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!

Bible -- historical or not? Genres in Bible literature

Genres of scripture

Christians often think that the Bible is a lot like a history book -- it tells things as they happened, in order, giving just the facts. Some parts of the Bible are like that, but some aren't. They are still part of God's communication with us.

Genre: "A category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, marked by a distinctive style, form, or content" - The Free Dictionary. (Pronunciation -- John-er).

The Wikipedia has an extensive list of genres found in the Bible. They include:

historical narrative

law

wisdom literature

psalms Many parts of the Psalms don't seem to be meant to be taken literally. 

From Psalm 23: are we really going to enter green pastures, and walk by still waters? Will we really sit at a table in the presence of our enemies? What is the valley of the shadow of death?

From Psalm 114: When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of foreign language, 2 Judah became his sanctuary Israel his dominion. 3 The sea saw it, and fled. The Jordan as driven back. 4 The mountains skipped like rams, the little hills like lambs. 5 What was it, you sea, that you fled? You Jordan, that you turned back? 6 You mountains, that you skipped like rams; you little hills, like lambs? (All scripture from the World English Bible, public domain, unless specified otherwise. Long quotations are in this color.)

apocalyptic literature (Revelation, much of Daniel)

the gospels: The Wikipedia list does not classify these as historical narrative. Other Bible scholars treat the gospels as mostly or entirely historical, although some parts of the gospels are prophecy, and some (Such as Mary's song in Luke 1:46-55) are poetry, or psalm-like. There is quite a bit of  non-historical material in the gospels. For instance, Nicodemus didn't understand the concept of new birth. Jesus, according to John's gospel, was (spiritually, not literally) the Bread of Life, the Light of the world, the Door, the Good Shepherd, and the Way.

Some parts of the Bible are clearly some sort of fiction. See verses 8-15 in the story below (Jerubbaal is another name for Gideon):

Judges 9:1 Abimelech the son of Jerubbaal went to Shechem to his mother’s brothers, and spoke with them and with all the family of the house of his mother’s father, saying, 2 “Please speak in the ears of all the men of Shechem, ‘Is it better for you that all the sons of Jerubbaal, who are seventy persons, rule over you, or that one rule over you?’ Remember also that I am your bone and your flesh.”

3 His mother’s brothers spoke of him in the ears of all the men of Shechem all these words. Their hearts inclined to follow Abimelech; for they said, “He is our brother.” 4 They gave him seventy pieces of silver out of the house of Baal Berith, with which Abimelech hired vain and reckless fellows who followed him. 5 He went to his father’s house at Ophrah, and killed his brothers the sons of Jerubbaal, being seventy persons, on one stone; but Jotham the youngest son of Jerubbaal was left, for he hid himself. 6 All the men of Shechem assembled themselves together with all the house of Millo, and went and made Abimelech king by the oak of the pillar that was in Shechem. 7 When they told it to Jotham, he went and stood on the top of Mount Gerizim and lifted up his voice, cried out, and said to them, “Listen to me, you men of Shechem, that God may listen to you. 8 The trees set out to anoint a king over themselves. They said to the olive tree, ‘Reign over us.’

9 “But the olive tree said to them, ‘Should I stop producing my oil, with which they honor God and man by me, and go to wave back and forth over the trees?’

10 “The trees said to the fig tree, ‘Come and reign over us.’

11 “But the fig tree said to them, ‘Should I leave my sweetness, and my good fruit, and go to wave back and forth over the trees?’

12 “The trees said to the vine, ‘Come and reign over us.’

13 “The vine said to them, ‘Should I leave my new wine, which cheers God and man, and go to wave back and forth over the trees?’

14 “Then all the trees said to the bramble, ‘Come and reign over us.’

15 “The bramble said to the trees, ‘If in truth you anoint me king over you, then come and take refuge in my shade; and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon.’

16 “Now therefore, if you have dealt truly and righteously, in that you have made Abimelech king, and if you have dealt well with Jerubbaal and his house, and have done to him according to the deserving of his hands 17 (for my father fought for you, risked his life, and delivered you out of the hand of Midian; 18 and you have risen up against my father’s house today and have slain his sons, seventy persons, on one stone, and have made Abimelech, the son of his female servant, king over the men of Shechem, because he is your brother); 19 if you then have dealt truly and righteously with Jerubbaal and with his house today, then rejoice in Abimelech, and let him also rejoice in you; 20 but if not, let fire come out from Abimelech and devour the men of Shechem and the house of Millo; and let fire come out from the men of Shechem and from the house of Millo and devour Abimelech.”

