Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus

All right, it's time for another book study on the culture of first century Israel! Are you ready? We're going to be reading:

This is another book by Lois Tverberg (and this one is also with Ann Spangler), and (spoiler alert!) I have two more in my "to be read" pile. I can't wait to see what I learn from these authors!

See you next week for our first post!

Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Get this Book!

That's it for our series on Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes. I honestly could keep going, but I believe that anyone who went to the trouble to write a book deserves to have people read it, not the reviews on summaries. I hope my series on it has piqued your interest!

I can't state strongly enough just how much I believe every Western Christian should read this book. It will not only give great insight into other cultures (and our own), but it will reveal things we didn't even know we were reading (or missing) in the Bible. It's so good that I'm already on my second read through!

You can get it on Amazon here. Check it out and then let me know what you think!

Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Honor and Shame

Fast-forwarding ahead to Part II of Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, the authors take us deeper into the 'iceberg' of understanding culture and worldview.

In chapter 4, they talk about the difference between Individualist (Western) and Collectivist cultures (Eastern), and give examples of this from the Bible.

Then, in chapter 5, they explore what it means that Individualist cultures are right/wrong cultures and Collectivist cultures are honor/shame cultures—and why this is important in the Bible, which was an honor/shame world (page 114). If that sentence doesn't make sense, I definitely recommend researching this topic. It's fascinating!

To oversimplify this, Westerners see the world through right and wrong, and believe the Holy Spirit (or their own conscience) will convict them of right and wrong. Yes, actions have impact on others, but ultimately, conviction and repentance is about the individual.

In the East, "people are more likely to choose right behavior on the basis of what society expects from them. It's not a matter of guilt, or an inner voice of direction, but outer pressures and opinions that direct a person to behave a certain way. Rules and laws are less a deterrent for bad behavior than the risk of bringing shame on oneself or one's family.... If a person from a shame culture commits a 'sin', he will not likely feel guilty about it if no one else knows, for it is the community (not the individual) that determines where one has lost face" (page 116-117). The authors continue to unpack this on pages 120-127 by talking about the honor/shame language, customs, and actions in the story of David and Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11-12. It's too long for me to summarize, but WOW- seeing this influence in this well known story really gave me another perspective!

Here are some short examples, however. In Exodus 32, when God is angry and wants to destroy the Israelites for worshipping the golden calf, Moses appeals to God's honor. "He makes a two-pronged argument to persuade God to change His mind: 1) think about what the Egyptians will say about Your name, and 2) You swore on Your name and You don't want to get a bad name! Moses doesn't appeal to God's sense of justice ('it wouldn't be right') but to His sense of honor ('You will be shamed')" p. 128.

Another example comes from Jesus. In this example, it's also important to realize something important about the concept of honor/shame. Basically, there's only so much honor. For someone to gain honor through interpersonal interaction, it means that they gained honor by shaming someone else (again, an oversimplification). Richards and O'Brien say that, "Public questions were contests. The winner was determined by the audience, who represented the community. If you silenced your opponent, you gained honor and they lost some" (page 129). This is why the disciples asked Jesus questions privately instead of publicly, as well as Nicodemus. But when the Pharisees asked questions in the open, at the Temple, it was a challenge, and every time they "lost", they lost honor. It was so enraging that they decided to kill Jesus as a criminal—this public disgrace would get their honor back (page 130).

WOW! How do these concepts impact how we can read the Scriptures? The authors conclude the chapter by recommending Bible readers to pay attention to where stories take place in Scripture (in private or in public). For us, it's a good clue as to what is a true quest for truth or a challenge.

Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: the Insignificance of Jerusalem

In Chapter 2 of Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, authors Richards and O'Brien explore the influence of ethnicity in both the Old and New Testaments. They assert that missing the ethnic markers and their importance in the ancient world can lead the modern reader to missing key elements in the text.

In addition to cultural, lingual, physical, and citizenship significance, the regional world played a key role as well. On page 65, they say, "It's easy for us to assume, for example, that Jerusalem was the center of the action in the ancient world. The city was certainly important to the Jews....But Jerusalem was insignificant in Jesus' time."

