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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, Eye opening., June 21, 2008
The information in Part 1: "The Birth of Jesus" is worth the price of this book. Previous commentators had remarked that Luke has the Greek word katalyma in Luke 2:7 and again in Luke 22: 11. In the first instance it is commonly translated "inn". In the second instance it is commonly translated as "guest room" or "upper room". Bailey states, "it is 'an upper room' which is clearly a guest room in a private house. This precise meaning makes perfect sense when applied to the birth story." p.33 This explanation then includes the clarifying diagram of a typical village home in Palestine showing the stable, steps leading from the family living room to the stable, the mangers and finally the Guest Room "kataluma". Bailey goes on to expand on the Christmas story. But he states, "Looking at the story in this light strips away layers of interpretive mythology that have built up around it." Bailey's lived knowledge of the Middle East, rhetorical patterns, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek and acquaintance with commentaries by Arabic speaking Christian theologians and exegetes makes this book truly unique. Examples could easily be multiplied. A summary glance of the Index section reveals the scope of this book: Early Jewish Sources, Middle Eastern Arabic and Syrian Christian Authors, Arabic, Armenian, Coptic and Syrian Versions of the Gospels, Greek and Latin Authors. One must read the book to see how masterfully these sources enrich the interpretation. Lastly the author does not hesitate to apply his exegesis to present day attitudes, issues and problems.
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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Important New Bible Study Aid, February 28, 2008
Kenneth Bailey's "Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes" gives the reader a rich feast of information about Jesus' times and teachings. Drawing on his own background of life in the Middle East, as well as expert knowledge of the literary structures and conventions of Biblical times, Bailey brings new excitement to passages that had perhaps become dulled through over-familiarity.
I highly recommend this book to students who are interested in the culturally relevant shades of meaning that actually reside in the parables and stories of Jesus.
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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Few Can Offer The Unique Insights Bailey Brings, September 18, 2008
Review of Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2008). ISBN 978-0-8308-2568-4. 443 pp. This review originally appeared on the Exploring Our Matrix blog.
In his latest book, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, Kenneth Bailey provides further discussion of various parts of the New Testament Gospels, from the perspective that has been his own unique contribution over the past three decades or so. To my knowledge, there is no comparable New Testament scholar who is a native speaker of English and yet who has grown up, lived and taught in the Middle East and been fluent in Arabic, and as a result has been able to mediate the cultural perspective of that region on the New Testament to English-speaking readers. As such, Bailey provides a genuinely unique perspective, and I expect anyone interested in understanding the New Testament will want to read his latest book, as well as earlier ones.
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.
Bailey professes to keep his focus primarily a literary and cultural one, which is wise, since a discussion of historical issues would have distracted from his primary interest, which is the meaning of the stories we have in the New Testament when understood against the background of Middle Eastern culture (p.20). Nevertheless, there are moments when Bailey seems to raise issues of history, such as in assuming that the murder of the children of Bethlehem took place (p.56). That there was such an event is not at all a historical impossibility - on the one hand, there is no corroborating evidence that it occurred, while on the other hand such an action on Herod's part is certainly in keeping with his paranoia as known from other sources. The point is simply this: whenever a scholarly work seems to take for granted that a story is essentially factual, it can feed into the tendency of many lay readers to assume that a historical critical approach to the Bible can be bypassed. On the whole, however, Bailey's approach minimizes the number of places where such issues come up, and Bailey himself appropriately points out where structural considerations suggest that either Jesus, or the later church or the Gospel authors, supplemented and commented on earlier material, even though this is never his primary interest.
Part 1 is "The Birth of Jesus", and the first chapter incorporates material that had previously been accessible only in a journal article, expanding and supplementing it not only with additional text but also with more sketches of what typical rural homes in Palestine are like. Among scholars, Bailey's argument about the cultural background of these stories, and in particular the likelihood that Jesus was born in a rural peasant home rather than an "inn", has been found persuasive not only because of the points Bailey makes about the cultural setting (including the nature of hospitality and travel in this part of the world in the first century and even today, and the fact that feeding troughs (or mangers) were and are typically found in homes rather than separate barns or stables), but also because the term for a commercial "inn" is not found in the story. The presentation of the evidence and the likely meaning of the relevant details in Luke's story are here made available to a wider audience. This material alone would be worth the price of the book.
