Stories behind the stories

Author’s knowledge of Middle Eastern culture helps him explain the wrath aimed at Jesus | Marvin Olasky

Exegesis is not always enthralling, but Kenneth Bailey's Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels (IVP, 2008) kept me walking my treadmill for a long time.

Bailey, who spent 40 years living and teaching the New Testament in Egypt, Lebanon, Cyprus, and Jerusalem, uses his knowledge of Middle Eastern culture to explain vividly the specific detail, references, and metaphors that those who heard Jesus 2,000 years ago would have understood. For example, he describes Middle Eastern homes then and now to show that very-pregnant Mary was not turned away from a Four Seasons and forced to give birth in a barn; people and animals shared housing space then, and in parts of today's Middle East they still do.

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