors” nor authoring a “full-fledged technical commentary” are purposes of this book (20); rather, “My intent is to contribute new perspectives from the Eastern tradition that have rarely, if ever, been considered outside the Arabic-speaking Christian world” (21).
The book is presented in six parts, each worth the reader’s time and energy:
1. The Birth of Jesus
2. The Beatitudes
3. The Lord’s Prayer
4. Dramatic Actions of Jesus
5. Jesus and Women
6. Parables of Jesus
Most people I know read the Bible solely from a Western tradition and perspective heavily influenced by the Enlightenment period, completely unaware of over a millennium’s worth of culture and writings predating those views that have been virtually ignored, often intentionally. Many thanks to Bailey for making some of this more accessible and bringing these things to light. -
Instructive and enlightening. I greatly enjoyed learning the cultural context of the gospels. A Western worldview (including the lenses of individualism and capitalism), combined with ignorance of first century Middle Eastern culture, distorts certain aspects of the Bible, all the worse for the distortion being invisible to the viewer. The New Testament makes so much more sense now, knowing how Jesus's audience perceived His actions and words and how He styled His message and deeds so they could understand. Additionally, understanding how Jesus was a master of Hebrew rhetoric and how He wove Old Testament references into His speech and stories creates a greater sense of cohesion of the Bible as a whole.
Bailey's omission of the Oxford comma was annoying, and he occasionally chose odd paragraph breaks, but by the time I was halfway through the book I had mostly become inured to the eccentricities of his style. Since each chapter is an independent essay, there is a great deal of repetition of explanations, but not so much that it becomes tedious. The formatted diagrams highlighting the rhetorical forms (ring composition, step composition, et cetera) were quite helpful in showing the parallels in the text and the implications inherent in Hebraic literary forms. -
This is the book I've been searching for my whole life. It is basically a commentary on the gospels through the lens of Middle Eastern culture, and it is by far the best commentary I have read.
I've always been a bit unsettled by Americanized biblical analysis and have longed for something that focused less on fitting the bible into my frame of reference and more on fitting me into Jesus' frame of reference. Well this is it! Kenneth Bailey has done a masterful job of setting the scene for gospels in a way that takes you right to the event as it unfolds, and explaining the context in a way that is understandable to the average American with little knowledge of historical Middle Eastern culture and custom. I have been brought to tears with new understanding of gospel stories that I've read so many times before and yet not understood. A truly transforming experience.
I cannot recommend this book more highly. I will definitely seek out all of Kenneth Bailey's books and writings. -
I wanted to like this more than I did. I found most of the author's observations on Middle Eastern culture to be self-evident. His linguistic analyses were much more valuable. Unfortunately the author has an unfortunate tendency to repeat himself, even within chapters. And the chapters read as though they were written to be self-contained, so there's a great deal of repetition across chapters as well.
This could be a valuable resource to accompany Bible study or for a homilist, i.e., for someone who would be reading only the relevant chapter. But for reading from cover to cover, not so much. -
I have really enjoyed this book. It is fresh and insightful in giving a new perspective for me on the Gospels in their context.
Bailey not only draws on his extensive contemporary understanding of the Middle East, but also moving beyond the Greek language of the writer to consider the Aramaic which was the language of Jesus.
As a result many passages take on new meaning.
I especially appreciate the treatment of some of the hard to understand passages that sometimes have "inspired" strange interpretations.
Because Bailey is of western extraction he is particularly sensitive to false perspectives that western thought can sometimes engender. -
I bought this book way back in 2008 while visiting Manchester, England. I had no idea who the author was but thought the book sounded interesting. I curse myself for waiting so long to read it. It is definitely one of the best non-fiction books I have ever read. The author's insight into the Bible from living and teaching in the Middle East for 40 plus years is fascinating and rich to say the least. I wish he would have written more books. I will read whatever I can get my hands on from him. Highly recommended to anyone who wants a fresh and deeper look into the Bible from a really good teacher.
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Kenneth E. Bailey's "Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels" opened my own eyes to a new perspective throughout the book. It was worth the read just to read his take on the setting of the Nativity. Bailey's style is not for the casual reader. This is an academic work and the author analyzes each passage first through its rhetorical style. To hear all of these stories/parables/accounts from a perspective so much closer to their original context is extremely helpful. I will want to return to this book for reference often.
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Wow!! Fantastic read. Insightful. Enjoyable. Educational. A Must Read.
How is it that so many churches don't explain these missed details? Why don't Pastors enrich their flock with the truth behind the culture Jesus lived in and how the writings are impacted by that culture? Read this book, if you are a person who studies the Bible, Meditates on the Word, and Worships the Lord; you can't let this book not be read if you do you are missing out on valuable information to the written word and how it is impacted by how it is written. -
A compelling look at some of the ways we misunderstand and misinterpret the Bible, without ever even knowing it, based on a western worldview. Long, but SO good. I feel like it completely changed my understanding of so many of the stories and parables in the gospels to understand how those stories would have been understood by people with a middle eastern worldview -- Jesus' audience!
"It is acutely embarrassing to hear and see one's deepest prejudices verbalized and demonstrated. As that happens, one is obliged to face those biases, often for the first time." (p. 223)
