Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes MP3 CD – MP3 Audio, June 7, 2016

Very good read. Gives you a whole different perspective and light. I recommend it ✨

"Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes" is an excellent "heads up" for everyone who reads the Bible. As the authors say in the introduction: "We want to unsettle you just enough that you remember biblical interpretation is a crosscultural experience and to help you be more aware of what you take for granted when you read."Some main points:- Where we stand culturally (our geography, time, political environment, etc.), influences both how we read and how we apply the Bible - and much of what influences us is assumed/instinctive.- Reading the Bible is a cross-cultural experience for everyone of us, no matter where or when we live - yet we seldom take notice- All of us NEED to take notice- We need to do our best to understand "what the passage meant to the original hearers," before we ask "how that applies to us." Interpretation comes first, then application. "What it meant to original hearers" comes before "What it means to me."The book is structured on the metaphor that our particular culture is like an iceberg, with 3 categories: Issues Above the Surface, Issues Just Below the Surface, and Issues Deep Below the Surface. It works well.A typical book on biblical interpretation deals with culture, and the need for interpretation before application, but this book gets much more specific with particular cultural matters, which is one of its greatest strengths - they don't leave it with stated principles, but give many concrete examples. Richards' experience as a missionary in Indonesia is used with great effect for many of these. And both authors' roots being in the U.S. south provide many other good examples.As they say in the introduction: "our primary goal is to help us learn to read ourselves." That is, to become aware of our cultural filters as we read the Bible.Why bother with this subject - on which a great deal has been written? My first thought is because "not many Christians - pastors, or everyday people - in America seem to be getting it!" So much of American Christianity is not biblical Christianity but "Americanity" - sort of an "American Dream" merged with Eisenhower's post-WW2 America. Other cultures have their own problematic cultural influences - I have found Korean Christianity to be "Confucianity" - because Korean culture has been so strongly influenced by Confucianism. This is, in fact, one of the authors' reasons: "If our cultural blind spots keep us from reading the Bible correctly, then they can also keep us from applying the Bible correctly....All questions of interpretation are, in the end, questions about application."But the authors have another excellent reason, which has to do with the (diminishing) persuasive influence of Americanity in the changing world: "we can no longer pretend that a Western interpretation of the Bible is normative for all Christians everywhere....We need to be aware of the way our cultural assumptions affect how we read the Bible so we are prepared to hear what our non-Western brothers and sister have to teach us about Christian faith and practice."As someone who has personally experienced "foreign Christianity" it is at first starling - and threatening - and then humbling and finally horizon-expanding - to deal directly with interpretations and applications that are very different from what we do in America without even thinking (because it "goes without being said," to use the phrase often used by the authors."We speak as white, Western males....There's really nothing we can do about that except be aware of and honest about it." ("This is the group that has dominated the conversation about theology and biblical interpretation for the last few centuries.")... That said, we write as white, Western males who have been chastened to read the Bible through the eyes of our non-Western sisters and brothers in the Lord.... The challenges of reading with others' eyes should not deter us. We can learn so much from each other."The book has good, extensive footnoting - with lots of good information. Unfortunately, eReading is not well suited to looking up footnotes and back-referencing what you've read earlier, so if you're one who does that, you'll be better served by a hardcopy version.An excellent book for anyone of any culture!

