Every fall I stand in front of a fresh group of first-year Bible College students to teach the interpretation of the Bible. While I find the task immensely rewarding, it’s not easy. Many of these students have lived with the Bible their whole lives. Parents, youth pastors, and social media influencers have all inculcated these students with their vision of scripture. Many believe they have a great understanding of the Bible—until my class, that is. I often recall the words of a dear saint from a former church: “Well pastor, what passage are you going to ruin for us today?”

It goes without saying that the Bible is an ancient book, but despite knowing that, we’ve been trained to treat it like a modern self-help manual. If we have any desire to dig into the details of this text, we need to learn to read it (insofar as we can) through the eyes of those who first heard it.

While there are many implicit cultural perspectives that we are blind to, one of the most pervasive is western-style individualism. We hear the messages of our culture: “be the best you can be” and “live your own life”—something that to biblical cultures would be understood as selfish if not unthinkable.

Misreading Scripture is the work of a biblical scholar (E. Randolph Richards) and a Middle Eastern church planter (Richard James, pseudonym). Together, they alert to the reader to the major structural differences between collectivist and individualist societies, highlighting important concepts like family, patronage, and shame. These are the features of a collectivist society that are unwritten and assumed everywhere in scripture.

This book is filled with fresh interpretations of familiar Bible passages, used to explore how proper cultural interpretation of the text makes hitherto unforeseen meaning come alive. Written in an engaging style, this is an excellent book for any western Christian looking to understand the world of the Bible and engage it more faithfully.

Richards, E. Randolph and Richard James. Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes: Patronage, Honor, and Shame in the Biblical World. IVP Academic, 2020.