Deeper Truths: A study featuring lessons from Kenneth Bailey’s book,
Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes
A 12-week study: This on 12 March 2026
Lesson 3: The Birth of Yeshua (Part 1 of 2)
Given on Zoom
Led by Bob Mendelsohn
Preliminaries
This week we continue our study of the person of Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes with the help of Kenneth Bailey and what he wrote in his book of that title. Bailey is a myth-buster who seeks to correct misimpressions and false narratives by honestly looking at the historical, theological, cultural realities of his six foci. Those we began looking through in the four chapters on the Lord’s Prayer the last couple of weeks. Tonight we join Bailey in Chapters 1 through 4, and investigate the story of Jesus, from his very beginning. At least his birth, not so much his pre-existence. After all, it’s impossible to talk about the beginning of the Triune God of the Universe, since He is the Alpha and Omega, the one who has no beginning.
Our study tonight
The book is made up of six parts, in order: (1) the birth of Jesus, (2) the Beatitudes, (3) the Lord’s Prayer, (4) the dramatic actions of Jesus, (5) Jesus and women, and (6) the parables of Jesus.
Tonight, I plan to cover all four chapters, including the narratives and the mistakes and assumptions about the wise men, the inn, the manger, thoughts on redemption itself, and finally responses by certain folks.
That’s a lot to get through, so let’s pray.
Prayer
Birth narrative and errors
Bailey cautions “the more familiar we are with a biblical story, the more difficult it is to view it outside of the way it has always been understood” (Page 25). Earlier this week, I put up a Facebook post and then put it on my Tiktok and YouTube about ‘convention’. It was Bailey whose quote here got me thinking about ‘what I’ve always been told’ about Christmas. But it’s just plain wrong. And his book showcases the errors.
We went out of order in discussing Bailey’s book, but that’s ok. They are modular after all. So we already covered section 3 on the Lord’s Prayer. Tonight we look at Part 1 of 6, which is “The Birth of Jesus”, and the first chapter incorporates material that had previously been accessible only in a journal article, expanding and supplementing it not only with additional text but also with more sketches of what typical rural homes in Israel were like back then. Among scholars, Bailey’s argument about the cultural background of these stories, and in particular the likelihood that Jesus was born in a rural peasant home rather than an “inn”, has been found persuasive not only because of the points Bailey makes about the cultural setting (including the nature of hospitality and travel in this part of the world in the first century and even today, and the fact that feeding troughs (or mangers) were and are typically found in homes rather than separate barns or stables), but also because the term for a commercial “inn” is not found in the story.
The visitors Joseph and pregnant Mary would have been welcomed by neighbours, by relatives, by most anyone in the town of David. Hospitality, especially table fellowship, is the norm in those days. This is still key for me in evangelism.
I’m sure many of you were surprised at the information about construction of houses in those days, with two rooms, one the large family room where they ate, socialized, slept and cooked. The other room was perhaps a few steps below, separated by some timber, and into that room barnyard animals were brought in to bunk down for the night. Those animals provided extra warmth in the winter and were also protected from theft by being inside. I liked the reference to 1 Samuel chapter 28 and the layout of the house that is very similar to what we read in Bailey. Even in verse 24, where the sacrifice animal was ‘in the house.’ The presentation of the evidence and the likely meaning of the relevant details in Luke’s story are here made available to a wider audience.
Also the reference to Jephthah and the first thing to exit his house on his return that he would sacrifice, well he had to be thinking that the animals were in the house and would be worthy and proper to sacrifice as well.
“Jephthah made a vow to the LORD and said, “If You will indeed give the sons of Ammon into my hand, then it shall be that whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the sons of Ammon, it shall be the LORD’S, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering.” (Judg 11.30-31)
By the way, I do not believe Jephthah killed his daughter. That would be horrible and evil and against everything moral. Why would the women of Israel celebrate something about her four days every year?
We read, “At the end of two months she returned to her father, who did to her according to the vow which he had made; and she had no relations with a man. Thus it became a custom in Israel, that the daughters of Israel went yearly to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in the year.” (Judg. 11.39-40)
No, Jephthah had no progeny from his daughter. She ended her days a virgin without child and that was the blow to him that was a sacrifice. He did not kill his daughter.
The pictorial imagery is clearer and helps us get the Christmas story right again.
