In 2 Timothy 3:16, the
apostle Paul states:
“All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, for rebuking, for correction, for training in uprightness.”
As followers of Jesus
Christ, it is essential that we hold fast to what this verse teaches. God has
designed the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments to teach us truth that we
need to know. The Bible can rightly be called “The Manual for the Human Life.”
So the Bible teaches what
is true. And it consistently teaches what is true. Note how Paul says that all Scripture is God-breathed.
IT’S NOT QUITE SO SIMPLE
Although it consistently
teaches what is true, when we come to closely examine the Bible, we find that its
truthfulness is not actually a simple subject. I am not suggesting that Scripture
in any way fails to accomplish what 2 Timothy 3:16 says. But when we get into
the details, we find that things are a bit more complicated than many assume.
Failure to recognise this
is not really dangerous in itself. But there are two problems that often arise
when Christians have simplistic assumptions about precisely what they mean when
they say that the Bible is true.
PROBLEMS WITH SIMPLISTIC ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE
BIBLE
First, there is the problem
of Christians doubting the inspiration of Scripture or even doubting the
Christian faith itself.
A Christian may have
certain assumptions about what it means to say that the Bible is true. Then,
when they come to the view that it is not true in exactly the way they thought,
it can make them doubt the Bible’s authority.
One motivation I have in
writing this article is to try, in some small measure, to prevent this
happening. I want to encourage Christians to see that the truthfulness of Scripture
is not a simple subject. If they understand this before they reach the point of
having a crisis of faith, then hopefully the crisis will never come. Some who
would otherwise doubt the Bible’s authority will hopefully just modify their
views on the Bible slightly instead.
It is a real tragedy when
Christians abandon the faith over something trivial. Often, all we need is a small
adjustment of our views on things.
Second, there is the
problem of Christians being hostile to other believers who differ in minor ways
on what they mean by the truthfulness of Scripture.
Again, it is a tragedy when
this happens. Christians need to accept each other when they take different
views on relatively insignificant matters. But this often doesn’t happen.
So another part of my
motivation in writing this article is to try to counter this hostility. I want
to persuade Christians that the truthfulness of the Bible is not quite so simple
a subject as many think. And then I hope that some who are currently hostile to
those who take a slightly different view will drop their hostility.
DIFFERENT IDEAS OF WHAT IS TRUE AND FALSE
The first point I want to
make about the Bible’s truthfulness concerns cultural variations in ideas about
what is true and false.
What the authors of Scripture regarded as true
or false ways of expressing things doesn’t always coincide with what people today
regard as true or false ways of expressing things. To an extent, ideas about what
is an acceptable way to express something actually vary from culture to
culture.
Often, modern Christians simply assume that the biblical
writers spoke and wrote about things like we do. However, there are many ways
in which they actually didn’t.
Importantly, in Scripture there is often much less
of a connection between truthfulness and precision than exists in modern
Western culture. The biblical authors were frequently far less precise about
things than we tend to be.
An example
A good biblical example of
this can be found in Matthew 12:40, where Jesus prophesies:
“For just as Jonah was in the stomach of the sea monster for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.”
The part of this prophecy
that we are interested in is the prediction that Jesus will be in the heart of
the earth for three days and three nights.
To begin with, we need to
recognise that being in the heart of the earth refers to the time between
Jesus’ death and resurrection.
The only other conceivable possibility is that
it refers to the time between His burial and resurrection. However, all the
Gospels portray Jesus’ burial taking place within about two or three hours of
His death. And there is no reason to doubt that the time between His death and
resurrection would have been only about two or three hours longer than the time
between His burial and resurrection. And this difference in time isn’t long
enough to affect my argument in what follows. So I won’t bother to argue the
case here that the time in the heart of the earth is the time between Jesus’
death and resurrection rather than the time between His burial and resurrection.
I will just assume this.
Matthew 12:40, then, tells
us that the time between Jesus’ death and resurrection will be three days and
three nights.
When modern Westerners say
“three days and three nights,” they always mean a period of about 72 hours,
give or take a few hours. However, when we turn to chapters 27 and 28 of
Matthew’s Gospel, we find that Matthew, like the other Gospel writers, portrays
the time between Jesus’ death and resurrection as about half that time!
Matthew implies that Jesus
died around or shortly after 3 pm on the Friday (Matt. 27:46-50). And he seems
to imply that He rose before about 6 am on the following Sunday (Matt. 28:1-7).
Like the other Gospel
authors, Matthew doesn’t tell us the time of day that Jesus rose from the dead.
But we could make a rough guess at 3 am on the Sunday. And it couldn’t possibly
have been later than 7 am. So, according to Matt. 27:46-28:7, Jesus was dead
for approximately 36 hours, give or take a few hours. And it couldn’t have been
for more than 40 hours.
