Joe Amaral
Autor de Understanding Jesus: Cultural Insights into the Words and Deeds of Christ
Sobre El Autor
Joe Amaral has traveled the world many times over as a sought-after Bible teacher and speaker as an Itinerant Minister. He has inspired congregations to better know Jesus and His teachings by having a deeper understanding of the world and time in which Jesus lived. Joe has also served as host and mostrar más director of a weekly TV program on Israel and its history. He is the author of Understanding Jesus and What Would Jesus Read?, and also acted as the daily host of Canada's longest-running daily TV show 100 Huntley Street and served as the Teaching Pastor of PORTICO Community Church in Mississauga. Joe Amaral founded the Christian Research Group in 2018. mostrar menos
Créditos de la imagen: Joe Amaral photo credit Karen Amaral
Obras de Joe Amaral
Story in the Stars [DVD] 1 copia
53:5 Minute Devotionals 1 copia
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
- Género
- male
Miembros
Reseñas
Estadísticas
- Obras
- 5
- Miembros
- 109
- Popularidad
- #178,011
- Valoración
- 3.8
- Reseñas
- 3
- ISBNs
- 11
However. I wouldn't really recommend this book. Granted, there are a couple of unique insights, but much of the material here could be gleaned from any number of respected Gospel commentaries (even including Amaral's scattered references to rabbinic traditions). So, one critique is that there was not much new here. Another key critique is that the book feels REALLY disjointed, almost as if Amaral was attempting to WRITE using rabbinic methods. This was really surprising, especially since you would think that a book about the life of Christ would already have a kind of "automatic" coherence; yet, somehow, by his random references to secondary research (I couldn't discern any consistent pattern), by his mish-mashed quotations from multiple Gospels and other biblical books, and a very odd use of heading structure, he made a naturally-cohesive book appear incoherent, uneven, and almost difficult. To be honest, it read more like a collection of blog posts than a coherent book (and perhaps it was meant to be read in smaller pieces).
But most troubling of all was Amaral's other agenda. Unfortunately, this book was NOT simply an exploration of Jesus' "Jewish roots"; it has a far more troubling aim of reintroducing the celebration of Jewish feasts as part of Christian worship and practice. As he says in his introduction: "The feasts were God's way of teaching His people about Himself. If they are God's teaching methods for us, then why are we not using them? How can we understand God and His plans by using our natural minds and by using our own plans? In order to better comprehend the things of God, the Western church needs to go through a radical transformation in these last days" (pp. 12-13).
To be fair, later in the same section, Amaral admits: "It is certainly true that we should never celebrate the feasts in order to achieve or augment our salvation. That was never God's intent for the feasts...We don't celebrate the feasts to impress God or to try to win His favor. We celebrate them because it reminds us of what He has done for us and what He is going to do" (p. 14). Note the assumptive tone.
Being part of a religious tradition that has seen some of its members depart into what has been colloquially dubbed a "Hebrew Roots" movement, Amaral's suggestions here are disturbing. First and foremost, this suggestion does not seem to settle well with the New Testament rejection of the idea that to be Christian requires one to become a Jewish proselyte who abides by the dictates of OT law (including festal observance, kosher food laws, etc). In reality, many of these ideas are simply the (barely) repackaged teachings of the Judaizers whom Paul so vehemently attacked in Galatians.
Secondly, and in a way perhaps more understandable to contemporary secular culture, I fear that Amaral's urging of Gentile adoption of Jewish practices is nothing more than a thinly-veiled transgressive act of cultural appropriation. We do no honor to the "Jewishness" of Jesus by simply pretending to be Jewish ourselves. I do think it's imperative for the broader Christian church to revisit its historic relationship to the Jews and to make proper restitution for wrongs that have been done to Jews in the name of Christ for centuries. I think Amaral's suggested approach merely "whitewashes" those issues in ways that are unhelpful and perhaps even more harmful.
Amaral's work does receive endorsement from noted NT scholar Craig Evans, so I've no real reason to doubt the accuracy of his claims about Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism (my expertise lying in other areas of biblical scholarship). So, in that sense, I believe this book is exegetically solid; however, I think in some places, Amaral "oversells" the depth of his insight and treats the common-place as "ground-breaking."
I find myself in the odd place where (pardon the double negative) I wouldn't NOT recommend it, but neither would I actually recommend it. If I meet a person who absolutely gushes over the wonderful insights of Joe Amaral, I think I'll simply say: "That's awesome! Say, have you ever heard of Craig Keener?"… (más)