Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes

by E. Randolph Richards

  We have to be careful, though, once we have accounted for genre, not to simply disregard metaphorical language as mere metaphor. The biblical writers were capable of writing in categorical terms, but they often preferred to speak about spiritual things metaphorically. And this made earlier interpreters nervous because ancient readers of the Bible knew that there was a lot at stake in a metaphor. The original Hebrew text of Exodus 15:3 reads, “The Lord is a warrior.” The context is the Song of Moses. The Israelites have just filed through the Red Sea to safety and Pharaoh’s army has drowned in the tide. The Lord, Moses implies, is a more powerful soldier than all the battalions of Egypt. But the Greek translators of Exodus were uncomfortable with this image. So they did just what we tend to do: they translated the verse as a proposition. In the Septuagint, the verse reads, “The Lord . . . shatters wars” or “bring[s] wars to naught.”[14] Instead of portraying Yahweh as an armed and bloodied soldier, they highlighted a particular implication of his prowess. While they might be right—perhaps the best soldier is the one who brings war to an end—the Septuagint interpretation narrows the meaning of the text. Resolving the tension of the metaphor actually diminishes the breadth and application of the text. And that’s too bad, as scholar Iain McGilchrist points out; the “point of a metaphor is to bring together the whole of one thing with the whole of another, so that each is looked at in a different light.”[15]

  Metaphors and other artistic expressions can also say more with less. An absolutely delightful expression from Arkansas is, “I ain’t got a dog in that fight.” I (Randy) have used it in Florida as a powerful administrative tool to indicate that (1) the issue at hand is not an integral part of my area of responsibility; (2) this is a messy problem with a lot of upset people; and (3) I could get hurt if I get involved and I am not invested sufficiently to justify the risk. Stating this propositionally takes longer and is often less effective.

  There is yet a subtler danger with distilling propositions out of metaphors. Time and time again, the biblical writers use metaphors to connect central truths in Scripture. One of the most famous and enduring images of God is as shepherd (Ps 23, for example). In Ezekiel 34, God describes himself as the Good Shepherd and all the Jewish leaders as bad shepherds. What is Jesus suggesting, then, when he claims, “I am the good shepherd” (Jn 10:14)? He is not just critiquing the leaders as bad. Is he using the metaphor to identify himself with God? His audience thought so. They picked up rocks to stone him “for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God” (Jn 10:33). Once you start noticing the connections between metaphors, you start to see them everywhere. It was Abel, the shepherd, whose offering pleased God. Saul was a bad king—and called a bad shepherd—but King David was a good king who shepherded the people of Israel (1 Chron 11:2). If we simply distill the propositions out of each of these accounts (“The Lord provides everything I need”; “Jesus lays down his life for us”; “Saul was a bad king”; “David was a good king”), we can miss the connection. The metaphor is not just a frilly package. In this case, the package is actually the bridge connecting all these ideas. Real misunderstanding is at stake. Classical liberal theologians of the nineteenth century argued that Jesus never claimed to be divine. They missed the crucial point that Jesus made important truth claims—including being God incarnate—through his use of metaphorical language.

  Consider another example. The prophet Isaiah sings the “song of the vineyard,” a lament of the unfaithfulness and unrighteousness of the people of Israel (Is 5:1-7). After much care and cultivation, God “looked for a crop of good grapes, but it [the vineyard, i.e., Israel] yielded only bad fruit” (Is 5:2). Centuries later, when Jesus wanted to rebuke Israel’s religious leaders for failing to fulfill God’s will for them, he could have stated it plainly: “You are sinners.” Instead, he summons this metaphor from Isaiah. In Matthew 20-21, Jesus uses the metaphor of the vineyard to teach about the kingdom of God and about his own ministry and identity (the parable of the workers in the vineyard, Mt 20:1-16; the parable of the two sons, Mt 21:28-32; and the parable of the tenants, Mt 21:33-44). Combining the vineyard metaphor popular with Isaiah and the prophets and another image—“the stone the builders rejected”—from Psalm 118:22, Jesus explains in no uncertain terms that he is God’s chosen son sent to redeem God’s vineyard, Israel. What went without being said in Jesus’ time is that metaphors bring with them the whole weight of the biblical witness—Torah, Wisdom and the Prophets.[16] Jesus’ listeners would have recognized immediately that he was drawing together these different strands of Scripture and that they were at risk of sharing the punishment Isaiah pronounced for the unfaithful.[17]

  Conclusion

  Of the three blatant cultural differences we discussed in this section, language is at once the most obvious and the most insidious. Serious misunderstanding can occur when we fail to recognize all that goes without being said about language and how we use it. There is no real substitute for becoming familiar with the Bible’s original languages. But that doesn’t mean you can’t become sensitive to the difference language makes in the meantime.

