5 Comments

1. 

   Lorna on Wednesday July 27, 2005 at 4:42 am

   what I do take friends to task for is calling the NT the Christian Bible. As Christians we need both – no matter what we call them.

   but I am wondering if the emphasis on Hebrew rather than Old is more usual in Christian circles in Oz and NZ. At least it comes up in discussion a lot when I talk with friends down under.

   Be blessed

2. 

   rick on Wednesday July 27, 2005 at 8:24 am

   I would go as far as saying we cannot understand Jesus or the New Testament without an understanind of the Hebrew text.
   E.P. Sanders was a leading scholar on the “Jewishess” of Jesus. Geza Vermes also wrote “Jesus the Jew” which is great.

   Great post!

3. 

   rick on Wednesday July 27, 2005 at 8:26 am

   Oops, one other thing… I thought the Bible WAS or IS Jewish? :) OKay, at least we could say that it was written by Jews and not “CHristians”.

4. 

   Brother Maynard on Wednesday July 27, 2005 at 8:43 am

   Rick, you just got two comments in while I was composing one! Interresting thought on the Bible not being written by Christians. I think we’d have to say it was by Jews and Jewish Christians, but consider your point made!

   We discussed this a little bit last night at ‘theology pub’ but my experience is that I couldn’t fully appreciate communion until I grasped the entire context and significance of the Passover meal and its roots in the Mosaic covenant… which stretched my view of the entire meal from a thimble full of grape juice and a quarter-inch of breadcrust right past an early Christian ritual to encompass Exodus 6 through Revelation 19. (I should really post on that sometime, it’s one of those “don’t get me started!” things but in a good way.) Anyway, you just don’t get any of that if you can’t see the Jewishness of Scripture, both in its composition and context.

   Gratia vobis et pax,

   (Or should I say, Shalom?)

5. 

   Jamie Arpin-Ricci on Thursday July 28, 2005 at 8:55 am

   I agree that we have drifted away from a Hebrew foundational understanding of Scripture and Jesus. In fact, as a missionary, dealing with contextualization of faith to various cultures, I have to realize how arrogant we continue to be in the West to use “our” expression of Christianity (already a contextualization) as the basis for other cultures to contextualize. I am beginning to see what an essential piece of the puzzle the Hebrew worldview represents in this context (and others).

   That being said, I think it can also be argued that Jesus life & teachings were counter-cultural enough to demonstrate that neither the OT or the NT can be properly understood without the other. The danger of putting too much emphasis on one over the other is that we will pay the price in its alienation of others on the journey (just as the Jewish Christian did with Gentile believers, as well as what Western Evangelicalism does to… well almost everybody else).

   While I may be burned at the stake for suggesting it, I have often wondered if the entirety of Scripture, viewed as the narrative record of God moving through history, could be best understood seeing the Gospel as the point of sharpest clarity. I do not want to diminish the Scriptures, as I believe them still to be essential to faith, but wonder if it represents a history of humanities abuse of God’s name, Jesus representing a re-centering, and the slow, but inevitable drift after that. Just a thought.

   Peace,
   Jamie Arpin-Ricci
   http://www.emergentvoyageurs.blog.com