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Jesus and the Origins of the Gentile Mission is unavailable, but you can change that!

Bird argues that Jesus was attempting to achieve and enact the restoration of Israel, and in continuity with other strands of Jewish belief, Jesus conceived of the restoration of Israel as resulting in the salvation of the gentiles. Jesus’ mission was Israel-centric, but he espoused a view of restoration that was indebted to certain strands of Israel’s sacred traditions where the gentiles are...

to include them under the name “the Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16)?’4 And Scot McKnight states that, in view of the Jewish heritage of early Christianity, ‘[t]he Gentile nature of the church … requires historical explanation.’5 Given that several groups within early Christianity engaged in a deliberate mission to the Gentiles,6 one might legitimately ask why this mission began in the first place. We may push the question back one step further and enquire as to what relation Jesus of Nazareth had to the
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