  To do this, we offer one simple suggestion: read from a variety of translations. Translators have different goals. Some English translations follow the grammar, syntax and voice of the original languages as faithfully as they can while still rendering readings that make sense in English. Other translations are more concerned that the text be readable, comfortable, idiomatic English. In other words (and to overstate the point a bit): some translations emphasize getting the original languages right, while others emphasize getting the contemporary languages right. For this reason, you can get a good sense for the differences between languages by reading a biblical passage in various English translations. Consider the following translations of the first beatitude (Mt 5:3):

  “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (NIV). The NIV represents the traditional translation of this beatitude.

  “God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs” (nlt). The goal of the New Living Translation is to render the original languages in good, contemporary English. The translators appear to recognize that English readers want a clear subject and a verb in the active voice, so they supply a subject (God) and make the passive Greek verb active.

  “The poor in spirit are blessed, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs” (Holman Christian Standard Bible). In contrast to the nlt, this translation preserves the passive voice of the original Greek. This is a less satisfying English sentence but more faithful to the original Greek.

  “Blessed (happy, to be envied, and spiritually prosperous—with life-joy and satisfaction in God’s favor and salvation, regardless of their outward conditions) are the poor in spirit (the humble, who rate themselves insignificant), for theirs is the kingdom of heaven!” (Amplified Bible). It would probably be difficult to read long passages from the Amplified Bible. But the value of this translation is that it demonstrates how it sometimes takes many words in one language to approximate or capture the essence of a single word in another language.

  “Happy are people who are hopeless, because the kingdom of heaven is theirs” (ceb). The Common English Bible abandons the traditional verb blessed altogether. This gives the verse a different feel.

  When you read a passage in different translations, take a few moments to consider the implications of the different renderings. Does the meaning or application of the verse change depending on the translation? Sometimes. This exercise can help you become sensitive to what goes without being said behind the words we use.

  Questions to Ponder

  Westerners are wired, by virtue of our worldview, to seek cause-and-effect connections in everything. We instinctively ask, “Why did this happen?” When we read the story of Job, for example, we tend to emphasize why these things happened to Job. We may be emphasizing the wrong point. Job never does know why those things happened. How might Job’s experience help us face lif
e, since we also are rarely told by God why things happen?

  A young married student just stopped by to see me (Randy). His wife miscarried last week. My heart is broken for them. Both are strong believers who are confident in God’s abiding presence in the midst of this calamity. As I attempted to comfort them, I noticed how our expressions were metaphors. When he spoke of the deeper bond he and his wife were experiencing, he said things like, “There is a silver lining to this dark cloud.” He added, “We are hearing God sing songs of comfort over us in the night,” and “Our church family has wrapped us up in loving arms.” Is it possible that direct statements of propositional truth aren’t as good as we think? Describe what you might say to a friend in a similar situation.

  Describe how you would explain to a nonbelieving friend the concept of “The Lord is my shepherd” (Ps 23:1). Try to use propositional statements instead of metaphors, similes or analogies. How easy or difficult is it for you to change this metaphor into propositional language? Do you feel like anything is lost in the process, and if so, what?

  PART TWO

  Just Below the Surface

  Here is a literal back-translation to English of Psalm 23 (“The Lord is My Shepherd”) as understood by the Khmus tribe of Laos:[1]

  The Great Boss is the one who takes care of my sheep;

  I don’t want to own anything.

  The Great Boss wants me to lie down in the field.

  He wants me to go to the lake.

  He makes my good spirit come back.

  Even though I walk through something the missionary calls the valley of the shadow of death,

  I do not care. You are with me.

  You use a stick and a club to make me comfortable.

  You manufacture a piece of furniture right in front of my eyes while my enemies watch.

  You pour car grease on my head.

  My cup has too much water in it and therefore overflows.

  Goodness and kindness will walk single file behind me all my life.

  And I will live in the hut of the Great Boss until I die and am forgotten by the tribe.

  We could have used this translation in the chapter on language, because it illustrates well the travails of trying to render the message of Scripture into other tongues. Here, though, we want you to notice how the Khmus people understood the final sentence, “And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” That line brings comfort to millions of Western Christians, and yet it is a terrifying thought to Khmus tribesmen. It’s not the concept of eternal reward that bothers them. Rather, it is the idea of eternal reward presented to them in individualistic terms. You (as an individual) will go somewhere else when you die, alienated from your ancestors and from your living relatives who have not been allowed access to this paradise. For Khmus people, and many others in the world, their first reaction to the idea of spending eternity in heaven is, “What? And leave my family?”

