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.
Industry Reviews
“Missions and missionaries have often been regarded as one-way conduits of the West and Western culture to the Middle East. Kenneth Bailey was a unique kind of missionary who also reversed this movement. Immersing himself for forty years in the main centers of Near Eastern culture—Egypt, Lebanon, and Palestine—he brought the Middle East to the West by re-reading the New Testament through Mediterranean eyes. Michael Parker’s book is a worthy scholarly tribute to Kenneth Bailey’s life and achievement.”
—George Sabra, president and professor of systematic theology, Near East School of Theology
“Drawing extensively upon primary sources, Michael Parker has crafted a lucid and engaging biography of the late Kenneth Bailey. Of chief importance, he describes how Bailey’s decades of living in the Middle East, serving as a missionary who made a concerted effort to understand traditional village culture, led him to penetrating insights into the New Testament. Parker is to be commended for a fine piece of work.”
—Michael T. Shelley, director emeritus, A Center of Christian-Muslim Engagement for Peace and Justice, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
“This is the remarkable story of a life we can only imagine. Michael Parker’s expert telling of Bailey’s life is enthralling and pulls us back to another era of courageous scholar-missionaries that today are few. Bailey was a missionary to the Arab world, but more, he was a missionary to the West, helping us see our Scriptures through the eyes of a world that originally produced them.”
—Gary Burge, professor emeritus of New Testament, Wheaton College