Some of you will know the name Dolly Parton, the American icon of country music. You may not know of her philanthropy and generosity, but it’s evident to most of American. When she was young living in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, just down the road from where I am currently in Nashville, she and her family lived like those in ancient Israel. Family? There were 12 children and the parents in a two room, that is, 1 bedroom and 1 family room, small house in the countryside. Rustic is a generous term for it. Seeing Dolly’s family home helps me consider the birthplace of our Messiah.
Bailey comments about Joseph’s lineage. And Joseph was likely from Bethlehem, since he had royal blood from King David, and he would have been known by some local tribal peoples. I like Bailey’s comments about the phrase “House of David” meaning ‘family’ and not a building.
I have elsewhere read that Mary was likely originally from Nazareth and Joseph, I believe, wanted to protect her from the shame of being pregnant without a marriage ceremony. (resource: Adam Hamilton’s book: Faithful: Christmas through the eyes of Joseph Taking her to his family’s region south in Bethlehem, just miles from Jerusalem, would have guaranteed her more privacy and less gossip, I should think.
Bailey takes on the ideas of the manger and helps us get it that this was more of a guest room, and says that there is no word used in the story for commercial ‘inn’ in those days, but again it’s the guest room notion. I found a good blog that might make Bailey even clearer: https://credohouse.org/blog/a-revised-christmas-story-13-things-we-often-get-wrong-about-the-nativity if that helps you.
My takeaway from the mistakes that both Michael Patton and Kenneth Bailey show us is that convention is often deeper than we can imagine. Take some other conventions. Why do we sit in pews and look at the back of the man in front of us and call that church fellowship? Why do we consider deacons to be of lower category and more like blue-collar folks and certainly not preachers, whereas Philip and Stephen, two of the first seven deacons named in the Word, were powerful preachers, and Stephen the first martyr, whose sermon in the book of Acts may be the longest one recorded in the entire Newer Testament! Why do we almost always start church services with singing and make the sermon the ‘big finish?’ All of these are conventions, but not necessarily divine.
Redemption is the story
Back to the birth narratives. I like the stressing of the salvific nature of the Messiah and the redemption story itself. As messianic Jews, we often stress this in our evangelism with our fellow Jews. It’s not hard to note the political situations in which First Century Jews found themselves. Oppressed by the Romans, without freedom to live outside their observations, most Jewish people then would have said the role of the Messiah to come was that of deliverance, from Roman rule and oppression. In the same way the Pharaoh represented the evils of Gentile governments ever since the time of the Exodus, Jewish people have longed for such a redemption.
Anyone who has seen the stage or movie version of “Fiddler on the Roof” would quickly add the evidence of something similar with the Russian constable who brings about the pogrom on the village of Anatevka first at the wedding of Tevya’s daughter Tzeitel to the tailor Motel Kamzoil, then the expulsion of all the Jews at the play’s end. Redemption is national or at least regional, and it has to do with governments that are ruinous and harmful to Jews, and getting them off our necks or backs.
To aver that redemption is personal and about sins, and freedom from sins, is shocking to any ordinary Jewish person. Honestly, most Jews I know would shake off their own need for such deliverance from sin, unless we are nearer the High Holidays in September. During that time, maybe more Jewish people would admit to having a sin problem, but no, it would not be what the Messiah came or would be coming to fix.
Luke 1 quotes Zechariah, “Salvation FROM OUR ENEMIES, And FROM THE HAND OF ALL WHO HATE US; To show mercy toward our fathers, and to remember His holy covenant, The oath which He swore to Abraham our father, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear.” (.71-74)
I remember marching when I was 11 years old in front of the Jewish community centre in Kansas City, holding a placard which read “Free Soviet Jewry” and the issue I had, and we as a protest had, was that Russian speaking Jewish people were not free to practice our religion. We were traumatized by the KGB and threatened with more violence and pain. We in the West were demanding the freedom of deliverance-- nationally, collectively, but not individually.
Genesis 3 is often cited as the protoevangelium, the first mention of the Good News in the record of the Scripture. There we see the prediction, announced by God to the serpent in the Garden of Eden, that the future serpent-bruiser, the Messiah, as he would later be labelled, would ‘crush the head of the serpent.’ (.15) That was not an indicator of St George killing dragons or St Patrick chasing snakes out of Ireland. Yes, that was a picture of conquest, but no, it wasn’t about dragons or snakes. It was about sin, and Satan himself. The future Messiah would conquer the evil One, and the real problem of separation from the Lord, which is sin itself. The Messiah would come to take away our sin and bring us back into relationship with the Lord of Life.
