A Journey

A Journey

Life is a journey. It is not static. Things change. People change, their understanding of the world changes, they mature, they see new things in the old, or see them from a different perspective. This is also true of the Christian walk. We see things differently; we see new truths we hadn’t noticed before; we mature in the faith and gain deeper insights.

At the beginning of 2016, I started to read my New Testament in chronological order by event. I looked out a ‘harmony of the Gospels’ which listed all the events of the New Testament in historical order, with the references from the Gospels next to each event. It meant a lot of flicking from one part of the Gospels to another, but it was worth the effort and I enjoyed reading how it all happened. I was struck by just how Jewish it all was!

At the end of that, I wanted to find a Bible or a book that wrote the life of Jesus, using the information from all the Gospels in chronological order, and set within the cultural and historical timeframe of first century Israel and the surrounding nations. I found one that had been written in 1867 or thereabouts; it was a struggle to read it and was very wordy – a common method of writing in those days. But I was hard pressed to find another, more up to date version. So, because I enjoy writing, I set about researching the details and writing one of my own (it is still to be finished – watch this space!) Again, because the life of Jesus did not happen in a vacuum, it became apparent how much a man of His time and culture Jesus actually was.

Finally, I also read a book, ‘The Master’ by John Pollock, which is a life of Jesus, based on the Gospel of John. My first surprise was in his opening sentences. He referred to John as a cousin of Jesus. I presumed he was writing about John the Baptist. But then he mentioned John’s parents – Zebedee and Salome. I thought, ‘Hang on! We know John’s parents were Zechariah and Elizabeth. Where do you get Zebedee and Salome from?’ That sent me scurrying for my books and the computer to discover that yes indeed, John and James were probably cousins of Jesus; their father was Zebedee and their mother was Salome, who was probably the sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus. I began to realise how many hints we are given throughout the four Gospels of when and how events took place and who was involved. I had ‘matured’ in my way of approaching the Bible – check the details was my new watchword and also, check the accounts as given in all the Gospels, not just one at a time.

Thus my studies had led me to understand just how Jewish the whole New Testament really was. I had long thought (and frequently said in the past) that Christianity is much more Jewish than we in the west give it credit for, but I had never really studied that. As far as I was concerned, it didn’t actually much matter. I am a 21^st Century Christian, living in the western hemisphere – why did the fact that Jesus and the Apostles were Jewish actually matter. The answer is: Context is everything! Understanding the New Testament hinges on understanding the culture and history, the politics and religion at the time the words were spoken. Knowing Hebrew idiom helps us understand what Jesus was actually saying. I used to think that putting the Bible into its first century context was a pretext for saying it doesn’t apply to us today. For instance, the issue of women’s head coverings for prayer is often said to have been something cultural for that day, time and place – therefore we today do not need to comply. For that reason, I had been hesitant to accept anything that called for cultural context, in case the next step meant we were going to be told to abandon whatever teaching it was. I now understand clearly that context really is everything! Looking at the Gospels in their proper cultural setting does not mean we must abandon the teachings contained therein; rather it enhances our understanding. For instance, Jesus said ‘I have not come to destroy the law…I have come to fulfil it’. That is Hebrew idiom (did you know? I certainly didn’t!) To destroy the law means to teach against it; to fulfil the law means to teach its proper observance – which makes perfect sense when we know that on the end of that particular bit of teaching, Jesus added ‘Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 5v19). And this reflects the Old Testament teaching (and remember, Jesus and the Apostles didn’t have the New Testament!) in Deuteronomy 27v26:

Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them. And all the people shall say, Amen. 

See how knowing the cultural, religious and historical context actually aids our understanding?

My final ‘revelation’ this year was to realise (and finally fully understand) that the Lord and the Apostles really didn’t have a New Testament! That might seem obvious, but it came as a ‘revelation’ in that we always interpret the teachings of Christ in the light of what is written in the New Testament – the writings of Paul and Peter, the Gospels and so on. But Jesus and the Apostles actually only had the Old Testament – which meant that all the teachings of the New Testament can be found and understood with only an Old Testament in our possession! Wow! That was a real eye opener!

So my journey started along the path to understanding the Hebrew origins, the Jewish origins, of our Christian faith. And the journey continues….