Misconceptions is Full of Misconceptions
I hate to bring you two reviews in a single week about books that missed their marks, but I simply cannot recommend Misconceptions: A Look at God’s Word Through First Century Hebraic Eyes.
The premise is a good one. We miss the richness of the biblical text — and on occasion the whole point — when we attempt to read it through a 21st-century Western lens. It was written in a given cultural context, and its initial audience had a particular understanding, so if we want to really understand it, we need to read it through their lens.
I also appreciate the conversational tone the author uses, although it gets a little rambly at times.
And I hate to pick it apart, because I believe Mr. Reider is sincere and well-intentioned. However, there are two major problems with this book which, in my estimation, are fatal flaws.
Shaky Theological Foundation
The author seems to be lacking a strong theological foundation. Although it came to us as separate letters, etc., the Bible is ultimately a single record of God’s redemption of man through Christ, and we need to understand it holistically. Much of the church today unfortunately approaches the teaching of it in a pieces/parts manner, leaving little sense of cohesion, of the underlying foundational ideas, and of how each part relates to the whole. This holistic view provides the reader with a set of checks and balances, of sorts, where our knowledge of the whole and of other portions helps prevent us from misinterpreting a given passage.
The theology in this was shaky in places, questionable in others, and just flat-out anti-biblical in others.
Rather than sticking with explanations of first-century Hebrew life and culture (which he doesn’t even seem to be particularly equipped to teach) and allowing that to provide the context for the Scriptures in question, the author repeatedly attempts to interpret passages of Scripture, and in most cases he does so poorly.
In at least one instance, he even interpreted a verse of Scripture virtually in reverse. (A verse about God speaking to us was used to “prove” something about our speaking to God.)
Questionable Information
The theology isn’t the only thing that’s questionable; the additional “facts” presented as a means of “illuminating” Scripture are questionable, as well. He doesn’t stick with New Testament-era Hebrew life and culture. There is modern interpretation of prophecy, there are supposed scientific facts, and so on, in addition to earlier Jewish culture. In other words, the content doesn’t stick to what the title claims to represent.
Some of it is completely arbitrary. For instance, Jewish numerology can be arranged and rearranged so it seems to say almost anything we want it to say. Most is more verifiable; however, it isn’t necessarily verified. There are scientific facts here and some Hebrew cultural references that I know to be incorrect. Others I find questionable.
Many — even most, perhaps — are probably true, but given that clearly not all of the information is accurate, it’s difficult to know what can be trusted. References would have gone a long way toward making the book more trustworthy, because it would be easier for the reader to check sources and verify the information for himself.
Some Good
There were a couple tidbits here that made me take a fresh look at something (and mark it for further study, since I’m not confident of the facts). However, I’m not comfortable recommending this. A reader who isn’t thoroughly grounded and strongly discerning is likely to be led into unsound doctrine. A reader who is will probably find the book frustrating.
It was a wonderful idea with a good start, but it really would have benefited from extremely heavy content editing from an experienced theologian and/or Jewish historian (preferably both) prior to publication.
(If you want to learn more about a Hebrew worldview that can bring some parts of Scripture to life, Barney Kasdan’s God’s Appointed Times and God’s Appointed Customs are interesting books by a Messianic author about the biblical feasts, and the Jewish lifecycle [birth, mikvehs, weddings, death, etc.], respectively.)
I mean this constructively – but if you’re going to write a review, specifics are a must. I came to see what was wrong with the book, and all I found were loose generalizations. You did not provide a single specific criticism – no page numbers, quotations, etc. As it is written, this review (which might be completely on the mark) is pretty useless to me.
I’m hesitant to post any quotes here, because they’re so egregiously awful I’d rather they not be “out there” for people to read. But I will see if I can pull some examples for you. (I have a harder time working with an ebook than a print book.)
