"Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes" by E. Randolph Richards and Richard James is a thought-provoking and timely examination of how individualistic Western cultural lenses can distort the interpretation of Scripture. The authors skillfully challenge prevailing assumptions and shed light on the communal and collectivist contexts in which biblical texts were written. The book's positive aspect lies in its ability to prompt readers to critically assess their own cultural biases and adopt a more holistic and accurate understanding of biblical teachings. However, at times, the text can be dense and scholarly, potentially making it less accessible to casual readers. Nevertheless, "Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes" is a valuable resource that encourages a deeper appreciation for the cultural nuances and communal dimensions of Scripture, ultimately enriching our understanding of the biblical narrative.

Essential read for anyone, but especially those in Western society. The vocabulary is truthful and caring. I ighly recommend!

I received an ARC from InterVasity Press, via NetGalley. This review is my personal opinion.

Usually, I do not read this type of book, however, the name caught my attention and I must say it was very enlightening and eye-opening. Well-written and thoroughly research this book will help us to see that we need to change our approach to the Bible. Our culture and specific context give us a view, a close and limit one and this book help me see the complexity inside the society represented in the Bible. I recommend this book, especially for those who like to do deep Bible study it could be a great addition.

In our western society, the value we place on individualism is of highest concern. To make our own choices, decide what we want to be, and to be free of boundaries placed upon us.

As we approach Scripture, we read within our own cultural lens and perspective, which can cause us to misinterpret and misunderstand biblical teaching. This book is a guide, to help us see the possibilities from a new lens, that of a collectivist society - which was the audience to which the Scriptures were written.

It's an important book to challenge our thinking, and help us grow in our understanding of the Word.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC, and the opportunity to post an honest review.

While emphasizing the relevance and applicability of the Bible, we often forget that the Bible is a text that was written during a specific time and place, and that the original audience would have had insights into the book that we (as western, individualist Christians) would not easily pick up on. Richards and James use their experiences living in collectivist cultures to show how we can misread scripture by applying our own individualistic worldview over a text written about and for a culture that was collectivist. The authors often illustrate certain concepts by telling anecdotes from their own experiences in collectivist cultures or the experiences of friends from those cultures. My only complaints are that at times it seemed repetitive, and that I didn’t always agree with their interpretation of certain scriptures. That aside, I found the book to be easy to understand and helpful in teaching me more about collectivist cultures during ancient times and today. I believe <i>Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes</i> is an important book and anyone endeavoring to study the Bible should add it to their reading list.

*Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Summary: An exploration of individualist culture (like the modern US) and collectivist cultures (like the biblical era) and how that leads us to misread scripture and misunderstand biblical concepts.

There is no way for me to adequately capture Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes in a simple review. There is no question it is among the best books I have read this year. I looked back at the pre-release PDF copy that I read, and I made notes or highlights on over 100 pages of a 300-page book. I also have recommended the book dozens of times since I started it.

Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes is a follow-up book to Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, which I also recommend, and have read twice. Both books are pointing out how our presuppositions and the (often unwritten) assumptions of the authors and original readers impact how we understand scripture. While the Western Eyes book looked at 9 areas briefly, Individualist Eyes spends more time focusing just on three inter-related concepts, Individualist vs. Collectivist cultures, honor/shame vs guilt/innocence, and patronage.

One of the problems of reading scripture is how we have been shaped to understand the culture of the  Ancient Near East by modern authors. It is common to hear that the Greek and Roman world did not value life or participate in charity. But Individualist Eyes complicates that picture because patronage, which is a type of community care, and charity, was common. Collectivist cultures do care for their community, but patronage systems thrive when there is a large wealth disparity and a low level of governance. The wealthy use their wealth for others to illustrate virtue. Those who are helped give gratitude, loyalty, and service to the patron. The Father and Jesus are both compared to patrons. Jesus' comment, 'if you love me you will follow my commands' was a reference to a requirement for his patronage. Jesus feeding people was likened to patronage in the benefits it gave the people.