21 Jotham ran away and fled, and went to Beer and lived there, for fear of Abimelech his brother.

Other parts of the Bible, including parts of the gospels, may have been either historical, or fictional. Was there a real prodigal son, or did Jesus just tell this story to show God's love? Was there a real Good Samaritan, or did Jesus just tell a story to point out that giving help to those who need, even if not from our ethnic group, is important? The parables make their point as well if they are narratives of something that really happened, or were told as fictional stories with an important meaning. Some parts of the gospels are clearly meant as non-historical. Nicodemus asked if a person could be physically born again. He missed the point. Jesus said that He was the Light of the World, the Good Shepherd, and the Bread of Life, in John's gospel. He said that the Holy Spirit was living water. These descriptions were not meant to be taken as history.

Not all Bible scholars would agree with the Wikipedia's list of genres, or would agree with which Bible parts are of which genre.

In a later post, I hope to discuss the interpretation of Genesis 1-2.

Thanks for reading! Please comment, if you can figure out how to do so.

Does the Bible really say that? Excerpt from my book, 4

(A previous post in this series discussed the fact that the Bible was written for a different culture than the one we live in.)

Besides the question of the culture that the Bible was originally written within, and for, there’s also the question of the purpose of the writing. We must be careful in drawing conclusions about the purpose for a particular section of the Bible, because we aren’t God, and don’t know His purposes exactly. Also, God most likely had more than one purpose in mind when He allowed, or caused, many Bible passages to be written. Sometimes, the main purpose seems to be quite clear. Not always.

The main purpose of the verses concerning how long Jesus was in the tomb was not to discuss Jewish burial customs, or to establish a timetable of what happened. . . . Luke 23 tells us that Jesus was not in the tomb when his followers got there on Easter morning. It doesn’t tell us when Jesus left the tomb. We can guess, but we don’t know. He could have arisen very early in the morning, before daylight, or just before the women arrived. But the main point remains. Jesus was not in a sealed, guarded, tomb. He arose!

. . . The genre of Biblical writing is related to the purpose. Bible students classify the writing of the Bible into several different genres, such as poetry, history, law, apocalyptic literature, parables, doctrine. (There are other ways of classifying sections of the Bible.) In almost no case, with the exception of the parables of Jesus, is the genre indicated – the Bible doesn’t tell us. We just have to figure it out. Occasionally, there is controversy over which genre a particular part of the Bible belongs to. This is true of the first part of Genesis. I’m not going to discuss the controversies over that section of the Bible, other than to say that there are such controversies, and that we should be careful not to be too sure that we know what the right answer is.

The above, except for the opening parenthesis, is an excerpt from my recently published e-book, Does the Bible Really Say That?, which may be obtained free of charge, or purchased from Amazon for $0.99, which is the lowest price Amazon lets an author set. Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, public domain.

Thanks for reading!

Does the Bible really say that? Excerpt from my book, part 3

Here is an example of Biblical writing:

Psalm 114:1 When Israel went out of Egypt,
the house of Jacob from a people of foreign language;
2 Judah became his sanctuary,
Israel his dominion.
3 The sea saw it, and fled.
The Jordan was driven back.
4 The mountains skipped like rams,
the little hills like lambs.
5 What was it, you sea, that you fled?
You Jordan, that you turned back?
6 You mountains, that you skipped like rams;
you little hills, like lambs?

The above is a poetic description of the passage through the Red Sea, in Exodus, and also of the passage across the Jordan River, decades later. Are we to suppose, from this, that the mountains and hills skipped like rams and lambs?  No. This is poetic exaggeration.

Apocalyptic literature is literature about end times, and/or that has an obscure meaning.

Ezekiel 1:26 Above the expanse that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone; and on the likeness of the throne was a likeness as the appearance of a man on it above. 27 I saw as it were glowing metal, as the appearance of fire within it all around, from the appearance of his waist and upward; and from the appearance of his waist and downward I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and there was brightness around him. 28 As the appearance of the rainbow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness all around. This was the appearance of the likeness of Yahweh’s glory. When I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard a voice of one that spoke.

