Book Plunge: The Good Shepherd

What do I think of Ken Bailey’s latest. Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Ken Bailey has been one of my favorite NT scholars ever since I read Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes and this latest book from IVP is no exception. Bailey writes from the perspective of someone who has lived in the Middle East teaching and knows the way life is there and recognizes many of the similarities that take place with the Biblical text. He also interacts with ancient and medieval writers many of us would have overlooked to bring us the best insights on the text.

The Good Shepherd is no exception. In this one, Bailey starts off with looking at Psalm 23 and goes from there throughout the Old Testament and into the New Testament to see how the account in Psalm 23 plays itself out later, including in the story of Jesus in the New Testament, who is the personification of the good shepherd that had been hoped for in the 23rd Psalm.

Bailey’s insights into life in the Middle East are invaluable as he has interacted with numerous shepherds and knows the lay of the land well and how shepherding works with the climate. He is not just writing about the behavior of sheep and shepherds in the abstract. He is speaking from the perspective of someone who knows shepherds well and someone who knows from them how sheep behave.

Bailey’s reading will open you up to new ways of reading the text that you had never considered. He is especially good at showing the ring composition that takes place in the writing of the account. The book is also written in a format that is easy to understand and yet also has the scholarly references throughout for those who are wanting to get that kind of approach as well.

When it comes to the New Testament view of the good shepherd, I found most fascinating to be the look in Mark 6. Most would not see this as a good shepherd passage, but Bailey brings out that it indeed is one. He paints a contrast between the banquet that King Herod throws early on that turns out to be a banquet of death where John the Baptist dies, and the banquet of life where Jesus provides a meal for over 5,000. It’s clear to Bailey that Herod would have had his spies in the area to see what Jesus would have to say as a popular leader about the death of his cousin.

I find once again that Bailey has given an excellent piece of work for all of us to consider. If you want to know about the life of Jesus as the good shepherd and especially how this relates to the grace of God found in Jesus Christ then it is absolutely essential that you read this book. Scholarship is blessed to have someone like Ken Bailey writing for us and I hope that the future works that he produces will be of excellent service to the church as well.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

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Scripture and the Words of Christ

How did the early church view the Words of Jesus? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Last night I was reading Ken Bailey’s latest book “Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes.” It’s a fascinating look at 1 Corinthians and I urge everyone to read it. What I was reading was about 1 Corinthians 9 and something was said that was one of those things we know already, but we don’t really think about until it hits us right between the eyes..

Last night, I wrote about the Jewishness of Jesus and how startling He was to His contemporaries. Later as I read, I was reading Bailey’s thoughts on 1 Corinthians 9 and in there he stated that the words of Jesus were being seen immediately on par with the words of Scripture.

That is something we think about and is fairly obvious to us in some ways. If Jesus was truly God in the flesh and Scripture is that which God says, then it would follow that whatever Jesus said would be Scripture. What is amazing is that this was such a quick recognition. It wasn’t the case that we had to wait until Nicea and then people started looking back and thinking “You know, all those things Jesus said, I’m starting to think maybe he was even YHWH in the flesh!”

The idea of Jesus being YHWH was not a development that came with paganism. It came right out of a Jewish milleu. Paul is being entirely consistent with his Jewish tradition. Note also that Bailey points out that in 1 Corinthians 9, Paul does not really say he became a Gentile. Instead, he says that he became like one not under the Law, save the law of Christ. Why? Paul can’t become a Gentile because he is a Jew and that is something that will never change.

Now of course Paul can stop following Jewish customs, although he will follow them if it will help someone come to the gospel. Today there are people who can abandon Judaism altogether and become atheists, but yet they still realize that even while atheists, they are still Jews. Some of them even still follow the rules of kosher eating as atheists.

The point is that Jesus was given this high place immediately. The last of the prophets before John the Baptist that had come was Malachi and that was about 400 years before Christ. The Heavens had been silent. It is my belief that God was wanting people to think about the time He had been silent for 400 years before sending Moses. Now, He was to send the prophet like Moses but greater than Moses. The people would be truly free from slavery.

Everything from Malachi and earlier that we have in the Old Testament was seen as authoritative Scripture and that would not be taken lightly. Notice what the 1st century Jewish historian Josephus says about the Old Testament in “Against Apion”.

For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another, [as the Greeks have,] but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine; and of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. This interval of time was little short of three thousand years; but as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes, the prophets, who were after Moses, wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God, and precepts for the conduct of human life. It is true, our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time; and how firmly we have given credit to these books of our own nation is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add any thing to them, to take any thing from them, or to make any change in them; but it is become natural to all Jews immediately, and from their very birth, to esteem these books to contain Divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and, if occasion be willingly to die for them

And yet, immediately the words of Christ are given such a position and we can often take them so lightly. We have heard the gospel stories so much that often times we do not have the amazement of them that we know that we should have. Let us not lose sight of this. The words of Jesus are the words of God Himself and if we take God seriously, we must take Jesus seriously. Perhaps if we do not take Jesus seriously, we should question if we are doing the same for God.

In Christ,
Nick Peters