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Bookwi.se's Favorite Books of the Year, Non-FictionWhat was clear to the original readers of Scripture is not always clear to us. Because of the cultural distance between the biblical world and our contemporary setting, we often bring modern Western biases to the text. For example:When Western readers hear Paul exhorting women to "dress modestly," we automatically think in terms of sexual modesty. But most women in that culture would never wear racy clothing. The context suggests that Paul is likely more concerned about economic modesty--that Christian women not flaunt their wealth through expensive clothes, braided hair and gold jewelry.Some readers might assume that Moses married "below himself" because his wife was a dark-skinned Cushite. Actually, Hebrews were the slave race, not the Cushites, who were highly respected. Aaron and Miriam probably thought Moses was being presumptuous by marrying "above himself."Western individualism leads us to assume that Mary and Joseph traveled alone to Bethlehem. What went without saying was that they were likely accompanied by a large entourage of extended family.Biblical scholars Brandon O'Brien and Randy Richards shed light on the ways that Western readers often misunderstand the cultural dynamics of the Bible. They identify nine key areas where modern Westerners have significantly different assumptions about what might be going on in a text. Drawing on their own crosscultural experience in global mission, O'Brien and Richards show how better self-awareness and understanding of cultural differences in language, time and social mores allow us to see the Bible in fresh and unexpected ways.Getting beyond our own cultural assumptions is increasingly important for being Christians in our interconnected and globalized world. Learn to read Scripture as a member of the global body of Christ.
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While very earnest and well-meaning, this book would be more aptly titled: "Misreading Indonesian Culture with Western Eyes." This is because the book continually references Indonesian culture with Western culture in order to show how things — words, events, customs — can mean very different things in different parts of the world. This is certainly an admirable goal and the book makes a very strong case for multicultural understanding. But it’s basically Anthropology 101. This would be great if we were studying anthropology, but the book promises, and mainly fails to deliver, much in the way of understanding biblical scriptures in any meaningful way. (There is at least one notable exception…below). Lack of a subject index is particularly vexing, esp. considering there is an author index, a scripture index and footnotes.The authors, both well-credentialed evangelistic theologians, have each spent significant time in various locales ranging from Arkansas (Brandon) to Indonesia (Randy) and use their experiences in far-flung stations to make good points about how an expression in one place is interpreted quite differently in others. “The most powerful cultural values are those that go without being said” (12). Unfortunately, most of the cross-cultural examples come from 21st century Indonesia (Randy), not 1st century Palestine. Arguably, the collectivist, family-oriented Indonesia of 2002 is a good place to make a case for not assuming that all people understand things the same way, but gives little insight into what may have been going on in Nazareth 2,000 years ago. Although there are hundreds of scriptural references, from Genesis to Revelations, very few of them actually provide any insight into how we moderns are supposedly misreading scripture based on our 21st century mores. And many of the putative insights are little more than minute, nitpicky differentiations, as in the discussion of 1st C “modesty” where they make a big deal out of the difference between “sexual modesty” and “public modesty” in the matter of women covering their heads (43). Another notable example is the discussion of what it means to be “first” (relating to Paul’s letter about Adam being born first and thus having authority over women in teaching). The authors claim that it’s our modern understanding of ‘first’ as meaning “better” which leads us astray, since in biblical times the rules of primogeniture simply meant the firstborn received the greater inheritance, the family title, assumed responsibility etc.….the authors say (13). But if that doesn’t somehow mean “better” or “preferred” it’s hard to know what would. In fact, its seems to the modern reader to be a rather dodgy apologetic for giving women 2nd-hand status.That said, one excellent insight has to do with the use of the Greek word 'makarios' in the Sermon on the Mount (the Beatitudes), usually translated as “blessed” or “blessing.” But the Greek more properly translates as “a feeling of contentment” or “when one knows one’s place in the world and is satisfied with that place” (75). The English language prefers clear subjects for its verbs, so it goes without saying (for us) that God blesses people. So we interpret the verse at Matt 5:9 as “If you are a peacemaker, then God will bless you.” But what the Jesus figure really meant was: “If you are a peacemaker, then you are in your happy place.” In other words, you will experience the feeling of contentment with your life if you are a peacemaker. This is part of a discussion on the important Whorfian hypothesis (aka Sapir-Whorf) to account for how our language shapes our worldview and in turn filters what we notice and how we interpret reality (71). Unfortunately, having made the point about makarios, the book doesn’t then go ahead and relate this wonderful theme to the actual subject matter of the book. We do however get a delightful example of the many distinctions of the word ‘rice’ in Indonesia compared to Western society (73) — as well as the Indonesian ideas of “privacy” and “quiet time.”Interestingly, we also learn that the term 'Galatae' (as in the epistle to the Galatians) was used by the Greeks to denote Celtic tribes in the 270s BCE. The "Land of the Celts" is the Latin transliteration of the Greek 'celtica.' However, the authors don’t even get this quite right, calling the Roman term for Galatia a “mispronunciation of the word Celts” (57).Alas, along the way the authors make what we might politely call “rookie mistakes,” considering that one (Randy) is a Ph.D. and dean of the School of Ministry at Palm Beach Atlantic University and the other (Brandon) is completing his doctorate in theology. For example, they try to introduce a point saying, “assuming the first gospel was written by the disciple Matthew” (79) — yet most biblical scholars acknowledge, and have for decades, that Mark was the first gospel composed (despite the conventional order presented in the N.T.) . Furthermore, Matt is usually dated toward the last quarter of the 1st C, attributed to a Greek-speaking anonymous Jew in Syria, not an Aramaic-speaking contemporary of Jesus. This is first-year theology school stuff.Another oddity has to do with the question of whether there were female apostles in the early church. The authors bring up Junia and co-laborer (or husband?) Andronicus, whom the authors say are “both called apostles” in Rom 16:7. The effort to show how our modern culture clings to “rules” rather than “relationships” is laudable but once again their scholarship is lacking. They do acknowledge that scholars hotly debate about Junia/Junias, but then make the wild claim that “scholarship has now shown conclusively that Junia is a feminine name” (172). But that’s either a red herring or simple lack of awareness of the debate since the question has never been whether ‘Junia’ is feminine, but whether the Greek word Paul uses is ᾿Ιουνιᾶν or ᾿Ιουνίαν [‘iounia(s)] and is therefore best translated as Junia or Junias. Further, the real debate questions whether Paul was saying “of note among the apostles” to mean “prominent among” or “well known to the apostles.”This IVP publication is full of gross over-generalizations (“In the West, rules must apply to everyone and they must apply all the time”) (168) and, many people thought the world was going to end in 2000…so we called it Y2K (145); and Westerners think mainly in terms of 'chronos' (like clock time) whereas ancients thought in terms of 'kairos' (seasons, situations) (142). Of course we get an excellent Indonesian example of the difference there (139).Nevertheless, while the concept of this book is excellent — because the Middle Eastern bible was written in terms of collectivism, honor and shame, and family expectations, we need to be sensitive to the differences in cultural outlooks — there are much better treatments of the theme like Spong’s Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy or his Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes. or Scott Korb's Life in Year One. These (and others) address the “misreading” issues in a much more scholarly and on-topic way with fewer diversions into well-meaning but generic Intro to Anthropology discussions.Finally, a style note. Because there are two authors with different missionary experiences, the authors chose to write incessantly in first person mode with “I (Randy) was often struck that telling stories for Indonesians…” (147) or “My (Brandon’s) acting career…” (100). This was fine for a while but after about a hundred instances, we yearn for a simple 3rd-person style: “Brandon’s acting career…”
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