Latest / Reformed Thinking / Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Recovering the Gospel’s Cultural, Literary, and Christological World

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Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Recovering the Gospel’s Cultural, Literary, and Christological World · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome to Reform thinking. So let me start off by asking
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  you a question. Have your post enlightenment
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  Western assumptions blinded you to what the biblical text is
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  actually saying? Wow, OK, that is a that is a
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  highly uncomfortable question to start with.
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  I know, right? I'm coming out swinging today.
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  You really are. But I mean, it gets right to the
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  core of what we are doing today because people living in the
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  modern West, we tend to assume our way of processing
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  information is like the objective universal standard.
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  Yeah, the default setting for humanity.
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  Precisely. We do not even realize we are
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  looking through a cultural lens. We read an ancient text and we
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  just instinctively project our own cultural norms, our own
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  economic structures, our own definitions of logic right onto
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  the page. And that projection, that that
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  assumption is what we are here to examine.
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  Our mission for this deep dive into the source material is
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  highly specific today, right? We're looking at a scholarly
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  perspective on Kenneth E Bailey's massive body of work,
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  specifically his book Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes.
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  Which is a huge undertaking, by the way.
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  Oh, massive. Yeah, because Bailey spent
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  decades, literally decades, reading the Gospels through the
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  lens of ancient Semitic culture and Arabic Christian history.
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  So our goal is to evaluate his methods.
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  We want to understand the tools he uses to strip away those
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  modern Western assumptions. Yeah.
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  And then we need to test those methods.
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  We have to test them against a rigorous confessional Protestant
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  theology. Because if we were supposed to
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  read the Bible as an ancient covenantal document, what
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  happens when we read it as if it were a 21st century self help
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  book? You know, written in some modern
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  suburban neighborhood. Well, what happens is we miss
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  the primary meaning. I mean, we completely miss the
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  social dynamics. Yeah.
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  And this is the massive blind spot that Kenneth Bailey
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  recognized, and he had the actual life experience to spot
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  it. Right, 'cause he lived there.
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  Yeah, he spent 60 years living in the Middle East, 60 years he
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  resided in Egypt, Lebanon, Jerusalem, Cyprus.
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  So he wasn't just flying in for some two week academic
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  conference and then catching a flight back to a western
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  university. Not at all.
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  He was immersed. He was in the day-to-day life of
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  Middle Eastern villages and that level of immersion.
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  It allowed him to see that modern Western readers
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  approached the text with highly individualistic, industrialized
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  ideas. OK, let's break that down a bit.
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  What is that Western blind Scott actually look like in practice?
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  Like when you say individualistic and
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  industrialized, how does that change the way someone reads a
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  story about Jesus in a 1st century village?
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  Well, think about the modern West.
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  Since the Enlightenment, the absolute fundamental unit of
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  society is the individual. Right.
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  Me, myself and I, yeah. We think in terms of personal
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  rights, personal autonomy, personal success.
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  So if we read a parable, we immediately individualize it.
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  We make it about us as a solitary person.
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  But the 1st century Mediterranean world, which was
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  much like the traditional Middle Eastern villages Bailey lived
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  in, it was a communal honor and shame culture.
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  Honor and shame. That's a huge shift from our
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  guilt and innocence culture. Huge.
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  The fundamental unit of society was not the individual, it was
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  the family or the village. Decisions were made based on
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  what brought honor to the community, or you know what
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  avoided public shame. Furthermore, it was an agrarian
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  society. It was intimately tied to the
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  land, the seasons, agricultural survival.
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  So if you read an agrarian communal text through the lens
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  of an industrialized hyper individualistic society.
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  You're going to get it wrong. You will routinely misinterpret
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  the motives of the characters. You'll miss the entire thrust of
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  the teaching. So to bridge this gap, to fix
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  this blind spot, Bailey does something really fascinating.
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  He points out that we have this massive historical resource that
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  Western scholarship has, frankly, almost entirely
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  ignored. Yeah, the forgotten faithful.
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  The forgotten faithful, they'd love that term.
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  He points to Arabic and Syria Christian scholars from the
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  period between like 8900 and 1400.
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  Yes, he highlights figures like Eben Altaibi.
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  I think he was an 11th century Baghdadi physician, right?
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  Yeah, physician, A philosopher and a theologian.
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  He wore a lot of hats. And he also mentions guys like
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  Mata Almas skin. So how do medieval Middle
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  Eastern scholars help us get past our modern western blind
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  spot? I mean they lived 1000 years
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  after Jesus. It comes down to language and
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  cultural continuity. To really grasp this, we have to
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  look at the linguistic tree. The language Jesus spoke daily
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  was Aramaic, and Syriac is essentially a major dialect of
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  Aramaic. Oh, I see.
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  Yeah. So the Syriac translation of the
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  New Testament, which is known as the Peshita, is incredibly
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  ancient. By studying Syriac, the reader
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  gets much closer to the sissima verb, the very words of Christ.
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  You are operating in the same linguistic universe.
