The Bible and the culture of honour – a challenge for the modern reader

That there are sometimes cultural clashes when we, as modern Europeans, open our Bibles is nothing new. After all, God chose to reveal his will through historical events and people, and it is inevitable that this will have an impact on contemporary culture.

However, the clashes can be of different character. For a Swede like me, it may be obvious that the cultural distance is greater to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob than to the apostle Paul, but for a farmer in rural Africa, the relationship is the opposite. An academic like Paul is much further from his everyday life than the cattle-owning patriarchs of Genesis!

Something that repeatedly provokes those of us who read through Western glasses are the Old Testament laws, and perhaps especially those linked to the Near East culture of honour. The reason for the clash is basically simple: these texts were written in a Far Eastern culture of honour. But what does this mean for those of us who wish to listen for the Lord's call in these texts today? Is it even possible?

One of the most important insights related to this, I think, is that the fact that God speaks into a particular culture does not necessarily mean that he sanctions everything that this culture stands for. A good example might be the instructions given to protect the weaker party in a polygamous marriage (see Exodus 21:10-11; Deuteronomy 21:15-17). At first glance, this could be interpreted as God being uncritical of this arrangement. But it can just as easily be interpreted as a stark realism: this is how it works in a fallen world, and in order to make the best of the situation, God through Moses makes laws that at least partially rectify the situation.

As American theologian Paul Copan puts it: “Since Israel is embedded in the harsh, morally problematic social environment of the Near East, the laws of the Old Testament are sometimes morally inferior, although they offer dramatic, gradual improvements. The Mosaic Law aims to regulate and limit intolerant structures (war, polygamy, patriarchy, slavery) and allows for different social structures because of the hardness of the human heart. Although it does not fully express the divine ideal, the Law of Moses often points in its direction.”

But it's also the case that, because of our cultural glasses, we miss the criticism that the Old Testament makes of the culture of the time. A classic example of this is the lex talionis, or in the words of Exodus: "If there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise" (Exodus 21:23-25). This text is best known for being challenged by Jesus himself in the Sermon on the Mount (see Matthew 5:38).

But what we tend to forget is that it was originally an effective way to limit revenge in a culture of honour. If someone knocks out your tooth, you must not retaliate by cutting off his hand. And even more to the point: if someone rapes your sister, you are not allowed to avenge by killing the perpetrator.

As we know, this is not only relevant in the distant past, but also in the Middle East today!

In fact, an entire institution in ancient Israel, namely the system of sanctuaries, was established by the Lord to save people who had accidentally killed someone from the requirement of blood vengeance: "When you cross the Jordan into Canaan, select some towns to be your cities of refuge, to which a person who has killed someone accidentally may flee. They will be places of refuge from the avenger, so that anyone accused of murder may not die before they stand trial before the assembly" (Numbers 35:10-12).

Another way the Old Testament undermines honour culture is by complicating legal processes. An example of this might be the laws governing the treatment of female prisoners of war. That women can also be harmed in war is well known, both historically and today. But the fact that the Bible addresses the rights of these women (see Deuteronomy 21:10-14) is actually more or less unique. Nowhere else in the Near East did laws exist that gave prisoners of war any human rights – and that regardless of gender.

The Swedish Jewish rabbi Dan Korn writes about this in his book As if God Existed (Timbro 2020): "If a soldier in a war sees a beautiful woman, he is allowed to take her as his wife if he first lets her sit for a month on the doorstep of his house and cry over her lost parents. During that time, she is not allowed to cut her hair or nails or wash herself. After a month, he can marry her, but if he changes his mind, he cannot mistreat her, enslave her or otherwise exploit her, but must let her go free. We know that rape is common in war, but for the Israeli soldier, it was only allowed if he went through this elaborate procedure. And the purpose is clearly to make him change his mind. He cannot go in or out of his house without seeing her there dirty, teary-eyed and unkempt.”

Korn makes a similar point when confronted with the Leviticus texts on the death penalty for same-sex intercourse. According to the Talmud, Korn writes, no one has ever been executed for this because it required two or three independent witnesses. And: "It is in the nature of things that witnesses are not usually present on such occasions."

Similarly, the reasoning goes for the right of Israelite parents to stone a wayward son: "When the Bible says that parents should bring a wayward son before a court to have him condemned to death, perhaps it is precisely because before the Ten Commandments it was the parents' right to do so themselves, in a world without courts. If the Bible had forbidden the parents to execute their son, they would have done so anyway, but because there was the possibility of having their son executed by the court, they turn to it. And the court acquits the son, because the parents are disqualified and cannot testify against their own child. It may seem that the court is cheating the parents, but it may just as well be a case of breaking old customary law in this way, that the parents are relieved of something that they saw as their duty because of the clan society."

Some of these statements can, of course, be problematised, and there needs to be no doubt that the Old Testament takes sin very seriously. As the New Testament also puts it: "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). But perhaps we as Westerners miss some of the "honourable ways out" that the Law of Moses offers in a clan and honour culture in the Far East. Solutions whose effect is a far more merciful society than was the alternative at that time in human history – and which still prevails today in large parts of the world.

Olof Edsinger, general secretary of the Swedish Evangelical Alliance.