Thursday, October 19, 2006

Book Review: Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus

Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus by David Bivin and Roy B. Blizzard

There are many expressions in the Gospels which are difficult to understand, and many which are so familiar we think we know what they mean. But do we? This book approaches the Gospels from a unique hermeneutical angle. The thesis is that Hebrew, not Aramaic or Greek, was the language of the common people in the first century C.E. They postulate that an account of Yeshua's life was originally written in Hebrew and later translated into Greek, as the need arose, and eventually this morphed into the three synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Many Hebraic sayings and idioms appear to be translated word-for-word into Greek, with confusing consequences for modern English readers. They believe the original chronology of the gospels has become jumbled, and therefore these parables and teachings have lost their original contexts.

I would recommend this book to anyone who would like a greater understanding of the cultural context of the Gospels, and to anyone who has come away from a parable of Yeshua with more questions than answers.

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 6, Page 88:

"The kingdom of God has come near you.

"In Hebrew, 'to come near' means 'to be at.' If we try to understand Luke 10:9 and 11, quoted above, by reading the Greek word engiken (translated 'has come near') we are in trouble. Engiken means 'about to appear' or 'is almost here'. However, if we translate it back into Hebrew, we get an entirely different meaning. The Hebrew equivalent of engiken is the verb karav, which means 'to come up and be with' or 'to be where something or someone else is.'

"The Greek engiken, or the English, 'near,' mean: 'It's not yet here.' The implication is that the Kingdom of God is futuristic, not yet here. The Hebrew karav means the exact opposite: 'It's here! It has arrived!' "

This book is available at Beth Shechinah.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

great example... really illustrates the point dramatically. "It is finished!" Here and now - these are the concepts most Christianity finds hard to digest.