Of the additional points made that go beyond Bailey's earlier article, perhaps the most provocative is his discussion about the shepherds in the context of Middle Eastern hospitality. If the shepherds had found Joseph, Mary and Jesus huddling in a stable, they would have insisted they come and stay in their own homes. Also worth mentioning is that Bailey, in addition to scholarly and popular works on the Biblical narrative itself, has composed a Christmas musical based on his understanding of the story, entitled Open Hearts in Bethlehem.
In addition to the elements that are so distinctive of Bailey's work on these stories, Bailey also offers a fresh look at some features that are noticed by scholars more generally, such as the women/gentiles in Matthew's genealogy of Jesus. There are some details about Matthew's infancy narrative that are overlooked (e.g. p.55, where Bailey assumes the traditional crèche scene with shepherds and Magi side by side, rather than considering the possibility that the scene in Matthew's story is set when Jesus is around 2 years old). But the new material Bailey offers, such as a survey of Arab Christian traditions suggesting the Magi were from Arabia (pp.52-55), more than make up for any and all such oversights and weaker points.
Part 2 is "The Beatitudes", and Part 3 is "The Lord's Prayer". The latter unfortunately does not explicitly address the popular notion that abba means "daddy", but nonetheless does communicate what clearly was the distinctive characteristic of Jesus' use of abba as a way of addressing God: Aramaic-speaking Jews in the first century still used Hebrew for the purpose of prayer, and so Jesus was praying, and teaching his disciples to pray, in their own vernacular (p.95). In this section, we also see Bailey's familiarity with Islam as a living religious tradition in the Middle East, and while remaining conscious of important differences, he regards Islam's traditions and perspectives as ones from which Christians can learn things of value (pp.98-99). Bailey discusses prayer in Judaism as well (pp.104-107), and notes that one can only talk about what was distinctive and emphasized in Jesus' prayers if we know what he assumed, so that we can see not only what he included but also what he altered and what he omitted. Ezekiel 20:41-42 is highlighted for the light it sheds on the petition "Hallowed by thy name" (p.108). In discussing the petition "Thy will be done on earth..." Bailey notes both the implicit possibility of God's will not being done, and also that the viewpoint of the prayer suggests that Christianity's concerns are not merely other-worldly (pp.117-118). The mystery of what the Greek word that lies behind the all-too-familiar English rendering of "daily" bread may mean is elucidated by appeal to the Old Syriac version of the Gospels, which uses the adjective ameno which means "lasting, never ceasing" (p.121). In addition to making impressive contributions to scholarship and our understanding of the New Testament, Bailey also wrestles with difficult aspects of the application of the text, such as the relationship between the call to Christians to forgive and the need to identify and stand against injustice (pp.126-127).
Part 4 covers "Dramatic Actions of Jesus". At one point (p.144), Bailey suggests a much earlier date (in the 50s) for the composition of Luke's Gospel than even most conservative scholars would accept. One wonders why such a controversial suggestion is made when it is not central to the author's argument. If the issue could not be addressed in this context, some acknowledgment that this is an unusual viewpoint, or a footnote to further discussion by scholars, would have been appropriate. Otherwise, the point could have been omitted with no harm to Bailey's overall treatment.
In chapter 12, it is suggested that Jesus may have been nurtured with a "theological education" in the lay movement of the haberim that sprung up around this time (p.147). The Dead Sea Scrolls are appealed to as shedding light on the Messianic understanding of Isaiah 61 (pp.149-150), and the Targum also helps us contextualize the passage as it was understood in early Judaism (pp.155-156). The complaint that follows Jesus' reading of that text in Luke's Gospel is, according to Bailey, to be understood as expressing the community's feeling that Jesus has departed from their own understanding of the passage. Nazareth was a "settler town" (p.152), and the community took offense at Jesus' omission of those very lines from Isaiah that gave voice to their expectation that the Messianic age would be glorious for them, while a time when God's vengeance would deal with their enemies (p.162).
Crucial cultural background is given to other stories in chapter 13: the healing of blind Bartimaeus and Jesus' encounter with Zacchaeus. Too often readers of these stories do not have an adequate understanding of the cultural realities of the time. What was the situation of a blind beggar, and what would the situation of such a person be if they recovered their sight...
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