FINDING BIBLE TRUTH - INERRANCY


In this article we look at the basic and utterly crucial question of whether the Bible can ever be wrong. The fundamentalist view that it cannot err and that its words must be taken literally used to be held equally rigidly by the established Churches, but in some of these there is now a degree of flexibility that permits an item to be treated as a parable or allegory when it becomes clear that literal acceptance is no longer defensible.

The quotation most commonly used to justify the doctrine of inerrancy is at 1Timothy 3:16
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,

Fundamentalists interpret "inspiration" as "God-breathed" and take it to mean that the text can include no error.

This question of inerrancy is here examined in its four aspects:

Internal conflicts.
Scientific conflicts.
Historical conflicts.
Theological conflicts.

Then, for a definitive conclusion on the question, it will be useful, to look at two of the best-known and most significant early stories. Adam and Eve, and the Flood. If these cannot be accepted as literally true, or intended as some sort of allegory, it has to be understood that the Bible cannot always be taken literally.

INTERNAL DISAGREEMENTS.

Throughout the Bible there are a great number of apparent discrepancies. I do NOT suggest that you make a deliberate search for them - that sort of negative approach would be bound to prejudice any conclusions. A sufficient number will become evident in the course of other studies. What is important is how apparent discrepancies are faced, and whether the implications of them can be accepted. Take one well known disagreement, the stories of David's census in 1 Chronicles 21 and 2 Samuel 24:

In Chronicles Satan incited David to call the census, which recorded 1.1 million fighting men in Israel and 470,000 in Judah. David then bought a threshing floor for 600 shekels of gold. In Samuel God incited David to order the census because he was angry with Israel. The total found were 800,000 in Israel and 500,000 in Judah. He then bought the threshing floor for 50 shekels of silver.

It may be claimed that the difference is not important, two historians, many years after the event may refer to different records. But if you believe that the words of the Bible were virtually dictated by God the difference is highly significant - there is no sign here of anyone whispering in the ear of the authors, telling them what to say. Then if you believe that the Bible cannot err the difference is cataclysmic because of these two accounts at least one must have errors; errors that cannot be blamed on careless copying.

There is in existence a book "Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible" by John W. Haley, which lists some 900 apparent discrepancies, (and is far from complete) and claims to reconcile each and every one of them. If you can get this or any similar work you may find it worth your while seeing how many of the reconciliations you find acceptable. The article Two Views of Apparent Discrepancies takes an extended look at the book, which mirrors the sort of "explanations" widely used by both fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist Churches. But if you read one side of the argument you must also consider the other side. The article also looks at "The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy" by C. Dennis McKinsey.

Fundamentalists claim that analysis of the Bible shows that it must be the product of one mind, and claim that they can produce a wealth of reference back and forth to show a great consistency of belief, of prophesy fulfilled, of a degree of coherence extending over the centuries. Typical of this approach is the mass of references given on each page of the Jehovah's Witnesses Bible, which at first sight gives support to the fundamentalist view. If you can find a copy of this (The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures), and spend a little time going over the references given, the initial impression begins to fade. It soon becomes apparent that about 5% of references are just wrong, non-existent or offering no connection, about 40% are worthless - for example a simple mention of the king of Assyria calls five references to other simple mentions of a king of Assyria but offering no insights into Assyria or its kings or anything else - 40% might be thought to have relevance if interpreted in a manner that an open-minded individual might find unjustified or illogical - 10% useful in an explanatory sense, as where a writer make an indirect reference to an earlier text - and maybe 5% adding usefully to understanding. While the actual translation itself is generally of a high standard (but losing a great deal of the majesty and poetry of the language), other authorities point to instances where the text seems to have been adjusted to match the particular doctrines of the Witnesses. Also giving an impression of consistency that may be unjustified, is the way that New Testament authors are particularly concerned to link events with Old Testament prophesy. This is discussed, together with the more general question of the success of Old Testament prophesy in the article on Prophesy.

There is sufficient evidence to show that large sections of the Old Testament are the work of a very few editors or redactors, working from source documents written by many earlier authors, and that even these paraphrases have not been immune from later amendments and additions. Any apparent coherence is less of a surprise than the number of conflicts that have been allowed to remain.

SCIENTIFIC CONFLICTS.

Study and resolution of this question must start in Genesis at the very beginning of the Bible. Fundamentalist Christians will say that the story of the Creation, of Adam and Eve, of the Flood, and all of the intermediate matter, including the Genealogies is absolutely and literally true.