Ezekiel doesn’t seem to be able to find words to give a good description. “Likeness,” “appearance of,” and “as it were” occur a dozen times in these three verses of apocalyptic literature. It seems that Ezekiel saw things that he really couldn’t describe well, and he did his best to let us know that he had seen some wonderful things. These included something like a man (God the Son, perhaps? An angel?), and that’s about all we can say for sure.

The excerpt above shows two examples, perhaps extreme, but examples, nonetheless, illustrating that at least some of the poetic literature in the Bible was not meant to be taken literally, and that at least some of the apocalyptic literature in the Bible cannot be taken literally, because God is trying to obscure some aspect of it, because the person who wrote it doesn't grasp it fully, because the reader can't grasp it fully, or some combination of these three.

Thanks for reading! Here's the previous post in this series.

What's wrong with Young-Earth Creationism?

This started out as a response to an anonymous comment, asking the question of the title.

My problems with Young-Earth Creationism (YEC) are six-fold.

1) The Bible tells us, in Psalm 19:1-4, and Romans 1:20, that God has revealed Himself to us through nature. (That's not the only way!) To ignore that evidence, or distort it, is a serious mistake, just as it would be an even more serious mistake to ignore God's revelation in Jesus Christ. I'm not sure that we understand any of God's types of revelation fully and correctly, but we shouldn't ignore them, and should seek compatibility between them.

The post to which the comment was made illustrates this problem with YEC. Kurt Wise is one of the most prominent Young-Earth Creationists, a paleontologist with impeccable academic credentials, and he cannot find good scientific evidence for the young-earth position in the fossil record. There is abundant evidence that the earth is older than a few thousand years in that record. How does Wise get around this? He says, honestly, that he has a prior commitment to believing in YEC. In other words, he discards evidence that argues against that position.

A similar situation exists with a YEC study of radioactive dating, called the RATE project. A group of YEC scientists concluded that the evidence from radioactive dating seems to indicate that the earth is a lot older than a few thousand years old. But then they went further. They proposed that it really isn't so old, because there have been periods when the radioactive decay rate was a great deal faster than it seems to be now. In other words, they rejected the evidence they discovered. (See here for one of my posts on this subject, which gives documentation.) There have been several criticisms of the RATE project's proposal that the rate of decay changed greatly, such as in the latest issue of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (which is not yet available on the Internet). The critic in that article, J. Brian Pitts, cites arguments** that way too much heat would have been produced by so much radioactivity, and that a mechanism proposed by the scientists who worked on the RATE project would not have worked. ("Nonexistence of Humphreys' 'Volume Cooling' for Terrestrial Heat Disposal by Cosmic Expansion," PSCF 61:23-28, March, 2009.)

Unfortunately, unlike Wise or the RATE project scientists, many YEC advocates just dismiss all evidence that there is good scientific evidence for an old earth.

2) The Bible does not necessarily teach Young-Earth Creationism. For example, Genesis 2:5 poses what I believe to be serious problems for the Young-Earth interpretation of scripture. (See this post, or my posts on David Snoke's excellent book, A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, for more criticisms of the YEC interpretation. In particular, here and here are posts pointing out problems with the belief that the days of Genesis 1 were literal 24-hour days. And the YEC view is an interpretation.) Many God-fearing, Bible-believing scholars are not convinced that the Bible definitely teaches that the earth is only a few thousand years old, that the days of Genesis 1 were literal, or that the flood of Genesis was world-wide. The Young-Earth view, in its present form, is comparatively recent, becoming prominent only in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, although many Christian scholars, well before that time, did believe that the earth was not very old. See the history section of the Wikipedia article on Young Earth Creationism.***

3) The days of Genesis 1 were not necessarily 24-hour days. Two of the major arguments from YECers, that they were such, are criticized effectively in a post from He Lives. The first such argument is that "anytime the word yôm is used with an ordinal number, it always refers to a twenty-four hour day." But David Heddle, the author of He Lives, points out that that is not always true. Hosea 6 is at least one exception:
1 “Come! Let’s return to Yahweh;
for he has torn us to pieces,
and he will heal us;
he has injured us,
and he will bind up our wounds.
2 After two days he will revive us.
On the third day he will raise us up,
and we will live before him.

The second argument for 24-hour days in Genesis is from the Ten Commandments: Exodus 20:8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 You shall labor six days, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God. You shall not do any work in it, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your livestock, nor your stranger who is within your gates; 11 for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy.

