Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes

[dwilkins]

http://www.amazon.com/Misreading-Script ... stern+eyes

I've seldom agreed with a book as much as I have this one. I highly recommend it to anyone who has gotten the strange feeling that we are missing something in the way that we sometimes algorithmically and individualistically interpret scripture.

Doug

[alaskazimm]

Yes, it is a very good book.

[mattrose]

Thanks for the recommendation. I am just about done with it and have found it quite good as well.

[dwilkins]

The last chapter was my favorite, so I'm looking forward to your thoughts after you've read the whole thing. There are some things about the book that I think the authors could have done better (is there any indication that the guilt system is an advancement over the shame system?), but it is one of the best books I've found to help loosen the plaque in the brains of Baptists.

Doug

[mattrose]

I will probably write a brief review or reflection when I'm done. I'm just starting the last chapter next time I get a chance to read.

[Michelle]

I read the book. dwilkins, what about the last chapter did you like so much?

[dwilkins]

It's my experience that people think that every single promise in the Bible is about them personally. The affects everything from regular day to day things to eschatology. I think the authors did a good job in explaining a more balanced way to look at that (though I wonder if they have thought through the implications of their position). Another way to say this is that most people I've met, especially those who "take the Bible literally", approach the scripture idealistically, with no appreciation at all for a literal reading of it from the point of view of the original audience.

Doug

[Homer]

It's my experience that people think that every single promise in the Bible is about them personally.

You are right there! As old Dr. Magee once commented many promises were for us but not to us.

There have been a number of valuable books written, over the last twenty years or so, about cultural anthropology (or archaeology) of the ANE. Such as:

The New Testament World, Insights from Cultural Anthropology by Bruce Malina

Portraits of Paul, An Archaeology of Ancient Personality by Bruce Malina and Jerome Neyrey

Handbook of Biblical Social Values by John Pilch and Bruce Malina

If you look up these authors at Amazon I'm sure you will discover many more.

Something I found interesting from Malina is his contention that "poor" is not an economic term at all in the NT, given that almost everyone (98% ?) was poor in the economic sense.

[Michelle]

It's my experience that people think that every single promise in the Bible is about them personally. The affects everything from regular day to day things to eschatology. I think the authors did a good job in explaining a more balanced way to look at that (though I wonder if they have thought through the implications of their position). Another way to say this is that most people I've met, especially those who "take the Bible literally", approach the scripture idealistically, with no appreciation at all for a literal reading of it from the point of view of the original audience.

Doug

Thanks for your response, Doug. Have you thought through some implications of the authors' position? Can you foresee something negative? I'm not really sure what your parenthetical remark means....

Thanks, Homer, for the list of books.

[dwilkins]

It's my experience that people think that every single promise in the Bible is about them personally. The affects everything from regular day to day things to eschatology. I think the authors did a good job in explaining a more balanced way to look at that (though I wonder if they have thought through the implications of their position). Another way to say this is that most people I've met, especially those who "take the Bible literally", approach the scripture idealistically, with no appreciation at all for a literal reading of it from the point of view of the original audience.

Doug

Thanks for your response, Doug. Have you thought through some implications of the authors' position? Can you foresee something negative? I'm not really sure what your parenthetical remark means....

Thanks, Homer, for the list of books.

My parenthetical remark was a reference to eschatology. I think they brushed up against preterism in some form. It might be that they didn't want to go there because it would turn off their audience. I might have been that if they took their advice to its logical conclusion (figure out what it meant to the original audience first) they'd almost certainly end up in some form or another of preterism.

I also thought their observation about the uniqueness of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Paul was very important. I think it's the key to predestination, actually. The point would be that certain key personalities are predestined to take certain roles in history, but that doesn't mean that either everyone is predestined to a given role or that things that apply to those whom are predestined necessarily apply to others. I think you can see this in the first chapter of Ephesians. Take a look at what Paul says about "we" and the transition to "you". What makes you think that "you" gets to categorically share in all of the benefits of the group "we"?

I didn't notice anything in the last chapter of their book that I thought was wrong.

Doug