Page organizes this revealing combination of commentary and travelogue into four chapters. He begins by reminding the reader of the general history of the land. Chapter 2 focuses on the prelude to Jesus' ministry, exploring the birth narratives, customs in the first century related to childbirth and the rearing of children, and the events leading to the beginning of his ministry and his move to Galilee. Chapter 3 explorers Jesus' Galilean ministry, and chapter 4 examines Jesus' final days on earth.
Jesus and the Land is a book to meander through slowly, to pause and absorb, not because the reading is difficult, but because the insights are plentiful. Page invites readers to revisit the familiar stories and places of the gospels with first-century eyes, to hear Jesus' words with first-century ears, and explore the landscape as a first century Jew. To accept that invitation is to enter the gospels with a new understanding.
Our twentieth-century reading of the gospels misses many of the implications of a passage which would have had meaning for a first-century hearer. For example, in those days, to offer another person a drink of water was an act of hospitality and also a social contract; this act of hospitality required the giver and the receiver to be friends for one year. A first-century reader would have known this. In John 4, where Jesus asked the woman at the well for water and offered her living water, a first-century reader would have immediately known that more was going on than just the quenching of physical thirst; Jesus was offering her friendship in the act of asking for water.
The passage becomes further illuminated when other cultural customs and religious requirements are known: a man was forbidden to speak to a woman in public unless she was his wife; Jewish people thought Samaritans were spiritual outcasts and untouchables; the woman was ritually unclean since she was living with someone who was not her husband; a Jew, especially a rabbi, would not come into contact with a person who was unclean for fear of personal contamination. These things made Jesus' offer to the woman even more appalling--and his love even more radical. But there is more. "Living water" was a very familiar phrase in the first century, a phrase that had a very specific association. Each new insight leads to another, and this is just one passage.
Have you ever wondered why the Sabbath healings caused great controversy in most places but did not in Capernaum? Have you pondered why Jesus sometimes says that He was sent only for the Jews or "for the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matt. 15:23), and in other places he says clearly that he was sent for all the world? Have you questioned why Jesus would have healed a man and then told him "no" when the man begged to come with Him (Mark 5:1-20)? What is the significance of the woman touching the "fringe" of Jesus' garment? What does Jesus mean when he talks of having faith the size of a grain of mustard seed and being able to move mountains? Page provides the background to help readers gain insight into these questions and many more.
In the forward to Jesus and the Land, Page says: "If Jesus is to matter at all, we must see and know him as he was. If his message is to have relevance in a complex technological age, we must hear his message clearly." Page helps this to happen. For anyone to whom Jesus matters--student, teacher, or seeker--Charles Page has provided a valuable resource that helps us know Jesus better and hear his message more clearly.
Roberta Parker Martin is a pastor and frequent traveler in the Holy Land who lives in Starkville, MS.
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