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Thursday, September 14, 2023

Is the science of the Bible always correct? Jesus and mustard seeds

The Bible was written, and understood, in the culture of its times. That doesn't mean that the Bible contains errors. We say, now, that the sun rises and sets. It doesn't. The earth rotates so that different parts of it are facing the sun, as we go through a day. Does that make statements about sunsets erroneous? No. Nor are they misleading. Our culture thinks of the sun and moon as rising and setting. Such statements communicate effectively within our culture.

When Jesus said that a mustard seed was the smallest of all seeds, (Matthew 13:31-32) he wasn't wrong, nor was he lying. (We now know that there are smaller seeds. Apparently, the people of Jesus' time and place thought that mustard seeds were the smallest seeds.) Jesus was communicating within that culture. He could have said something like "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a tiny seed, smaller even than the mustard seeds you are familiar with." But He didn't. His purpose was not to teach plant reproductive anatomy, but to teach about the Kingdom, and His purpose was achieved in this illustration, using the idea of mustard seeds to communicate.

Answers in Genesis (AiG) has posted on this part of the Bible. They say, correctly, that Jesus wasn't teaching plant anatomy in this story. But the author uses some strange thinking in his discussion, suggesting that the seeds that we know now, and now realize are smaller than mustard seeds, may have descended from plants that grew in the time of Christ, but evolved (AIG doesn't use that word here, but the concept is strongly suggested!) from plants with larger seeds, to plants with tiny seeds now.

The Bible is not a science textbook. It was written, and understood, in the culture of the times. Writing within the culture didn't make it erroneous.

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