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.

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!

Denis Lamoureux on the Bible and ancient science

Denis Lamoureux has written a good book. The title is The Bible & Ancient Science: Principles of Interpretation. (Note that there's an ampersand, not an "and" in the title.) The point, made over and over, by analyzing the original language of the Bible, is that the Bible was written from the standpoint of ancient science.

Lamoureux discusses the statement, by Jesus, that the mustard seed is the smallest seed (it isn't) in Mark 4:30-32. Jesus wasn't teaching botany, nor was He mistaken, or lying. He was speaking to the people of the day, using the knowledge that they had. The message, about the Kingdom, was far more important than the size of the seed.
 

The author also discusses the beliefs of Biblical writers on human reproduction. They thought that a woman was merely a sort of field, where the male implanted something which grew into a child. Infertility was always the "fault" of the woman. The Bible reflects that belief. Again, the Bible isn't a text on human reproduction. It's a text on God's plan of redemption, and false beliefs about peripheral issues are just that, peripheral.

Another item. The Biblical authors thought that the earth was circular and flat, surrounded by water, and that there was a solid firmament above it. But Genesis 1-2 isn't a textbook of astronomy, geology, meteorology or oceanography. It was written from the standpoint of the beliefs of the people of the day, and tells us that God is creator, that the creation was good, that humans sinned and need a Redeemer. There is no firmament, even though the Bible writers thought that there is. The earth is not flat -- careful study of the Hebrew of the Bible, which Lamoureux appears well-qualified to do, shows that the Bible does not teach that the earth is a globe, but describes it as if it was flat.

(The illustration above is not from the book)

Lamoureux, like many others, points out that the apparent sequences of events in Genesis 1 vs. 2 seem to be contradictory. But Genesis 1-2 was not meant to be taken as a literal, step-by-step account (or accounts) of what happened at the beginning, and it isn't that. Does this downgrade the Bible, or the Gospel? No, argues Lamoureux. The first part of Genesis was made to teach eternal truths, namely that one God created, without using stuff from some other entity, that creation was good, and that sin entered the world.

Although he doesn't mention Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis much, the book demonstrates that the AiG thesis, that the earth is only a few thousand years old, is not really based on scripture, in spite of what AiG believes  the Bible says. Lamoureux directly criticizes the writings of Henry Morris, the most important young-earth creationist of the 20th century, for the same reason -- he took Bible passages that were not meant to be taken literally, and not meant to describe the world in terms that we would use now, and took them literally, and as if they describe the world as we now understand it.

There's more serious, and good, thinking and teaching in the book.

I was pleased to be able to read this in Kindle format, using my Kindle Unlimited membership. But the Kindle version's type size was almost too small to read on my 9 inch tablet, and, unlike most books in Kindle format, the type size can't be changed on this one. 

Thanks for reading. Read Lamoureux.

Sunspots 407

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Humor: (or something) The BBC reports that many Swedish babies and toddlers are put outside for their mid-day naps, even in the winter.

Science:  National Public Radio reports that dolphins can, and do, use names to identify each other.

Wired tells us that at least some of the seemingly impossible things that Spider-Man does can be done, or are in development.

Sports: This is going way too far! The University of Alabama has offered an 8th grader a football scholarship, according to Sports Illustrated.

Computing: Gizmo's Freeware has a list of the best apps for Windows 8 (computers or tablets).

Gizmo's also has an article on two web sites designed to help you delete on-line accounts (Facebook, etc.) quickly.

Christianity: A web page on the plant described in the parable of the mustard seed, found in Mark 4:30-32.

Image source (public domain)