Friday, September 19, 2008

Freaky Friday

In my spare time I've been reading Philip Yancy's book "The Jesus I Never Knew". I have the great privilege of reading over my breakfast because we have no kids, and my Beloved goes to work early and lets me sleep in that extra hour after the alarm (I don't think he wants to talk to me until I've woken up properly on the off chance that I turn cranky and violent).

The thing I like about this book is that Philip Yancy tries to find examples to illustrate to us how the words of Jesus must have sounded to his first listeners, rather than interpreted through 2000 years of the Christian Church.

I ran into this quote about how the Jewish Sanhedrin would have viewed Jesus' claim that he could destroy the temple and rebuild it within three days, "Imagine the reaction today if an Arab ran through the streets of New York City shouting, 'The World Trade Centre will blow up, and I can rebuild it in three days'."

I thought that it was a pretty good illustration, but it doesn't have the unexpectedness that Jesus' words would have had. Just like the destruction of the Jewish Temple, we all know what happened to the World Trade Centre. Of course, before the 11th September 2001, it wouldn't have meant as much outside an American (or Financial guru-type-person) audience, as many of us in the rest of the world didn't know anything about the building before it was gone.

As a matter of interest I turned to the publishing details at the front of the book... 1995.

The chance that I'm not a little freaked out?

...Approximately None

2 comments:

Givinya De Elba said...

Hello Hip-Jen. Nice post, I'm not freaked out. It seems to be more like a good (and meaningful) example than prophesy.

And those who flew the planes into the WTC knew it was meaningful to Americans.

Or maybe they read Yancey's book and thought, "Now there's an idea ..."

Hmm, Nah.

Allegro ma non troppo said...

I like Yancy. "Disappointment with God" is so honest.

I'm interested in this book. Sound like a good one to read.