Where Jesus and Paul and other early Christians were radical was not in care for the poor and disenfranchised, it was in removing the boundaries between who you cared for. Patrons would care for the poor and desperate of their own family, social group, or ethnic or religious community. But the early Christians put social obligations to care for others as a family across those boundaries. NT Wright's biography of Paul talks well about how the early church crossed boundaries. In addition, our modern sensibilities emphasize the importance of 'no-strings' gifts or charity. But communal cultures view the strings as part of the reason for gifts or charity. Those strings bind people together in relationships. There can be a misuse of that binding, and so Proverbs and other places give warnings at times, but part of covenant thinking, expressed clearly in the Old Testament and the New is that there is an 'if...then...' thinking in how our relationship with God works, a patronage relationship.

At the same time, Jesus (and later the early Christians) redefined the reciprocity of relationships. In Matt 5 when Jesus if someone wants to sue you for your shirt, give them your coat as well. I have heard that explained as a form of shame, which could be true, but it was more likely to be about trying to turn an "adversary into a friend." (p 82)

Our cultural toolbox has limitations. In Western Christianity, there is an emphasis on sin and guilt. The Holy Spirit does use guilt to produce repentance, which should produce change. But many modern "Asian cultures don't even have a word for guilt." (p130) Instead, collectivist cultures tend to use shame as a boundary for appropriate behavior in order to draw people into the right relationship with the group. On the other side, honor functions as one of the tools to reinforce a group's values and identity, also creating inclusionary boundaries.

One of the strengths of Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes is that it not just illustrates the concepts, but then uses those concepts in scriptural interpretation, highlighting areas where we modern individualists misread scripture. It is common that we 'honor' David for being a good shot in killing Goliath. But ancients would have honored David for trust God to fight for him. "We are not supposed to say 'David killed Goliath.' We are supposed to say 'God killed Goliath.'" (p 149). Or in 1 Cor 13:4 and many other places:

Paul is indicating his achieved honor. In my individualist culture, boasting has negative overtones. "Don't boast," my grandmother warned. "Boasting is wrong." That's our values at work. So we quote Paul when he says love does not boast (1 Cor 13:4)...We fill in the gaps about why they are condemned: they are condemned for boasting, because boasting is wrong. Yet, if we look closely at these verses, Paul is not actually condemning boasting but boasting for the wrong reasons...Boasting in Paul's culture...was to indicate achieved honor. Furthermore, since honor is collective, everyone else in Paul's group also benefited from his boasting. For individualists, boasting is a way to put yourself ahead of your peers. For collectivists, boasting is a way to put you and all of your peers (group) ahead. (p 150-151)
Part of what is being pointed out is the nuance that we miss because we are in a different culture. We have all heard about the many different words for snow that Eskimos have. The point isn't that our concept of snow (one English word) is just expressed by many different words, or that our concept of love was expressed by four different words in Greek, but that in modern English, we compress those four different Greek concepts or the number of different Eskimo words for snow into a single word/concept. Said another way, we have less nuance for love and snow than Greek or Eskimo languages do. So in Hebrew, there were at least ten distinct terms for what we commonly translate as shame in English (p 180). The concept of shame/guilt has been written about widely, often frame through Brene Brown's work. Her work is helpful, but her distinctions and work are about modern concepts and usages of guilt and shame, not ancient concepts of guilt and shame. And so we cannot simply listen to Brene Brown and use her work to influence how we read Proverbs 3:35.

The main concept (and there is too much I am skipping over) is that shame used rightly in ancient collectivist cultures was an attempt to bring about the restoration of relationships. The misuse of shame in modern culture (as illustrated through Brene Brown) tends to push people out of relationships. The right use of shame in a modern or ancient collectivist culture is restoration. But shame can be misused in either collectivist or individualist cultures. Matthew 18 never uses the words shame, but the concept of quietly going to someone to gently correct and then slowly enlarging the circle to apply more pressure is using the concept of shame in a way that we likely miss.

Boundaries are one of the areas where I think Misreading with Individualist Eyes is particularly helpful. We individualists tend to think of all boundaries as negative. But within collectivist cultures, boundaries show shared values and group identity. In the New Testament, the importance of boundaries is that:

"God doesn't want to save me as an individual. God saves us into something: a community...It is true that God loves us, each and every one of us. Salvation is a deeply personal matter, and I as an individual am restored to God. He does love me. At the same time, it is also about we...God sent Jesus as a broker to reconnect us to him and to one another. The Bible teaches I'm saved--into a community. (p238, italic in the original)
That saved into a 'we' isn't just about eschatological reality, but current reality as well. Acts 2 isn't about a failed communism.