Everywhere you go, people are the same. Right? Oh there are some basic differences of course, but if you cut any of us, we bleed. Mankind really hasn't changed that much in all the years we've been around. When we read Aristotle or Cicero or Moses, we are reading someone was pretty similar to us and had the exact same struggles we do. We can regularly see it in their own writings can't we?Or, maybe we don't. We just think we do.Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes (MSWWE from now on) is a book that helps to expose us to the fact that people are not like us. The authors, E. Randolph Richards and Brandon O'Brien, show numerous examples of the way our culture misreads the Bible based on our Western presuppositions and that people in other cultures are quite different. This can be shown to be the case in Biblical times, but also in modern times as Richards has several examples in his book from his missionary service in Indonesia.For instance, if you had an affair, would you feel guilty? Here in the West, you would. In Indonesia, there would be no guilt until everyone else said you did something wrong. What time does that church event start? Here, you could say "Mid-day" and most people would be there at Noon. There, you'd say "Mid-day" and most people would show up when it started to get hot. If you say "All people serving in the church must be eighteen", here it'd be a strict rule. Over there, there would be exceptions.Much of this seems foreign to our experience, and for good reason. It is. One of the greatest signs of this is our intense individualism where we think everything has to be about us. There is even a chapter in the book on how people take a passage like Jeremiah 29:11 and make it to be about God having a personal plan for them. Somehow, all those Israelites that died during the attack of Nebuchadnezzar missed that.The authors also bring out important realities of the system that was around then and is still around in most countries today, such as the honor/shame system and the patron/client system. Consider the story of David and Bathsheba. That is a story we all learn something from, but when it is read through the lens of honor and shame, all of a sudden several new facets of the story show up that the Western reader would not notice.What does this mean? It means that there's further reason to drop this nonsense idea that so many have that all we need is to just have the Bible. Now of course, the Bible contains all that is necessary for faith and practice, but if you want to know all that it contains, you will have to study it well, and for many people, that is anathema, and is in fact part of the individualism that we have today. If God wants ME to get something out of the Bible, He will make it plain to ME.When speaking about the patron/client model then, we actually make it seem like the problem is that God isn't doing what He's supposed to be doing. If an atheist wishes to discuss the problem of divine hiddenness, it's always that God is hiding Himself, instead of realizing that maybe God has revealed Himself and we are the ones hiding from Him. Skeptics today make the most outlandish claims about what they think God is required to do, such as a cross on the moon or everyone having the same dream at the same time, not aware that all of these are actions that would require further explanation through the social context of each culture.The ideas that could be embraced if we would but study are monumental. How much different will you approach a text like Romans 8:28 if you realize that God is your patron working all things for good. Now I do have a small disagreement with the authors. I do think God does work all things for individual good. The caveat I would add is that some of that might not happen until in what I call, the after-death. Many people will die with suffering on them that I think God will redeem in eternity. I do agree with their collectivist approach and would contend that all those God will work the good for are Israel. The true Israel is really Jesus Christ and all who are "in Him" are in Israel. (I would even contend at this point that Romans could be about identifying who Israel is.)I am not really including quotes on this because I find quotes to be inadequate for this one. There are such large pieces of thought that you need the whole context to see them all. I think the reader not familiar with the social context will learn something from every chapter, and I think many of us who already are will have our insights greatly expanded by reading this book.The authors also do not resolve many of the difficulties. They present the scenario and they leave it to you and I to work out the difficulties in our own reading of Scripture and try to learn to read with new eyes. The authors also give points to ponder at the end to show how we can avoid doing what we've been doing. What questions can we start bringing to the text that will help us understand it?Also, the authors do present points of application for us to consider, which can also make this book an excellent choice for small groups at churches. (All churches could be greatly benefited by having a small group that is based around this book.) The authors don't want to make this just a detached scholarly work, but they want it to be one that will engage us and force us to come to the text and see if we have been projecting our own culture on to it.Many works in this field have been extremely scholarly, and I applaud those, but I am thankful now that when someone asks me one book I can recommend on the topic, I will not have to hesitate. MSWWE is on the top of the list!In Christ,Nick Peters

Thisis an interesting read for those who are interested in scripture.

This book definitely helps the reader understand historical cultural contexts used in the Bible. It’s a great addition to your Bible study material.

The book cleverly dissects the old wording of the Hebrew Bible and compares it to our Western thinking.

I would HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone who wants to go deeper into the Word. The book that I "gift" to others most after the Bible and Radical by David Platt. Just a treasure trove of understanding God's Word the way it was written to be understood. Every western Christian should read this!

This is a superb book for anyone who is seriously interested in studying the bible to discover what it really teaches. It looks at all the context elements that can lead us to misread biblical passages. It addresses the elements that "go without being said", either for the historical writers but not us (which mean we are missing vital pieces of the jigsaw to help our understanding) or for us (which means we layer our own world view on top, distorting the meaning). In the course we also see how our western world view and assumptions are not the same as those held by the many non-western christians - leading to differences in our understanding of scripture. Particularly informative are the sections on Honour / Shame cultures, which characterised biblical times but which are mostly misunderstood by modern western readers. The explanation of the story of David and Bathsheba in these terms is like scales falling from your eyes.