Jesus is the Good Shepherd and Gate for the Sheep

Rulers all over the ancient Near East were called "shepherds." How does that inform Jesus as the Good Shepherd? Why are the sermons of Jeremiah and Ezekiel crucial background for the "thieves and robbers" who harm the sheep? How does the current chapter division of John 9 and 10 obscure the connection between the two? What is the connection between Jesus as the "gate of the sheep" and Psalm 118? These and other questions, Chad Bird will address in this week's episode of Reading the Gospels through Hebrew Eyes on John 10:1-10.

[@chrisdriscoll6160]

This is so good!

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Thanks a lot for your exposition..it is very enligthening. God Bless you Chad...

[@t.m.guyerandayersfriendspc2050]

Brother Chad, what a wonderful discourse this is. Here are some comments:
(1:40) You explain that "the chapter divisions in Bibles are usually attributed to Stephen Langton, a 13th Century biblical scholar... and all these chapter divisions are standard still". (2:20) "A lot of these are fine, but some of them are in the way and keep us from seeing the connection to different parts of the scriptures". (6:20) "All this to say, when you are reading through the scriptures, as much as possible, ignore the chapter divisions, and in fact sometimes ignore the verse divisions". In wisely counseling us to deemphasize or ignore text divisions, you are invoking a "canon of construction" similar to that for legal codes which caution against textural understandings from sources influenced by labels, sections, numbering, and even punctuation inserted after the original was written rather than by the authors of the bible scripture in their own time.The canons basically teach us this: text should be interpreted based first and foremost by textual context, not by syntax and punctuation inserted by editors.
Cardinal Langton had a relationship to another great Latin text in the 13th century-- the Magna Carta, says Wikipedia. The Magna Carta authors themselves added paragraph breaks, numbering and punctuation, so that is authoritative. Here in Serbia where I am teaching law for a semester and elsewhere in the Orthodox world, older laws and legal writings can be difficult to follow for lack of section numbering and punctuation. Were I to edit Serbian legal text with labels, paragraph breaks and punctuation by making it appear more organized and readable to me and mine, I would make it more accessible within my legal culture but I would alter its meaning for the worse. The qualifications of editors are extremely important. (8:00) The story of Judith Fain, who wondered how the commingled sheep of three different shepherds could be disentangled, was fascinated to observe that the three flocks separated on command by the voice of their own shepherd. The story ends with: "Apparently, some things in Israel haven't changed for thousands of years". What fascinated Ms. Fain was basic animal ethology and studies of the social behavior of sheep tell us what she was actually seeing-- and not seeing. She did not see the leadership structure of the flock, nor that the flocks moved as commanded not because the individual sheep recognized the herder voices, but because flock leaders did. The flock itself did not obey the shepherd, the flock obeyed a single or several sheep leaders (depending upon breed), who obeyed him. The studies show many in the flock don't recognize the shepherd's voice, and others willfully disobey him. You have given us a wonderful lens into biblical understanding with this shepherd discourse precisely because domesticated sheep behavior today is the same as it was in biblical times. You elucidate the profound importance of sheep metaphors in the gospels. Biblical text may be arcane, but sheep ethology is not. (11:58) As you say, "what God wants from His people, what he wants from us, is to have ears that listen." The church then and now is not founded on individual congregants (sheep) recognizing God's voice, but on us hearing the voice of Christian leaders who by our social interaction with them, guide us in the right direction so that we may listen and hear God's voice. It means that you brother Chad in the social media world of RUclips are a shepherd to a grateful follower like me.