Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes: Patronage, Honor, and Shame in the Biblical World

by E Randolph Richards

The American value of being tough is harder to explain than you might first think. Deep values are hard to describe because they usually go without being said.

I am comfortable admitting that we don’t have a good metaphor for this. Honor, shame, and boundaries are the means or the method or the manner by which, or the bucket in which, collective cultures pass along their key values, such as kinship, patronage, and brokerage. Individualist cultures have their own tools, such as guilt (and innocence) and an introspective conscience.

Westerners to bring about repentance, just as he uses honor and shame to bring Easterners to repentance and saving grace. Ironically, each culture tends to think the Spirit only uses its particular tools, or that other tools are inadequate, so people want to import their tools into other cultures. Thus, Westerners can’t imagine how the Spirit can convict anyone without using guilt; yet many Asian cultures don’t even have a word for guilt.

Part of our challenge is that the English language lacks sufficiently nuanced terms to describe the things we’re discussing. On the other hand, English has plenty of nuanced terminology for things that are important to us.

Honor, shame, and boundaries are a big part of life in collective cultures, so they have a wide vocabulary to talk about them. In English we tend to use just a few words.2

We might say, for example, that the Old Testament (Hebrew) has at least ten words for shame. A better way to say it is that English has one word for ten different (Hebrew) things.

Third, in modern Western usage, all three concepts—honor, shame, and boundaries—often refer to an individual. In the biblical world, as well as in collectivist cultures today, honor, shame, and boundaries are collective tools (methods, buckets) used by communities, not individuals. They require a people, not a person, for them even to work. A man is considered honorable because he belongs to an honorable family or community.

Old Testament scholars call this way of speaking antithetical parallelism. The same idea is taught by saying opposites. It uses the pattern “a wise man does A, but a foolish man does B.” It is a very common device in Proverbs, where contrasts are made between the righteous and the wicked, the rich and the poor, the diligent and the lazy.

Each village knew what was honorable. We Westerners look at different values and call them honor. It helps to remember that although collective cultures have different values, all think the way to enforce and reinforce these values is by honor, by considering the possession of a particular value to be honorable.

Collective cultures think collectively. When one person gains honor, the rest of the collective group shares in that person’s honor.

So, when we see honor at play between two individual people in Scripture, we need to remember they are representatives of their people. The interaction between them often concerns the rest of their collective group.

The key is that ascribed honor is not earned.

To Westerners, this seems unfair. Well, it is unfair. Before we rise up in arms to protest it, we must remember we are given certain rights and privileges as Christians because “We are children of God” (1 Jn 3:2). We didn’t earn it. We were born (again) into it.

Joseph did not earn it; it was ascribed to him by Jacob.

When Paul defends his honor in front of the Sanhedrin, he lists his ascribed honor (Acts 23:1-10). This is a wise move on his part, since his achievements are in question (in the eyes of the Sanhedrin). Paul’s ascribed honor, however, cannot be questioned. “Brothers, I am a Pharisee,” Paul notes, “a son of Pharisees” (Acts 23:6 NASB). The Pharisees recognize the honor. They share in it too. That’s why they come to his defense (at least temporarily).

As an individualist, I could question whether Saul has any honor left based on his actions. But just as Paul didn’t lose his ascribed honor in the eyes of the other Pharisees, so King Saul doesn’t lose the honor ascribed to him by the prophet Samuel.

“Who can lay a hand on the LORD’s anointed and be guiltless?” (1 Sam 26:9). Saul remains the Lord’s anointed. While others might not value God’s selection, David does. He honors whom God honors. Who Saul is (his ascribed honor) is more important than what he does, in David’s eyes.

We can say every collective group used honor and every collective group honored different things.

First, we should note that Jesus is pretty dismissive of the Sadducees: “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God” (Mt 22:29).

Jesus actually recognizes that the content of the Pharisees’ teaching is rather sound:

“The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach” (Mt 23:2-3). So what exactly is Jesus’ problem with Pharisees? It is not what they say but their hearts. Jesus points out: “Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others” (Mt 23:5-7). Jesus is pointing out that the problem is they want honor for the wrong reasons.

the Pharisees pursued honor based on the wrong values. They wanted to receive honor for doing the correct actions, not for having the correct motivations.

When searching for a king, the crowds honor the wrong values, appearance and height: “But the LORD said to Samuel, ‘Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart’” (1 Sam 16:7). Scripture doesn’t criticize seeking honor or giving honor. Samuel is sent there for the purpose of giving honor. Scripture doesn’t criticize honoring the right values.

Saul fails to act like a king, “to go out before us and fight our battles,” while David demonstrates exactly that behavior. David achieves the honor of being their king.

