Recently, I've been trying to peel back the filters of being a 21st century, American, female reader when reading the Bible. It's so easy for me to assume so much from my culture and worldview as I read the Bible. But what would it mean to read with Jewish eyes?
To this end, one of the books I read recently is Reading the Bible with Rabbi Jesus by Lois Tverberg.
To this end, one of the books I read recently is Reading the Bible with Rabbi Jesus by Lois Tverberg.
Tverberg opens the book with statements supporting this view: "How can [non-Jewish] Christians be equipped to read the Bible from the Hebraic perspective of its first readers? What big-picture ideas do we need to understand?.... In the past few decades, we've been realizing that Jesus has been overly cast within Greco-Roman society to the neglect of His Jewish context. Jesus interacted with a wide spectrum of people—Samaritans, Romans, Greeks—and yet His Galilean upbringing and ministry were profoundly, deeply Jewish. While we find Paul preaching to Greek audiences, Jesus' words fit far better into Judaism than a Gentile context." (p. 11, emphasis and insertions mine).
This is what I want to discover, and I feel like this book is an excellent introduction into this topic. Care to dive in with me? In the next few posts, I'll explore just a few of the themes Tverberg focuses on. Stay tuned!
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