A while back, I posted links to some audio by Ray Vander Laan. Ray does a wonderful job of providing insights into the Jewishness of the Bible, helping us to understand the message in its context. He has a very helpful website: FollowTheRabbi.com
I first discovered Ray through Jay Guin’s website. Yesterday I noticed that Jay had posted a link to more audio files. Since several people commented that they found the previous links helpful, I thought I’d point to these files as well. You can download recordings of lectures that Ray gave in Idaho by going to this URL: http://www.box.net/shared/6bs7nk5g62
Here are links to the individual files:
File #1 (23.1 MB)
File #2 (23.6 MB)
File #3 (15.5 MB)
File #4 (23.5 MB)
File #5 (22.8 MB)
File #6 (22.8 MB)
File #7 (17.2 MB)
File #8 (22.7 MB)
File #9 (15.4 MB)
File #10 (22.7 MB)
File #11 (22.8 MB)
File #12 (20.8 MB)
File #13 (22.0 MB)
File #14 (2.3 MB)
Usual disclaimers apply: I don’t agree with everything Ray says in his lectures. I haven’t studied his doctrine fully, but wouldn’t be surprised to find things there that I disagree with. I listen to these lectures for the cultural insights they provide.
While Ray’s insights can be insightful and profitable, the issue that has been brought up in study (and something to keep in mind while listening) is that Ray takes a lot of stuff uncritically from the Mishnah and Talmud, dating hundreds of years after Jesus, and reads it back into the first century; where there is no evidence for his claims. For example, his stuff about rabbis and those who followed them could have been fully developed by the early 6th century, whereas in the 1st century it may not have even existed yet. As Scot McKnight writes in Jesus Creed, “as we don’t use contemporary conditions (globalization, etc.) to explain what the framers of the Constitution meant at that time, so we don’t use the rabbis to explain Jesus and the Bible.”
Jr,
Thanks for pointing that out. Quite honestly, it’s some of those things that I haven’t cared for in Ray’s presentations. What I’ve used the most is his analysis of the difference between Greek thought and Hebrew thought. Very insightful.
Grace and peace,
Tim Archer