"The believers were acting like family...If we call God Abba, then we cannot think of one another as brothers and sisters merely with empty words, as John notes. We must treat one another as brothers and sisters because we are a family under a new heavenly father." (p244)
One of the most important passages in my reading is this one.

The challenge of building a Christian community is not an individualist or collectivist problem. It is a problem of living as God's family in a fallen world. It can be hard to form a deep community from individualists because individualists often do not understand the importance of community. At the same time, it can be hard to form a deep community from collectivists because collectivists understand the importance of community--the ones they are already apart of. (p245)
Right now we, our society has significant boundary issues. We are ideologically, relationally, and geographically divided. Those divides do not magically disappear because of Christ. But because of Christ, we have tools (ones that we may not recognize, but they are there) to do the hard work of breaking down inappropriate boundaries and maintaining appropriate ones. We have tools to see other Christians as a family under the same patron. And we have the ability to love in a way that illustrates God's care for us to show God's love to others.

This book is a deep dive into the collectivist cultures of the eastern and middle eastern worlds as well as the biblical worlds of the Old and New Testaments. The authors use many examples from present time - when they were living and working in these parts of the world - to explain concepts such as kinship, patronage, brokerage, honor, shame, and boundaries. They also use biblical examples as well, which offers readers a freshly nuanced way to understand these biblical texts. This is important because western readers live in individualist cultures and societies and can misinterpret and misunderstand the Bible when we don’t acknowledge the collectivism within biblical cultures. The authors carefully explain these concepts in easy to understand, conversational language while also applying detailed research to the work as well. This is an important resource for any western Christian wanting to further their study of the Bible and expand their understanding of it.

Coming from a Latinx family, the village mindset tends to be a bit more pervasive. My dad is white but was raised in a primarily Mexican neighborhood and married someone from that neighborhood so the village mentality was always a thing, even after they divorced. But I really appreciated how this pointed out ways that the Bible, and the life of Jesus, was very different to our individualist identities in the US than it was in Jesus's time and the apostles times.

"Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes" looks at the cultural background of the Bible in order to better understand what's happening in the Bible. The authors focused on the differences between individualist and collectivist cultures, specifically on kinship, patronage, brokerage, honor, shaming, and boundaries. They used modern examples to help explain a concept then showed how this shows up in the Bible. They showed how understanding these cultural differences can change how we view what's going on in some biblical accounts or even what the main point being made is. I've read a lot of these cultural background books yet I still learned a lot. I felt that the authors explained the concepts well. Overall, I'd highly recommend this book to anyone interested in a deeper understanding of the Bible.

Rarely, when reviewing books, does where I live play a role. In reading “Misreading scripture with individualistic eyes” though, it feels important to note that South Africa has deep roots in collectivist culture. Authors E. Randolph Richards and Richard James set out to explain to readers from individualistic cultures the differences between the two and how that impacts the way we read the Bible, they comment:

“…to understand ancient Mediterranean (and most modern Eastern) collectivist cultures, you need to understand six basic ingredients: kinship, patronage, brokerage, honor, shame, and boundaries.”
However, I felt like neither fish nor fowl! I was raised as a first generation South African by British parents but in living over 30 years in South Africa, these six basic ingredients felt familiar and my interpretation of the examples given lined up on the collectivist side of things. I am a mix of the two, I can see both sides, but felt more comfortable with the collectivist than the individualist. Whichever side you find yourself on, better understanding how culture and context impact how we interpret stories is a good thing and as such, I enjoyed the book. My experience of collectivist culture meant I found having a concept explained three or four times over in different ways repetitive but, perhaps, for those less familiar with it, it will be helpful.

In Africa, there is a saying about the meaning “being in the air”, unstated and yet understood. It would be seem to be similar in Eastern culture as a large part of the book explains what ISN’T said in the Bible as it “…examines some unspoken foundational social structures and tools used in the biblical world.” The authors do this through expounding on Biblical stories, sharing modern examples and writing fictional stories to highlight their points. In doing so, they achieve their objective of highlighting how different the Biblical world view was in comparison to today’s Western culture.

