Kenneth E. Bailey > Quotes

“The prayer for "our bread" includes the neighbors. It is "our Father" and "our bread.”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

“But Jesus does not say, “Blessed are those who live righteously and maintain a righteous lifestyle.” Rather he affirms, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.” The statement presupposes that righteousness is something the faithful continuously strive after. The blessed are not those who arrive but those who continue, at whatever cost, in their pilgrimage toward a more perfect righteousness. The constant, relentless drive toward righteousness characterizes the blessed.”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

“Jesus was raised by an extraordinary mother who must have had enormous influence on his attitudes toward women.”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

“Christian faith is fact, but not bare fact; it is poetry, but not imagination. Like the arch which grows stronger precisely by dint of the weight you place upon it, so the
story of the Gospels bears, with reassuring strength, the devotion of the centuries to Jesus as the Christ. What is music, asked Walt Whitman, but what awakens within you when you listen to the instrument? And Jesus is the music of the reality of God, and faith is what awakens when we hearken.ls”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

“A British journalist once asked Mother Teresa how she kept going, knowing that she could never meet the needs of all the dying in the streets of Calcutta. She replied, “I am not called to be successful; I’m called to be faithful.”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

“People with differences can work together if they have the same purpose. Paul wants all of them to think along the same lines, and to have a united purpose.”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes: Cultural Studies in 1 Corinthians

“The more familiar we are with a biblical story, the more difficult it is to view it outside of the way it has always been understood. And the longer imprecision in the tradition remains unchallenged, the deeper it becomes embedded in Christian consciousness. The birth story of Jesus is such a story.”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

“The following high points are prominent in this brief homily.
1. Breaking into ethnic enclaves is unacceptable. Furthermore, loyalties to individuals is not an excuse for breaking the unity of the church. Their leaders are not adequate centers of primary loyalty.
2. No group in the church has the right to claim that they alone are loyal to Christ.
3. They are "called by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1:2) and in that name they can find their unity (1:10).
4. Baptism and the cross also call them together.
5. The question is not "Who is my leader?" but rather, "Who died for us?"
With the problem of this first essay stated boldly, Paul turns to the cross in the shadow of which their divisions can be eclipsed (1:17-2:2).”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes: Cultural Studies in 1 Corinthians

“When you are in total darkness, the tiniest point of light is very bright.”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

“Dodd was able to point out that no one would have crucified an itinerant preacher who went around encouraging people with general moral principles.”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant's Eyes

“In the kingdom of God, barking orders at others is not an acceptable way to try to solve problems created by our inadequacies.”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

“Jesus does not eat with sinners to celebrate their sin. He does so to celebrate his grace.”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jacob & the Prodigal: How Jesus Retold Israel's Story

“more than ten million Arabic-speaking Christians of the Middle East can trace their origins to the day of Pentecost, where some of those present were from Arabia and heard the preaching of Peter in Arabic.”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

“In every culture the total word of God has to be declared to us by another. In every culture the message of the gospel is in constant danger of being compromised by the value system that supports that culture and its goals. The stranger to that culture can instinctively identify those points of surrender and call the community back to a purer and more authentic faith. But such infusions of new life are usually resented and resisted.”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

“In the Lord's Prayer the believer, with the phrase "May thy name be made holy," calls for a demonstration of the holiness of God. That is, the worshiper is saying, "May God again demonstrate his holiness." This in turn expresses a willingness to participate in Isaiah's dramatic experience.”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

“Centuries of high quality Arabic Christian literature remain, for the most part, unpublished and unknown.' All of these sources, Syriac, Hebrew/Aramaic and Arabic, share the broader culture of the ancient Middle East, and all of them are ethnically closer to the Semitic world of Jesus than the Greek and Latin cultures of the West.”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

“The idea that the early Christian tradition was limited to its Greek and Latin expressions is still widespread. This assumption distorts historical reality and weakens greatly our understanding of the roots of Christian theology and spirituality. In the third and fourth centuries Syriac was the third international language of the church. It served as the major means of communication in the Roman diocese of the "East," which included Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia.”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

“prevail in their relationship. Her past behavior cannot and must not be repeated. But justice demands that she be stoned to death for sexual misbehavior. On the other hand, Hosea wants to live with her in a relationship filled with love and mercy, where the past is forgotten and a new life is begun. Hosea states their current needs as he says to her: I will betroth you to me for ever;
I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice,
in steadfast love, and in mercy. (Hos 2:19, italics added) How can both sides of this equation be implemented given what Gomer has done? Is Hosea to affirm righteousness and justice or love and mercy? Hosea tells his personal story because in it he finds a metaphor for the divine relationship between God and his people. Hosea suffers the agony of rejected love and in the process discovers something of God’s divine agony as he deals with his wayward people. Kuhn writes: In Hosea, therefore, the concept of holiness takes up into itself as the fullness of deity the thought of love—an insight”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

