history Archives - Operation Reveille

Book Review: Through Mid-East Eyes – Illuminating Mid-East Service and Bible

September 9, 2009December 12, 2015 Bruce Leave a comment

bailey_cover Jesus lived and taught where most military men and women are serving. Kenneth Bailey’s book, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels, reveals what Jesus’ life and teaching meant to his Middle Eastern audience. His impact on them was often quite different than his impact on Europeans and Americans today.

For example, according to Rolland Muller in his book The Messenger, The Message, and The Community (p. 237), parents in the Middle East today still indoctrinate their children using a story with a moral about how it is more honorable to say “yes” to your father in public even if you plan not to do what he says, than to say “no” in public and obey him later. Compare this to the parable Jesus tells that is recorded in Matthew 21:28-32. In that story, one son tells his father he will work in the vineyard but does not, and the other son tells his father he won’t work in the vineyard but does. By commending the son who publicly humiliated his father but privately obeyed him, Jesus shocks his audience in ways that we cannot comprehend.

Jesus taught in Aramaic, not Greek. Yet the original New Testament is Greek. Kenneth Bailey has spent 40 years living, studying, and teaching in Egypt, Lebanon, Jerusalem, and Cyprus. He reads ancient New Testament translations and commentaries in Aramaic. From the Greek he can reconstruct the probable words that Jesus actually spoke and estimate the understanding his audience most likely had. His insight into the teaching, context, and drama of Jesus outstrips that of the finest Bible scholars who study texts and traditions in mainly Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.

Service in the Middle East brings sparkle to the Bible through reading this book, and reading this book adds freshness to serving in the Middle East.

Results to Iraq’s Ethnic Christians

June 15, 2009November 10, 2009 Bruce Leave a comment

What will happen to Iraq’s Christian ethnic minorities when the Americans leave?

Chaldeans and Assyrians once ruled great empires from Babylon and Nineveh respectively. Their Christian institutions are among the oldest in the world. Their language is the world’s closest to the Aramaic that Jesus spoke. Their Syriac New Testament is the oldest of all New Testament translation traditions.

Even after the 7th century Arab invasions, they maintained regional majorities and cultural dominance until the 13-14th century withdrawal of invading Mongols with whom they had sympathized against Arabs rulers.

In the ensuing backlash of persecution they became a minority. In the early 20th century, they allied with the colonizing British. Then, they were halved in size and influence again in persecutions that followed the British withdrawal.

All of this history jumps from the pages of Philip Jenkin’s new book, The Lost History of Christianity.

Less obvious may be how Iraq’s ethnic Christian minorities may also have only themselves to blame. After all, they’ve had over a thousand years of living among Arabs in which to convert them. Today that job is falling to others.

In the video clip (above) pay close attention to the final interview with one of Iraq’s ethnic minority Christian leaders. If he speaks for the consensus in the historic minority church that is in Iraq, then that might explain why they are being removed from the Middle Eastern scene.