This is denied by scientific study of the history of the earth which says that it has been in existence for some four and a half billion years, that hominids, man-like creatures, have existed for some three million years, culminating in creatures indistinguishable from modern man over the last 100,000 years. 10,000 years ago men lived in village communities, had developed agriculture, irrigated their fields, had the arts of painting and sculpture, believed in an after-life, could scatter flowers on a child's grave, and the first set of massive stone walls had been built at Jericho. At Catal Huyuk in Anatolia the remains of a city of 5-6000 people was found, dating to about 6000 BC, textiles were found there, the first mirrors, wooden vessels, pottery, plastered and painted walls. The picture of the development of man and of the earth is built on consistent results from a very wide variety of independent disciplines.

The Bible is full of incidents that are scientifically impossible - the plagues of Egypt, crossing of the Red Sea, the Flood, holding the sun still for Joshua, and such. The claim is of course that these were miracles - but there are also incidents attributed to the opponents of God which also can only be accounted as miracles.

A profitable pseudo-scientific industry has sprung up under the name of Creation Science which seeks to challenge mainline science and provide scientific justification for the Genesis account. Acceptance of their arguments seems to be more a matter of credulity and wishful thinking rather than judgement since any dispassionate examination shows a gross reliance on faulty science, distortion and misrepresentation.

HISTORICAL CONFLICTS.

In the period covering the legends of early Genesis and the Israelites' conquest of Canaan, the verification of Biblical history has not proved possible, there being few reliable contemporary records. Some inscriptions can be used to suggest the existence of a small body of foreign workers in Egypt but that is about all. Historians will point to many similarities between Genesis stories and ancient legends from Sumer and Canaan, although with a very different theistic perspective.

The evidence from archaeology is, to say the least, confusing. While evidence from the time of the Kings quite consistently supports the Bible, archaeologists, including the prestigious Tel-Aviv archaeology department, now say that finds over the last sixty or seventy years suggest that the Hebrews developed from within the existing population of Canaan, that there was never a period of exile in Egypt (except perhaps for a few), no Exodus, no forty years in the wilderness, and no campaign of conquest in Canaan. The consequences for the integrity of the Pentateuch and for Judaism would be overwhelming should the view prove true, but there will have be a great deal more research and discussion before any consensus can be reached, and there are many religious circles that would reject it no matter how strong the evidence.

Many of the scientific and historical objections rely on Carbon14 dating, and the first approach of defenders of inerrancy is often to deny its accuracy. But while the occasional discrepancy appears there are quite literally thousands of comparisons made with known history which confirm the reliability of its results

During and after the time of Saul agreement with both archaeological evidence and contemporary records is generally good, and even where there are differences the quality of the Bible record is such that this is normally preferred. Discrepancies remain of course in the form of gross exaggerations and the substitution of theological for factual explanations, nothing that a tolerant understanding of the aims of the priestly writers cannot accommodate, provided that a position of absolute literal truth is not required.

In the New Testament there are serious problems over the stories in Luke and Matthew of the early life of Jesus, sufficient on their own to challenge any dogma of inerrancy. However absolute proof of error, as opposed to strong suspicion, generally requires proof that something did NOT happen, which is rarely if ever available.

THEOLOGICAL CONFLICTS.

Just a few examples will be sufficient:

You will find many references to attest to God's omnipresence, and many more which deny it such as Gen 3:8, Gen 43:21.
You will find many references to God's immutability, as in Num 23;19 and many more which deny it, such as Jer 15:6, Jonah 3:10.
You will find many references to God's approachability, and many which query it, such as Ps 10:1, Lam 3:44.

TRANSLATION PROBLEMS.

Consider Gen 6:4: There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of man and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

This is often interpreted in several ways - undisciplined Angels taking human women as wives, or Cain's godless offspring marrying the faithful offspring of Seth. Giants (nephilim) resulted. The suggestion that sexless (presumably) pure spirits would be attracted to human women, let alone father children appears patently absurd, but the second interpretation seems possible. But what of the giants? Now the linguists get to work to claim that 'Nephilim' has been mis-translated. One says that the Hebrew word means a being who has rejected God's will and that the Vulgate wrongly translated it to the Latin Gigantus. Another says that the word is derived from 'naphal' meaning 'to fall'. Now the verses have a new meaning and the lesson that if believers live with non-believers the results are disastrous. Even the Flood itself can appear to be a result of this. Many of the stories in the early part of the Old Testament appear to be designed to point up this message, which is also likely to lie behind Ezra's demand for racial purity and some of the more extreme views of some Jews today. I wonder how many Christians would accept this as God's verdict on such matters as ecumenism, multiculturalism, and tolerance for the religious beliefs of others.

