Engaging Jesus with Our Senses: An Embodied Approach to the Gospels
Digital Logos Edition
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Jesus took on flesh—he was embodied. And the Gospels use multisensory language to reveal that his teaching, ministry, and interactions with people engaged the senses. Consider the raging storm on the Sea of Galilee, the perfume filling the house as Mary anointed Jesus’s feet, the significance of touch as Jesus healed people. Jesus even described himself in sensory terms--as the bread of life, the light of the world, the vine to whom his disciples are connected. Our physical senses are crucial to gaining knowledge of the world around us. Yet when it comes to Bible reading, we often reduce it to a mere cognitive experience, ignoring the Psalmist’s invitation to “taste and see that the Lord is good.”
This book offers a fresh way to read the Gospels with an emphasis on embodiment, focused on a life abiding in Christ. The goal is a greater, more tangible knowledge of God. Jeannine Hanger points to the importance of engaging our physical senses in Bible reading, shows an approach to doing so with an emphasis on sparking the imagination, and looks at how utilizing our primary senses plays out in reading the Gospels. Each chapter includes sensory practices and questions for personal reflection. The book includes a foreword by Grant Macaskill.
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- Includes sensory practices and questions for personal reflection
- Points to the importance of engaging our physical senses in Bible reading
- Offers a fresh way to read the Gospels with an emphasis on embodiment
- Foreword by Grant Macaskill
- Introduction: Why the Physical Senses Matter for Reading Texts
- 1. Our Sensory Approach: Reading with Our Senses Intact
- 2. The Focus of Our Sensory Approach: Introducing the Gospels
- 3. Tasting the Good Life: Jesus, Bread for the Hungry
- 4. Seeing and Not Seeing: Jesus, the Light and the Giver of Sight
- 5. Hearing the Divine Call: Jesus Who Speaks and the Sheep That Follow
- 6. Smelling Death and Life: Jesus Makes Scents of Memorable Fragrance
- 7. Just a Touch of Love: Jesus and the Potency of Touch
- 8. Sensing Jesus Together: Concluding Thoughts
- Index
While the theological content of the Gospels is highly significant, the tactile witness of their accounts packs a powerful punch. From the flesh wounds of Jesus to the smell of the nard at the anointing, the Gospels not only exhort us to ‘listen up’; they invite us also to ‘come and see.’ In this lucid treatment of engaging the senses by Jeannine Hanger, the Gospel narratives form a literary bridge between sensory experience back then and experiential encounters with the subject of the texts—Jesus—in the here and now.
—Paul N. Anderson, professor of biblical and Quaker studies, George Fox University; author of The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus; cofounder of the John, Jesus, and History Project
It is not easy to write about texts and yet evoke all the bodily senses. But Jeannine Marie Hanger succeeds brilliantly where most would fail. In this vivid and engaging but well-researched book, utilizing recent shifts in scholarship, she draws us into the rich sensory world of the Gospel narratives and encourages the use of all our senses in encountering the Word made flesh. This is an excellent resource for a fully embodied life of faith.
—John M. G. Barclay, Lightfoot Professor of Divinity, Durham University
- Title: Engaging Jesus with Our Senses: An Embodied Approach to the Gospels
- Author: Jeannine Marie Hanger
- Publisher: Baker Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2024
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 208
- Era: era:contemporary
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- Subjects: Bible › Gospels; Jesus Christ; Senses and sensation › Religious aspects--Christianity
- ISBNs: 9781540966728, 9781540968302, 9781493447534, 9781493447541, 1540966720, 1540968308, 149344753X, 1493447548
- Resource ID: LLS:NGGNGJSSPPGSPLS
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-08-27T18:07:50Z
Save on 2024 best-sellers!