Bailey highlights this in the play-on-words of the name of Messiah in Matthew 1. “You shall call his name Yeshua, for he will save his people from their sins.” The name Yeshua means Saviour, or God saves, and the redundancy is consciously memorable like all the children of Israel named, for a characteristic. “Leah said, “How fortunate!” So she named him Gad.” (Gen. 30.11) or again, “And you shall call his name Ishmael, because the LORD has given heed to your affliction.” (Gen. 16.11)
Being named something will ever have the attention of the parents, the children, even the child himself, to remember the cause or the feelings at the time of the birth.
Thus Yeshua would yasha, that is, Jesus would save. This was intentional to remind us two millenia later, and also to remind him of his mission even in Gethsemane 30 years later. “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” (Matt. 28.39)
Cast of characters
Some have said, that perhaps the most provocative is his discussion about the shepherds in the context of Middle Eastern hospitality. If the shepherds had found Joseph, Mary and the baby huddling in a stable, they would have insisted they come and stay in their own homes. I liked that. Hospitality is mandatory in that region at that time.
They had been told by the angel to go see the baby and they did and they left rejoicing. In fact, the shepherds were instrumental in encouraging Mary particularly. She heard what they told her, and the Word says, she “treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.” (Luke 2.19) And the end of the shepherd’s visit we read, “The shepherds went back, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen, just as had told them.” (2.20)
I love the way Luke does what so many writers in the Bible accomplish. He lists the cast of characters. It’s as if the Lord wants everyone, everywhere to find herself or himself in the text. Here we see the lowly, the unsophisticated, the uneducated, dirty shepherds. They are outsiders. They are Jews, but not the leadership. Just some rag-tag fellows, who said, “Let us go to Bethlehem” to see what God had shown them. What does that mean? That no one who is uneducated is unable to find God. It means the lowly are not so low that they cannot find the High and Exalted One. No one is out of God’s reach. If you will, this book, the Bible, is about being included, not excluded.
Oh, to be fair, this same book teaches exclusions. Those who turn away from God miss him. Those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit are not forgiven.
But those who wait on the Lord, who wait patiently for him, whose hope is in the Lord, they shall renew their strength. The woman caught in adultery. The leper on the side of the road. The blind man. The lame man by the pool. Half breeds. Gentiles like Cornelius. The list goes on and on, but I won’t. There is no one who cannot be included in the realm, in the Kingdom of the Lord of Life.
Zoom in on Matthew
Matthew begins his genealogy, his whole Gospel account, with a list of folks who should not be in the ranks of the Messiah. If you had an ancestry that included traitors and no-good-niks, and they were terrible people, who did bad things… if those were in your line, would you list them and publish their names so that others would see? When you can, perform a study on the people of Matthew 1, and see the people, not only the women, but so many of that genealogical list are embarrassing folks. But Matthew records them. What can that mean?
For that, you have to remember who Matthew himself is. He is a former tax-collector. I know that we are approaching April, and that means you might be thinking about the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) For non-Singaporeans, that is the main government agency responsible for tax collection, managing corporate tax, individual income tax, property tax, and GST. Taxpayers must file, pay, and manage inquiries through the myTax Portal, with deadlines typically in April for individuals.
Also in the US, 15 April is the deadline for filing income tax returns to the IRS for the previous 12 months.
We know that in the First Century Jewish world that the tax collectors were a despised people group, who made their living on the backs of their own people. Overcharging the ordinary Jew and underpaying to the Roman overlords.
Tax collectors (sometimes labelled publicans) in Jesus’ time were Jews hired by the Roman Empire to collect taxes from their own people, making them despised as traitors, extortionists, and ritually unclean sinners. Often corrupt, they used Roman authority to demand excessive payments, pocketing the surplus. Despite this, Jesus frequently associated with them, even calling Matthew to be an apostle.
Because they worked with Gentiles and handled unclean money, they were ceremonially impure, shunned socially, and considered on the same level as thieves and sinners.
Other disciples
Now when Matthew was called (Matt. 9.9) he got up from his tax office at IRAS and followed Messiah. Just left. Like the fishermen before him who left their fathers and their boats and their lives as they knew them. Abandoned all to follow Messiah. But think about the who’s who in the band of the apostles, those apprentices walking with Yeshua. Peter the fisherman and Matthew who used to tax him and basically rob him and then pay off the Roman leadership and informants. It was a lose-lose relationship. Yeshua called them both to walk with him. And to walk together.
