As we begin our year in the New Testament, we naturally start with the Gospels…  which is a problem, funny enough.

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Reading the Gospels, we find what we expect too easily. That is, Latter-day Saints are primed to look for explicit “doctrinal” statements “in the open,” like the ending of a parable, or perhaps marked by a “and thus we see.” The Gospels seemingly provide these in abundance, and so we tend to stop there, assuming that we’ve found the timeless truths they intended to communicate. They seem “easier” to read because of this, which tends to confirm our unconscious assumption that THAT kind of thing is indeed how scriptural truths are communicated. It leaves us wondering why, lacking explicit doctrinal statements, this detail or that story is included. It also means we tend to favor the Gospels over the epistles, particularly Paul’s.

But just as the Old Testament and D&C have implicit contexts (see here, and here for a sports analogy), so to do the Gospels and the rest of the NT as well. Indeed, the New Testament “presumes a high knowledge of the context on the part of the reader and explains very little.”1Rohrbaugh, cited below

What if some of the truths New Testament authors were trying to convey are invisible to us, because we don’t recognize how they are being communicated or lack the implicit context to understand? 

Reading scripture— ALL scripture, including D&C — is a cross-cultural experience. Recognizing that  fact is key to understanding its “weirdness” and uncovering the blind spots created by our own assumptions, time, and place.

If, however,  we insist on reading scripture with the assumption that God’s word is clear, plain, and timeless, needing no real context or interpretation,2This was Joseph Fielding Smith’s philosophy of scripture. then we’re going to misread and misunderstand, sometimes quite badly and perhaps with serious results; in effect, that approach insists on reading scripture through the lenses of our modern cultural assumptions while also denying we’re wearing glasses.

For example, we quite naturally read language of Jesus-as-the-Father through the inherited lens of modern western Christianity, and then get confused or anxious at the Book of Mormon teaching “the Trinity.” (It’s really not. And most LDS misunderstand the Trinity anyway.)

We tend to read grace/works/faith through the lens of Protestant framings about grace and “law,” which derive from Luther; he read Paul’s Jews through the lens of 16th century debates with legalistic Catholics, distorting what Paul was really saying.  The “law” is Torah, and grace/faith language draws heavily from Greco-Roman patron-client relationships.

These are places we have “read in” later developments and ideas that aren’t present. And at the same time, we fail to recognize some things that would have stared contemporaries in the face, cultural natives, so to speak. To pick a few, briefly, addressed in later posts:

  1. The most mind-blowing miracle of Jesus is calming the storm. Why? Because of the traditions around creation and the cosmic waters. The Apostles were familiar with Jewish and pagan miracle-workers, healers, and exorcists; this miracle elevates Jesus to the level of someone who can bend cosmic realities with a word.   “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?!”
  2. When Jesus says “the eye is the lamp of the body,” (Matt 6:22) he meant that somewhat literally, an example of accommodation. Wait, what?

    the ancients understood light to issue out from the eye and not penetrate into it….

    In the ancient view, light originated in the heart. It was then projected out through the eyes and illuminated or damaged whatever it hit. The problem [Jesus discusses] therefore is not with our eyes but with what originates in our hearts. We have heart problems, so to speak, not eye problems. Light is understood to be the carrier that projects greed and envy (the core of evil-eye belief) out from the heart, through the eyes, from whence it damages those it hits. The problem then is not what we take in; the problem is what we give out.

    -Rohrbaugh, The New Testament in Cross-Cultural Perspective

  3. Matthew starts with a genealogy, but Luke doesn’t give one until chapter 3. Why? As it turns out, genealogies aren’t primarily for genealogy.

    Only rather rarely and to a limited depth do ancient Semitic genealogies afford us a list of strictly biological ancestry—a factor that does not necessarily make them inaccurate since the intention of those who preserved them was not strictly biological.

    – Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, 65.

Indeed, Luke has something very different in mind to demonstrate, and that explains why he places the genealogy where he does.

the genealogy of Jesus is a stunning claim to honor, all out of keeping with the actual circumstances of his birth…. Luke therefore goes immediately from the honor claim (genealogy) to a test of Jesus’s honor at the level of the cosmic powers (4:1–13)…. Jesus once again passes a test of loyalty and shows himself to be worthy of an outrageous honor claim. In a classic Middle Eastern game of challenge and riposte, Jesus has bested an adversary who would frighten any mortal man. His honor has been vindicated in a frightening contest of wits.

-Rohrbaugh, The New Testament in Cross-Cultural Perspective, 37ff.