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  Let's make sure the mechanics of that are clear for the listener.
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  Why does operating in the same linguistic universe matter so
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  much? I mean, is it just about having
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  the right vocabulary? Flash cards.
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  No, it's way more than that. It is about the semantic range
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  of words, the idioms, the way concepts are naturally paired
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  together in a language. Like slang or figures of speech?
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  Exactly. I mean spot on.
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  When a scholar like Ibn Al Taib translates ancient Syriac texts
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  into Arabic and writes commentaries on them, he is
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  utilizing linguistic tools that are native to the Middle East.
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  He is not forcing Greek philosophical categories onto
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  Semitic idioms. He gets the joke, so to speak.
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  Right. Moreover, these medieval
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  scholars lived in that same agrarian honor and shame
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  culture. The social dynamics of an 11th
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  century Middle Eastern village shared far more characteristics
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  with the 1st century world of Jesus than modern London or New
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  York. Ever could.
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  OK, I think of it like this. It's like trying to understand a
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  Shakespeare play by exclusively reading a Japanese translation
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  produced in the 1990s. Oh, that's a good analogy.
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  Right, you get the basic plot. You know Romeo and Juliet are
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  star crossed lovers. The translation gives you the
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  sequence of events. But you lose all the cultural
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  furniture. You lose the specific
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  Elizabethan word play, the historical references to the
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  Tudor dynasty, the social dynamics of 16th century English
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  nobility. You miss the flavor, Yeah.
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  The Japanese translator might use terms that make sense in a
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  modern corporate culture in Tokyo, but those terms
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  completely obscure what Shakespeare was actually doing
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  with his dialogue. So Bailey is basically saying
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  these Eastern scholars help us put the original cultural
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  furniture back into the room. That analogy hits the mark
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  perfectly. They supply the historical and
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  linguistic furniture, however, and this is a big however.
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  Here comes the theology. You know it.
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  Introducing medieval Arabic and Syriac scholars raises a massive
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  theological question for any confessional Protestant.
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  We have to establish a strict boundary line here.
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  OK, laid out for us. We recognize the historical
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  reality of God's Providence. God's common grace has preserved
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  these ancient Eastern churches, their monasteries, their vast
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  libraries through centuries of Islamic rule.
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  Which is incredible in itself. It really is, and because of
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  that common grace, we can and should use these scholars as
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  historical and linguistic tools. But we must strictly reject the
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  theological errors. Now this is where I have to push
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  back a little bit, because you were talking about churches that
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  split off after the Council of Chalcedon in 8451 and they
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  developed some serious Christological issues.
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  I mean, if they are getting the very nature of Christ wrong, why
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  should a confessional Protestant listen to them at all?
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  Why not just bypass them entirely and stick exclusively
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  to the Reformers? You know, stick to Calvin and
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  Luther. Because we have to distinguish
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  between a historical witness and a doctrinal authority.
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  Those are two very different things.
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  Let's look at what happened at the Council of Chalcedon in
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  8451. That council established the
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  orthodox understanding of the Incarnation.
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  Jesus Christ is one person with two distinct natures, fully God,
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  fully man, without confusion, without change, without
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  division, and without separation.
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  The bedrock of Orthodox Christology.
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  Right. But many of the Eastern
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  churches, like the Coptic Church in Egypt or the Syriac Orthodox
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  Church, they rejected Chalcedon. They leaned into what is called
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  Myophysitism. Myophysitism.
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  Try saying that three times fast.
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  What does that actually mean? It essentially blends the divine
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  and human natures into one single nature.
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  Yeah, that is a severe theological error regarding the
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  very person of Christ. And it does not stop at
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  Christology either. When we look at the medieval
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  period for these groups, we're also looking at massive issues
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  regarding salvation and church practice.
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  Correct. They embraced sacramentalism,
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  which is Sacramentalism is the belief that divine grace is
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  mechanically dispensed through the physical rituals of the
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  Church administered by a priesthood.
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  Like a vending machine for grace.
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  That's a good way to put it. They also held to a synergistic
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  soteriology. Synergism is the idea that
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  salvation is a cooperative effort.
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  God does his part. I do my part.
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  Yes, God provides grace, but human effort and merit must
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  cooperate with that grace to achieve justification.
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  And then you add to that extreme monastic asceticism.
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  Oh, like the guys living out in the desert.
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  Yeah, where men would live on top of pillars for years or
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  starve themselves in the desert, believing punishing the physical
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  body earns spiritual favor. A confessional Protestant looks
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  at that entire system and says this directly contradicts the
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  biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone.
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  So the tension here is obvious. How do we justify pulling
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  commentaries from a monastery that promotes synergistic
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  salvation and asceticism? I mean, are we playing with
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  fire? We justify it by adhering
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  strictly to the formal principle of the Reformation sola
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  scriptura. Scripture alone is our final,
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  infallible authority. We do not grant these medieval
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  scholars an ecumenical pass on their doctrinal errors.
