Cyndi Parker - Encountering Jesus in the Real World of the Gospels

I did not grow up with a burning desire to visit the land of the Bible. I did not think it mattered. Then toward the end of my seminary studies, I began to feel restless. In my classes, I wrestled with theological issues, which were interesting, but I had a sense there was something else important that I was missing.

Based on a professors suggestion, I decided to spend my last year of seminary in Israel. That was when I realized that what I was missing was experiencing the locatedness of the biblical stories. I discovered that I loved standing on the ruins of ancient cities and imagining the experienced reality of the people who lived there long ago, and I began to recognize the humanity of the people in the Bible instead of thinking of them as only carriers of a theological lesson. Being in the land gave me a new lens through which to study Gods revolutionary story to engage humanity and to mend the broken relationship between the divine, humans, and the created world. Learning and experiencing the context of the biblical world was fascinating enough to convince me to remain in Israel for several years, teaching other people to engage the geography, history, and cultural context of the Bible.

During one of those classes, I took a group to Bethlehem to explore the rich historical and geographical context of both King David and Jesus. In the final hours of the day, I sat on a carved, wooden pew in a beautiful Catholic church. A sweet student turned to me and whispered, Is this the church Jesus came to as a child? I paused for a moment as thoughts passed rapid-fire through my head. Should I explain that neither the church nor Christianity existed at the time of Jesus? Do I remind the student that Jesus was Jewish and therefore went to synagogues, because churches didnt yet exist? Do I point out that Jesus grew up in Nazareth, and we were definitely not in Nazareth? If I remember correctly, I took the easy way out and simply leaned over and answered, No.

The students question revealed her limited understanding of the historic reality of Jesus. The Jesus she knew emerged from her own context and belonged in the large, beautiful, Christian churches of the Western world. But she is not alone in her assumptions about Jesus. In Israel, I teach students of all ages and with all levels of biblical knowledge. In the beginning of every course, students are struck by how different the real contexts of the Gospel stories are from how they imagined them. They then become enthralled with the process of discovering an accurate picture of Jesus contextualized in his historical landscape.

Jesus ministry was exciting because he was the continuation, the climax even, of Gods long history of interacting with and revealing himself to humanity. The Western church sometimes considers the Old Testament and the New Testament as separate and independent entities. However, without understanding the whole story of God and how Jesus fits into it, we are not engaging the full depth and richness of the Gospels. If we are to understand the historical Jesus, then we need to start at the beginning and recognize that Jesus had a mission connected to the Old Testament narratives, which in turn occurred on the stage of a very specific landscape that played a great role in the narratives and the way in which they were recorded.

Modern readers who think of the Gospels as self-contained histories of Jesus do not ask the significant contextual questions that have massive implications for interpreting the Gospels. For instance, the writings of the Old Testament are written in Hebrew (with some Aramaic) but the Gospels are written in Greek. Why is that? Gods people in the Old Testament are called Israelites, but in the Gospels, they are called Jews. Is that change significant? In the Old Testament, the Israelites have a kingdom with political borders. In the Gospels, the Jews live scattered throughout the Roman Empire. So, what did concepts of the kingdom of God mean for the Jewish people who did not have a kingdom? The Old Testament focuses on the temple in Jerusalem, but the Gospels mention synagogues. Where did synagogues come from, and what is their relationship with the temple? The Judaism represented in the New Testament is not the same as the Israelite religion in the Old Testament. But how is it different, and why did it evolve? The Gospels also mention people such as the Herodians, Pharisees, and Sadducees. Who are these people, and how are they different from the crowds of people who followed Jesus? These are all important contextual questions to ask before diving into the life and teachings of Jesus.