I believe the authors stumble on the third section of this chapter. Indeed, I believe they have mishandled a rich opportunity on the whole chapter. What they do manage to say is that your church is your true spiritual family, and that we should learn to think more collectively about this. But they spill a…
Month: March 2024
Misreading Scripture: Collectivism 02
The third section of the chapter on collectivism begins with a reference to the next book we’ll be looking at (Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes). The issue is the birth of Jesus. All of our Christmas imagery comes from Victorian England, not from the Hebrew culture. The Holy Family were hardly alone; individualism is a…
Misreading Scripture: Collectivism 01
The introduction to Part Two discusses basic assumptions just below the surface of our consciousness. The authors begin recounting how Western Christians confuse the image of crossing the Jordan with the Greek image of crossing the River Styx into the realm of the dead. The two are merged into the idea of an individual soul…
Misreading Scripture: Languages 03
The final issue in language is the American preference for brutal clarity over ambiguous beauty. The amount of metaphor and figures of speech in English are massive, but our underlying thought process prefers propositional clarity when it comes to something so important as eternal truth. We get impatient with the Hebrew habit of parables and…
Misreading Scripture: Languages 02
The next question is: Can reality be expressed in our language? R/OB start this section with the Reformation. The whole point of Luther’s objections to the system was that the Church ritual of “penance” was not equivalent to what the New Testament referred to as “repentance”. This transitions into Americans and their presumptions about American…
Misreading Scripture: Languages 01
I’ve taught for years that biblical languages aren’t like English, and that translation is more art than science. R/OB mention that we don’t really know whether our language affects our thinking or whether our thinking affects our language. What we do know is that the two come in a package. Even within a given society,…
Boundaries and Exceptions
I’m going to interrupt the series today. God has called me. I am not accountable to any man for that calling, only to God. When the Holy Spirit tells me to change something, I strive to obey. When man tells me to change something, I always check with my Lord first, because my peace with…
Misreading Scripture: Racism 02
R/OB mention how accents can be the basis for discrimination. In the Bible, we rarely have a clue about how that affected the narrative. It was mentioned once in the Old Testament when there was war between two tribes (Judges 12) from which we get our figure of speech regarding the word shibboleth. But it…
Misreading Scripture: Racism 01
In chapter two of Misreading Scripture, R/OB attempt to talk about race and ethnicity. They do a poor job, trying to virtue signal without noticing that the Bible is quite racist. Here’s my point: human are racist by wiring. Infants are racially aware. It is utterly impossible to turn that off, though we have been…
Misreading Scripture: Basic Mores 02
Regarding money, the authors note that Americans have this rather ugly and perverted outlook on the issue of wealth. We believe it’s unlimited. Anyone who works hard enough can get some. Paul said, “If a man doesn’t work, he can’t eat.” With us, it’s “If a man can’t eat, it’s because he doesn’t work.” Since…