Re: [asa] On Job

On Thu, 12 Oct 2006, Don Winterstein wrote:

> "My experience overseas has been just the opposite. People tend to
> react better to a foreigner with perceived greater knowledge than a
> local for much the same reason Christ faced rejection in his home town."
>
> How much of this is attributable to the foreign missionary's coming from a technologically superior (e.g., medicinally, etc.) culture? I often wonder whether Christian missionaries from the West in foreign lands are promoting Western civilization as much as Christianity. Without the boost from the reputation of having a more advanced civilization, the impact would likely not be the same. In any case, making conversions in foreign lands is often a painfully slow process, not one in which a whole large city all of a sudden repents in sackcloth.
>
> It's the "perceived greater knowledge," very likely, that has the impact. That's what I referred to when I wrote, "If [foreigners are] known in advance for their accomplishments, they're often given sometimes undeserved special respect." On what grounds would the Ninevites have perceived Jonah to have had such "greater knowledge"?
>
> You're right in inferring that too much familiarity breeds disrespect. But being too different in the absence of a special reputation also breeds disrespect. That's normal human prejudice at work. People of Nazareth had a hard time accepting Jesus for who he was, but his most successful ministry was in nearby portions of Galilee, and his closest disciples as a rule came from there as well. They all spoke with the same accent (Matt. 26:73). And Jesus worked miracles to support his teaching, just as missionaries today use modern medicine to work miracles. Jonah apparently didn't do any such thing.
>
> Don

When I was a child, foreign travel was much less affordable than it is
now, and the vast majority of foreigners that I met in the US were highly
educated people, and this probably accounted in part for my image of their
countrymen in general. Perhaps this sort of phenomenon could take place in
the ancient world as well.

Gordon Brown
Department of Mathematics
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0395

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Received on Thu Oct 12 11:18:25 2006