To a modern Western mind,
what Matthew has done is nothing short of astonishing. In Matt. 12:40 he tells
us that Jesus prophesied that He would be dead for three days and three nights.
But when he describes the fulfillment of the prophecy in chapters 27-28, Jesus
is dead for only about 36 hours!
It is important to note
that we can’t explain the prophecy by saying that three days and three nights means
three periods of daytime plus three periods of nighttime. Even if, improbably
in my view, Matt. 27:46-28:7 can be interpreted to allow for a post-dawn
resurrection and therefore three periods of daytime between Jesus’ death and
resurrection, there were only two periods of nighttime. Jesus was dead during
the nighttime of Friday to Saturday and during the nighttime of Saturday to
Sunday. But there was no third period of nighttime. So the three days and three
nights cannot mean three periods of daytime plus three periods of nighttime.
Instead, the three days and
three nights must be referring to three consecutive Jewish calendar days. Jewish
days began and ended at sunset. So the time between Jesus’ death and
resurrection fell on the last part of the day before the Sabbath, all of the
Sabbath day, and probably a bit less than half of the day after the Sabbath. Therefore
the time between His death and resurrection fell on part or all of three
consecutive calendar days.
And Matthew apparently regarded
it as true to say that this period of about 36 hours was three days and three
nights! But in modern Western culture we couldn’t possibly truthfully describe
a period of about 36 hours as three days and three nights!
Suppose a man in a Western
country went into a house at 3 pm on a Friday and came out of the house at 3 am
on the following Sunday. And suppose he later referred to this, but instead of
giving the times of entering and exiting the house, he said, “I was in the
house for three days and three nights.” This man would obviously not be telling
the truth.
But in Matthew’s culture, a
period of about 36 hours, that fell on three consecutive calendar days, apparently
could be truthfully described as
three days and three nights!
Matt. 12:40 therefore contains
an example of wording that was true in first century Jewish culture, but which
would be considered untrue in modern Western culture. If modern Western ways of
expressing things had existed back in Jesus’ and Matthew’s day, the prophecy in
Matt. 12:40 would surely have been worded differently. The same information
would have been conveyed, but using different wording.
Summing up
We see, then, that the
Bible can use very imprecise language that would be considered untrue in modern
Western culture, but which was considered true in first century Jewish culture.
This example shows clearly
that the truthfulness of the Bible is not a simple subject. The wording of Scripture
is only true in terms of the values of truth and error in the cultures of those
who wrote it. And occasionally these values are very different from other
cultures, such as modern Western culture.
MINOR ERRORS THAT WERE NOT IN THE ORIGINAL TEXT
Another way in which the truthfulness
of the Bible is not a simple matter concerns errors that have come into its
text since it was first written.
You may be surprised to
hear this, but even the vast majority of ultraconservative Bible scholars
believe that Scripture as we have it today contains some minor errors.
(In this article I will use
the term “ultraconservative” to refer to Christians who claim that the original
text of the Bible contained not even one minor error. This is a much better
term to describe these believers than “conservative,” since there are many Christians,
like myself, who are theologically and doctrinally fully conservative, while
holding that the original text of Scripture contained some minor errors.)
When ultraconservative scholars
say that they believe in the “inerrancy” of the Bible, what they almost always
mean is that they believe that the autographs of the biblical books were
without error.
The autograph of a text is the
original document, the piece of writing that was first composed. And all of the
autographs of Scripture are now lost. What we have today are copies of earlier
copies.
During the copying process, scribes often made unintentional
mistakes. And they also sometimes deliberately altered the wording, when they
thought that it read awkwardly or that what it said was theologically
problematic.
The result is that today we
have thousands of manuscripts of portions of the Bible in Hebrew, Aramaic and
Greek, but no two copies of any significant length agree with each other
perfectly. And this means that any Bible translation today is bound to contain
some minor errors.
An
example
An example of an error that has come into the
Hebrew text can be found in 2 Samuel 15.
Verses 1-6 of this chapter
describe how Absalom made himself popular among the Jews of his day. The
passage tells us that he used to stand near a gate in Jerusalem
However, in the Hebrew text
as it has come down to us, v. 7 then begins:
“At the end of forty years Absalom said to the king [David] . . .”
In the context, the forty
years apparently refers to the time that Absalom was in the habit of speaking
to people at the gate. But the author of 2 Samuel surely cannot have written
that Absalom did this for forty years. It seems far too long a time.
Besides, the reader of 2 Samuel has been told
that David was king in Jerusalem Jerusalem
It is likely that the
original Hebrew read “four,” and that this was accidentally corrupted in
copying to “forty.” Most English translations have “four” in their texts, and
this seems to be our best guess of what the author wrote. Nevertheless, “forty”
is apparently an error in the Hebrew text as we have it. And even ultraconservative
scholars usually agree with this.
