“In the 1970s a friend gave me a copy of Kenneth Bailey’s The Cross and the Prodigal. I was blown away. It transformed my understanding of how to read the New Testament. Later I devoured Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes. Bailey’s basic thesis was that Middle Eastern peasant culture changes only very slowly. So if we want to understand the world that Jesus lived in, we should get to know Middle Eastern peasant culture today. He was an extraordinary Christian gentleman. One of my great privileges as an editor was to work with him and help spread his valuable work to thousands of others. His insight, integrity and friendship will be deeply missed.”
“Kenneth E. Bailey [was] the scholar who introduced evangelicals to Middle Eastern culture and history. Bailey gave Western readers “the eyes to see” the deeper significance of Jesus’ life and stories by placing them in the cultural context of the Middle East, publishing books like Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes and Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes, a 2012 Christianity Today Book Awards winner.”
“One of the most striking commentaries was on Jesus, as the Good Shepherd, who sought the one lost sheep even though it meant endangering the other 99, Bailey explains, by leaving them unprotected in the field. How else, he asks, could the individual sheep feel secure unless they knew that the shepherd would not leave them to die alone should they become lost? Bailey contrasts the Good Shepherd’s risky behavior for the sake of one sheep with that of 20th century dictators who, hardened by utilitarian ideologies, were willing to sacrifice millions to promote their versions of ‘the greater good.’ Seen in this light, who would not be awed and humbled by the Shepherd’s extravagant individualism? Bailey’s insights enrich and deepen our understanding of the New Testament while confirming essential, time-honored evangelical truths. Like the sheep in the 23rd Psalm, readers of Bailey will lie down in green pastures, encounter still waters and find their souls restored.”
“When a book like Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes (2008) sells about 75,000 copies, we know something is afoot. A movement has started. Almost single-handedly Ken Bailey restored the legitimacy of thinking about the Middle East as a constructive cultural source for the work of interpretation. In an era where the value of Arab culture is casually dismissed because of either conflicts with Israel or devastating civil wars following the Arab Spring, Bailey legitimized value and respect for these cultures. Plus he gave wide public recognition to the writings of ancient Middle Eastern theologians who often wrote in Syriac.”
“His writings shaped a generation’s worth of Sunday sermons on the Prodigal Son, and they challenged the old Christmas-pageant trope of the barnyard birth of Jesus. The Rev. Kenneth E. Bailey, who spent his career as a Presbyterian minister in the Arab world, is perhaps best remembered for what he brought home with him — insights into the Middle Eastern cultures and oral traditions that shape the Bible.”
“You’ve seen, heard, and sung the Christmas story so often you can recite it by heart, right? Mary’s going into labor as she and Joseph arrive in Bethlehem. A mean innkeeper says there’s no room in the inn but lets them camp out in a stable. Meanwhile, angels visit shepherds who are shivering in the fields. Now imagine yourself at a Christmas play, where, in the opening scene, the narrator says that Bethlehem is too small to support an inn. You watch a family lead farm animals inside their house. Mary and Joseph arrive, move in with this family and their beasts—and, three weeks later, still no Jesus.
That’s how things go in ‘Open Hearts in Bethlehem: A Christmas Musical Drama,’ written by Kenneth E. Bailey, who, also, by the way, says Jesus was born in summer or fall, not on December 25. By now you may wonder whether Bailey believes the Bible is true. He does, and so passionately that he’s devoted his life to helping Christians ‘strip away layers of interpretive mythology that have built up around biblical texts.’ In his most recent book, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels, Bailey compares Western interpretations of key texts, such as the Christmas story, to a diamond that needs cleaning to restore its original brilliance.”
Articles
- Kenneth E. Bailey, 1930--2016 / InterVarsity Press – Andy Le Peau
- Why the Christmas Story Bothered Me / InterVarsity Press – Andy Le Peau
- Kenneth Bailey, the Scholar Who Made Jesus Middle Eastern Again / Christianity Today
- Rev. Kenneth Bailey: Presbyterian Bible scholar, author / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
- Kenneth Bailey: A scholar with a new way of looking at the New Testament / Presbyterian Outlook
- Kenneth E. Bailey on Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes / Joan Huyser-Honig
- Kenneth E. Bailey: An Ambassador Serving the Middle East and the West / International Bulletin of Mission Research – Gary Burge
Reflections
The significance of Ken Bailey’s life as a gift from God to the World Christian Community
June 3, 2016 / Mercer, Pennsylvania
Many responses have come from around the world since Ken Bailey’s passing. I am impressed by how often the messages speak of Ken as a humble, gracious and kind gentleman. He was all of that and more, and he was also a proud man, but it was a holy pride. He took his vocation, his calling in the church, very seriously. But Ken would not have agreed to a eulogy in this service. He would say that this service should be about the grace of God as demonstrated in the resurrection of Jesus.
So instead of a eulogy, I want to reflect on “the significance of Ken Bailey’s life as a gift from God to the world Christian community.” There are many things that could be said, and I hope that you will use this occasion to say them to each other, but I will mention only three:
First, at a General Assembly luncheon ten years ago I was asked to introduce Ken. It seemed rather extravagant but I said, “Ken Bailey is the most important New Testament scholar in our generation.” I believe that even more today. Maybe not the best known or most decorated or occupant of the most prestigious chair in the most prominent seminary or university, but he was the most important New Testament scholar for the world Christian community. Fifteen years ago, Jim Walther, himself an excellent New Testament scholar at Pittsburgh Seminary said, “Ken’s work will be discovered and become widely influential fifty years from now.”
All of us have seen his study sheets in lectures that we have attended. Ken’s formatting of the text in chiastic form introduced us to understandings of Jesus parables that we had never seen before. He once presented a lecture in Australia on “Why Jesus never wrote a book.” His point was to affirm Jesus’ confidence in the accuracy of the oral transmission of his teaching in a Middle Eastern context he did not need to write a book for his teaching to be remembered. Fifteen years ago, N. T. Wright and James Dunn, both well-recognized world class New Testament scholars, acknowledged that they used Ken’s understanding of the oral tradition as the foundation of their work. Another New Testament scholar, highly regarded around the world, has said that it is beyond him to evaluate Ken’s work because he, like virtually all biblical scholars in the western church, is not fluent in Arabic nor can he read the ancient Aramaic and Syriac as Ken did.
We can all remember that it was from Ken that we learned that there was no mean innkeeper in Bethlehem! That small example from the Christmas story is hardly the tip of the iceberg of what we have begun to understand from Ken’s vast contextual knowledge. That’s why he was, first of all, the Bible teacher for the church, not the academy. Yet he was no amateur simpleton, but a scholar of the highest academic standard. That is why he was much in demand by pastors. He answered as many as 200 letters a year about New Testament questions (and he didn’t even use email until the last few years, and then with very few people). It is no wonder that his books and articles were translated into more than twenty languages, some of which we have never heard.
More than ten years ago [2003] Ken received a letter from a pastor in Nepal. A missionary there had given the pastor a couple of Ken’s videos. He and his wife were working among a tribal group. He wrote, “We have gone through intense persecution to the point even of death. God has protected us and given us His strength. We have several churches and pastors.” He wanted to learn more from Ken for the training of the pastors.
Secondly, when Ken and Mickey retired to New Wilmington twenty years ago his advisory committee became more active and eventually developed into the Foundation for Middle Eastern New Testament Studies (FoMENTS). The Board only met once or twice a year, but it was a feast with Ken preparing five to ten-page reports on what he had been writing, where he had been lecturing, and his emerging vision to make the cultural contribution of the ancient churches available to the world Christian community.
Ken was better known around the world and among Catholics, Anglicans and others than he was by Presbyterians. Averaging 150 lectures a year his ecumenical heart embraced the emerging church of the Global South. He delighted in telling us how the philosopher Descartes famously said, “I think, therefore I am,” but a pastor leading worship in the Middle East would say, “I am because we are” and the liturgical response of the people was, “we are because He is.”
Ken was among the earliest to see the decline of the church in Europe and North America in juxtaposition to the ascendency of the church in Asia, Africa and Latin America. He told the story of lecturing on preaching to a class in Beirut, encouraging them to avoid too many personal illustrations in their sermons. Ezekiel, a Dinka student from the south Sudan, wanting to make sure that he understood, asked if the professor was referring to a personal story like his. Ken asked him to tell the story.
“The government lit a fire in the high grass around our village and everyone panicked and ran. One terrified woman was so desperate that she threw her child into the grass and ran. I grabbed the child and it took me three days to find her. Can I tell that story?”
The class was hushed and Ken declared, “The professor is not qualified to teach this class.” Ken Bailey wrote and spoke for such students, and he embraced a deep ecumenicity. He knew better than most how desperately the church in the west needed partners like Ezekiel, the Dinka from south Sudan.
Finally, in the last conversation which Joan and I had with Ken he said, “It is important to support women leaders.” He spoke of Anne Zaki, an outstanding Egyptian woman teaching at Cairo Seminary. He had seen her on a video about the ISIS murders of poor Coptic workers in Libya. He was encouraging me to find a way to involve her in his Foundation for Middle Eastern New Testament Studies. Ken said, “We must work to encourage women leaders in the Middle East.” He had been doing that all his life. Time and again he returned, in his writing and his speaking, to what the New Testament said about women. His insights into scripture on gender issues were far more compelling than anyone else’s, or any extra-biblical analysis.
Those are simply three examples of the significance of Ken Bailey’s life as a gift from God to the world Christian community. I am sure that you are here because of Ken’s significance in your life. But it is also important to acknowledge what Ken made clear many times. Mickey, his wife of 64 years, was “the light in his darkness.” She had a major part in God’s gift to us all.
I want to conclude with the last paragraph of Ken’s final lecture at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge on January 12:
“The Church, living under the authority of Scripture, is not a snowman in grave danger of melting away because of the burning rays of a hot secular sun that is beating down upon it. Rather, it is the flock of God, saved by the Divine Shepherd who safely leads his sheep through angry waters to quiet inlets where the sheep can drink and be renewed…to go in and out as they live their lives and fulfill their ministries…having received amazing grace sufficient to overcome ‘many dangers, toils and snares.’ May it so be with us, today.”
A beginning reflection on "the significance of Ken Bailey’s life as a gift from God to the world Christian community.” Amen
Rev. David Dawson
Pastoral Prayer
Service of Witness to the Resurrection for Rev. Dr. Kenneth Bailey
June 3, 2016 / Mercer, Pennsylvania
All thanks and praise to you, O Lord – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – Lover, Beloved, and Love itself. All our best praise and thanks to you this day for every good gift you have given us in this life, some of the more precious of which we have just named:
your Holy Spirit,
your holy catholic Church,
the communion of your saints, the forgiveness of our sins;
and those most mysterious and marvelous gifts, to which we cling this day,
the resurrection of the body, and life, with you, everlasting.
All thanks and all praise, to you, for these. Like a father who risks reputation to welcome home a wayward son, like a mother who unwearyingly listens to supplications, the requests of her anxious child, you O Lord are more generous, more forbearing, more faithful than we have dared to pray or proclaim or practice. And so, on this day, in this hour, in this good space long dedicated to the proclamation of Jesus as Shepherd and Savior and your very Self in our midst, O how we bless you, O Lord, for sending us a Son ... and also for sending so many others in his wake who have helped us hear his word and notice his way.
For preachers and prophets;
for the tutelage of good teachers;
for the long hours of labor when faith seeks understanding;
for those who see and hear your living word and then
– with the fire of good news burning in their bones –
patiently and persistently help the rest of us to know and be known;
for those who before us peer into the vacated Friday tomb and behold your stunning promises,
who then come running back to us with that life-rearranging news of the Lord of life and the death of death;
for servants of your gospel and stewards of your living word, we say, thank you.
Thank you, O Lord, for your child and our brother, Kenneth Bailey. We will resist our temptation to revere him for his work, for that would be to miss his point and surely to invoke his holy ire, and yours—for he steadfastly pointed always and only to you. We will, however, surely bless you, and we will give you our reverence, for the son, husband, father, grandfather, preacher, teacher, scholar, servant, and friend in ministry he was to so many, around your world.
We bless you for well more than a half-century of wedded life and love and mutual ministry shared by Ken and Mickey, who bore witness to your covenant faithfulness by the steadfastness of their own vows. We bless you for the good hope of the resurrection to come, for that sturdy promise that holds son David and his many gifts in your good care, and likewise bolsters today daughter Sara, and husband Victor, with peace and promise and much ministry yet to do. We bless you for the ministry of a good grandfather, who also taught about matters not found in books or manuscripts, who bequeathed to his grandchildren good jokes, goofy moments, and the memories of split wood campfires and story upon story upon story. And so we pray for Kelcey and Cameron, and mother Leslie. Indeed, O Lord, confirm in the entire Bailey clan that peace which surpasses even the best of our understanding, and draw them together in that love which—like a strap of strong leather fashioned by a craftsman — binds them together in harmony and peace.
We are your Prodigal People, O Lord.
When at last we come to our shallow senses,
when finally we curse the far country of our wandering ways,
when the piggish pods of sentiment and platitude no longer preach,
you always welcome us home.
Thank you for lighting the lamp we call Jesus and searching your house for the likes of us. Thank you for risking even the safety of the saved, the 99 already in church, to go looking — like any good shepherd would — for those of us who have been that 1 lost sheep.
You have met us here in this communion this afternoon. And likewise we pray for communions of your saints everywhere your gospel abides: in villages across rural Egypt, in classrooms in Lebanon, among student saints in Palestine and Israel, in fellowships of believers from Cyprus to Shenango and everywhere in between, among Anglicans and Orthodox and Presbyterians and prodigals of every stripe and tribe ... bless every place, far and wide, where the name of Jesus is now better known.
And in his name, we now pray his prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.
Rev. Ralph Hawkins