Okay, I’m going to try to give some examples, but it’s really kind of hard to explain. Not all of the issues with the book are with a specific brief quote, but with the overall presentation of everything. The whole book is basically one long string of “hey, this is cool” — where the “hey, this is cool” is sometimes a legitimate observation but not the POINT of the biblical passage that it’s presented as, and sometimes just…weird.
“There wasn’t a permissive tense to the English language at the time the KJV was written, so it would say things such as God brought evil on the enemies of Israel. What it meant was that God allowed evil to come on the enemies of Israel. God is incapable of evil, so he couldn’t possibly bring evil to anyone and still be the holy God he is.”
He doesn’t provide any scripture references here, so I don’t know for sure what verse(s) he’s talking about, but he’s wrong. Consider, for instance, Isaiah 45:7. KJV: “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” NKJV: “I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the Lord, do all these things.” NIV: “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.”
Translators don’t have any disagreement over the tense here. The “issue” with the KJV is not some perceived lack of a certain tense, but the overlooked fact that the word “evil” has more than one meaning.
“Why didn’t he call Peter a brick with which he would establish his church? First, a stone or rock is made by God while bricks are man-made. We can be individuals with different talents, ethnicities, and socioeconomic statuses yet unite through the Messiah. Bricks, being man-made, would imply that salvation depends on our works, not grace. Brick are also uniform, while God is a God of diversity. God wants his church to live in unity, not uniformity.”
All of those individual pieces may be true, but it’s really pushing it to say that’s “why” Jesus said what he said. Like much in the book, there is notably no reason given for believing this is the message intended by the passage.
“Since the promise was to the Jews first, when Jews come to faith in Messiah Yeshua, their anointing is more powerful.”
“The Bible even mentions the sevenfold spirit of God symbolized by the menorah.”
I don’t even know what this means. I mean, I know what the menorah is, but I don’t recall any references to the “sevenfold spirit of God.”
“The Hebrew alphabet is triune; Christians believe in the Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Humanity is also triune; we are spirit beings with souls and bodies. Second, the letters in the Hebrew alphabet all have numeric values. Third, there are pictographs that correspond with each letter.”
“In Hebrew, the number 666 could be vav, vav, vav. The interesting or frightening thing is that the Hebrew letter vav has the sound of the English letter W.” “So 666, vav vav vav, could be www as in http://www.oneworldorder.com.”
I don’t even know what to say to that. There’s such a conspiracy theorist, force-things-to-fit-a-certain-perspective vibe to that. I’m not even sure he’s right about vav, vav, vav, because I don’t think that’s how numbers worked. I think they would have written 600, 60, 6. But even assuming he’s right, and even assuming that’s pointing to www, why single out http://www.oneworldorder.com? Why not http://www.biblegateway.com? Or http://www.amazon.com?
“The Hebrew word for meditate is the word haga, ‘speak aloud.’ The word consists of three Hebrew letters — hey, gimel, and hey. In the previous chapter, I explained that the open window picture for hey represents grace. In the first century, the camel was one of the main vehicles for travel, so when you look at the three letters that are used to mean ‘meditate,’ the pictures say it is grace to grace.”
“If you look at the original Hebrew text of the Tanakh, you will find aleph tav in almost every sentence where a major point is being made, and it is left untranslated. The first verse in the Old Testament or Tanakh contains seven words with aleph tav in the center. ‘Beresit bara Elohim et hassamayim weet hares,’ that is, ‘In the beginning created God the heavens and the earth.’ Aleph tav would be pronounced ev even though it is represented by ‘et.’ There are two very interesting things here in the Hebrew; first, there are exactly seven words — the number of perfection to God. There are also exactly seven lamps in the Hebrew menorah that represent the sevenfold spirit of God, and each has Christ or Messiah in the center.”
I hope I don’t need to get into how weird it is to major on the number of words in one particular sentence in the Bible, since we could as easily cherry-pick another verse and make an issue of its having six words or something. He makes way too much of this “untranslated” thing, though. A brief Google search turns up the information that this two-letter word “serves a grammatical purpose.” It isn’t translated as a word in English because that isn’t its purpose. It serves almost more as a form of punctuation, designating which word is the direct object.