“If Joseph and Mary were taken into a private home and at birth Jesus was placed in a manger in that home, how is the word inn in Luke 2:7 to be understood?
Most English translations state that after the child was born, he was laid in a manger "because there was no room for them in the inn." This sounds as if they were rejected by the people of Bethlehem. Was that really the case?”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

“changing message centered in himself. A rich harvest results from this unique “sowing.” The community around Jesus. A Samaritan woman and her community are sought out and welcomed by Jesus. In the process, ancient racial, theological and historical barriers are breached. His message and his community are for all. The water of life. Those who accept this water are called to share it with others. Religion and escape from God. The woman tries to use “religion” as a means of escape from Jesus’ pressing concern about her self-destructive lifestyle. Prophet and priest. The voice of the prophet is incomplete without the complementary priestly ministry of true worship. Salvation. God’s acts in history to save “through the Jews” are a scandal of particularity that proves to be a blessing for the Samaritan woman. Christian self-understanding. Four important aspects of Christian self-understanding appear in this story. These are (1) the confession of Jesus as the Savior of the world, (2) the obsolescence of the temple, (3) the incorporation of non-Jews into the people of God, and (4) the deabsolutizing of the law. Food and drink. Two kinds of drink (one passing and the other permanently sustaining) and two types of food (physical sustenance and spiritual fulfillment) are prominently featured in the story.”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

“The Corinthians are identified as “Those who were made holy” and who were “called out as saints [i.e., holy ones]” (1:2). They were getting drunk at Holy Communion and shouting insults at each other. One of them was sleeping with his mother-in-law. The prophets (preachers) were all talking at once in their worship services and some of the women were chatting and not listening to anyone. They had split into factions, and some thought that polished language was more important than historical realities like the cross. Others denied the resurrection. Yet Paul called them “saints.” Remarkable! Clearly, for Paul, “a saint” meant a person who had received the Holy Spirit and not a person who had reached some undefined stratospheric level of piety. The troublesome Corinthians were saints!”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes: Cultural Studies in 1 Corinthians

“What is music, asked Walt Whitman, but what awakens within you when you listen to the instrument? And Jesus is the music of the reality of God, and faith is what awakens when we hearken.[”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

“The child was born for the likes of the shepherds—the poor, the lowly, the rejected. He also came for the rich and the wise who later appear with gold, frankincense and myrrh.”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

“the community developed what was called the kezazah ceremony (the cutting-off ceremony).8 Any Jewish boy who lost his inheritance among Gentiles faced the ceremony if he dared return to his home village. The ceremony itself was simple. Fellow villagers would fill a large earthenware pot with burned nuts and burned corn and break it in front of the guilty individual. While doing this, they would shout, "So-and-so is cut off from his people." From that point on, the village would have nothing to do with the hapless lad. As he leaves town, the prodigal knows he must not lose his money among the Gentiles.”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jacob & the Prodigal: How Jesus Retold Israel's Story

“5. The kezazah ceremony. In the Jerusalem Talmud and elsewhere in the writings of the sages, we are told that at the time of Jesus the Jews had a method of punishing any Jewish boy who lost his family inheritance to Gentiles. Such a loss was considered particularly shameful, and the horror of that shame is reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jacob & the Prodigal: How Jesus Retold Israel's Story

“never again attained in the OT. As Hosea himself in his shattered happiness learned to know love as the indestructible force which could save even his lost wife, so Yahweh’s holiness as the sum of His being must contain the creative love which slays but also makes alive again (cf. Hos 6:1).[7] God is holy love, and he faces unholy nature. Yet, in his holiness, God is able to reach out to love that unholy nature. Again Kuhn writes, “therefore the antithesis between God and man consists in the very love which overcomes it.”[8]”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

“If at the end of Luke's Gospel, the word katalyma means a guest room attached to a private home (22:11), why would it not have the same meaning near the beginning of his Gospel? The family room, with an attached guest room, would have looked something like the diagram below:”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

“The meaning of true worship, here so simply and profoundly defined, is inexhaustible and has inspired William Temple to write: Worship is the submission of all our nature to God.
It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness;
the nourishment of mind with His truth;
the purifying of imagination by His beauty;
the opening of the heart to His love;
the surrender of will to His purpose—
and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless
emotion of which our nature is capable.[13]”
― Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels