Besorah

Book excerpt: The gospel of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth has healed countless lives over the centuries, but the gospel itself has been wounded through neglect of one of its main components. The books of Luke and Acts reveal that the death and resurrection of Jesus are linked inextricably to the destruction and promised restoration of Jerusalem, the city that personifies the Jewish people as a whole. To highlight this expanded understanding of the gospel, Mark Kinzer and Russ Resnik unpack the Hebrew term for gospel, besorah, as a prophetic message of salvation for Israel and all nations. In Luke’s besorah, the death and resurrection of the Messiah are a sign of the coming judgment and restoration of Jerusalem and the Jewish people—a restoration that brings with it the renewal of all creation. This prophetic dimension of the besorah is a key to healing the fractured gospel and restoring its power amidst the strife and tumult of the twenty-first century.