The importance of Israel was only geographic in Bible times. Situated at the crossroads of Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, it was the best place to transport goods to and from the different continents. "It was important that Roman controlled the land [for tax reasons], but the activities that took place there were rarely of Roman interest. Pilate was more than the main finance officer or tax collector than anything else. 

"The events of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, so important for Jews and Christians at the time, were marginal events in a nothing town on the edge of an empire with more important matters to consider. If we fail to recognize this, we can fail to recognize just how remarkable the rapid growth of the earth church really was" (page 65).

Jerusalem was not an 'important' city in the eyes of the world. Israel was not an important piece of land. It's easy to read the Bible and see it as the center of the action, with great significance, but this wasn't the case.

How does this regional distinction affect how we read the Bible?

I highly recommend going through the questions at the end of every chapter of this book, as the authors point out key passages and ask the reader to consider the impact of the chapter's them on that story. Are you ready to read the Bible with a new perspective?

Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Race and Ethnicity

In Chapter 2 of Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, the authors focus on the issues of race and ethnicity in the Bible.

There were so many "WHOA" moments for me in this chapter that I'm going to make it two posts, and even then, I won't hit it all. (Basically, every Western Christian needs to read this book).

The title of this chapter is "The Bible in Color", and wow—they did a GREAT job of showing this in just a few pages. I want to read a whole book just on this topic! On page 56, they state the reason for this chapter: "Being oblivious to ethnicities can cause us to miss things in the Bible.... Like the world we inhabit today, the worlds of both the Old and New Testaments were ethnically diverse and richly textured by an assortment of cultures, languages, and customs."

Ethnicity goes beyond skin color and national boundaries... it touches lingual, regional, and cultural significance as well.

It's easy to read the Bible and miss the mentions of ethnicity because we weren't alive then (and don't live there now), and as the authors convinced me, to do that would be to miss SO MUCH. 

Example #1: For instance, the authors give an example how in the time New Testament, anyone who didn't speak Greek were (from a Greek and Roman perspective) considered uneducated barbarians, because the Greeks equivocated speech with reason. "Barbarian" comes from the sound they made to imitate out languages... the equivalent of English speakers today saying, "blah, blah, blah" when imitating non-English speakers today.

So, in Acts 21, when the Romans were looking for Paul, they didn't know who he was—and when they caught him, they assumed he was Egyptian. Why? Because he was undergoing a purification ritual and had shaved his head. To a Roman, all of "those barbarians" looked alike. "The Roman who arrested Paul was surprised he could speak Greek (Acts 21:37). He never imagined Paul, a barbarian, might be a fellow Roman citizen." (pages 57-58)

Example #2: Here is another example they give: Moses married a Cushite woman and his brother and sister were upset. Why? Cushites were from the southern Nile Valley and were dark-skinned Africans. But the difference in skin color and cultural practices were not why Aaron and Miriam were upset. 

The authors point out that the Israelites had just left Egypt after 400 years of slavery. There were a slave race. "The Cushites were not demeaned as a slave race in the ancient world they were respected as highly skilled soldiers. It is more likely that Miriam and Aaron though Moses was being presumptuous by marrying above himself" (pages 59-61). There was a distinctive class system at play here that modern Western readers can miss because we don't understand the dynamics at play—Moses, from a slave race, married a woman from the people who enslaved the Jews. 

Example #3: Here is a final example, another one from Paul's world. On page 66, the authors point out how Paul, in talking to the church in Corinth, placed ethnic markers in the text, for example, "Apollos the Alexandrian Jew" or calling Peter by his Aramaic name, Cephas. The authors say Paul isn't addressing any theological differences between all of these people. Why? "There weren't any. The problem was ethnic division: Aramaic-speaking Jews, Greek-speaking Jews, Romans, and Alexandrians". 

How do these three examples impact how you read the Bible? How can we, as Western readers, be more aware of the influence of ethnicity in the Bible?