I’m back in my office only briefly before taking off again so I don’t have time to address all of the latest discussions on this thread. I’ll focus on this in hopes of clarifying at least one major issue:
Perhaps I can illustrate the trade-offs which come with language and composing written texts by using a popular Bible topic: the BEHEMOTH animal in Job 40.
I’ve had Bible critics complain to me, “If God can do anything, why wasn’t he powerful enough to be able to inspire a Biblical text which clearly identifies without ambiguity the specific animal being described in Job 40?” Here are just a few of the answers to that question:
(1) Job 40 is not a zoological treatise. It is part of a very beautifully written drama and theological exposition engaging timeless questions about human suffering and God’s sovereignty.
(2) There is no reason to assume that the original audience of this ancient document didn’t have a better understanding of the meaning of the word BEHEMOTH than we do today. An ancient document cannot be expected to preclude future ambiguities arising from differences in language, culture, and historical/chronological context.
(3) The ancients were not as obsessed with detailed labeling and taxonomy as we are. No doubt the author(s) of the Book of Job would say, “The animal’s appearance and behaviors are explained in detail. What more do you want?” Job 40 states that the BEHEMOTH fears no other animal yet God is sovereign over it as part of his creation.
(4) Debates about the Hebrew words translated variously as tail, trunk, penis, etc. are interesting but they have virtually nothing to do with the purpose of the pericope or the themes of the Book of Job. So is there anything to be gained from meeting someone’s expectations of a greater level of anatomically descriptive clarity? (And some of the popular expectations of Bible skeptics are arbitrary and consist of little more than gotcha attempts.)
Sometimes lack of clarity is intentional. One of many reasons can be the beauty of language which arises from the crafting of “word pictures”, metaphors, alliterations, rhymes, and the painting of poetic imagery, to name just a few. Even pop music lyrics often play with ambiguity to allow the listener to consider several separate ideas as a tightly connected whole. Audience often ask, “What does this line of the song mean?” even while finding it beautiful and full of emotional expression. Long tomes have been written on this literary characteristic alone and I don’t have time to develop it here.
People can have very different expectations of degree of clarity in a text. I think of the debate over Genesis 1. Lots of people want it to provide a detailed chronological account of creation, complete with a careful definition and duration for the word YOM (day) as well as a clear statement of the world’s age. Read on its own terms and context in the Ancient Near East, it is a carefully structured tribute to the Creator, who made and governs every sphere of reality, and this contrasts with the gods and goddesses of the neighboring peoples’ pantheons, who each tend to rule only a particular subdomain (e.g., god of the sea, goddess of the harvest and fertility.) Genesis 1 uses a seven-day week as a literary device, a structure built around careful chiasms and beautiful language. Many readers today worry about details which were superfluous to the ancient audience.
Back in the 1970’s The Amplified Bible was somewhat popular. This paraphrase sought to add clarity to the scriptures by providing a series of elaborations and greater detail (often via a list of synonyms), not as footnotes, but in the main text itself. Many people liked it while others complained that it was tediously wordy, dull, and distracting. Why? It goes back to the trade-offs I described previously: clarity, brevity, beauty of expression, wordiness, and the difficulties of copying and distributing a text which is far larger than it needs to be. (The Bible is already quite large. How much larger and more detailed would it need to be to satisfy every expectation from every person in every culture in every century which followed?)
Of course, the clarifications many people demand show an ignorance of how language and translation works. Thus, typical complaints about the Bible include “It says that whales are fish and that bats are birds.” No. Semantic domains differ from language to language and the Hebrew word for “swimming creatures of the sea” does not cover the same set of creatures as the English word fish. Likewise, the Hebrew word for “non-insect winged creature” is not 100% equivalent to the English word bird.
I’m fine with people saying, “I have many questions when I read the Bible. I wish it could be clearer.” However, I used to say the same of some of my textbooks when I was earning my degrees. When does this reaction not arise when studying complex topics? In the case of the Bible, Christians regard it as sufficiently clear for the ideas which God wished to communicate. It’s textual survival in transmission over many centuries and into many languages is incredibly impressive—and it is quite a large tome as it is. Meeting a much higher standard of detailed clarity would have required how much more papyrus and vellum.
I understand much more of the Bible now than I did sixty years ago. I expect my understanding of the Bible to keep increasing over time.