Think about another apostle, Simon the Zealot, particularly. Zealots were keen to rid Judea of all things Roman. The subset of zealots, the knife men, the Sacarii, sought to murder Roman soldiers ‘privately.’
Imagine the first home group gathering of Peter, Matthew and Simon the Zealot and what conversations they might have shared together. It is not only that Yeshua chose a motley crew; it was a self-defeating club with hostility and oppositional viewpoints. Like a Tory joining the fellowship with a Labour leader. Like a staunch US Democrat hanging out with a Trump cabinet member. That’s how different the disciples were.
And yet, they worked together. And each of us on this call are members of congregations with people of different convictions and backgrounds. We are called to worship together, to learn together, to love one another. Read the Sermon on the Mount again, “if you love those…what reward do you have?”
Why did Matthew include ‘those’ women?
The genealogy of Matthew Chapter 1 fascinates me. I’ve already mentioned the listing includes less-than-noble folks. But what I didn’t show you was the women listed. Bailey highlights the four (not Mary). Remember, Jewish genealogies don’t usually list the mothers. Only the father. My name is Reuven ben Eliayahu. Isaac was the son of his father Abraham. Caleb is the son of Yefuneh of the tribe of Judah. You get it. Men have children.
Now I understand biology; I have three adult children and seven grandkids. But biblically, men have the children. So that Matthew lists 5 different women, and each with a questionable backstory shouts to me.
Bailey doesn’t mention this, but you have to see Matthew 21 or this will not make sense.
“Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him; but the tax collectors and prostitutes did believe him; and you, seeing this, did not even feel remorse afterward so as to believe him. (Mt. 21.31-32)
Matthew alone includes this quote. Matthew alone of the apostles was a tax collector. He alone felt this citation deep inside his heart. He knew his own sin. And he equated his ill-repute with that of prostitutes. He was saying of himself that he was a low-life.
Matthew kept this teaching of Yeshua in his heart and included it here in chapter 21, but he hinted at it in his genealogy.
The women in the genealogy included Tamar (a Gentile with a disreputable patriarch father-in-law), Rahab (another Gentile, a harlot inn-keeper who saved Jews after the Exodus, Ruth (a Moabite Gentile, who joined up with Jews after her husband died), and Bathsheba (an immodest neighbour of King David) who was married to a Gentile, and was unfaithful. None of these are clean slate folks.
Mary of course is the 5th woman listed and Bailey mentions that she is a faithful woman and as such likely not an immodest person. But the uproar she would have caused in Nazareth or in Bethlehem and to this day (the narratives about the genealogy of Yeshua are a regular comment in Jewish circles) would have lined her up with the ill-reputes of the other 4.
Bailey does highlight the “neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female” (Galatians 3.28) comprehensive ingathering of all folks, the ‘whoever’ of the Bible. God is an equal opportunity Saviour, amen?
If we miss this, and it’s blaring, right at the beginning of the anthology of biographies of the Messiah in the Newer Testament, then we miss grace. I believe Matthew is relieved when he writes this. I see him leaning back after each episode is considered. Remember, he doesn’t include every generation from Abraham to Yeshua. I see him leaning back and pondering, and saying to himself, “And yet… God used that one.” He is thinking and rethinking the story lines and saying, “If God can override all that this person did, then yes, God can override all the evil that I did, and … there is grace.”
You see, this genealogy is about grace. Oh, certainly it’s a list that is a validation. Every person who stands up and says that he is a candidate for messiahship has to be qualified. Which means anything that could disqualify him has to be presented.
Matthew knows his sins, and he had imagined them the great disqualifying agent to prevent his usefulness to the Almighty. But God loves him and called him. There is no ‘other shoe’ about to drop. He is welcomed by Messiah. He is part of the family of God. Tax collectors and prostitutes will get in before the obviously righteous. Matthew is relaxing. The phrase, “it is finished” is heard again and again in his heart. “I’m forgiven” Hallelujah!
Responding to the Light
What about the responses of Herod, the magi, Anna and Simeon?
Bailey’s writing highlights the people of the story. And usually Herod is omitted. Keeping him in the story sharpens the comparison of Moses with Jesus and our author reminds us of “suffering and the depth of evil that Jesus came to redeem” (page 99)
From where did the magi come?