If you haven’t experienced a collectivist culture, this book will open your eyes to a very different way of perceiving the world and change the way you see many of the familiar stories from the Bible. If you have, this may not be the one for you, it doesn’t dig deeply into particulars of the Biblical culture and admits to using generalisations to make the point. It’s a three out of five on the enJOYment scale.

The authors use a combination of anecdotes from their experiences in collectivist societies and historical research to show how beliefs in honor, familial and kinship ties, as well as other related factors, effect how collectivist societies operate. Understanding these cultural factors make Biblical stories clearer, helping Western readers understand the cultural context behind Bible stories and teachings.

Highly valuable book to help understand the Bible in context of the original culture in which it was written. So often we misunderstand what the Bible is teaching and misapply it to our lives because we see biblical accounts through individualistic eyes rather than through the collectivist cultural view in which these accounts took place. I didn’t realize I was misunderstanding the meaning of parts of the Bible all this time! A very eye-opening book that I highly recommend!

Thanks to InterVarsity Press and NetGalley for an advanced reader's copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I consider this book and its predecessor by E. Randolph Richards to be among the most valuable books I've read for bringing my understanding of the Bible in line with the context, culture, and time period of the Bible's writing. While it's definitely a book seminary students should read, it's also written in a way that's accessible to those of us who haven't sat in a theology classroom. This is good news, because the content is revelatory for both crowds.
The concepts of honor, shame, collectivism and individualism may those of us who have always lived in an individualist context on the defensive, but don't turn back. The authors are not out to prove that western culture is wrong. Their mandate is to help us understand how it's different, how we read our own experience into Scripture instead of seeing the writings as they were intended.
Richards also greatly benefits from his new co-author. At the beginning of the book, the two talk about how they will fuse their writings together instead of separating their experiences (that's so collectivist!), and the result is a text that is both historical and biographical. To give a reader a door into the biblical world as it may have looked 2000 years ago, the two include some more modern experiences from collectivist cultures such as Indonesia. I found this very helpful, because this gave additional, firsthand experience to collectivist cultures that may have otherwise come across as historical and too far removed.
A great read in general. I wouldn't say that nobody understands the Bible if they don't read stuff like this, because that's certainly not true. I would definitely assert that books like Richards has given us deeply enrich our understanding of the Bible and bring new freshness to the text.

Richards, E. Randolph, and Richard James. Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020. $28.00

Randolph and James have teamed up to write Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes. The book challenges those who have grown up in cultures emphasizing individualism and the way they read Scripture; this should be fairly obvious from the title. The goal is to shed light on “collectivist” read Scripture and how the culture surrounding the Biblical authors was collectivist. This term is a generalization based on the idea that much of the Western world is "individualistic" and much of the Eastern world is "collectivistic." In their introduction, they oppose resolutely saying one or the other perspective is better or worse. Rather, they recognize because of the fall we have gaps in our understanding and they want to promote our ability to read Scripture and encourage the individualist to see the value in the collectivist approach.

The authors want this book to be an introduction to the gaps individualists experience and it certainly serves its purpose. They helpfully engage in topics such as kinship, patronage, honor, shame, and boundaries. Reading was a challenge at times because the authors edited each other's writing (as noted in the preface). At times there is a lack of flow or I might wish for certain parts to be more concise. I liked the effort put into the book and the goal of increasing Biblical literacy by broadening our cultural understanding.

I received a complimentary digital copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley for review purposes. My comments are independent and my own.

E. Randolph Richards and Richard James’ “Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes” is an eye-opening text that informs, challenges, and inspires us toward a new way of looking at the biblical text, the characters in the text, and a path forward toward practical living in an individualistic society. I highly recommend this text for any serious student of the Bible!

Love the book. Loved the previous book as well. I dont think the authors are fully right on everything they say...its like the saying says, to the guy with a hammer, everything is a nail. But having said that, they do expose many presuppositions in the west that need to be checked before going to the biblical text and understanding it better.