Catacomb Resident Blog

JTMEE: Chapter 3

10 April 2024

I must admit this chapter troubled me just a little. Bailey praises someone I believe caused more trouble than good, Desmond Tutu. Let's be honest: There was certainly nothing wrong with ending apartheid. It was what came with it that dragged South Africa back toward the Stone Age, and Tutu had a hand in that. It's easily one of the most corrupt countries in the world today, and the economy is in shambles.

Because of his approach in this first section of this chapter, Bailey oddly ends up being a little too western, too sympathetic with the oppressed in a way that Jesus was not. The ancient Hebrew teaching was that oppression came because of the nation's sin. Thus, it is only natural that if the biggest problem is cruel oppression, then the biggest need is to get right with God.

Thus, the vision for Joseph that this baby would "save His people from their sins" would have made perfect sense, not something bewildering as Bailey suggests. Joseph should have understood it well enough; his nation was under evil oppression because the leadership in particular had courted that oppression as failed shepherds. Everyone knew that Rome was there by invitation of one of two evil factions fighting for the rule of Judea a couple of centuries before.

Bailey cites the incident where someone came to Jesus to tell of a horror story of Pilate slaughtering Galilean Jews in the Temple right in the middle of a sacrifice. It violated the treaty and defiled the sanctuary (Luke 13). Since there is no other mention of this incident in history, we can only guess that Pilate viewed this as a form of revolt. The question was almost certainly politically sensitive, and the folks reporting it to Jesus were testing Him to see if He would say something that could be used either way. Instead, Jesus said this illustrated how the whole nation needed to repent; He came to save them from their own sins, not the excesses of Rome. Tutu didn't approach his task the way Jesus did.

In the next section, Bailey jumps to the question of whence the Magi came. His preferred answer is from Arabia, which is highly disputed. I believe he's wrong, but he refers to a Bedouin tribe that called themselves by a name that meant their ancestors had once been astrologers. That tribe (Muslims) claimed that the Magi where their people traveling to honor the Messiah. The story comes from research during the 1920s.

Bailey also cites a a historical reference from Justin Martyr (c. 160 AD) who got it second hand from a Jewish man named Trypho that the Magi were from Arabia. Either way, they still came from the Parthian Empire, which was not on good terms with neither Rome nor Herod.

He goes on to press his case using Isaiah 60, but this offers very thin support. I would say he almost plays fast and loose with the text, and doesn't bring into play anything uniquely Middle Eastern about his questionable exegesis. He keeps hammering on how frankincense is only found in southern Arabia, but something that valuable would have been traded away all over the known world. The counter argument is that the Magi knew something not so obvious to everyone else, that the Messiah was divine, and a worshipful incense was due Him.

I contend the Magi came from the southeastern shore of the Caspian Sea where a whole kingdom of "wise men" existed for a couple of millennia, perhaps going all the way back to the Sumerian Empire. They had embraced Zoroastrian religion during the Persian Empire and their prophecies predicted a Jewish Messiah.


Comments

Robust1

Yea, he definitely was a westerner. He tries to use western cultural touchstones to illustrate his points in multiple places, they all fell flat for me. Reminds me of the trend of trying to make teaching "relevant" to modern Americans (We will shoehorn some modern ideology into our interpretation to make it relevant). There is still a lot of good stuff to be mined out of his material, minus the eye rolling stuff.


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