The Bible
gets its job done
There are numerous other
places in the Bible where we find similar minor errors that have come into the
text since it was first written. Sometimes we can figure out with a high degree
of probability what the original was. But sometimes we can’t. And this means
that every translation of Scripture is bound to contain some minor errors.
There is no need for
Christians to be troubled about this, however. Although the original text of
the Bible has not been preserved perfectly, the overwhelming majority of these
errors involve trivial matters. Furthermore, even on those occasions when
something more important is in view, it is never the case that a key matter of
doctrine or practice stands or falls on the uncertain passage alone. There will
be other scriptural passages that teach about the same subject and which are
textually not in dispute.
Basically, errors that have
come into the text since the Bible was written in no way prevent it doing what
God designed it for. Scripture succeeds in getting its job done.
I also think that allowing
unimportant errors to enter the biblical text is actually an act of great
wisdom on God’s part. Sadly, some Christians unintentionally tend to treat the
Bible as an object of worship. But the minor errors in it help to counter this
tendency. And yet they don’t stop Scripture accomplishing its purpose. It seems
to me that this is perfect planning by God.
The
same would have been true in the first century
There is one other point
worth making on this issue, which is that the same sort of situation would have
existed in the first century as exists today. The copies of the OT used by
Jesus and the early church would have contained minor errors. It is completely implausible
to think that God chose to prevent the introduction of minor errors into the
text for hundreds of years up to the time of Christ and the early church, but
that He then allowed this after that time.
This means that when, in
the NT, we find Jesus and early Christians implying that the OT text in their
day is without error, we should understand them to be simplifying things
slightly.
This simplification is
perfectly reasonable. As is true today, the errors in the first century text
would in no way have stopped the OT doing its job. So there was no need to see
them as significant or bother mentioning them. But nevertheless, it is worth
noting that there is a bit of simplification going on.
Summing
up
This issue of minor errors
coming into the text after it was written, then, is a second way in which the
truthfulness of Scripture is not a simple matter.
MINOR ERRORS THAT WERE IN THE ORIGINAL TEXT
Another way in which the Bible’s
truthfulness is not a simple subject concerns minor errors in the original
text.
As I have studied Scripture closely
over the years, I have become convinced that its original text contained errors
of this kind. I am sure that the only way of avoiding this conclusion is to
take extremely unnatural interpretations of the passages involved or to come up
with other implausible solutions. And I don’t believe that God asks us to do
anything implausible when dealing with Scripture. So I take the firm view that
the original text of the Bible contained minor errors in unimportant matters.
An example
An example of this can be found in Job 37:18, where Elihu challenges Job with these words:
“Can you spread out the skies as He [God] does, hard like a mirror of cast metal?”
Elihu assumes here that the
skies God made are solid. Up until the 16th century AD people believed that the
sky was a solid dome, and Elihu clearly understands things in this way. But we
know today that the sky is not solid. So Elihu has unknowingly made a minor
mistake.
It is not reasonable to
argue that because this is poetry, the author of Job didn’t intend his readers
to take these words literally. Poetry actually often uses a great deal of
literal language. And the hardness of the skies was clearly meant to be
understood literally here.
The key point Elihu is
making in this verse is that God is immensely powerful and wise, and this, of
course, is true. And Elihu is also obviously correct to say that God used His
power and wisdom to make the skies. So his error here in no way affects his
argument in this part of the book of Job. It is a trivial mistake.
In this verse God has
chosen to speak using ancient understanding of the world, even though that understanding
was not entirely accurate.
The only way to avoid this
conclusion is to explain things away, but Christians should never do that.
No need to be troubled
Again, there is no need for
believers to be troubled about minor errors like this one. Just as with errors
that have come into the text since it was first written, so with errors in the
original text, we can be sure that they are all minor ones.
It is unthinkable that God
would allow the Bible to mislead us in anything of importance.
Summing up
The existence of minor errors
in the original text of the Bible, then, is a third way in which the truthfulness
of Scripture is not a simple matter.
AVOIDING SIMPLISTIC ASSUMPTIONS
I have briefly commented on
three ways in which the truthfulness of the Bible is a subject that is a bit
more complicated than many Christians might think.
As I said at the outset, my
aim is to encourage believers to avoid simplistic assumptions about the nature
of the Bible.
If Christians accept that
the Bible’s truthfulness is not entirely straightforward, they will surely be
less likely to have their faith shaken by things in it that they were not
expecting to find. And they will surely also be more generous to other
believers who differ from their view of Scripture in minor ways.
For a more in-depth
discussion of this issue, see my longer article:
See also:
