Through Middle Eastern Eyes

A Life of Kenneth E. Bailey

Michael Parker

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9798385207794
  9798385207800
• eBook ISBN:
  9798385207817
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Biographies

Kenneth E. Bailey was both a missionary and a New Testament scholar. As a missionary, first in Egypt and later in Lebanon, Israel-Palestine, and Cyprus, he experienced firsthand the life of traditional Middle Eastern villagers, which led him to the conclusion that the village culture he witnessed in the twentieth century had hardly changed since the first century. Consequently, he was able to reinterpret Jesus's parables and life experiences through this traditional culture. In a remarkable series of acclaimed books, which include The Cross and the Prodigal, Jacob and the Prodigal, and Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes, Bailey showed that Jesus was the first mind of the New Testament who used story and metaphor to challenge the leaders of his day in ways often unappreciated by contemporary readers. This biography explains the origins of Bailey's key ideas and recounts his often fraught missionary career--one that included the austere and the sometimes harsh life in the simple villages of Upper Egypt, the perils of life in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), and being evacuated four times during the military conflicts in the region--that made possible his groundbreaking insights into the New Testament.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Prologue
• Chapter 1: The Bailey Family and the American Mission
• Chapter 2: Childhood and Education
• Chapter 3: Learning the Heavenly Language
• Chapter 4: Mission in Minia
• Chapter 5: Master’s Degree and Work with CEOSS in Minia
• Chapter 6: Immersion in Egyptian Culture and Ministry
• Chapter 7: Expulsion from Egypt and Furlough in Pittsburgh
• Chapter 8: At Home in the Paris of the Middle East
• Chapter 9: Doctorate from Concordia and The Cross and the Prodigal
• Chapter 10: A Fourth Arab-Israeli War, and Civil War Comes to Lebanon
• Chapter 11: Discerning the Poet in the Peasant
• Chapter 12: Seeing through the Eyes of Peasants
• Chapter 13: The Israeli Invasion of Lebanon
• Chapter 14: The Antiochian Missionary
• Chapter 15: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem
• Chapter 16: On the Island of Aphrodite
• Chapter 17: A Tale of Two Brothers, Redux
• Chapter 18: Seeing Anew through Middle Eastern Eyes
• Chapter 19: Chiasms Everywhere
• Chapter 20: The Shepherd King’s Thousand-Year Prologue
• Author’s Note and Acknowledgments
• Select Bibliography