"The Lord is my shepherd."
Thus begins the most beloved of all Psalms—and thus begins a thousand-year journey through the Bible. Prophets, apostles, and Jesus himself took up this image from David, reshaping it, developing it, and applying it to their own situations and needs. Kenneth Bailey uses his celebrated insights into Middle Eastern culture, especially his familiarity with Middle Eastern shepherding customs, to bring new light and life to our understanding of this central image of the Christian faith. With each of nine major Old and New Testament passages, Bailey reveals the literary artistry of the biblical writers and summarizes their key theological features. His work is also enriched by his unique access to very early Middle Eastern commentaries on these passages, bringing fresh understanding from within the mind-set of these ancient worlds. The Good Shepherd invites us to experience a rich, biblical feast of ethical, theological, and artistic delights.
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"This book examines the theme of God as a shepherd in the Old and New Testaments, showing how "The Lord is my shepherd" was adapted by the prophets, Jesus, and apostles.
Good points: Viewpoint diversity. Most Christian books published in the West deal only with Western Christianity. This is almost entirely from an Eastern perspective, involving some type of Orthodoxy--Eastern, Oriental (not the same thing), Coptic, etc. You might learn something.
Relevant settings. There's a lot about how shepherding works and worked in the Holy Land, as distinct from practices elsewhere in the world.
Bad point: The only major annoyance here is that there are frequent references to useful information to be found in Figure X, which should be included in a non-existent PDF. If the download included such a PDF, I'd probably bump up the rating to 5 out of 5.
Still worth the cost, though."
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Ansric (4 out of 5 stars)