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  We do not accept their theology. But, and this is the crucial
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  distinction, a witness to a historical fact does not have to
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  be a flawless theologian. Oh, I see.
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  If a medieval Coptic monk understands the agrarian
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  practices of a 1st century village better than a an
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  American commentator in a high rise office, we use his
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  historical insight. If an Arabic linguist
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  understands the nuance of an Aramaic idiom, we utilize that
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  linguistic data. We take the good and leave the
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  bad. Yes, we extract the historical
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  value while subjecting every single doctrinal claim to the
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  supreme evaluating authority of the biblical text itself.
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  OK, so we use the linguistic tools, but we do not buy the
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  whole theological house. We let them show us the cultural
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  furniture, but we do not let them dictate the theology.
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  That is the line we have to walk.
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  That makes a lot of sense. So acknowledging the value of
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  these linguistic resources naturally shifts our focus to
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  the actual literature these cultures produced.
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  Because they didn't just use different vocabulary, the way
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  they structured their arguments is completely alien to the
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  modern Western mind. Oh, totally.
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  And this is perhaps one of the most useful insights we gain
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  from studying the ancient Near East.
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  The concept is Semitic rhetoric. Semitic rhetoric.
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  Right. Think about our educational
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  systems in the modern West. They're heavily influenced by
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  Greek philosophy, specifically Aristotelian logic.
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  Right, like when you were taught to write an essay in middle
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  school, Yes. You were taught straight line
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  logic. You introduced premise A,
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  Premise A causes premise B, Premise B leads to premise C,
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  and that brings you to your final concluding thought at D.
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  So the big reveal is at the end. Always the most vital point.
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  The climax of your argument is always at the very end.
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  It is the standard legal brief. It is the scientific method.
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  You build your case block by block until you reach the grand
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  finale. Yes, but ancient Near Eastern
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  literature simply does not operate that way at all.
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  Really. It utilizes complex
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  parallelisms. The writers organize their
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  thoughts symmetrically. Bailey maps out these structures
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  across the gospels, and it completely alters how you read
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  the page. You have straight line
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  parallelism where an idea is stated and then immediately
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  repeated using different words for emphasis.
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  OK, I've seen that in the Psalms.
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  Right, and you have step parallelism where an idea is
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  repeated but pushed one step further in intensity.
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  But most significantly, you have chiasms.
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  Chiasms. OK, let's breakdown the chiasm
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  because this is where the architecture of the text becomes
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  visible. A chiasm is basically an
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  inverted parallelism. Often people describe it like a
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  sandwich. The famous sandwich analogy.
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  Right, you have the bread on the outside, the lettuce on the next
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  layer, and the meat in the middle.
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  The pattern is ABCBA. While the sandwich analogy gives
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  you the basic sequence, I think a better way to visualize a
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  chiasm is an architectural archway made of stone.
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  An archway. OK, paint that picture for me.
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  Think of a massive stone arch in an old cathedral.
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  The outer blocks on the left and right, the base of the arch, are
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  your A statements. As you build upward and inward,
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  you place the B blocks. OK, leaning in toward each
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  other. Yes, but the entire structure,
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  the whole thing depends on the keystone at the very top center,
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  the. One piece holding it all
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  together. Right, that Keystone is the C
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  statement in Western straight line thinking.
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  We expect the climax at the end. In a Semitic chiasm.
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  The climax is squarely in the center, acting as the keystone.
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  The surrounding parallel lines are building tension toward the
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  middle and then resolving it outward.
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  Man, that is a completely different way of reading and
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  recognizing that archway structure is vital because we
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  have a modern habit that frequently destroys it.
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  I am talking about chapter and verse numbers.
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  Oh yes, the numbers. When you open a Bible today,
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  every sentence has a little number next to it.
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  It looks like a reference manual, like an encyclopedia.
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  But those numbers were not in the original Greek or Hebrew
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  manuscripts. Not at.
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  All they were added centuries later, mostly in the 16th
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  century, by a printer named Robert Estien, primarily just to
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  make indexing easier. And while those numbers are
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  helpful for finding a passage quickly, they act as an
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  unnatural grid imposed over the text.
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  Sometimes a verse break or a chapter division chops a
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  beautifully constructed chiasm right in half.
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  It takes the architectural archway and just smashes the
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  keystone. It destroys the author's
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  intended flow. If you only read verse by verse,
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  treating each sentence as an isolated proverb, you completely
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  miss the rhetorical climax the original author constructed.
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  Let's look at a specific example.
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  To make the mechanics of a chiasm clear for you listening,
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  let's examine Luke 16.13. Time.
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  Jesus is talking about having 2 masters.
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  If we map this out chiastically, the outer lines, let's call them
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  the base blocks of our arch A and A prime contrast, submitting
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  to God versus submitting to Mammon or money.
