Prepare to be amazed | Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes Review | Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels | Kenneth E. Bailey

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	• Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels Kenneth E. Bailey IVP Academic, 2008 - 443 pages average customer review:based on 28 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Outstanding

I was recommend this book by a pastor friend in England. The first chapter is amazing and worth the price of the book alone. It will become a well-used book on my bookshelf. The only danger is everyone will want to borrow it!

Prepare to be amazed

I read and recommend a lot of books; rarely do I find one that I savor, read slowly, and when I'm done with a chapter and lay it aside, look forward to reading the next. Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes seemed like a worthy study, and it came recommended, so I got a copy. I was a bit concerned that it would be dull, dry as dust. What I wasn't expecting was a book where I found on every page something to instruct and inspire. After reading countless commentaries and works on the Life of Christ, I wasn't prepared for a book like this. I'm not exaggerating when I say I learned a lot on every page. Although couched in a scholarly framework, Bailey offers a wealth of spiritual insight along the way (there's plenty here that will preach) and is a gifted writer. Don't hesitate to put this in the Church Library. Familiar episodes from the Gospels are probed, charted, and explained. Bailey brings to the table experience from a lifetime spent in the Middle East. I am truly excited about this book; I wish I could buy copies for all my friends. It is that good. In his analysis of the parables, he makes a helpful analogy: just as we would interpret the Gettysburg Address from the context of the Civil War, we must understand Christ's parables from the Biblical world, not ours; otherwise we may read into them ideas from our cultural baggage, through a distorted lens at best. This is a book I will be referring back to time and again.

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Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes Review

Inspired reading and great reference book. This book explains why people interacted with Jesus the way they did and Jesus to them. We accept the biblical versions of what happened with Jesus, but now we can understand the culture that dictates or allows such an interaction. Our beloved Christmas Story is even put into a different light when you look through Middle Eastern Eyes.

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One of the best books I've Read in Gospel Studies

Kenneth Bailey has been teaching New Testament in the Middle East for over 50 years, and he has tremendous cultural insights into the text that only someone living in the Middle East at the time of Jesus and afterward would get. For example, he points out that when Jesus tells Peter to launch out into deeper water, Peter says "Master, we were out all night and didn't catch anything." Fishing was never done during the day on the Sea of Galilee during the daytime because the fish would hide under the rocks hundreds of feet below sea level to escape the heat. So when Jesus was telling Peter to do this, Peter would have thought, "There's NO WAY this is going to work! Jesus ought to stick with what He knows and leaving the fishing to the paid professionals - us!" But when Peter and his buddies caught the huge, net breaking catch of fish, he knew right away that this traveling rabbi had a special connection with God!

Another example is how Bailey brings the Christmas stories back into reality. The manger was not a stable in a cave, it was a feeding trough in a house. The inn was not what we think of today as an inn, it was the guest room of a house - the same Greek word is translated "upper room" in Luke 23.

Bailey also discusses Jesus willingness to have Mary of Bethany as a disciple in Luke 10, at a time when it was considered inappropriate for women to be a rabbi's disciples. In Luke 16:1-8, we see that the unfaithful steward is not being commended for his deception, but for his cunning, and that believers in Christ need to be cunning and shrewd in the way we relate to nonbelievers.

In the parable of the compassionate employer, a middle easterner would notice the compassionate nature of the employer, and how he kept going back to the marketplace again and again to get people to work in his vineyard. He didn't give the people a hand out, he gave them a hand up, so that even those hired at the 11th hour could say "I found gainful employment today!

There is so much more that could be said, and not everyone will agree with Bailey at every point, but most of what is here is sensational and it will spice up the best preacher's preaching.

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The context changes everything.

What Bailey does here is not to offer fresh and innovative perspectives on the Gospels - but to painfully scrape away the distorted layers of time, distance, language, geography and culture, to reveal Scripture in much the way it was initially presented.
For some this will appear as completely new and foreign, and for others more studied in Bible times, this will prove a most refreshing and authoritative commentary.

Once the proper context established, even though we remain removed some 2000 years, we can more fully grasp the intent of Jesus' words and the impact upon his audience. By laying a solid cultural foundation, we can see Jesus' interaction in a better light - and hopefully note that contrary to our popular image, Jesus was anything but soft on sin - always confronting sin.

This confronting of sin is not always evident to the modern reader, but surfaces very clearly when one begins to see when rules of custom are twisted and broken by Jesus' opponents. All Bible readers should read books such as this one, to gain a more accurate representation of the time and culture within which the Bible was written - and to learn those same truths the original audiences would have plainly understood.

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Beginning with Jesus' birth, Ken Bailey leads you on a kaleidoscopic study of Jesus throughout the four Gospels. Bailey examines the life and ministry of Jesus with attention to the Lord's Prayer, the Beatitudes, Jesus' relationship to women and especially Jesus' parables.

Through it all, Bailey employs his trademark expertise as a master of Middle Eastern culture to lead you into a deeper understanding of the person and significance of Jesus within his own cultural context. With a sure but gentle hand, Bailey lifts away the obscuring layers of modern Western interpretation to reveal Jesus in the light of his actual historical and cultural setting.

This entirely new material from the pen of Ken Bailey is a must-have for any student of the New Testament. If you have benefited from Bailey's work over the years, this book will be a welcome and indispensable addition to your library. If you are unfamiliar with Bailey's work, this book will introduce you to a very old, yet entirely new way of understanding Jesus.

Market/AudienceFans of the authorMissionariesStudents and professors of biblical studies
Features and BenefitsOffers insight into the Gospels from a Middle Eastern perspectiveCounteracts modern and western impositions upon the BibleHighlights the key events and teachings in the earthly ministry of JesusFeatures a wealth of cultural information related to ancient Middle Eastern peasant societyProvides an excellent resource for New Testament students interested in the Gospels

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