There can be little doubt that some of the problems in the Bible would cease to be problems, and cease to be quotable as examples of error, if we could only know exactly what the words meant at the time they were written. Here there is a serious difference between the Christian Bible translations and Jewish translations (or at least some of them). The former rarely admit to any doubt about the absolute correctness of their words - at most they may refer to minor differences in other translations - however the Jewish Bibles often add footnotes such as "Meaning of Hebrew here is uncertain" or similar phrases, often in critical passages such as those relating to Isaiah's Servant and the prophesies of Daniel. How can we pretend certainty over the meaning of a section of text, and that it must be inerrant, if even Jewish scholars do not know how the original should be translated?

THE STORY OF ADAM AND EVE.

If you accept the scientific evidence for the development of Man then Adam and Eve must be rejected; there is no place in the steady progression of hominids becoming more and more man-like for a 'First man' - Adam. If, however, you reject this or are not convinced, it should be worth looking at the internal evidence of the story itself, and considering whether it can be read literally:

Can you accept Man and Serpent talking and understanding each other ?

Who or what was the Serpent ? The wisest/most cunning/most cautious of the beasts (depending on your version of the Bible). Nowhere in the Bible is it said that the Serpent was Satan although some sayings of Jesus and and a remark in Revelations are claimed to imply this.

If it was in fact Satan, can this be reconciled, with the wisest etc identification in the text ? Is it credible that the identification with Satan should have been deliberately withheld from the Hebrews ?

If its fruit was forbidden why was the tree placed in the Garden of Eden. Was it a deliberate test - a temptation intended by God ? Would an all-knowing God not have known the outcome in advance? It is possible to see Satan as testing Adam in the same way as he tested Job, with God's authority. But why would God want to test Adam if not to find out what was the moral strength of the creature he had created? And if Adam failed who could be to blame but his creator?

Why was the Knowledge of Good and Evil to be withheld from Man ? Would it be possible for Man ever to follow the course of Good without that knowledge ?

In Gen 2.17 Adam is told that on the day he eats of the tree he will surely die - and then lives for another 930 years. To say that he died spiritually is hardly an answer.

Can the draconian punishment inflicted on all mankind be reconciled with the God of love and forgiveness taught by Christ ?

Do you accept that God would punish all mankind for the flaws, perhaps of pride and greed, in the character of his prototypes - flaws in the character that he had built into them ? If you created something that does not behave as you would like, would you blame yourself or your creation.

Other conflicts arise from notions that, but for their sin, there would have been no death or disease, that Man and God would be spiritually severed (Abraham seems not to have been told!), that control of earthly affairs was handed over to Satan, that all future generations would be born in a state of sin (a sin gene in their DNA?). You will be aware of the consequences of rejecting the story of Adam and Eve. The doctrine of Original Sin, a pillar of conventional theology through the ages, loses its foundation. The teaching in the New Testament that the primary purpose of the sacrifice of Christ's life was to cancel out the sin of Adam (something that Christ himself never said), fails. The purpose of countless missionaries and evangelists to 'save' and persuade people to be 'reborn' is greatly weakened. We may still all be sinners, but we would have to blame ourselves for that and not Adam. The status of Satan as having corrupted mankind from the beginning, and brought disease and death, is destroyed.

The Roman Church seems to have adopted a highly equivocal attitude to the story of Adam and Eve; while it maintains all the consequences of a literal reading it accepts that some of its most crucial elements are NOT to be taken literally but as allegory - a recent Encyclical on morals declares that the instruction in Genesis (Gen 2: 16-17) not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is intended to proclaim that "the power to decide what is good and what is evil does not belong to man, but to God alone." (ie rely on the moral laws issued by the Church, not on your conscience).

In Jewish readings of the story God's punishment rests on Adam alone; there is no suggestion that all mankind has to pay for his sin.

It has been suggested that Adam was not the first man, but was the first man into whom God breathed a soul. If estimates of world population some 6000 years ago are anywhere near correct this would leave Adam and Eve in a minority of two in about ten million equally human, but soulless, individuals. I have not seen an explanation of how any inheritance (eg of sin) from Adam could be significant compared with our inheritance from the majority.

THE STORY OF THE FLOOD.