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  The next layer, inward blocks, B&B prime contrast, hating one
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  master and despising the other. But the Keystone, the center of
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  the Chiasm C&C Prime, focuses entirely on the heart's
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  affections, love and devotion. What is so revealing about that
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  structure is how it rebukes our modern pragmatic tendencies now
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  so well. We often try to find a
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  comfortable compromise. We want to pursue worldly
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  wealth, build our personal empires, while still claiming to
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  submit to God on the weekends. We look for a middle ground.
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  Right, the whole heavier cake and eat it too mindset.
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  Yeah, but the very architecture of Luke 16 point third forbids
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  that compromise. The parallel layers build a wall
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  of absolute contrast, and the center demands total devotion.
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  The structure itself argues the theology.
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  You cannot dismantle the theological meaning without
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  literally dismantling the physical shape of the sentences.
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  This sounds brilliant, but I can see a pitfall here.
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  Did looking for poetic structures turn reading the
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  Bible into like a puzzle solving game?
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  I can easily imagine someone getting so caught up in hunting
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  for hidden ABCBA codes that they start treating the text like an
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  esoteric conspiracy theory, totally losing the actual
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  message. That is a highly valid concern.
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  Whenever we introduce a new hermeneutical tool, the
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  temptation is always to overuse it or force it where it does not
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  belong. To see chiasms in the phone
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  book. Right.
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  However, proper structural analysis does the exact opposite
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  of arbitrary code hunting. It actually restrains the
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  reader. Restrains them.
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  Yes, by forcing you to honor the author's intended boundaries.
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  You cannot just pull an isolated phrase out of context to support
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  a personal agenda. The structure tells you where a
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  thought begins, where it climaxes, and where it ends.
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  Furthermore, discovering this structural evidence acts as an
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  incredibly robust apologetic shield.
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  An apologetic shield against what, specifically?
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  Against liberal critical theories that emerged in the
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  19th and 20th centuries, a major claim of liberal scholarship has
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  long been that the Gospels were heavily edited or outright
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  invented by Hellenistic Greek community as centuries after
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  Jesus lived. OK, so the theory is that it's
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  Greek, not Jewish. Yeah.
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  Argue the texts are disconnected from the original Jewish
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  context. They claim the stories evolve
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  through a long game of telephone among Gentile converts.
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  But the chiasms blow a hole in that theory.
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  Completely, When we analyze the discourses of Jesus in the
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  Gospels and discover they are structured according to ancient
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  prophetic rhetorical templates, the exact same templates found
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  in Isaiah, the Psalms, and ancient Hebrew literature, those
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  liberal theories collapse because a late Hellenistic Greek
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  writer inventing a story in the 2nd century would write using
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  Aristotelian forms. He would use Greek rhetorical
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  devices, and the fact that the Gospels utilize complex Semitic
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  chiasms prove the text is demonstrably Jewish and ancient.
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  The architecture verifies the history.
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  The very shape of the paragraphs acts as a fingerprint from the
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  ancient Near East. That is a staggering
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  realization. The physical arrangement of the
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  words proves the cultural origin of the text.
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  It's incredible, but. And here's a massive transition.
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  While Bailey's structural tools provide this brilliant defense
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  of the texts antiquity, his explanation of how the text was
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  actually inspired creates a massive theological collision.
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  Yes it does. This is where we have to shift
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  from praising his linguistic work to heavily scrutinizing his
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  theology. This is where a rigorous
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  confessional evaluation must step in and offer a sharp
• 18:16
  critique, because Bailey attempts to explain how he got
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  the Gospels by suggesting the human writers function like
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  modern television documentary editors.
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  Let's define what he means by a documentary editor.
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  The theory is that the gospel writers collected a bunch of raw
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  footage, in this case oral traditions, community memories,
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  sayings of Jesus, right. They sat down at the editing
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  Bay, spliced it together, selected the scenes they wanted,
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  left the ones they did not on the cutting room floor, and then
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  added their own subjective voiceover commentary to tell a
• 18:45
  compelling narrative. That's the model, right?
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  That's his model, and to understand why Bailey developed
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  this theory, we have to look at the environment he lived in.
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  Remember, he spent 60 years surrounded by Islamic culture
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  and scholarship. He proposes this documentary
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  editor model specifically to counter the Islamic concept of
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  inspiration, which is called Nuzul.
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  Nuzul. Let's unpack that.
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  What does that mean for a Muslim reading the Quran?
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  In Islamic theology, Nuzul is the idea of verbatim mechanical
• 19:15
  dictation. They believe the Quran is a pre
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  existent book in heaven. Like physically pre existent?
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  Yeah, completely formed. It descended to Muhammad.
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  It was dictated to him mechanically by the Angel
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  Gabriel. There is absolutely no human
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  personality involved. Mohad's vocabulary is
• 19:31
  historical, Research is personal style.
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  None of that is supposed to be in the text.
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  It is a sheer dictation theory. OK, so Bailey looks at that and
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  says that's not how the Bible was written, right?
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  Bailey, wanting to emphasize the real, gritty human historical
• 19:45
  process behind the writing of the Christian Gospels, over
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  corrects. He wants to show Muslims that
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  the Gospels are grounded in real history, so he reduces
• 19:53
  inspiration to this human editorial process.