So as with any cross-cultural experience, you get the most of out it with an explainer, a guide who can bridge both and point out the right signposts.

At a rather simple and basic level, studies of cross-cultural communication indicate that when the familiar guideposts that allow people to proceed without conscious thought are missing, as they are in many cross-cultural situations, people tend to rather quickly substitute markers from their own culture. They assume that their own ways are normal, natural, and right and therefore project their own sense of things onto the situation as a simple means of finding their way.

-Rohrbaugh, The New Testament in Cross-Cultural Perspective,

 

Now, to shift gears.

The goals we have dictate the tools and methods we should use; if we merely wish personal inspiration and discipleship (and don’t mind the risk of misunderstanding Jesus’ teachings), then none of this matters. If, on the other hand, we want to read and understand scripture “literally,” then we need to be aware of some of these things.  Or at least, we need to have enough self-awareness to know we are probably “misreading scripture through Western eyes” lest we simply “project our own assumptions” onto the text.

So, what are some major differences between modern Western readers and the New Testament?

  • Honor/shame.
    • A number of passages are attempting to demonstrate how Jesus had honor (read: “authority”)  in both ways that mattered, acquired and merited. This was massively important.

    • Honor is indeed the core value in Mediterranean culture. It is one’s public reputation, one’s standing in the village, one’s “face.” And it may either be ascribed or acquired. Ascribed honor, perhaps the most important, is the honor derived from birth status, power or public position
      -Rohrbaugh

  •  Collective/individualist
    • It may surprise you, but Americans (and most westerners) are radically, off-the-chart individualists, whereas the Biblical cultures are strongly collectivist.

      the individualist—collectivist divide [is often] the primary dimension of intercultural communication difficulties. Recognizing that American culture is probably the most individualistic culture that has ever existed, and that the culture out of which the New Testament came was at the collectivist end of the spectrum, we should not be surprised to find miscommunication between these two cultures.

      – Rohrbaugh, The New Testament in Cross-Cultural Perspective, 10–11.

  • Social stratification and social structures
    • There was virtually no middle class, and many many many slaves of both Jews and Greeks, though slaves could be highly educated and somewhat independent. It’s likely Paul came from a once-enslaved family, and slavery plays a major role in understanding Philemon.
    • Most people were peasants, and “peasant life was nothing like what is often pictured on our Sunday school walls.”3Rohrbaugh
    • By social structures I mean things like the patron/client relationship, which underlies much of the grace/faith language of the NT.

    • It is extremely difficult for modern Americans to understand the feel that social stratification gave to ancient social relations, though such stratification is approximated in some third-world countries today. Much of it we Americans find offensive because it violates our Enlightenment ideal of an egalitarian society. But social class conflict was simply a pervasive fact of life in the first century and its corrosive effects are present throughout the Gospel stories of Jesus.

      -Rohrbaugh, The New Testament in Cross-Cultural Perspective

All of these cross-cultural aspects shape our (mis)understanding of scripture. As Rohrbaugh says,

when Americans read the Bible using (and assuming the universality of) the American style of communication, they make misunderstanding inevitable. We think we understand when in fact we do not. We are simply projecting our own cultural perceptions onto the texts we claim we are reading, to see what they might say to us. We often remain oblivious to the distortions we introduce simply because of who we are and the way we speak….

A simple gesture such as a smile can be an example. Americans assume a smile to be a universal gesture of friendliness. It is not. In a number of Asian cultures a smile at a stranger is either rude or an indication of sexual deviance. Tears, especially public tears on the part of a male, have a very different connotation in Middle Eastern culture than they do in

the West.

To take another example, men holding hands carries very different connotations in the Middle East today than in the West, as many political commenters were quick to point out in 2005. That’s George Bush holding hands with Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

So, how do we account for our Western perspectives, and not let them distort our New Testament study? Resources! Study Bibles will do a little, dedicated resources much more. And I’ll blog about some.

But before I make my reading suggestions, I want to point out that the Church’s scripture study manual says things like this.

Lesson 11: Bridging the Cultural Gap

  1. We must seek to understand the time and place where scripture originated.

  2. Understanding culture will help in comprehending scriptures.

  3. There are ways to improve your understanding of cultural influences on scriptures.

Study the historical context and setting of scripture passages. Study the cultures that influenced the peoples of the scriptures. Study the geography, climates, and seasons of scriptural lands.

So take responsibility for your own learning, and read some books 🙂

Reading Recommendations

All of these are available via Logos as well, which means all their scripture references are popups.

Previous posts for this year’s NT study

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