  Why do we find the concluding line of Psalm 23—“And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever”—so comforting (Ps 23:6)? What goes without being said in the West is that you have to leave here and go there to get to the house of the Lord. This idea has a history. Ancient Greek mythology described the dead as crossing the cold River Styx to Hades. Plato tweaked this into a migration of souls, as he describes in the Myth of Er, by which our souls cross from “here” to “there.”[2] Over the centuries, Christians gradually adopted this way of thinking. At death we “cross over” to heaven. We leave here (this world) to go there (the land of glory). We even biblicize the old Greek myth. After the Reformation, hymn writers commandeered the Exodus story of Joshua leading the people of Israel into Canaan and mixed it with the Greek myth of crossing the River Styx. “Crossing the Jordan into the Promised Land” became an image of the migration of the Christian soul to heaven. Some of you will remember the old hymn “He Leadeth Me.” The third stanza reads:

  And when my task on earth is done

  When by thy grace the victory’s won

  E’en death’s cold wave I will not flee

  Since God through Jordan leadeth me.[3]

  Here we see death described as crossing the cold river over to the Promised Land. Other hymns, such as “I Won’t Have to Cross Jordan Alone,” “I’m Just A’Goin’ Over Jordan,” “The Far Side Banks of Jordan,” “I’ll Be Waiting by the Jordan for You” and “When Ol’ Chilly Jordan Calls,” all reinforce this image.

  The Khmus tribesperson, for whom leaving his or her tribal home is a terrifying thought, would like the biblical image better: God brings his kingdom here. The New Jerusalem descends down to our current home: “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them” (Rev 21:3). When we superimpose our image of leaving “this world of woe” onto the Christian story, we turn the gospel of good news into bad news for people like the Khmus.

  Western individualism affects more than just our view of eternity. One time I (Randy) was browsing in a bookstore in the massive city of Jakarta with an Indonesian colleague. An Indonesian clerk was following us around. Whenever I selected a book, she took it from me. I felt like they were worried I was going to steal something. They thought they were providing quality service. (These days, when I go to a big box store, I wish I could even find a clerk!)

  After we had selected several books, we walked up to pay the cashier—or the person I thought was the cashier. He carefully wrote out a receipt, listing all the book titles and prices in triplicate. He handed my books to someone else, who left, and then handed me two copies of the receipt. Another clerk escorted us to the actual cashier in another part of the store. She took my money and stamped two copies of my receipt, and we were then escorted to yet another counter. Upon delivering one of my stamped receipts, I was handed my books, neatly wrapped like a Christmas package. Actually, it had been so long since I’d seen the books that it felt like a Christmas package.

  Exhausted, I told my colleague, “I could make this store far more efficient!” He politely asked how, and I explained that only one person was needed for all those tasks. I leaned back in my bus seat smugly.

  He looked me in the eye and said, “Your idea would put five people out of work.”

  I shrugged and he looked dismayed. I was saving time. He was saving jobs. I was thinking about the situation from my individual point of view. He was thinking of the group. For me, it was an economics problem and certainly had nothing to do with moral right or wrong. I obviously was not even thinking of the other people involved. He thought I should be ashamed.

  In this section, we will look at three aspects of our Western worldview in which the differences between cultures are less obvious and, consequently, more dangerous. These perspectives reside just below the surface of our consciousness, out of plain sight. In chapter four, we talk about the differences between collectivistic and individualistic cultures. In chapter five, we talk about the values of honor and shame. In chapter six, we address the tricky concept of time. These concepts can cause big problems because they represent deeper values. We might concede that our mores, views of race and language are culturally subjective, but we will be tempted to believe that the values discussed in this section are universal and objective. You might find yourself asking in these chapters, Why won’t they do it the right way? For us as authors, these differences are increasingly difficult to explain clearly. For all of us as readers, this is where serious misreading of Scripture can occur.

  -4-

  Captain of My Soul

  Individualism and Collectivism

  Except for a brief stretch in the seventeenth century, and despite many missionary efforts over time, Christianity never took root in Japan before the modern era. In The Samurai, Japanese Catholic novelist Shusaku Endo explores some of the crosscultural challenges that made the Japanese slow to adopt the Christian faith. Speaking to a council of bishops about the progress of the mission in Japan, veteran missionary Father Valente explains:

  The Japanese never live their liv
es as individuals. We European missionaries were not aware of that fact. Suppose we have a single Japanese here. We try to convert him. But there was never a single individual we could call “him” in Japan. He has a village behind him. A family. And more. There are also his dead parents and ancestors. That village, that family, those parents and ancestors are bound to him tightly, as though they were living beings. That is why he is not an isolated human being. He is an aggregate who must shoulder the burden of village, family, parents, ancestors. . . . When the first missionary to Japan, Francisco Xavier, began his labours in the southern provinces, this was the most formidable obstacle he encountered. The Japanese said, “I believe the Christian teachings are good. But I would be betraying my ancestors if I went to a Paradise where they cannot dwell.”[1]

  What the fictional Father Valente articulates is a very real difference between how Westerners and non-Westerners understand personal identity and the relationship of the individual in society.

  Western societies are, by and large, individualistic societies. The most important entity in an individualistic culture is the individual person. The person’s identity comes by distinguishing herself from the people around her. She is encouraged to avoid peer pressure and be an independent thinker. She will make her decisions regardless of what others think; she may defy her parents with her choice of a college major or career or spouse. The highest goal and virtue in this sort of culture is being true to oneself. The supreme value is the sovereignty of the individual.