The Forgotten Jesus

Starred review from April 3, 2017
In this short work, Gallaty, senior pastor of Long Hollow Baptist Church in Hendersonville, Tenn., fleshes out the Jewishness of Jesus and suggests that familiarity with the Jewish faith is crucial to understanding Jesus’s life and teachings. Beginning with the typical representations of the Messiah in the Hebrew scriptures and then presenting their fulfillment in the Gospel accounts, the author digs beneath the text to discover a rich tapestry of meaning based on Jewish life and custom that can be overlooked by a surface reading of the text. Gallaty persuasively catalogues nuanced readings of ancient Greek text that will be completely missed without knowledge of the ancient traditions of the Hebrews that drove their telling of the gospel story. How many know the interesting history behind “swaddling cloths,” and what is the meaning of “touching the hem of his garment”? Questions like these are answered with an eye toward broadening the reader’s understanding of the Jesus story in this informative text, which closes with a 52-week Bible reading schedule.