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  I understand his motivation, I really do.
• 19:58
  He wants to prove the human authors were really involved.
• 20:02
  But his documentary editor analogy introduces a lethal
• 20:05
  poison into the doctrine of scripture.
• 20:07
  It really does. Because a human editor is, by
• 20:10
  definition subjective and fallible.
• 20:13
  An editor has a bias. They might cut out a vital piece
• 20:16
  of information because it contradicts their personal
• 20:19
  narrative. They might spin a story to make
• 20:21
  a certain political point. If the Gospel writers were just
• 20:24
  human editors compiling oral traditions, then the historical
• 20:28
  reliability of the entire text evaporates.
• 20:31
  That is the core danger. If the Gospels are subjective
• 20:34
  documentaries, we lose objective truth.
• 20:36
  We would be reading a human interpretation of a religious
• 20:39
  event rather than a divine revelation.
• 20:42
  The entire bedrock of the Christian faith would collapse
• 20:45
  into post liberal skepticism. We could never truly know what
• 20:48
  Jesus said, only what the editor wanted us to think he said.
• 20:52
  This is why we must sharply contrast Bailey's flawed model
• 20:55
  with the Reformed Dr. of confluence and verbal plenary
• 20:57
  inspiration. Confluence.
• 20:59
  Let's define that for you. Listening.
• 21:01
  We talking about the historical Protestant understanding of how
• 21:04
  the Bible was written, heavily articulated by the scholars of
• 21:07
  Princeton theology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
• 21:11
  Men like BB Warfield, yes. Warfield and the Princeton
• 21:15
  theologians provided a brilliant articulation of confluence.
• 21:19
  Confluence means the text is the product of dual authorship.
• 21:23
  Dual authorship. It is not mechanical dictation
• 21:26
  like the Islamic concept of Nuzal, and it is not a
• 21:29
  subjective human edit like Baileys theory.
• 21:32
  The Holy Spirit did not simply supervise a human editor
• 21:35
  standing over their shoulder and occasionally correcting a
• 21:37
  mistake. He sovereignly breathed out the
• 21:39
  words. The Greek term used by the
• 21:41
  apostle Paul is theonistas, God breathed.
• 21:44
  Now if God breathed out the very words, how do we account for the
• 21:47
  distinct styles? Because anyone who reads the New
• 21:50
  Testament can see that John writes with a very simple,
• 21:53
  repetitive Greek, but Luke writes with highly sophisticated
• 21:56
  medical and historical Greek. Paul sounds intense and
• 22:00
  argumentative. Peter sounds different from
• 22:03
  Paul. If it is all God's words, why
• 22:06
  does it not sound like it was written by one single monotonous
• 22:09
  author? Because the Holy Spirit is
• 22:10
  sovereign over Providence, He did not override the human
• 22:14
  authors, He prepared them. Prepared them a.
• 22:16
  How He orchestrated their family backgrounds, their education,
• 22:20
  their vocabularies, and their specific historical
• 22:22
  circumstances from the day they were born.
• 22:25
  When it came time to write, the Holy Spirit used their distinct
• 22:28
  personalities and minds. He guided their thoughts so
• 22:31
  thoroughly that what they wrote freely was simultaneously their
• 22:34
  own words and the infallible, inerrant word of God.
• 22:38
  He guaranteed a perfect result without violating their human
• 22:40
  agency. The humanity of the text is
• 22:42
  real, but the divinity of the text ensures it is without
• 22:45
  error. This doctrine shifts everything.
• 22:48
  We can talk about the mechanics of confluence and the Greek
• 22:50
  definition of theobnessus, but we need to grasp the sheer
• 22:53
  gravity of what this means for a person holding a Bible.
• 22:56
  It means God offered the text through human instruments,
• 23:00
  ensuring every single word is precisely what God intended.
• 23:04
  When you read the Gospel of Luke, you are not reading Luke's
• 23:08
  best guess. You are not reading his bias
• 23:11
  documentary cut of the events. You are reading absolute truth.
• 23:16
  The bedrock of faith rests on divine revelation, not on human
• 23:21
  editorial decisions. That reality is paramount.
• 23:24
  We have an infallible God breathed document, but
• 23:28
  possessing a perfect text does not automatically mean we know
• 23:31
  how to read it correctly. Right, because we still have
• 23:33
  that Western blind spot. Yeah.
• 23:35
  We can use Bailey's cultural tools to understand the Middle
• 23:38
  Eastern setting. We can map out the Semitic
• 23:40
  chiasms to see the architecture. We can affirm the inerrancy of
• 23:43
  the words. But we still need an
• 23:45
  authoritative guide for interpretation.
• 23:47
  How are we supposed to synthesize all this data?
• 23:49
  To answer that, we have to look at the text's own internal
• 23:51
  standard for interpretation, we turn to the end of Luke's Gospel
• 23:55
  chapter 24. This is the famous narrative of
• 23:58
  the Road to Emmaus. A beautiful passage.
