Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies In The Gospels

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Bailey leans heavily on Middle Eastern scholars and texts written in Arabic (that have yet to be translated into English): 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):

Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes - InterVarsity Press Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes - InterVarsity Press

And what light do these diamonds shine on people who care about reading the Bible and understanding God? Does Ken Bailey’s work nullify what Christians think they know? Part 5: Jesus and Women - worth a skim if you have not read an explanation of this elsewhere. If you are already familiar with first century attitudes toward women in Jewish and in Hellenistic societies from any of the alternative and excellent sources, this will seem superficial and won't add much. Besides marginalizing Jesus as a major theologian, many scholars and commentators try to authenticate “the real Jesus.” They sift and parse through these stages:As westerners, we tend to universalize our culture. Parables do speak to everyone, but we need to understand the Middle East context—or parables become ethics, not theology,” he said at the Calvin Symposium.

Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth Bailey - Waterstones

Rabbis saw shepherds as unclean and low status. So the shepherds were afraid of more than angel choirs. “From their point of view, if the child was truly the Messiah, the parents would reject the shepherds if they tried to visit him!” Bailey writes. Hearing that the babe was lying in a manger reassured them that he was in a humble home. 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. But this strength verges into a flaw at points. Some of the parallels are striking, perhaps undeniable. Others seem forced, a gust of chiasmania. We tend to start, progress step-by-step to a conclusion at the end. Writers then might put the important part, the conclusion, in the center with supporting info leading to and from that center point. It is slightly disconcerting, but I eventually got into the flow and could follow his logic.

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Robert W. Yarbrough, professor of New Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School I have long been an admirer of Kenneth Bailey’s helpful insights. As in his earlier works, his breadth of knowledge of Middle Eastern culture sheds rich light on numerous points in the Gospels, providing fresh perspectives and often illumining details we have rarely considered. He provokes those of us who depend mostly on ancient written sources to consider new approaches, often cohering with but often supplementing such research. Two things remove this book from the four star ranking I've previously given some of Bailey's work. First, there is a sense that in dealing with the Corinthian milieu Bailey is slightly out of his element. He is, after all, an expert in the area of the agrarian Levant rather than the urban centers of Rome. Secondly, much of his approach in this book is built off of a thorough knowledge of Hebrew and Greek rhetoric. Form criticism is, in general, of interest only to the specialist. It doesn't preach well.