Every disciple imagines Jesus; reading the Gospels we form images of him and of his surroundings. This has been constant practice for those who desire to know him more clearly. We, however, borrow stuff–from stained glass windows, book illustrations, and the like–which is always familiar to us, but which reflects our, not his, culture. This book invites readers to construct different scenarios about Jesus and his world from the study of his ancient culture.
We do this with accuracy because of the advance of cultural studies of his and our worlds. Jesus should look different (wear different clothing, experience different grooming), in settings foreign to us (in houses and boats from his own world). Jesus should speak differently so that the meaning of his words can only be known in his culture.
In this book readers travel through the Gospels with specific suggestions about what to see, namely, Jesus in his cultural world. Imagining Jesus also suggests how to listen to him in his cultural language. Did Jesus laugh? How did he pray? This is what the incarnation means: imagining Jesus socialized in a particular culture, at a time foreign to us and in a language strange to us.
About the author
Douglas E. Oakman has been with the faculty of Pacific Lutheran University since 1988. Prior to that he taught at Santa Clara University, the University of San Francisco, and San Francisco Theological Seminary. He was chair of the Religion Department from 1996-2003 and Dean of Humanities from 2004-2010. Oakman has published numerous articles applying the social sciences to biblical studies. He is the author of Jesus and the Economic Questions of His Day (1986), with K. C. Hanson the award-winning Palestine in the Time of Jesus (second edition, 2008), Jesus and the Peasants (Cascade Books, 2008), The Political Aims of Jesus (2012), and Jesus, Debt, and the Lord’s Prayer (Cascade Books, 2014). Oakman is an ordained minister on the roster of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. During the 1990s, he participated in archaeological excavations at Jotapata and Cana in Galilee.
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