Emerging Pastor

Summary

The book begins: “It is indeed unfortunate that of all the New Testament writings, the words and sayings of Jesus himself are the most difficult to understand.” This difficultly, the author contents stems from the willful and deliberate de-judification of Jesus from his historical context and a great lack of understanding of Hebrew culture and idioms.

The authors make this point quite well arguing that the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) make greater sense when looking for the original Hebrew language that would have underpinned them and not the Greek texts that we have surviving today. This follows a growing minority of scholars who consider the present Greek gospels are translations and in some cases poor transliterations of Hebrew and Aramaic originals.

A serious amount of research and scholarship underpin this assertion and fully fills the first half of the book. However unless you have a hard time with the concept that Jesus was in fact Jewish and thought like a Jew, or are engaging with some serious textual analysis for research you might as well rip the book in twain along the spine and skip straight to the “Appendix” which absorbs the second part of the book. The foundational chapters do become quite repetitive like micro-essays with start with a proposition, detail the proposition then conclude by restating the original proposition, all of this builds to an anti-climax of technical analysis which is both important state but simply boring to read.

The appendix addresses the implications of misunderstanding Jesus in two cases. The first, the times we think we understand Jesus but screw it up and the second, the times we just plain don’t get what he was on about.

To the former the book examines topics such as: Jesus was not a pacifist despite “turn the other cheek” and Jesus was not an advocate indiscriminate charity despite “give to him who asks of you.”
To the latter the book examines topics such as: what did Jesus mean by ‘I came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it?’ Christians aren’t required to follw the Law, are they? If that doesn’t ‘abolish’ it, then what would?

Density

As I said, the first portion of the book is often dense scholarship. You wont miss anything by skipping over it but will find some gems for preaching and expanding your critical thinking.

Who should read it?

This one isn’t just for the pastors bookshelf! It provides an thought provoking examination of the world in which Jesus lived and ministered and is challenging to the both your thoughts and actions providing at times ideas and angles on Scripture that are completely orthogonal to Western thinking.

What impact did it have on me?

At not much over 160 pages this book really wets your appetite to dive into the Hebrew culture and challenge you to ‘get’ what Jesus was really saying. It has certainly had this affect on me.