Biblical Views: Reading the Bible Through Ancient Eyes

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With the advent of multi-national corporations and widespread international travel, it has become increasingly obvious that communication between people of different cultures is difficult at best. In fact a substantial industry has developed, designed to teach diplomats, business people and assorted travelers how to communicate with people from other countries.

Why does this matter to American readers of the Bible? Because of a simple, obvious—but usually overlooked—fact: The Bible is not a Western book. It was written by, for and about people from the Mediterranean world who did not think, live or communicate like Westerners and who would be astonished at many of the things modern, Western readers “find” within its pages. Moreover, few of us are aware of the subtle ways in which we unconsciously import our American culture into the world and language of the Biblical text. The fact is that miscommunication is no less a peril in reading the works of persons from other cultures than in speaking with them face to face.

In Matthew 25:14–30 Jesus tells a story about a rich man going on a journey who entrusted large sums of money to three slave-managers. The two who received the largest sums traded up, doubling the amounts they had taken on deposit. The third slave, however, buried his master’s money to ensure that it remained intact. When the returning master learned what happened in his absence, he praised and rewarded the first two slaves and bitterly rebuked slave number three.

Luke also has a version of the story (19:11–27). There each slave receives ten pounds and is told to “do business” with them until the master returns. The first slave makes 1,000 percent on his money and the second 500 percent. Both receive high praise and are rewarded by being placed in charge of ten and five cities, respectively. Thus one prominent western commentary author pronounces the astonishing returns in Luke “a most satisfactory result.”¹

Americans love this story because it seems to be a kind of homespun capitalism on the lips of Jesus. We imagine the master in the story to be an analogue for God and thus see the story as divine affirmation of our Western economic practices of trading and investment.

The problem, however, is that given the “limited good” outlook of ancient Mediterranean cultures, seeking “more” was considered morally wrong. Because the pie was “limited” and already all distributed, anyone getting “more” meant someone else got less. Thus honorable people did not try to get more, and those who did were automatically considered thieves: To have gained, to have accumulated more than one started with, is to have taken the share of someone else. As the early Christian theologian Jerome would later write: “Every rich person is either a thief or the heir of a thief” (In Hieremiam II.V.2; CCL LXXIV 61). And as Sirach puts it, “A merchant can hardly keep from wrongdoing, and a tradesman will not be declared innocent of sin” (26:29).

Of course the elite tried to deflect accusations of getting rich at the expense of others by having their affairs handled by slaves—exactly what is described in the story Jesus tells. Shameful, or even greedy, behavior could be condoned in slaves because slaves had no honor nor any expectation of it. As Sirach so wisely says, it amounts to this: “A rich man will exploit you if you can be of use to him, but if you are in need, he will forsake you” (13:4). And exploitation is exactly what this ancient story is about.

The returning master admits to what the third slave knew ahead of time: that he is a “hard” (the Greek term here, skleros, is used by ancient writers to describe someone who is cruel, merciless or arrogantly inhumane) man who “reaps where he did not sow and gathers where he did not scatter seed” (Matthew 25:24). The perfect definition of a thief! How have we missed that? Moreover, the master in Luke’s version is even worse. There he owns up to this same merciless attitude but then goes much further: ordering his enemies slaughtered in his own presence.

And what about the third slave, the one so bitterly rebuked by the returning master and vilified in virtually all Western interpretation for failing to invest the money? In Matthew, he buries the deposit for safekeeping. The rabbis argued that this was precisely the right thing to do so the deposit062 could be returned intact (b. Baba Mezi’a 42b; m. Baba Batra 4:8.) In fact they ruled that burying the deposit meant the trustee was not liable if a loss occurred. Though the Lukan slave ties the money in a cloth—thus taking what the Mishnah specifies as the riskier course—he nonetheless preserves the pound as any honorable man would. He does not participate in the scheme to double the master’s money, but honorably refrains from taking anything that belongs to the share of another.

In both versions of the story, the third slave is told he should have invested the money with bankers so the master could have at least earned interest on his money. But seeking interest from another Israelite was forbidden by the Torah (Deuteronomy 23:19–20), and, elsewhere in Luke, Jesus says that we should lend “expecting nothing in return” (Luke 6:35). Even more telling is a third version of this parable quoted by Eusebius (265–339 C.E.) from the now-lost Gospel of the Nazoreans. There Eusebius is quite explicit that the hero of the story is the third slave who refused to cooperate in the investment schemes of the greedy master (Theophania 22).

What causes cross-cultural miscommunication is the unwarranted assumption that people from other cultures think like we do. But they don’t. So when we read this story (and so many others in the Bible) through Western eyes, we miss completely what it once said to people in the ancient Mediterranean world. Perhaps it might have been possible for Western readers to see this master’s rapacious behavior for what it really is had we not been so eager to discover our own cultural values affirmed in the sacred text.

With the advent of multi-national corporations and widespread international travel, it has become increasingly obvious that communication between people of different cultures is difficult at best. In fact a substantial industry has developed, designed to teach diplomats, business people and assorted travelers how to communicate with people from other countries. Why does this matter to American readers of the Bible? Because of a simple, obvious—but usually overlooked—fact: The Bible is not a Western book. It was written by, for and about people from the Mediterranean world who did not think, live or communicate like Westerners and who would be […]