He is the king, and the king is to fight their battles for them. The text reminds us that Goliath is tall, but so is Saul (1 Sam 9:2). Goliath has great armor. Saul does too. We might say, well, Goliath is taller.4 But that’s not the difference the Bible highlights. Saul notes that Goliath “has been a warrior from his youth” (1 Sam 17:33). Saul is supposed to be confident that the Lord, Israel’s God, will fight for him. Saul isn’t confident.

David is commended because he is confident that God will fight for him, “The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine” (1 Sam 17:37). Growing up, I admired (honored) David for the wrong value. I honored him for being a good shot; Scripture honors him for trusting the Lord. That is the value that counts.

We are not supposed to say, “David killed Goliath.” We are supposed to say, “God killed Goliath.” Whatever conclusions we take from this story, the most important one is that we are to honor David not for being a great slinger but for trusting God. He is the kind of person who will make a good king.

God assures Abram, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield” (Gen 15:1). God tells Isaac, “Do not be afraid, for I am with you” (Gen 26:24).

The biblical message doesn’t change. What does Jesus tell us? Face Goliath if you are a good shot? No. “And surely I am with you always” (Mt 28:20). Honor David, but do it for the right value: for believing that God would be with him, as he promised.

So far, we have been making a distinction between ascribed and achieved honor.

In the eyes of the crowds, Jesus has little ascribed honor: “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” (Mt 13:55). Yet, he has a lot of achieved honor: “Many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name” (Jn 2:23).

While Jews made up about 14 percent of the empire, they didn’t integrate very well because they had some very different values from the rest of the pagan empire.

Keeping the Sabbath, observing food laws, and practicing circumcision were important to the Jews, so Jews honored those who did. They withheld honor from those who didn’t (such as Gentiles). But Gentiles didn’t care, so they felt they were losing no honor. They wrote it off as Jews being “a peculiar people.”7

But other Jews were jealous. (Acts 17:1-2, 4-5) The Jews are angry. Luke is very clear why. Some patronesses have given Paul their support: “quite a few prominent women,” Luke subtly notes. There is a potential loss of honor (and potential funding) for the Thessalonian Jews, if these prominent women stop acting as patronesses for the Jewish community. Thessalonian Gentiles, though, won’t care because those patronesses will support some other Thessalonian cause.

The Thessalonian Jews are smart enough to know they cannot charge Paul with gaining patronage from patronesses, however disruptive it could prove to be to them personally. Patrons supported whomever they wished.

Protecting their city was a value shared by all Thessalonians, Jew and Gentile. Apparently, the Jews knew something of Paul’s activities.

When some Gentile Thessalonians joined the Christian community, what they honored changed. Honoring the gods was no longer esteemed. Rather, as Christians, they were to honor the one God. Paul reinforces that value by honoring them in a letter, noting how other churches honor them for doing so: “You became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. . . . They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thess 1:7, 9).

Paul is using honor to reinforce the value. Their values changed, and so what was considered honorable changed too.

Values changed because the Gentile Thessalonians changed communities. They now belonged to a new community with different values. This is part of the process of discipleship in honor-based cultures.

When Jesus argues for resurrection using their books, it is a different matter, and we see that Matthew reports it as an honor contest:

For now we see honor is at stake in this scenario because Jesus is disputing with the Sadducees over the public interpretation of a text that both Jesus and the Sadducees consider sacred

(Ex 3:6).

Jesus was killed over honor.

The banquet table truly is a picture of one’s standing in the community. More than that, it was the standing of Mason’s entire family in the community.

So, does rain comes from God or from Baal? Ahab insists Baal, who lives on mountains, sends the rain. Elijah announces the LORD will send no more rain, and, importantly, no more rain comes.

So the honor contest begins and is held on Baal’s best territory: on a mountain. This is not just any mountain but Mount Carmel, the mountain on the border between Baal’s established land (Phoenicia) and the land Baal is now claiming (Israel). The LORD gives every advantage to Baal to underline the difference in power.

conclusion is clear. The verdict of the court of opinion is announced: “When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, ‘The LORD—he is God!’” (1 Kings 18:39).

The leaders lose honor because they are clearly seen to be afraid to take a stand on what they think. They are not acting as brave teachers of Israel, as having no concerns higher than the law of God. They fail to embody a community value. Jesus concludes, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things” (Lk 20:8).

Jesus is noting the temple leaders don’t get to rule on John the Baptist’s authority. The court of reputation does. So also Jesus is refusing to allow them to rule on his authority. Let the court of reputation do it.

So Jesus is pointing out, here is a guy who likes to use Caesar’s coins because they are secured, but he doesn’t want to pay for the empire to secure them. The leaders are being hypocritical. The Jews like Caesar’s money and his roads and his safety from bandits and pirates, but they don’t want to pay for these things.