The Bible and culture, and so-called errors in the Bible

Literal or not?

In a previous post, I considered genres in the Bible. The Bible is God's Word, and living by it should be very important. But the Bible is not a historical narrative, although there are parts of it that seem to have been meant as such, like Judges, Ruth, Esther, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles. But the Bible is more than a historical setting forth of what happened when, where, and with whom. Some parts of the Bible, like the Psalms, are poetic, setting forth the truth in figurative language. Example: 

Psalm 1:3 He will be like a tree planted by the streams of water,
    that produces its fruit in its season,
    whose leaf also does not wither.
    Whatever he does shall prosper. 

4 The wicked are not so,
    but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. (Long quotations are set in this color. Quoted scripture is from the World English Bible, public domain.)

The wicked are not really blown away, and the good man (or woman) isn't really rooted next to a water source. That doesn't take away from the significance of the passage, which is about God sustaining people who follow him, and punishment for those who don't.

Another example of poetic, non-literal language: Psalm 98:7 Let the sea roar with its fullness; the world, and those who dwell therein. 8 Let the rivers clap their hands. Let the mountains sing for joy together. 9 Let them sing before Yahweh, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity.

Some parts of the Bible are apocalyptic. Some, probably including most or all of the parables in the gospels, are stories to make an important point. Some parts, like much of the epistles, were to set forth the theology of the Kingdom.

The influence of culture.

How long was Christ in the tomb? Most Christians would answer "three days." After all, the Bible says, in Matthew 16:21 and other places, "From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up," or similar language. The culture of the people of Israel, in the time of Christ, would influence how the time in the tomb was described. Christ died toward sundown on Good Friday, and had risen by morning on Easter Sunday. That means that he really was in the tomb for less than 48 hours. In my culture, this probably wouldn't be described as "three days." Apparently it would be appropriate, in the culture of the Bible, to describe this time as "three days." This example shows that the culture of the writer and the reader influences how scripture is interpreted.

We say that the sun (and moon) rise and set. They don’t, really. The earth rotates so that they are visible in regular patterns. The rising and setting description is part of our culture. It’s not wrong, in the sense that other people are harmed or deceived when I talk about the sunrise, but it’s not strictly correct to say that it rises and sets. Luke 4:40 ("When the sun was setting, all those who had any sick with various diseases brought them to him") is not teaching astronomy, and it uses, as we also do, a modified description of the actual happening, accepted in the culture of Bible times. Readers would have been mystified, if Luke had written "when the earth rotated so that the sun was gradually obscured by the earth." So would Luke.

Mark 4:30 He said, “How will we liken God’s Kingdom? Or with what parable will we illustrate it? 31 It’s like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, though it is less than all the seeds that are on the earth, 32 yet when it is sown, grows up, and becomes greater than all the herbs, and puts out great branches, so that the birds of the sky can lodge under its shadow.”

Actually, a mustard seed is not the smallest seed. Answers in Genesis has posted an article about this situation. There are some interesting speculations in the article, and some that I have trouble with, but I agree with this statement: "The parable was never meant to be an exposition on botanical size ..." No, it wasn't. And the Bible, nor Jesus, is in error here, any more than Luke 4:40 is. Jesus was communicating about the Kingdom of God. Presumably, in that culture, mustard seeds were described as the smallest seeds, and the people of Jesus's time and place didn't know that they weren't. It would have been unnecessarily confusing for Jesus to have described unfamiliar tiny seeds.

So, Biblical examples, such as the ones given above, indicate that the culture of the audience may mean that parts of the Bible are best not to be taken as literal, historical fact. There are plenty of arguments about which parts these are, and how they should be taken.

Thanks for reading!