Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes

by E. Randolph Richards

  On another occasion, Paul was arrested by the Romans during a riot in the temple, but the Romans didn’t know who Paul was. They thought he was an Egyptian who had been causing trouble elsewhere (Acts 21:38). Why in the world would they think that? We might assume the Roman soldiers were comparing the modus operandi, since that’s how we might go about it. Two riots in recent days? Must be the same guy who instigated both, we might think. But this was not likely their reasoning. They more likely made their judgment on the basis of Paul’s appearance. Jews and Egyptians looked nothing alike. But at the time, Paul was taking part in a purification rite and had a shaved head, as was common in Egypt (Acts 21:24). And to a Roman—well, you know, all “those people” look alike. The prejudice ran even deeper. Jews were often included in the list of barbarians. 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! Earlier in Paul’s ministry, Paul had run into trouble with Philippians who were boastful of their own Roman citizenship. It had never occurred to them that Paul, a Jew, could have boasted the coveted citizenship, too.

  It should be clear from these examples that our ignorance about the ethnic stereotypes in biblical times can cause us to miss undercurrents in the biblical text. As we will see in our next example, sometimes our own prejudices can lead us astray.

  A Slave Race?

  Of course there is more to ethnicity than skin color. But when we’re reading, we can’t even see skin color in the text. So we often find it difficult to detect the ethnic dimensions of a situation in the Bible, even when the author is trying to make it plain. Luke, for example, sprinkles ethnolinguistic markers throughout the account of Paul’s time in Jerusalem in Acts 21: “Jerusalem . . . Gentiles” (21:11); “Cyprus” (21:16); “Trophimus the Ephesian” (21:29); “Do you speak Greek?” (21:37); “Aren’t you the Egyptian?” (21:38); “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia” (21:39); “in Aramaic” (21:40 and 22:1); “a Jew born in Tarsus of Cilicia” (21:39); “Jerusalem . . . Gentiles” (22:17, 21). Prejudices based on ethnicity and geography inform the drama of these events and crescendo with Paul’s surprising news that he was born a Roman citizen (Acts 22:28).

  Another example may strike closer to home. Many Americans fail to note that the problem with Moses’ wife was her ethnicity, even though the author states it plainly and repeats it: “Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite” (Num 12:1, emphasis added). But even once we’re made aware that the issue is indeed a “race issue,” we’re still prone to misinterpret what’s really going on. Indeed, in this case, because we don’t know what went without being said for the original audience, we may fill in the blanks and suppose a negative prejudice where the original audience assumed a positive one.

  All we know about this wife of Moses is her ethnic identity—Cushite—but that’s enough to irk Moses’ siblings. It’s clear that her ethnicity is the source of the siblings’ disapproval. From there, making sense of this passage requires a bit of detective work. You may not know who a Cushite is or where Cush was located. A peek at an atlas or the notes in your study Bible may tell you that Cush was in the southern Nile River valley.[3] That means the Cushites were dark-skinned Africans. What goes without being said for many Western readers is that Africans were a slave race; even though we no longer (or should no longer) consider people of African descent inferior, we may nevertheless assume that the ancient Hebrews would have assumed that the Cushites were their inferiors. Western scholars have made this mistake for generations. Older commentaries frequently assumed that dark skin denoted inferiority. J. Daniel Hays has shown that the assumption that Africans are a slave race has influenced the way we read every reference to Cush and the Cushites in the Old Testament. In his commentary on the books of Samuel, nineteenth-century scholar H. P. Smith writes, “Joab then calls a Negro (naturally, a slave) and commands him . . .” [4] The text (2 Sam 18:21) never says or even hints that the person was a slave, merely that he was a Cushite. We might not be surprised that writers in the nineteenth century made this sort of mistake. But even into the twenty-first century, commentators have followed this assumption about the supposed inferiority of the Cushites, against evidence to the contrary.[5]

  If we don’t know what went without being said for the ancient audience, we might supply what goes without being said for many Westerners and conclude that Miriam and Aaron were upset with Moses because he married a black woman and therefore married below himself. This would be a mistake. Remember that although Westerners may have once considered Africans a slave race, in the Nile River valley of ancient Egypt, the Hebrews were the slave race. We should know that simply from reading the Bible. It wasn’t too long ago in the story that Moses and the Israelites left the bondage of slavery in Egypt. So what was it about the Cushites that went without being said in the ancient Near East? The Cushites were not demeaned as a slave race in the ancient world; they were respected as highly skilled soldiers.[6] It is more likely that Miriam and Aaron thought Moses was being presumptuous by marrying above himself. That makes sense of the tone of the passage. “Has the Lord spoken only through Moses?” they whined. “Hasn’t he also spoken through us?” (Num 12:2). In other words: Moses is not the only prophet here. Who does he think he is?

  A Jew Is a Jew, Right?