• 24:00
  It provides the ultimate blueprint for hermeneutics.
• 24:04
  We have two disciples walking away from Jerusalem on the day
• 24:06
  of the Resurrection. Let's look at their situation.
• 24:09
  They possess all the historical facts.
• 24:11
  They know the geography. They saw the miracles.
• 24:13
  They witnessed the crucifixion under Pontius Pilate.
• 24:16
  They even have the fresh reports from the women about the empty
• 24:19
  tomb. They have all the raw data, but
• 24:22
  they're walking away in total confusion and despair.
• 24:24
  And their despair is incredibly revealing.
• 24:27
  Why are they confused? It is not a lack of cultural
• 24:31
  background data. They were 1st century Jews.
• 24:33
  They understood the agrarian society, the honor and shame
• 24:36
  dynamics, and the Semitic rhetoric perfectly.
• 24:39
  It was their native air. They didn't need Kenneth Bailey
• 24:42
  to explain the culture to them. No, not at all.
• 24:45
  Their problem, as Jesus points out when he joins them on the
• 24:48
  road, was a moral slowness of heart.
• 24:50
  They failed to read the historical events through the
• 24:53
  lens of God's redemptive plan. Notice what the risen Christ
• 24:56
  does. He does not give them a history
• 24:57
  lesson. He rebukes their slowness of
• 25:00
  heart, and he unfolds the Scriptures.
• 25:03
  He starts with Moses and goes through all the prophets,
• 25:06
  showing how every part of the Old Testament points directly to
• 25:09
  him. He gives them a Christ centered
• 25:10
  hermeneutic. He demonstrates that the entire
• 25:13
  Old Testament is not a collection of disconnected moral
• 25:15
  fables. It is a massive unified arrow
• 25:19
  pointing straight to his suffering and subsequent glory.
• 25:23
  Now let's contrast that Christ centered reading against the
• 25:25
  interpretive errors running rampant today.
• 25:27
  OK, look at the prosperity gospel.
• 25:30
  It reads the Bible and turns Jesus into a cosmic slot
• 25:33
  machine, a tool for acquiring financial wealth and physical
• 25:36
  health. It ignores the suffering of the
• 25:38
  cross entirely. Then you have liberal theology,
• 25:41
  which strips the text of its supernatural elements.
• 25:44
  It wants a therapeutic Jesus. It wants a comforting ethical
• 25:47
  teacher who offers affirmation. But it violently rejects any
• 25:51
  mention of divine wrath against sin or the necessity of blood
• 25:54
  atonement. And we cannot forget moralism.
• 25:58
  Moralism looks at the Bible as an ancient self help manual.
• 26:01
  It treats the historical narratives as just examples of
• 26:04
  good behavior to copy. Do this.
• 26:06
  Don't do that. Right.
• 26:07
  It treats Jesus like a life coach who gives tips for a
• 26:10
  successful family life. But the Emmaus Rd. standard
• 26:13
  shatters all of these approaches.
• 26:15
  The Gospel is not a financial strategy, therapy, or moral
• 26:18
  advice. It demands absolute submission
• 26:21
  to a sovereign Lord who fulfills all of redemptive history
• 26:24
  through his sacrificial death and resurrection.
• 26:27
  Those modern errors dominate because readers want the social
• 26:30
  or psychological benefits of religion without the offense of
• 26:32
  the cross. They selectively edit the Jesus
• 26:35
  of Scripture to fit their own desires, acting much like the
• 26:38
  subjective documentary editors Bailey theorized about.
• 26:40
  Man, that's a sharp connection. Christ's exposition on the road
• 26:43
  to Emmaus corrects this. The whole redemptive pattern,
• 26:46
  the covenant promises to Abraham, the blood sacrifices of
• 26:49
  Leviticus, the kingship of David, the tragedy of the exile,
• 26:52
  the hope of restoration, it all culminates in him.
• 26:55
  But let me pose A practical challenge here.
• 26:58
  If the ultimate goal is just to see Christ in the text, and if
• 27:02
  the Holy Spirit's illumination is what opens our eyes, does
• 27:05
  that mean we can discard the heavy academic work?
• 27:08
  Can we ignore the Greek grammar, the Syrian history, and the
• 27:11
  Middle Eastern cultural tools entirely?
• 27:14
  Is studying history a lack of faith?
• 27:17
  Should a Christian just close their eyes, open the Bible at
• 27:20
  random, and wait for a subjective, spiritual feeling
• 27:22
  about Jesus? Absolutely not.
• 27:25
  That approach is a form of spiritualized anti
• 27:28
  intellectualism and it is just as dangerous to the health of
• 27:31
  the church as cold, rationalistic skepticism.
• 27:34
  We must study the historical stage intensely.
• 27:37
  Why, if it's all about seeing Jesus?
• 27:39
  Because the incarnation of the Son of God happened in real time
• 27:42
  and in physical space, God did not send a vague spiritual
• 27:44
  feeling. The eternal Word became flesh.
