Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 24:1 (Winter 2010)
Article: Book Review: "Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies In The Gospels", By Kenneth E. Bailey (InterVarsity, 2008)
Author: Cynthia Long Westfall

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Book Review: Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies In The Gospels, By Kenneth E. Bailey (InterVarsity, 2008)

Cynthia Long Westfall

Cynthia Long Westfall is Assistant Professor of New Testament at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario. She is the author of Discourse Analysis of the Letter to the Hebrews: The Relationship Between Form and Meaning (T. & T. Clark, 2006).

Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes is appropriate for laypeople who are motivated to study the Bible, as well as pastors and scholars. Kenneth Bailey intentionally writes in a way that those outside of the circle of scholarly discussion can hear and apply some of the important insights and contributions that emerge from the dialogue. He is well qualified as an author, lecturer, and emeritus research professor of Middle Eastern New Testament Studies for the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem. He lived in the Middle East for sixty years. His childhood was spent in Egypt, and he taught New Testament in Lebanon and Cyprus as well as Jerusalem. As we might expect or hope, he sprinkles his work with entertaining stories about his personal encounters and experiences in the Middle East. However, the “Middle Eastern eyes” of his title also include the Old Testament, and the literature that provides the context for the first-century texts of the New Testament, as well as the post-New Testament Jewish literature, and particularly the literature of the Arabic-speaking Christian world up through the modern period.

Some of the key texts in the gospels and several categories that are particularly enlightened by Middle Eastern cultural lenses include Jesus’ birth stories, the Beatitudes, and the Lords Prayer, which are central to Christians. Most will enjoy the opportunity to reconsider and ponder these wonderful texts from the perspective of Middle Eastern culture. He also focuses on Jesus’ actions, Jesus and women, and Jesus’ parables. A major contribution of Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes is the demonstration of the role that context plays in the interpretation, meaning, and application of Scripture. One of the primary goals of this specific book, as with his other articles and his scholarship in general, is to sensitize the reader to “the imposition of Western cultural models and mental attitudes into a Middle Eastern cultural world,”1 Bailey argues that what has been considered among Western scholars to be objective interpretation is, in reality, subjective. The Middle Eastern cultural world, which is far closer to the first-century context of the New Testament than is the West, is presented as a more appropriate lens for reading first-century Middle Eastern texts,

Both scholars and laypeople will appreciate the way that Bailey brings ...

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