  Even the most casual reader of the New Testament notes the tension between Jew and Gentile. And we likely attribute this animosity to theological, not ethnic, differences. It may come as a surprise to some, even though it is clear in the biblical texts, that the Jews made ethnic distinctions even among themselves. This point is probably obvious to readers of ethnic minority status. White Westerners have a habit of lumping diverse ethnicities under large and imprecise blanket terms. We use the term Latin American or Latino for anyone of Central or South American descent who speaks a Romance language (Spanish, Portuguese or French). But the people who fall under those broad designations—such as Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Hondurans and Brazilians—are likely more aware of their ethnic and cultural differences than their similarities. In any case, we tend to assume that Jewish was primarily a theological or religious designation for Jews of the first century.[7] People of Jewish ethnicity, however, were quite divided. These divisions threatened the unity of the early church even before Gentile Christians entered the picture.

  Acts 6 offers an explicit example of ethnic divisions among Jews challenging the integrity of the early church. The first five chapters of the book of Acts record the remarkable growth of the Christian faith in and around Jerusalem after Jesus’ resurrection. In Acts 6, Luke records the church’s first major internal obstacle. The “number of disciples was increasing,” and the needs of the people risked outgrowing the church’s ability to serve everyone in a timely fashion. Unfortunately, some of the Grecian Jews were “being overlooked in the daily distribution of food” (Acts 6:1), while the Hebraic Jews were receiving what they needed as usual.[8] The Hebraic Jews were likely those from Palestine who spoke only Hebrew or Aramaic, whereas the Grecian Jews were probably from the Diaspora (meaning they were raised and/or lived outside of Palestine) and spoke primarily or only Greek.[9] To the Hebraic Jews, these Diaspora brethren were second-tier Jews. We might not recognize the significance of the regional prejudice. After all, a Jew was a Jew, right?

  No. Fortunately the apostles recognized the potential for disaster. They called together all the disciples and directed them to choose seven men from among the factions to oversee the food distribution. It is significant that of the seven, at least five have Greek names. In order to ease tensions among the Grecian Jews, the early Christians recognized that the distribution of food should be overseen by Grecian Jews. What goes without being said in Western culture is that to be equal, everyone must be the same; therefore, we sometimes think that the worst thing the church could do is to make ethnic distinctions. We would fear turning the issue into a racial issue. Fortunately, howev
er, the apostles saw the situation for what it was and approved the appointment of an ethnically diverse team of deacons.

  This is an obvious example of how ethnic divisions among Jews posed a problem for the church, and it should remind us to be alert to other situations in which prejudices among the Jews might play a role in the story. There are other types of prejudice that we are not likely to see, because we are slow to attribute problems to such distinctions.

  Twang

  One’s accent can often give away where one was raised. This wouldn’t be a problem, except that negative stereotypes are often associated with certain accents. In the United States, for example, a Southern accent may strike you as refreshingly genteel and charming. But you’re just as likely to assume that the person who adds syllables to words and drops their g’s (I grew up huntin’, fishin’ and campin’) is uneducated and slow. If I speak with a British accent, I am smart; with an Australian accent, I am cool; with a Jersey accent, I am ill-tempered. I (Brandon) got so tired of negative stereotypes related to my native accent that I’ve worked hard to neutralize it. During the semester I spent abroad, I encountered another prejudice. Scotland is small enough that natives can determine what city or town someone is from based solely on her or his accent. When I was studying in Edinburgh in 2002, the United States was just revving up its war on terror. And Europeans were not pleased. People snubbed me frequently when they heard my American accent. I soon learned that folks would treat me more kindly if they thought I was Canadian. So I learned to adapt my accent yet again.

  The Bible gives us clues that the ancients also discriminated on the basis of how people sounded. Because we can’t hear accents when we read (unless we’re reading Mark Twain), we can miss this form of discrimination in the Scriptures. In Judges 12, Jephthah rallies the men of Gilead to battle the Ephraimites. Ethnically, the Gileadites and the Ephraimites were related. Both tribes were Semitic, and they shared Joseph as a common ancestor.[10] The text suggests that they would have been physically indistinguishable. So after the battle, the Gileadites developed a clever way to identify which survivors were friends and which were enemies. They guarded the fords of the Jordan River leading to Ephraim, and when a survivor tried to pass through, the soldiers made the men say the word shibboleth. The trouble was, Ephraimites couldn’t say the word correctly because they couldn’t pronounce the “sh” sound. If an escaping soldier said sibboleth, they were killed on the spot. That’s pretty serious discrimination.

  Our Lord was also easily identified by his accent. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but most folks didn’t know that. He was raised in Nazareth (Galilee). Since his accent was Galilean, no one considered the possibility he might actually be a Judean (Jn 7:41-43). When Peter tried to deny his association with Jesus after the arrest, his accent gave him away as a Galilean (Mt 26:73), and Judeans just assumed that all Galileans would be supporters of Jesus the Galilean. Jewish travelers from all over the empire could identify the apostles as Galileans based on their accents as they preached the gospel during Pentecost: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans?” (Acts 2:7).

