Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies In The Gospels

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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. The same word is translated as “upper room” in Luke 22:10-12. Arabic biblical translations have for more than a thousand years interpreted that word as house. When Luke meant a commercial inn, as in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), he used the Greek pandocheion. Listen to Ken Bailey’s sermon “The Wonder of the Nature of Faith: David, Jesus and Hebrews 11.” Read a sermon on the prodigal sonby emergent kiwiblogger Steve Taylor, a Baptist pastor in New Zealand. The book is divided into six main sections, each containing several chapters each of which is focused on a particular passage from the Gospels. The introduction should not be skipped, since it emphasizes the importance of the unique perspective Bailey offers and the neglected sources he draws upon. Bailey draws heavily not only on his own experience of life in the Middle East, but also the neglected witness of Christian authors writing in Syriac and Arabic over the centuries. The insights that can be gleaned both from contemporary life in this part of the world, and from the Christians who lived there prior to the modern era (and in particular those who spoke Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, the language Jesus himself spoke) are extremely important. So too is being aware of the poetic structures in which storytellers and writing authors expressed themselves. The book’s introduction focuses on such materials, not uniformly neglected by scholars, but certainly not the focus of sufficient sustained and detailed attention. At the very least, as far as the awareness of such matters among Christians and other readers of the New Testament more generally is concerned, these sources of knowledge about the cultural context of the New Testament are little known, and Bailey’s book, while certain to be of interest to New Testament scholars, presents matters in a manner accessible to a wider readership.

Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth Bailey - Waterstones

While all of the sections are thought-provoking, the first section, “The Birth of Jesus,” is noteworthy. Bailey argues that over the centuries, traditional understandings of the birth narratives have obscured the true meaning and message of the text (p. 25). This imprecision can be combated by re-reading the text bearing in mind cultural customs and attitudes contemporaneous to the text and by consciously stripping away long held traditions that have blinded us to Middle Eastern culture and customs that still remained unchanged even up to this day. His classic text was Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes. These texts helped readers see the parables in the gospel of Luke in a whole different light. Recently, Bailey compiled Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes, which offered unique perspectives on prominent passages in the Gospels. Now, in Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes, Bailey focuses his considerable intellect on the epistle of I Corinthians. That's not to dismiss them, however. I think us Euro-American centric interpreters need the voices from across the ocean and throughout the past, especially the ones closer to the moment and closer to the environment. My caution is that sometimes such a method can bring things to the text that simply weren't there before or intended by the author, but we shall see. Making arguments based on the grammar of the Aramaic original - What Aramaic original? This is pure speculation. We have no textual evidence from an Aramaic original, not one line, not one sentence. So, in essence, Bailey is making arguments from a possible Aramaic original that he must construct on his own and analyze. That is bad scholarship. Not totally uncommon, but still bad.Especially since the Enlightenment, people in the Western hemisphere tend to assume that reason is universal. A lay Christian might hear a scholar talking about biblical interpretation and think the scholar is saying that the Word is wrong. Writing of Jesus’ birth, Bailey notes that many Westerns have supposed that Mary and Joseph were turned away from an “inn.” But the word in Luke 2:7 is katavluma, that is, a guest room in a house, not a commercial inn. For the latter the word would have been pandocei'on. “Jesus was placed in a manger (in the family room) because in that home the guest room was already full” (p. 32). Bailey adds that many have erroneously supposed Jesus was born in a cave or a stable, a tradition that started with Justin Martyr (p. 34). Like the shepherds, who came to see the baby Jesus, He was poor, lonely, and rejected. “Jesus was born in a simple, two-room village home such as the Middle East has known for at least three thousand years” (p. 36).

Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the

After undergraduate and seminary studies, Dr. Bailey completed degrees in Arabic Language and Literature, Systematic Theology and a doctorate in New Testament. Ordained by the Presbyterian Church (USA), Dr. Bailey spent 40 years (1955-1995) living and teaching in seminaries and institutes in Egypt, Lebanon, Jerusalem and Cyprus. The gospel authors used written sourcesand stories that had been passed on orally, just as a biographer today might draw on books, unpublished letters, and interviews with a subject’s relatives and friends. What do you gain or lose by seeing biblical stories, metaphors, or parables as a primary way of creating meaning…rather than as illustrative sugarcoating on a theological pill of logic? More importantly, Bailey lost his credibility in my eyes as an expert on 1st century culture by making several critical cultural exegetical errors. If he is making fundamental errors, then I cannot even trust those things that sound like they might be true (because there aren't footnotes). Examples of fundamental mistakes (in my eyes and the eyes of modern scholarship):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." As Ken Bailey explains Luke 2, the Greek word ( katalymaor kataluma) translated as innin Luke 2:7 does not mean a commercial building with rooms for travelers. It’s a guest space, typically the upper room of a common village home. Our Christmas crèche sets remain as they are because ‘ox and ass before him bow, for he is in the manger now.’ But that manger was in a warm and friendly home, not in a cold and lonely stable. Yes, we must rewrite our Christmas plays, but in rewriting them the story is enriched, not cheapened,” Bailey explains. His years of living, researching, and teaching in the Middle East convince him that “the most profound theology in scripture comes out in story—Psalm 23, parables of the Good Shepherd and/or prodigal son….”

Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes Review of Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes

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.” Inspiration is not a moment when Jesus opened his mouth. Inspiration is a process that lasted about 60 years. It’s what produced the Greek New Testament that has changed the world,” Bailey says. Middle Eastern village context In his most recent book, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels, Bailey compares Western interpretations of key texts, such as the Christmas story, to a diamond that needs cleaning to restore its original brilliance. No inn or stable Besides marginalizing Jesus as a major theologian, many scholars and commentators try to authenticate “the real Jesus.” They sift and parse through these stages: So, overall, the book contained some interesting information, but I didn't feel like reading it cleared up any potential confusions I had about 1 Corinthians. It was more than it pointed out possible nuances that I might not have otherwise noticed.

Cultural Studies in the Gospels

Did you design a participatory project that helped Christians from different cultures—including Middle Eastern ones—talk about their faith practices? Kenneth E. Bailey (1930–2016) was an acclaimed author and lecturer in Middle Eastern New Testament studies. An ordained Presbyterian minister, he served as canon theologian of the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh. The author of more than 150 articles in English and in Arabic, his writings include Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, The Good Shepherd, Open Hearts in Bethlehem (A Christmas Musical), and The Cross and the Prodigal. Bailey begins by arguing that 1 Cor is Paul's most contemporary letter, holding along with an apparent cloud of witnesses throughout the historic Church (including Ambrosiaster, Chrysostom, Bishr ibn al-Sari, and Calvin) that this letter is not simply occasional but written to all the Church. And it's a letter "with a carefully designed inner coherence that exhibits amazing precision in composition and admirable grandeur in overall theological concept" with "five carefully constructed essays, which themselves showcase a discernible theological method." (25) I was interested in his discussion on the problematic passages but didn't think I had much to learn about the more famous passages. But the discussion on 1 Corinthians 13 was one of my favorite parts of the book. In particular, the phrase "I am banging brass or a clanging cymbal" (v.1) comes to life when the bronze and brass work that took place in Corinth at the time is understood. For more than ten centuries, Christians who translate the gospels into Arabic have not seen the prodigal as repenting in the far country. They say he’s returned to his senses. He’s figured out how to play his father and earn money for food and land.