Read this one, and you'll already be ten times smarter than C. Dennis McKinsey. (You probably already are, though, so you'll be 100 times smarter.) On this site we regularly recommend books that provide a window into the thought-world of the Bible, which help in an apologetic context to understand why critics so often go wrong in their arguments. Portraits of Paul (despite the main title) isn't so much about Paul, but does use Paul as an example, to explain how the ancients thought compared to us today. Hmm, did I say ancients? Actually we're still the odd ones out. Even in modern times most of the world still thinks as the people in the Bible did.

And how did they think differently? The key word is "collectivism". Not an economic theory, but a way of looking at the world and at other people. Dissing the "easy ethnocentrism" of certain scholars (which is also shared by many Bible critics) who try to analyze Bible characters in terms of modern psychology, Malina and Neyrey lay out what it is that ancient people thought was most important, and show how Paul (and by extension other people in the Bible) fit into this context. Ancient people related to each other "in terms of their group embeddedness and resultant social connections, their standing in the network of relationships, and their prestige deriving from these connections." [61] Where you came from was important and defined what sort of person you were (viz. the Pastoral comment about Cretans). What was done for the group was paramount; what was done for the individual was a matter of the least importance; individualism was deviance, because it impaired the group's ability to survive. (This is why a single death of one of our soldiers seems so meaningful to us, yet other cultures can seemingly "throw away" lives by the score without experiencing dissonance. It is also why something like the destruction of the Canaanites could be done without guilt.) Control over behavior was exerted by the group, not by individualized norms. You made defenses of the truth in certain ways we would find strange. How a person looked determined what sort of person they were. Concern for public awards of respect or honor was a constant (not money!).

Skeptics who smugly think their way is better need to be informed that even today 70 percent of the world thinks in this collectivist fashion. We are the oddballs and we need to respect that fact in our dealings with others -- and in our dealings with the Bible. I think one sentence sums it up well from this work: "No one in a group-oriented context would understand something as culturally nonsensical as 'Let your conscience be your guide.'" [187] Now that is indeed something the critics I know could relate to!