  You’re Not from Around Here, Are You?

  Closely associated with the issue of speech are prejudices based on geography. We distinguish among Americans in this way. The terms Yankee and redneck both conjure concrete images and arouse feelings of disdain among certain groups of people. But visitors to new cultures have a difficult time identifying these kinds of distinctions and their attendant presuppositions. I (Brandon) was once with Austrian friends in a pub in Salzburg. At a corner table sat some very loud, obviously inebriated merrymakers. They were white, like me and my friends, and they spoke German. I assumed they were Austrian. I was wrong. One of my Austrian friends saw the rowdy crowd, made a disgusted face and said, “Ugh, Germans! They’re worse than Americans!” That made me feel special.

  If visitors to a foreign culture have a hard time detecting ethnic stereotypes based on geography, we have an even harder time detecting the same issues in the Bible. We are unfamiliar with the geography of the Near East, as well as the prejudices that adhered to certain locations. Sometimes they are made blatant. We grew up singing a hymn that began with the line, “I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene.” But Jews in neighboring areas seldom found anything amazing about Nazarenes. When Nathanael found out Jesus was from Nazareth, he was unimpressed; “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” he replied (Jn 1:46). Those of us accustomed to referring to our Savior as “Jesus of Nazareth” don’t have a negative association with the place.

  Sometimes we do have certain prejudices associated with locations in the Bible. But very often, we have the opposite associations from those of the original audience. It is 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. It was at the center of their eschatological hope. One day everyone would come to Zion, the City of David, to worship the Lord. Because it was central for the Jews, everyone went “up to” Jerusalem, no matter which direction they were traveling from.[11] To us, Jerusalem and its environs comprise “the Holy Land.” During the Crusades, Christians spent much money, many years and countless lives to reclaim the city from Muslim invaders (even though the Crusaders were actually the invaders).

  But Jerusalem was insignificant in Jesus’ time. Pliny the Elder (a.d. 23-79), a famed Roman philosopher, statesman and soldier, traveled extensively and described the Jerusalem of Jesus’ day as “the most illustrious city in the East.” That was actually faint praise. We must note well the qualification: that it was the greatest city on the eastern fringe of the empire. This statement might compare to a New Yorker saying, “the nicest town in the backwaters of Louisiana.” The importance of Palestine was entirely geographic. The taxes were not enough to influence the Roman budget. Palestine was not known for anything except trouble. But that region controlled the only land route to the breadbasket of Egypt and all of Africa. It was important that Rome controlled the land, but the activities that took place there were rarely of Roman interest. Pilate was more 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 early church really was. For the first couple of centuries, Roman writers often referred to Christians as “Galileans,” indicating how nominal and provincial they considered the early Jesus movement to be.

  I’m with Him

  Paul begins his first letter to the Corinthians with a plea for unity. “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, . . .” he writes, “that all of you agree with one another . . . and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought” (1 Cor 1:10). We might ask ourselves what caused the divisions in Corinth. All we know is what Paul tells us: “One of you says, ‘I follow Paul’; another, ‘I follow Apollos’; another, ‘I follow Cephas’; still another, ‘I follow Christ’” (1 Cor 1:12). What likely goes without being said for us is that the church was divided either theologically or over devotion to different personalities. These are two common causes of church divisions in the West. We tend to fall out along doctrinal lines or because we are drawn to one charismatic pastor over another.

  It is possible, though, that the divisions among the churches in Corinth were not theological. We may be failing to note ethnic markers that Paul sprinkled all over the text. Apollos was noted as an Alexandrian (Egyptian) Jew (Acts 18:24). They had their own reputation. Paul notes that Peter is called by his Aramaic name, Cephas, suggesting the group that followed him spoke Aramaic and were thus Palestinian Jews. Paul’s church had Diaspora Jews but also many ethnic Corinthians, who were quite proud of their status as residents of a Roman colony and who enjoyed using Latin. This may explain why Paul doesn’t
address any theological differences. There weren’t any. The problem was ethnic division: Aramaic-speaking Jews, Greek-speaking Jews, Romans and Alexandrians.

  Conclusion

  How do we uncover what goes without being said about race and ethnicity? A first—and difficult—step is making a thorough and honest inventory of your assumptions about people who are different from you. Take time to prayerfully consider your prejudices. Do you harbor bad feelings for members of a particular ethnic group? Or people from a certain sociopolitical group? If you feel brave enough, consider asking your close friends or family whether they hear you make statements or tell jokes about certain people or groups. Carefully consider why you feel the prejudices you do. Does it have to do with your upbringing? Is it economic—that is, do you make judgments about people based on their appearance or perceived status? Think through the categories above (geography, accent and place of origin). Do you have preconceived ideas about people based on these? Your increasing awareness about your own ethnic prejudices will help you be more attuned to them in the biblical text.