According to the Bible Genealogies and other biblical data the Flood took place in around 2350 BC. This is well within historical times, but the available historical, archaeological and geological evidence makes it impossible for a world-wide flood, covering all the mountains, or any flood even approaching the Biblical description, to have occurred anywhere near this period. In the Sumerian "Epic of Gilgamesh" a world-wide flood, dated much earlier - perhaps around 3000 BC, is described which is so similar in many of its details to the Bible's Flood that either the Bible account has to be an adaptation, or at least is based on the same tradition. There is geological evidence for a widespread flood in the heart of the Mesopotamian region (but not extending outside it) in around 3500 BC.

However when examining the Flood story it is not the period but the internal discrepancies, and apparent impossibilities that cause the greatest problems, and, to say the very least, raise doubts as to whether the story can meet the fundamentalist requirement for absolute and literal truth, or even to be considered to have any truth in it at all.

Internal discrepancies include:

6:7 Jehovah intends to destroy "both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air".
6:17 Elohim intends to destroy "all flesh in which there is the breath of life".

7:2 Jehovah instructs Noah to take seven pairs of the clean beasts.
6:19 Elohim instructs Noah to take one pair of every sort of clean beast.

7:13 All boarded at the start of the flood.
7:7 & 7:10 All boarded up to seven days before.

7:12 It rained for forty days and forty nights.
7:24-8:2 It rained for a hundred and fifty days.

7:17,8:6, & 8:8-13 The earth had dried after around one hundred days.
7:11 & 8:13-14 The earth had dried after about a year.

8:20 Noah sacrificed birds and clean beasts - not possible if he only took one pair.

It is not difficult to divide the story of the Flood into two separate and internally self-consistent accounts. Commonly this is treated as another doublet (see article on The Pentateuch ) with one account attributed to the 'P' source, the other to 'J'. See Two Floods

Consider Noah's task: A vast number of creatures had to be assembled - up to thirty million or so if the possibility of macro-evolution is denied - including many who could not possibly make the journey unaided. They had to be fed and prevented from killing each other while waiting. They had to be loaded into the ark, many into individual cages and special environments, in a period of one day (perhaps seven days in one of the two accounts). Thousands of special diets would have to be prepared and fed daily (where would the fresh meat for the carnivores come from, or live insects for the many creatures that live on them). Mountains of waste would have to be collected and disposed of daily. Finally on release many of the creatures would have to be continually fed and prevented from preying on each other for several years. It is sometimes claimed that only one representative from each genera, eg one cat to represent the forty or more species of cats, was saved, however this would require a wholly impossible rate of post-flood macro-evolution.

At a time when major expeditions to the northern forests were required to get a few beams for a temple roof, Noah must have been the richest man in Mesopotamia to afford the timber and bronze needed; he must also have been a most remarkable scholar since more than three different scripts and a large number of different languages survived the flood. (Which also challenges the story of the Tower of Babel).

Physically you have the problem of finding sufficient water to cover the earth to a depth of nearly five miles (to cover Everest), and of disposing of the water afterwards. The list of impossibilities could be extended almost indefinitely. In most cases miraculous intervention has to be assumed, but if the whole is a series of miracles why does the Bible falsely present it as an actual event. Even miraculous intervention will not solve all of the problems.

There may be an even greater problem if you believe in a rational God. Then you have to ask:

If God was angry with humanity why did he destroy the animals.

If God wanted to destroy all except the Ark's cargo why go to the immense complication of hundreds of subsidiary miracles when he could (presumably) just have said "You're dead"? To impress us?

If God wanted to impress us why would he have produced an account the obvious impossibility of which in any literal sense has alienated hundreds of thousands of people from accepting the Bible as true.

A final word on the Flood: Around 2350 BC the art of writing was well advanced in Egypt, China, Sumeria, and probably also in Canaan and India. Taking Egypt alone the scripts, the understanding of what they say, the very language itself, would have been lost, along with religions, dress, burial customs. Technologies such as embalming, pyramid building, architecture - all would have gone. Yet neither then nor at any time in Egypt's history do we find any period where the land is devoid of people, nor do we find any step change in any of these factors. Nothing significant changes.

CONCLUSION.

Some Biblical apologists have tried to show that Biblical stories such as the flood can be reconciled with science or reason by re- interpreting the original Hebrew, however the changes that can be made without hazarding any doctrine of inerrancy are wholly insufficient. There remains a possibility of regarding these stories as allegory, but one would expect some indication in the text that they are indeed not to be read literally.

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