The Bailey book deeply covers much of this, and I encourage you to dig deep into that. Whether the magi were Arabs from Arabia or from Persia, it’s interesting, and one can draw much from either (especially as Bailey links the former with Isaiah 60). The key to me is that if they are Persian, which I think, then it speaks of the biblical deposit that Esther and Mordecai as well as Daniel left in the land there, and encourages me as a missionary to keep depositing in Singapore and in Nashville and wherever I travel, so that in due course, those seeds will bear much fruit. And let that sink in for you tonight, that we should be about the Father’s business and pass it on as well.
If they are Arabians, then it also speaks of God’s massive love for former Moabites, Midianites, other tribes of peoples, Gibeonites, etc, and that no one is to be excluded.
Finally Anna and Simeon were Temple faithful. She was 84; he was aged as well (Luke 2.25-38). They prophesied and proclaimed truths in the Temple and to the parents of Yeshua. They represented the insiders of Judaism, and they saw in Messiah: the hope of Israel, the consolation (Simeon in .25), the redeemer (Anna in .38).
God’s inclusion of shepherds and magi, of Simeon and Anna, in the Temple, and of angels and …the list goes on, and keeps going throughout the Gospels and throughout the world of Singapore and China, of Hong Kong and Perth, Australia, here in Nashville, Tennessee, and Tel Aviv and Cairo… God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3.16) No one is left out. Whoever.
Joel the prophet had said that. Paul the Apostle quotes Joel in Romans 10. “For the Scripture says, “WHOEVER BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him; for “WHOEVER WILL CALL ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED.”(10.11-13)
Five Summary Thoughts from tonight:
1) Gentiles in the family of God are not an afterthought. From the beginning, God has wanted all the earth to praise him. Same can be said of women. (really … all people!) No one is left out.
2) Hospitality is normal for God’s people; table fellowship is standard in biblical community, especially as relates to evangelism
3) Don’t let convention rule in your experience or theology, but let the Spirit of the Lord guide you
4) Suffering is as much a part of the Christmas story as the pastels and soft Silent Nights that are usual. Herod’s murders, even Simeon’s prediction of the piercing soul support this.
5) Depositing biblical information is a big part of discipleship in these days. Listen, learn, inwardly digest the Word of God, and then pass it on. Who knows if it will work, or when it will work.
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Questions that have come since I wrote this:
1) “Which Messianic bible version is more accurate in translation, closer to ancient manuscript?
Here’s the thing about accuracy and translation. Ever since Tyndale and Wycliffe, since King James and 1901… new translations come and keep on coming. There is no single "most accurate" Bible translation, as the choice depends on whether one prioritizes a word-for-word (formal equivalence) approach or a thought-for-thought (dynamic equivalence) approach. However, for in-depth study and technical accuracy, the New American Standard Bible (NASB) is widely considered the most literal, followed closely by the English Standard Version (ESV), the Christian Standard Bible (CSB) and the New King James Version (NKJV).
The Tree of Life Version (TLV) is a modern Bible translation created by Messianic Jewish and Christian scholars, designed to restore the Hebrew roots, context, and culture of the Scriptures. It uses original Hebrew names (e.g., Yeshua for Jesus), follows the traditional Jewish order of the Old Testament, and is considered accurate, readable, and reverent. Their goal is to bridge the gap between Christians and the Jewish roots of their faith, as well as to bring the gospel to Jewish people.
Jews for Jesus produced a Chronological Life Application Study BIble
2) Do you agree Ethiopian bible has the complete bible books, with apocrypha books, more recommended?
Our Bible has 66 books. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church Bible is the most complete, containing 81–88 books, including Enoch, Jubilees, and Maccabees, making it significantly broader than Western canons. It is considered highly valuable for studying ancient biblical, apocryphal, and deuterocanonical texts, such as Book of Enoch and Book of Jubilees, which survive fully only in Ge'ez.
3) Do you agreed apocrypha books should be included as part of the complete bible canon?”
No. Even though several books commonly identified as part of the Apocrypha (or Deutero-canonical books) and Pseudepigrapha were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, they are useful for background, but they are not canon. Specifically, fragments of Tobit (in Aramaic and Hebrew), Sirach (Wisdom of Ben Sira, in Hebrew), and the Letter of Jeremiah (in Greek) were discovered, indicating their usage among the Qumran Essene community. These texts were found alongside biblical books, suggesting that for the Qumran community, the definition of authoritative scripture was broader than the later finalized Hebrew Bible and certainly the Protestant Bible as well.
It is clear that there is interesting and sometimes very useful historical or cultural information, but it’s not recognized by either the Jewish or Protestant authorities.
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