Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewish Words of Jesus Can Change Your Life - Softcover

Tverberg, Lois

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0310330009 ISBN 13: 9780310330004

Verlag: HarperChristian Resources, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

In Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus, Lois Tverberg challenges readers to follow their Rabbi more closely by reexamining his words in the light of their Jewish context. Doing so will provide a richer, deeper understanding of his ministry, compelling us to live differently, to become more Christ-like. We'll begin to understand why his first Jewish disciples abandoned everything to follow him, to live out his commands.

Our modern society, with its individualism and materialism, is very different than the tight-knit, family-oriented setting Jesus lived and taught in. What wisdom can we glean from his Eastern, biblical attitude toward life? How can knowing Jesus within this context shed light on his teachings for us today?

In Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus we'll journey back in time to eavesdrop on the conversations that arose among the rabbis of Jesus' day, and consider how hearing Rabbi Jesus with the ears of a first-century disciple can bring new meaning to our faith. And we'll listen to Jewish thinkers through the ages, discovering how ideas that germinated in Jesus' time have borne fruit. Doing so will yield fresh, practical insights for following our Rabbi's teachings from a Jewish point of view.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lois Tverberg, PhD, has been writing and teaching about the Jewish background of Christianity for the past twenty years. Her passion is to translate the Bible’s ancient setting into fresh insights that deepen and strengthen Christian faith. She is the author of Reading the Bible with Rabbi Jesus, Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus, and Listening to the Language of the Bible. Lois writes from her home in Holland, Michigan. For more information, visit OurRabbiJesus.com.

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Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus

How the Jewish words of Jesus can change your lifeBy Lois Tverberg

ZONDERVAN

Copyright © 2012 Lois Tverberg
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-310-33000-4

Contents

Foreword by Ray Vander Laan...................................9I Hearing Our Rabbi's Words with New Ears.....................131 Brushing Away the Dust of the Ages..........................152 Shema: Living Out What You Hear.............................313 Loving God with Everything You've Got.......................424 Meeting Myself Next Door....................................55II Living Out the Words of Rabbi Jesus........................675 Gaining a Good Eye..........................................696 The Mystery of the Name.....................................817 How to Have a Kosher Mouth..................................928 Taking My Thumb Off the Scale...............................1049 Praying with Chutzpah.......................................11710 Thinking with Both Hands...................................130III Studying the Word with Rabbi Jesus........................14311 The Treasure of the Text...................................14512 The Secrets That God Keeps.................................15413 Our Longing Father.........................................16514 God's Image Stamped in Dust................................180Afterword by Ann Spangler.....................................192Appendix: The Shema...........................................195Acknowledgments...............................................197Notes.........................................................199Glossary......................................................217Recommended Resources.........................................223Scripture Index...............................................227General Index.................................................230

Chapter One

Brushing Away the Dust of the Ages

Just as rain water comes down in drops and forms rivers, so with the Scriptures: one studies a bit today and some more tomorrow, until in time the understanding becomes like a flowing stream. —Song of Songs Midrash Rabbah 2:8

In 1977, Pinin Barcilon won the assignment of a lifetime when she was asked to lead the restoration of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, one of the most well-known images of all time. But the renowned Italian art conservator could hardly imagine how nerve-wracking the next twenty-three years would be.

The centuries hadn't been kind to the mural that da Vinci completed on a monastery wall in Milan, Italy, in 1498. Always the experimenter, Leonardo had reformulated his paints in a way that proved to be unstable, so that the paint began flaking off even before his death. And even though his mural was immediately hailed as a masterpiece, it was left unprotected from pollution and humidity. When Barcilon began her restoration, five hundred years of dust, mold, and candle soot had darkened the iconic work almost to the point of invisibility.

The real challenge for her team, however, was to undo the disastrous attempts at restoration that had begun back in the 1700s. Heavy coats of varnish, glue, and wax had been brushed on, each of them hastening the darkening process. Worst of all, hack amateurs had painted over da Vinci's work time and again, rendering its images distorted, brushing out details they didn't understand, and filling in gaps with their own interpretations.

After months of photographing every square centimeter of the painting's surface and analyzing it using state-of-the-art technology, Barcilon's team members finally began their work. Then, for over twenty years they hunched over microscopes, painstakingly scraping away five hundred years of grime and overpainting. On a good day, one postage stamp's worth of the image would emerge. In 1999, when da Vinci's brushstrokes were finally revealed, her team's meticulous, mind-numbing labor found its reward. Barcilon called it a "slow, severe conquest, which, flake after flake, day after day, millimeter after millimeter, fragment after fragment, gave back a reading of the dimensions, of the expressive and chromatic intensity that we thought was lost forever."

Gloomy shadows banished; a well-lit banquet hall emerged. Peter's beard and nose were free of the clumsy weight that later retouchings had given them. Matthew sported blond hair, not black. Thomas gained a left hand. Andrew's expression was transformed—he was no longer sullen, but astonished. And Jesus' face glowed with new light after the dingy repaintings had been removed.

The essence of the scene remained unchanged. Da Vinci had depicted the fateful scene at the moment Jesus revealed one of his disciples would soon betray him. But after centuries of murky obscurity, restoration had brought to light the original beauty of the artist's masterful portrayal of the facial expressions and body language of Christ and his disciples.

Unearthing Jesus' World

Just as modern technology enabled Barcilon to reveal da Vinci's original strokes, in recent decades scholars have gained new tools to restore the picture of Jesus that the gospel writers first gave us. In just the past fifty years, we have seen more advances in biblical archaeology and in the discovery of ancient texts than in all the centuries since the time of Jesus. As dingy accretions of history are cleared away, vivid details of Jesus' life and culture are emerging.

The same year that the Last Supper was newly unveiled, I took my first study trip to Israel. One of the scarier highlights of our tour was exploring the water tunnel that King Hezekiah built under Jerusalem in 701 BC. Half terrified, our group peered into the dark, stone-hewn shaft before us and stepped down into the icy, rushing waters of the Gihon spring. After groping our way through the cramped blackness by flashlight for a third of a mile, waist-high water sweeping us along, we heaved a sigh of relief when we finally glimpsed the exit.

Adding to the thrill, we were emerging at the site of the famous Pool of Siloam, where a blind man miraculously recovered his vision after Jesus sent him there to wash (John 9:7). The puddle-deep pool was, admittedly, unimpressive—only a few feet wide and a few more yards long. But this was the famous site, according to Christian tradition that went back to the fourth century AD.

Or so we thought.

In 2004, five years after our visit, a sewage pipe broke underneath a nearby Jerusalem street. Massive earth-moving equipment rumbled in to make the repair. Pushing into the soil, a bulldozer blade collided with a submerged object and came to a grinding halt. An ancient plastered step emerged as the dirt was brushed away. Within minutes prominent archaeologists had rushed over, the word "bulldozer" hurrying them to the scene. Excavation revealed several more steps down one side of an enormous rectangular pool. Within weeks this monumental reservoir (about 160 feet wide by 200 feet long) was identified as the real Pool of Siloam, the main source of fresh water within Jerusalem's walls. Coins embedded in the plaster confirmed that it was in use during Jesus' time.

As they excavated the Pool of Siloam archaeologists also discovered a wide, stepped first-century street that leads from the pool up to the Temple. This was one of the main Jerusalem thoroughfares in the first century, and it would have been the final steps of ascent for pilgrims after days or weeks of journeying to celebrate the feasts. The Pool of Siloam was one of the places where they could...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: HarperChristian Resources
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0310330009
• ISBN 13: 9780310330004
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 240
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland