week 1 db

Discussion Board 1 Case Study

The “Disciples’ Dialogue” Bible study group meets each week at the Common Grounds coffee shop for prayer, fellowship, and Bible study. The participants fluctuate with Daniel, William, Phyllis, and Sharon comprising the nucleus of the group. Each week one of the group takes the lead in the Bible study, presenting the fruits of their study and leading the ensuing discussion. This week, Daniel is leading the discussion on the Sermon on the Mount. Having gone through a period of “soul searching,” and sensing God’s call on his life, Daniel recently enrolled in Liberty University’s School of Divinity as an online student. Eager to share what he has been learning, he begins by emphasizing the thoroughly Jewishness context of the Sermon. He points out that the entire New Testament, not just the Sermon, assumes a first-century Jewish context, and that without an appreciation of that Jewish context, one is very likely to misunderstand and misinterpret the New Testament.

Sharon interrupts: “Daniel, with all due respect, I know that Jesus and his disciples were Jews, but people who know little or nothing of the Jewish context of the New Testament have been interpreting it for years!”

Daniel: “Yes, and often incorrectly!”

Sharon: “I know that Jesus was born a Jew, but he transcended that narrow cultural identity, didn’t he? He is the Savior of the world! Do we really need to know all that Jewish stuff to be able to understand Jesus and interpret the New Testament?”

Daniel: “Yes, Jesus, both as the Preexistent One and the Risen Lord, transcended his particular biological, cultural, and religious heritage, but the whole point of the Incarnation is that in Jesus, God took on “flesh and blood,” and flesh and blood cannot be unmoored from a specific biology, culture, and history. To be born into this world means to be born a particular person. That was no less true of Jesus than of you and me. Jesus was born in a particular place, at a particular time, among a particular people, speaking a particular language, and practicing a particular faith. Scholars call this ‘The Scandal of Particularity,’ and we cannot fully appreciate or understand Jesus, the disciples, or, indeed, the New Testament itself, without a knowledge of those particularities. When we open the New Testament, we have left our 21st century Gentile Christian world and entered the world of first-century Judaism. Without a knowledge of the New Testament’s world, we will very likely misunderstand and, perhaps, misinterpret it.”

Sharon: “Okay then, give me some examples of how an awareness of the New Testament’s Jewish setting and context is required to interpret it properly.”

Put yourself in Daniel’s place. How would you respond?