Reading the Bible with Rabbi Jesus: How a Jewish Perspective Can Transform Your Understanding

by Lois Tverberg

The word he used there for “nations” was goyim, which carries the sense of “Gentiles,” or non-Jews.

If a person exerts himself and ascends to the summit, it is possible to reach it, while not being there. He stands on the summit of the mountain, but his head is somewhere

to be fully present, in body, mind, and spirit.

Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic (in voting

The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity,

A truly great little book for understanding cultural differences is Sarah Lanier’s

Foreign to Familiar: A Guide to Understanding Hot- and Cold-Climate Cultures (Hagerstown, MD: McDougal Publishing, 2000).

that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations,

You could say that Hebrew expresses truth by splashing on bold colors with a

broad brush, like van Gogh. Even though the details are quite rough, you mentally fill them in, inferring them from the context. Your mind is used to figuring out meaning from context. Even in English we sketch

out a scene with a few “word strokes” and let listeners figure out the rest. Instantly we recognize the difference between getting a run in baseball, getting a run in y...

Imagine yourself as a Bible translator who is “repainting” a scene into English. If you aim to translate word-for-word, you can only use one stroke of your brush...

you have to trade your wide Hebrew “brush” for a fine-tipped English “brush,” and your color palette isn’t quite the same. English may have more hues to choos...

overtone within the original swath of color. What will you do? Most likely, the result of your efforts will show people the overall scene but it won’t quite cap...

translator would bring out different shades and overtones from the exact same text. Certainly, some renderings will be better than others, but it simply isn’t possible to perfectly reproduce a painting with a different palette and different brushes. This is why there will never be one solitary, “best” translation of the Bible that re...

text? Rather than clinging to one translation, you’ll actually get a clearer idea if you read from more than one version and then compare them. Read from a few major ...

for-word and then look at some that are more thought-for-thought. When you see the range of ways that artists “paint” the same passage, you’ll start to get a better s...

Son of David would build a “house” for the Lord. Building

Without having the word stingy, Hebrew speaks of being “tight-fisted” or of having a “bad eye”—being unable to see the needs of the person right in front of you.

Living without abstract terminology

did not prevent the Bible’s writers from expressing profound thoughts; it inspired them to paint colorful word pictures instead.

When we forgive a person, we need to choose to put aside our grievances, and often we need to do that over and over again

as the memory returns to our minds.

With my scientific, analytical training, I grew up very much focused on

seeing Christian faith as a set of beliefs. I had inherited the Greeks’ love of ideas, so I saw religion as a list of doctrinal bullet points to be affirmed. But what if I removed my Greek spectacles? What would faith

look like from a Hebraic p...

I conceived of belief as mental assent to abstract statements of truth. My thinking was actually quite close to the gnostics, ancient

heretics who misunderstood the gospel to say that what was essential to salvation was knowing certain spiritual truths, which would unlock the secret knowledge of the heavens.

because my word finds no place in you.

At the same moment that Jesus speaks of his father granting him a kingdom, he identifies himself as the “one who serves.” The connection here seems undeniable. Jesus is claiming to be both the King of Kings and the Servant of Isaiah 53.

let him hear,” he was calling us to put his words into action, not just listen (Matt. 13:9).