07 April 2024
To me it looks like I've done these books in the right order. We are following the subject into deepening complexity. Our next book review is Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth E. Bailey (2008 InterVarsity Press, ISBN 13:9780830825684 paperback). Henceforth, I will abbreviate that to JTMEE. The author lived in the Middle East for sixty years, and taught graduate level New Testament courses during forty of them.
In the Introduction, the author refers to Middle Eastern Christians as forgotten in the West. There is a ton of early Christian literature in languages like Arabic, Syriac (modern Aramaic), and various other Semitic tongues, to include Coptic traditions. Their traditions go all the way back to Jesus in unbroken lineage. The author lists three classical translations of the gospel for them: Old Syrian, Peshita, and Harklean. He mentions the Diatessaron, an early harmony of the Gospels. There are several major commentaries in Semitic languages dating through the Second Millennium AD.
Thus, there is a substantial library reflecting various church traditions in the Middle East. One of the major elements Bailey mentions is what we call "Hebrew parallelism", which was developed by the Middle Eastern churches to a high art form. I can't do justice here the outline of Isaiah 28 offered in the book. The message has stanzas in ABCDEDCBA format, chasing the imagery to a climax, and falling back down the way it came.
This format shows up in Psalm 23 and Mark's Gospel. Westerners tend to think, "How clever!" And then they dismiss it as a curiosity, not a feature the original author consciously used. Western evangelicals struggle to imagine the Hebrews had developed a high intellectual tradition and culture. Notice that Luke 16:13 is ABCCBA. When viewed from this kind of analysis, Paul's hymn to the Cross follows this kind of middle-climax format in 1 Corinthians 1:17-2:2. It suggests we might need to check our English translations for missed emphases.
Western chapter and verse divisions will become a frequent problem for such an approach. Middle Eastern churches have long ignored our western layout because it often misses the whole point of the passage in question. Sometimes the manuscript we are working from can be rendered in several different ways, depending on how you approach it. Even Greek can be rather ambiguous.
Note that the Isaiah passage mentioned above refers to the treaty with Egypt as a treaty with Death largely because Egyptian religion was a death cult. This kind of mockery plays a part in the Hebrew concept of "proof" in a debate. This sort of analysis also allows us to spot rhetorical footnotes when they are written in a different cultural background. Luke uses them a great deal. However, it was also rather common in Hebrew literature, as well. Once you can see the rhetorical flow, you can identify what constitutes an aside.
In a world dominated by Islam's combative assertion about their Scripture's authority and inspiration, the Middle Eastern Christians have a long history of having to push back with similar claims about the Bible. The Muslim concept is that their Scripture came as if through a pipeline from God's mind, through the angel Gabriel, to Mohamed's pen, and it cannot be translated. I hope no one claims as much for the Bible; it's tantamount to surrendering to the dominance of the flesh over the Spirit.
Bailey notes the four-part process western scholarship assigns to the Gospels:
1. The life and teachings of Jesus in situ in Aramaic
2. The first-hand witness and Aramaic testimony of that message
3. The translation of that testimony into Greek
4. The selection, arranging and editing of the Greek texts into the Gospels
If all we care about is the first item in that list, then we do not understand the Bible at all. Did not the Holy Spirit work with the people who followed Jesus? Did He not guide the men who translated and published the resulting Gospel texts? At what point do we begin to doubt the handling of the manuscripts once the first generation of disciples passed on? Actually, Bailey doesn't go as far as asking these questions the way I did. I feel like he left something hanging by the end of this introductory chapter.
Be warned: This book is a scholarly approach just barely within the grasp of lay readers.
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