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Kenneth E. Bailey on Authoritative Insider Interpretation in the Bible
Kenneth E. Bailey on Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes |
Some Christians feel unsettled to hear that Luke didn’t know Jesus. Luke did not personally see or hear what the gospel of Luke reports Jesus saying and doing. These same Christians may feel uneasy to learn that the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John weren’t written till decades (30 to 60 years) after Jesus ascended into heaven.
The gospel authors used written sources and stories that had been passed on orally, just as a biographer today might draw on books, unpublished letters, and interviews with a subject’s relatives and friends.
“There is a yearning in every Christian age [to understand scriptural inspiration] as direct dictation from the Holy Spirit into the mind and hand of people who wrote the Bible,” says Kenneth E. Bailey, an expert on Middle Eastern New Testament studies and prolific author and lecturer.
Bailey often reminds readers and audiences that Jesus could have written a book, but he didn’t. Bailey sees scripture inspiration as a process, not a single moment in time. “Christian faith is based on fact, but not bare fact. The gospels are based on a Middle Eastern understanding of truth and give an authoritative insider interpretation of what events mean,” he said at a recent Calvin Symposium on Worship.
Bare facts don’t always tell truth
 Years of living in the Middle East, including 10 years along the road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem give Kenneth E. Bailey a unique perspective on the New Testament world. |
Perhaps you’ve said (or been told), “Cut to the chase! Just give me facts.” Bailey explained why bare facts aren’t always enough—even though “our current Western scientific mentality tempts us into reductionism.
“Shelby Foote in his trilogy of Civil War history spends 185 pages on the Battle of Gettysburg. Imagine if someone could have set up 75 cameras from different angles to film that battle. What would you get? Blood and guts. From Foote you get the meaning of the event,” he said.
Bailey shared an insight from Bishop Kenneth Cragg, a scholar who has written extensively on Arab Christians and Islam. He compared gospel writers to a filmmaker who has to squeeze the death of John F. Kennedy into a documentary only an hour long.
If the documentary did not include eyewitness accounts, interviews, and information from other sources, then the assassination could be reduced to a single sentence: A man in a warehouse shot another man in a passing car. “And if that is all you say about it, then you are lying,” he said.
Bailey affirms that the Spirit of God guided the process of the Bible. “God as Jesus invites disciples to participate with him in an inspired process to produce a book which has changed all our lives,” he said.
The text is inspired—not the translation
 There’s always more Christians can learn about the Bible. |
When preachers at the Worship Symposium asked Bailey how to share his ideas without alarming their congregations, he said, “As Protestants, we are so proud of our sola scriptura. We build up around scripture our traditional interpretation of scripture. Don’t let your congregations absolutize a translation. The text is inspired, not the translation.
“My interpretation is not inspired. Our understanding of scripture has to be tentatively final. Sorry about the oxymoron. Today I have to be obedient. But tomorrow I will understand better. I am a sinner in need of Christ.”
Especially since the Enlightenment, people in the Western hemisphere tend to assume that reason is universal. A lay Christian might hear a scholar talking about biblical interpretation and think the scholar is saying that the Word is wrong.
Bailey says we often don’t see that “the way we reason and what becomes reasonable for us is influenced by our language, culture, history, tradition, economic system, and our military. That’s the sieve through which we perceive the world and come up with what is reasonable. But somebody halfway around the world processes the same data and comes up with a different conclusion.”
Consider the phrase fed up or the word mad. “In Egyptian English, a visitor might say, ‘Thank you. I cannot eat any more cookies. I am fed up.” Someone from the United States or United Kingdom would probably use another word, such as full.
A British person who says, “I’m mad about my flat!” is likely far happier about the apartment than an American who says the same phrase but means “I got stuck with this place.”
Bailey explains, “When you get into the nitty-gritty of telling and responding to Jesus’ story, then we start getting a lack of universality of our own culture and reasoning process.”
Enhances biblical understanding
 As Ken Bailey could tell you, this peaceful beach on the Red Sea gives no clue of the amazing coral, seaweed, and fish underwater. |
His years of living, researching, and teaching in the Middle East convince him that “the most profound theology in scripture comes out in story—Psalm 23, parables of the Good Shepherd and/or prodigal son….”
Bailey compares his life work to looking for diamonds in a gravel pit.
And what light do these diamonds shine on people who care about reading the Bible and understanding God? Does Ken Bailey’s work nullify what Christians think they know?
As you might expect, he answers with a story. “Suppose I’ve spent my life going to a beach. I’ve seen waves splashing against rocks, ships on the water, fishermen casting lines. One day at this beach someone says, ‘Ken, I have two snorkels. Let’s go.’
“Suddenly I see coral, seaweed, and fish. These undersea views in no way invalidate the beauty of what’s above. In my work, I’m looking for the coral and the fish.”