But Heddle points out that Leviticus speaks of the Sabbath as a year, not a day:
25:1 Yahweh said to Moses in Mount Sinai, 2 “Speak to the children of Israel, and tell them, ‘When you come into the land which I give you, then the land shall keep a Sabbath to Yahweh. 3 You shall sow your field six years, and you shall prune your vineyard six years, and gather in its fruits; 4 but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to Yahweh. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. 5 What grows of itself in your harvest you shall not reap, and you shall not gather the grapes of your undressed vine. It shall be a year of solemn rest for the land. 6 The Sabbath of the land shall be for food for you; for yourself, for your servant, for your maid, for your hired servant, and for your stranger, who lives as a foreigner with you.  

Many Bible scholars believe that God's rest, described in the Exodus passage quoted above, is continuing into the present, therefore was hardly 24 hours in extent.

Heddle has more to say, and I invite you to read his blog post. 

This 3rd point was added on August 22, 2017.

4) There are well-informed YEC scientists, like Wise, or the people who worked on the RATE project, who are scientifically qualified, fair and reasonably objective in their discussion of the evidence for and against Young-Earth Creationism. But they are few and far between. There are charlatans, tax dodgers (see here), and demagogues out there, many with little or no scientific training, with web sites, radio programs, books to sell, and seminars to present in churches. It is much easier to get a following, including financial support, if you scream that anyone who doesn't believe in YEC is anti-God, and that there is abundant scientific evidence that YEC is true, than if you are fair and reasonably objective. Christians who don't agree with the screamers are seldom heard in the non-scientific media, or in conservative churches. As a result, conservative Christians, as individuals, in congregations, and in Christian schools, including home schools, colleges, and others, are being cut off from fair and honest examination of alternative Christian views of origins. They are providing ammunition for atheists who are anti-God. Further, they are cutting themselves, and their children, off from being able to reach well-educated sinners in need of a savior.

There may be a few people who have been won to Christ by a presentation of YEC. There are likely more than a few who have been driven away from Christ by such a presentation -- "If the Bible is so wrong about geology*, how can it be right about what it says about sin and redemption?" Glenn Morton, who had a career as a geologist with YEC training, describes how he "was almost through with Christianity," after he found that the Young-Earth geology he had been taught did not work, and discovered that other professional geologists with YEC training had found the same thing -- YEC geology doesn't describe the way things really are.

It is also true that there are screamers on the other side, people who say that Christian belief is incompatible with science, or that all Christians are willingly ignorant. That's just as bad, but this post is about what's wrong with YEC, not what's wrong with Richard Dawkins.

5) YEC advocates usually portray themselves as defending the Bible. That isn't really true. What they are doing is defending their interpretation of the Bible.

6) YEC and Intelligent Design (ID) are often presented as if they were one and the same. They are not. See here for documentation.

There are many Bible-believing, God-fearing, soul-winning, heaven-bound people who believe that Young Earth Creationism is the only option for Christians. I love them, and appreciate their sincerity and zeal. But most of them have been cut off from evidence, both scientific and Biblical, that argues against their position. There is such evidence, and it is part of God's revelation to us. YEC may or may not be right, but there are other views held by Bible-believing, God-fearing, soul-winning, heaven-bound Christians. Christians who haven't much background in origins, or science, should be told that such views other than YEC exist among believers. (There are problems with all of these views. In this post, I explain why I have problems with Intelligent Design. I'm not alone.)

7) (This point added on August 20, 2012) The genre of Genesis 1 is peculiar, and probably was meant to be largely symbolic. See here for some of the evidence for why I say that. This point is closely related to the second one, but since I'm adding it so long after the original post, I'm entering it as a new item.

What do I personally believe about origins? See here.

Thanks for reading!

*The Bible says little about geology, and I believe that what it says is correct. YEC advocates claim that the Bible says that the earth was covered by a world-wide flood, which is responsible for most of the earth's rock layers, and that this flood took place a few thousand years ago. That's one interpretation of what the Bible tells us. It's not the only one, and it is inconsistent with the evidence from geology. Some YEC advocates also claim that the Bible teaches that dinosaurs co-existed with humans, and other such nonsense. Here is some additional material about geology and YEC.

**This sentence was clarified on June 6, 2009. The article by Pitts is in this issue of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith.

***This sentence was added, and the previous sentence corrected, on June 6, 2009. I thank Brian Pitts for a communication which led to these changes.