“Luke 1 tells us that Zechariah, a priest of the division of Abija but not a high priest, would have a son with Elizabeth and name him John. There is a significant lesson here. The sex and blood type are determined by the father, but the lineage comes from the mother.”
Basic scientific factual error here. A father does not play a more significant role in the determination of blood type than a mother. I’m not sure what he’s after there.
“Another aspect of this story [turning water into wine] is that Jesus was ushering in a new age or era superior to any previous. The six water pots represent the religious system, Judaism, with the imperfections humanity had brought.”
“In the Bible, women represent the church.”
“Miracles have been documented of people with stage-four cancer being totally healed without surgery by taking communion daily.”
This would be a pretty good claim to provide documentation for.
“The Bible says David was ‘ruddy’; he was redheaded with freckles…Physical attributes can skip generations, and in this case two generations from Ruth to David. Since he didn’t look like a Jew, he was an outcast in his own family; he couldn’t even eat with them.”
My Bible doesn’t so much as imply anything about David’s not being permitted to eat with the family. Only that, as the youngest, he was busy in the fields.
“Okay, we’ve seen how we define stress, but let’s see if the Bible has anything to say about it. Deuteronomy 28:67-68 (NIV) tells us, ‘In the morning you will say, “If only it were evening!” and in the evening, “If only it were morning!” because of the terror that will fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see.’ That is a very accurate description of stress so let’s see what the Bible says causes it. I’m paraphrasing Deuteronomy 28:64-66 here. ‘Yahweh will scatter you among all people from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will serve other gods, made of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known. Among these nations you will find no repose, raga, and there will be no rest, nuach, for the sole of your foot; rather Yahweh will give you there anguish of heart, dimness of eyes, and apathy of spirit. Your life will hang in doubt before you; you will be afraid night and day have have no assurance that you will stay alive.’ According to the Word of God, then, stress is a curse for not putting our trust in him and living according to his Word.”
There’s sort of some truth to that conclusion, in that we’re told not to worry, to cast our cares upon Him, etc. But it’s pretty iffy to say that the Bible says stress “is a curse for not putting our trust in him…”
“Isaiah 28:11 offers us nuach and raga in a positive way in my paraphrase here: ‘So with stammering lips, in a foreign tongue [Yahweh] will speak to this people. He once told this people, “This is the rest, the exhausted can rest, now you can relax”– but they wouldn’t listen.’ In the first part of this verse where it says, ‘This is the rest,’ the Hebrew word manukah is used. It means the resting place of rest or tranquility. ‘The exhausted can rest (nuach), now you can relax.’ The word for relax is a verb marga, derived from the noun raga. So according to the prophet Isaiah, praying in tongues or in the spirit is R&R for the believer.”
This passage doesn’t say a thing about people speaking to God; it talks about GOD talking to PEOPLE. That’s so grossly upside-down I won’t even get into what else is wrong here.
“There are thirty-nine root diseases known to man. The second place Jesus bled was from the thirty-nine lashes.”
What, exactly, are the thirty-nine root diseases, and who makes this claim? Some people say there’s only one root disease. Others certainly count them differently. What makes a count definitive?
Excellent – thank you! That’s helpful on two accounts: First, it helps me see how you approach scripture. You approach it differently than I do (which is fine), which helps me to evaluate whether your criticisms are the same as mine might be. Second, it provides some really excellent insight into the book itself. I really appreciate all the effort of this post. Very helpful.
I’m glad it was helpful! I do generally try to be specific, but this book presented a unique challenge. There’s kind of an overall “tone” or “vibe” to it that’s hard to explain with details. It *does* have helpful insights, particularly into Hebraic culture. The difficulty is, there’s enough in there I know to be incorrect that there isn’t a consistent way for a reader to filter it.
Hence, my alternative recommendations, which I think are more consistently reliable.