• 27:47
  He entered the specific genetic line of Abraham.
• 27:49
  He lived under the specific political occupation of the
• 27:52
  Roman Empire. He spoke an actual human
• 27:54
  language with specific idioms. So history matters.
• 27:57
  Studying the history, the geography, and the grammar
• 28:00
  honors the physical reality of the incarnation.
• 28:03
  We do the hard work of using the cultural and structural tools we
• 28:06
  discussed earlier, but we use them as servants to uncover the
• 28:09
  Christ centered meaning of the text.
• 28:12
  To demonstrate how the synthesis actually works, how we combine
• 28:15
  rigorous historical study, structural analysis and Christ
• 28:19
  centered theology, we have a brilliant case study from the
• 28:22
  Old Testament. Yes, let's look at this.
• 28:24
  We are going to look at the covenant of death in Isaiah 28.
• 28:27
  First. We have to set the dramatic
• 28:29
  historical scene to understand what the prophet is addressing.
• 28:32
  The year is roughly seven O 5 BC.
• 28:35
  The geopolitical situation in the ancient Near East is
• 28:38
  terrifying. Terrifying is putting it mildly.
• 28:40
  The new Assyrian king Sennacherib is marching his war
• 28:44
  machine southward. The Assyrians were notoriously
• 28:47
  brutal. They did not just conquer the
• 28:49
  utilized psychological terror, siege ramps, mass deportations,
• 28:53
  They literally flayed their enemies alive.
• 28:56
  The northern Kingdom of Israel has already been annihilated.
• 28:59
  Now the southern Kingdom of Judah is squarely in the
• 29:01
  crosshairs. The rulers of Judah, the
• 29:04
  political officials advising King Hezekiah in Jerusalem, are
• 29:07
  in an absolute panic. And the geography of the region
• 29:11
  dictates their panic. Judah is a small mountainous
• 29:14
  buffer state. They are caught in a vice grip
• 29:16
  between the massive advancing Assyrian Empire to the north and
• 29:20
  the ancient, wealthy Egyptian Empire to the South.
• 29:23
  So what do they do? In their desperation, the
• 29:25
  political elites of Jerusalem make a highly pragmatic, secular
• 29:29
  decision. They decide to bypass the word
• 29:31
  of the Lord, which Isaiah has been preaching to them entirely.
• 29:34
  They organize a secret diplomatic treaty with Egypt.
• 29:37
  They want to secure Egyptian Chariots and cavalry to defend
• 29:40
  against the Assyrian siege. They think they're being
• 29:42
  incredibly shrewd. They view this military alliance
• 29:45
  as their ultimate safety net, a master stroke of foreign policy.
• 29:50
  But Isaiah steps onto the scene in Isaiah chapter 28 versus 14
• 29:54
  through 18, and he absolutely mocks this alliance.
• 29:57
  He denounces their treaty, calling it a covenant with
• 30:00
  death. That phrase covenant with death
• 30:02
  is a brilliant piece of localized sarcastic double
• 30:06
  entendre. To understand the sarcasm, you
• 30:09
  have to know Egyptian culture. Which is where the historical
• 30:11
  background comes in. Exactly.
• 30:13
  I mean, precisely. Egypt was globally famous for
• 30:16
  its obsession with the dead. They built massive pyramids as
• 30:19
  tombs. They developed complex
• 30:20
  mummification processes. Their religious texts, like the
• 30:24
  Book of the Dead, were entirely focused on navigating the
• 30:27
  afterlife. By turning away from the living
• 30:29
  God to ally with Egypt, the leaders of Judah were literally
• 30:32
  allying themselves with the land of the dead.
• 30:35
  Isaiah tells them that God considers this political treaty
• 30:37
  a refuge of lies, and he issues a terrifying warning.
• 30:41
  God will sweep away this false refuge with the flash flood of
• 30:44
  divine justice. He will bring out the measuring
• 30:46
  line of his perfect righteousness and the Plumb line
• 30:48
  of his justice, and their flimsy political shelter will collapse.
• 30:52
  The imagery is violent and vivid, a flash flood wiping out
• 30:55
  a shelter made of lies. And this is where the structural
• 30:58
  insight we talked about earlier pays off in a major way.
• 31:01
  Isaiah 28.114 is not just a random collection of angry
• 31:05
  prophetic warnings. No, it is not.
• 31:07
  It is carefully arranged in A7 stanza chiasm.
• 31:10
  We have an architectural archway built out of words and remember
• 31:13
  the rule of Semitic rhetoric. The climax is squarely in the
• 31:17
  center. Right when you map out the seven
• 31:19
  stanzas of this prophecy, the center of the chiasm, the
• 31:22
  keystone of the arch, is a stunning promise of salvation.
• 31:26
  Amidst all the pronouncements of judgement, the invading Assyrian
• 31:29
  armies and the flash floods of justice, the 4th stanza sits at
• 31:33
  the very heart of the text. What does it say?
