I had a sense I wouldn’t like this one, and I don’t. Bailey buys into the idea that pious Jews hiked around Samaria, crossing the Jordan twice to avoid it. This has been debunked generously; there’s no evidence whatsoever. He also pushes the envelope calling this Samaritan woman the first female preacher of the gospel….
JTMEE: Chapter 14b
Bailey notes that, since Jesus allowed women to be His disciples, we would expect His message to include them. It’s only natural that some of His parables would feature imagery peculiar to their experiences, and significant women in history, alongside a similar mention of men. In Luke’s Gospel we find the following: 1. The Widow…
JTMEE: Chapter 14a
The next seven chapters of Bailey’s book are about Jesus and women. This chapter is the introduction to the wider subject. He rightly notes that the Hebrew culture was a clear departure from the broader Ancient Near Eastern view of women. Yet he offers very little beyond that. The Law of Moses is the first…
JTMEE: Chapter 13b
Bailey lays out Luke 19:1-9 in rhetorical analysis, what he calls inverse parallelism: ABCDEDCBA. A. Jesus passes through New Jericho B. Zaccheaus, wealthy tax collector C. Crowd blocked his view D. Climbed the tree E. Jesus announced Zach would host Him D. Down the tree C. Crowd murmured B. Zaccheaus declares restitution A. Jesus proceeds…
JTMEE: Chapter 13a
This is about the two stories spanning Luke 18:35-19:10. As Bailey notes, they belong together. The blind man is oppressed, and Zacchaeus is an oppressor; Jesus has mercy on both. Bailey offers another elaborate rhetorical analysis of the story of the blind man, but what I see is frankly a Hebrew drama, a brief scene…
JTMEE: Chapter 12c
Jesus portrayed His Messianic mission as a Jubilee, not vengeance on the political enemies of Judea. When the audience in Nazareth outside the synagogue got hostile, He stated that no prophet was welcome in his hometown. Then He made some pointed comments (Luke 4:25-27). Bailey lays it out in rhetorical analysis: ABCD,ABCD. A. widows in…
Extra: Divine Justice
My disdain for so-called “social justice” is not because of some American conservative instinct. It is because “social justice” is confused with God’s actual intention for how humans should live. Divine justice is restoring God’s preferred order of things. It has nothing to do with the material/physical justice western minds instinctively expect. To be more…
JTMEE: Chapter 12b
Return to the comment that Jesus, in His message to the synagogue in Nazareth, left out the line about “the day of vengeance” in Isaiah 61:2. Bailey says the wider passage (vv. 1-7) is in three sections for this context. First is the part we’ve already covered. He places that lost phrase in the second…
JTMEE: Chapter 12a
We turn now to the inauguration of Jesus’ public ministry in Luke 4:16-31. This is a long one. At his bar-mitzvah in Jerusalem, Jesus demonstrated how seriously He took the Covenant of Moses. Bailey neglects to mention that common Jewish folks were aware that Daniel’s prophecy said the Messiah was about due to show. There…
JTMEE: Chapter 11
The next three chapter cover dramatic acts of Jesus; some of the chapters are quite long. This next is the Call of Peter (Luke 5:1-11) and is relatively short. Bailey almost misses the point right off the bat with a Strawman argument. He talks about how Greeks thought the spirit realm was good and the…