• 31:35
  God declares, Behold, I'm the one who was laid as a solid base
• 31:39
  in Zion. A stone, a tested stone, a
• 31:41
  precious cornerstone of a secure foundation.
• 31:45
  And the climactic phrase of the entire structure is this He who
• 31:49
  believes will not be in haste or translated another way.
• 31:52
  He who believes will not be shaken.
• 31:54
  While the political elites are running to Egypt in a panicked
• 31:57
  frenzy, God says the one who rests his weight on this
• 32:00
  appointed cornerstone will stand completely secure.
• 32:03
  He who believes will not be shaken.
• 32:05
  They will not give into the panic of the age.
• 32:07
  They will not scramble to build a refuge of lies.
• 32:10
  Now let's bring in the Emmaus Rd. hermeneutic.
• 32:12
  We have the history, we have the chiasm.
• 32:14
  What is the Christological synthesis?
• 32:17
  How does the New Testament interpret this specific
• 32:18
  structural climax from Isaiah 28?
• 32:20
  The New Testament authors, writing under the infallible
• 32:23
  inspiration of the Holy Spirit, make the connection explicit.
• 32:26
  Both the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans and the
• 32:29
  Apostle Peter in his first epistle identified this
• 32:33
  precious, tested cornerstone directly as Jesus Christ.
• 32:36
  Jesus is the stone. He is He was tested in the
• 32:39
  wilderness by Satan. He was tested by the relentless
• 32:42
  hostility of the religious leaders.
• 32:44
  He was tested by the sheer agony of Gethsemane, and on the cross
• 32:48
  He endured the overwhelming scourge of God's holy wrath
• 32:52
  against sin. He absorbed the flash flood of
• 32:54
  divine justice so that believers could place their faith in Him
• 32:58
  and remain eternally secure. We look at those ancient
• 33:01
  politicians in Jerusalem terrified of the Assyrian army,
• 33:04
  and we might shake our heads at their foolish decision to trust
• 33:07
  the Egyptian cavalry instead of God.
• 33:09
  But human nature has not changed since seven O 5 BC.
• 33:12
  Not at all. We all build modern refuges of
• 33:14
  lies to shield ourselves from vulnerability.
• 33:17
  We try to find safety outside of God's provision.
• 33:20
  We build massive financial portfolios, assuming wealth will
• 33:24
  insulate us from tragedy and sickness.
• 33:26
  We place our hope and political alliances or specific
• 33:29
  candidates, believing the right human leader or the right
• 33:31
  Supreme Court will save our society from moral collapse or
• 33:36
  looking inside the walls of the church.
• 33:38
  We rely on pragmatic church growth strategies, assuming that
• 33:42
  slick marketing, entertainment, and corporate management
• 33:45
  techniques will secure the future of our congregations.
• 33:48
  Every single one of those modern constructs functions as a
• 33:51
  covenant with death if it takes the place of Christ as our
• 33:54
  secure base. The storm of God's perfect
• 33:56
  justice is an absolute reality that will eventually sweep
• 33:59
  across all human history. That's coming.
• 34:01
  When that storm hits, no financial portfolio will provide
• 34:04
  cover. No political party will offer
• 34:06
  defense. No pragmatic church philosophy
• 34:09
  will survive the measuring line of God's holiness.
• 34:12
  They will be washed away. Just like the Egyptian Chariots
• 34:14
  were useless against the Assyrians.
• 34:16
  Only the tested cornerstone will remain.
• 34:18
  Only the cornerstone remains. That brings the entire
• 34:21
  discussion into sharp focus. We take the historical reality
• 34:25
  of the ancient Near East, we apply the structural tool of
• 34:28
  Semitic rhetoric to find the climax of the text, and we let
• 34:31
  the New Testament reveal the Christ centered fulfillment.
• 34:34
  It is a complete demonstration of how to read the text
• 34:37
  faithfully. Approaching the text this way
• 34:39
  requires an attitude characterized by humility.
• 34:43
  We should gratefully utilize the cultural insights and linguistic
• 34:46
  tools provided by Middle Eastern scholars to understand the
• 34:49
  biblical world more clearly. We should respect to the
• 34:52
  literary architecture the human authors employed, right.
• 34:55
  But we must subject all those tools and all our own cultural
• 34:58
  assumptions to the supreme authority of the God Breathe
• 35:01
  Scriptures. We allow the text to interrogate
• 35:04
  our modern biases rather than forcing the text to validate our
• 35:07
  preconceived ideas. We submit our minds to the Word.
• 35:10
  We do not stand in judgement over it.
• 35:12
  So we leave you with a final question to ponder as you step
• 35:15
  away from this deep dive. If ancient political leaders
• 35:18
  built a covenant with death to feel safe from an invading army,
• 35:21
  what modern refuge of lies are you relying on today to give you
• 35:24
  a false sense of peace? And when the real storms of life
• 35:28
  and the ultimate justice of God arrive, will that refuge hold
• 35:31
  up, or do you need to shift your weight entirely onto the
• 35:33
  cornerstone?