The "flawless" Bible

Conversation
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I do not condemn those who do not condemn. To quote the Bible and at the same time say that the Bible is imperfect is not a contradiction.

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Thanks to those who are willing to taste the red pill. The Bible fascinates me as a Christian, a linguist, a scientist and a scholar. Looking just at the books of Matthew and Luke, we can see such incredible wisdom, and at the same time, centuries of revisionism, bias, and human intention. It is a tribute to the original Words of Christ that so much has survived and continues to grant us each day our super-essential bread.

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Perhaps you could think of it in terms of Godel’s incompleteness theorems (which is probably being butchered when I inappropriately apply it but hey).

One of the incompleteness theorem states that formal systems like logic and math cannot be both complete and consistent - that is, cover everything, and be consistent with itself.

Perhaps God’s Word, God’s logia for us, then, could never be both complete and consistent - if it were to be consistent, it would never be complete (think of this as an infinite amount to be written), and if it was possible to cover everything, it wouldn’t be self consistent.

Perhaps that’s why God is happy with imperfect descriptions from a variety of varying sources who disagree with each other.

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Good thing we never see any of them around here! :smile:

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I’m sure you are right. I find no surprise that there is nuance, disagreement and even truth in the documents. I am more concerned about the CONVICTION and EVANGELISM of the leaders who persuade and influence the millions. I’m sure that the legions have not read the Chicago Statements, or even the Bible itself, but they listen with open hearts to these leaders, and I would say they have fallen under their spell. Atrocities have been committed in the name of Christ throughout history because a few have misused the Word to influence the many.

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Word.

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So, @Dan_Eastwood, what in your mind is the meaning of inerrancy as opposed to infallibility, particularly in the context of the written Gospel? I can see that they are not exact synonyms, but I fear that perception of the written Bible as EITHER flawless (aka without error, inerrant), or infallible (unfailing, perfect, indisputable) leads to the misuse of its specific words.

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I would agree that for any set of rules (which the Bible can be interpreted to be, at least in part), completeness and consistency are mutually-limiting objectives.

It is not however clear that the Bible is optimally consistent for its level of completeness (or alternately optimally complete for its level of consistency).

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Can you elaborate?

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For the most part, global churches have focused on Scripture as “infallible” and “authoritative.” By “biblical infallibility,” we mean that the biblical teachings are true and without falsehood in all that they affirm, with specific reference to God’s revelation of himself as Savior. It is often unclear exactly how infallibility and inerrancy materially differ from each other, since both deny that God’s revelation is encased in falsehood. Sometimes it is said that inerrancy entails freedom from error in all that is mentioned in Scripture—regardless of whether it pertains to historical, scientific, or theological claims—while infallibility is more modest in scope and pertains only to matters of faith and doctrine.44 That is of course the root of the inerrantist objection, that infallibility is too soft and not assertive enough. I want to say that infallibility is not a retreatist position; rather it focuses on the perfection of God’s revelation, with a view to the purpose for which God has revealed himself.45 The Bible was not intended as a handbook on astronomy, so it is pointless to treat it like one. Instead the Bible was intended to impart knowledge of God as Creator and Redeemer, and under that premise, the Bible is completely true in all that it says. The primary feature of infallibility is that God’s Word will never mislead us and it is a safe and reliable guide in all matters to which it speaks.

–Michael Bird’s POV in “Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy”

Bird prefers the term infallibility to inerrancy and cites article 2 of the Lausanne Covenant, according to which Scripture is “without error in all that it affirms.” Yes, the term inerrant is missing, but the basic concept is front and center. Bird says that infallibility has a soteric focus (as opposed to inerrancy’s scientific preoccupation): God did not give us a handbook on astronomy but a map that leads us (infallibly!) to Jesus Christ. Bird rightly reminds us of the essentially redemptive purpose of Scripture, and of revelation more generally.

How significant is the difference between inerrantists and infallibilists?62 I personally prefer the term infallibility (when I get to define it) because it suggests that the Bible does not fail to achieve the purpose for which God has given it, whether that purpose is asserting, promising, commanding, exhorting, praising, etc. On this view, inerrancy is a subset of infallibility: the Bible is inerrant because its assertions are infallible.63 I recognize that my use of the term infallible is different from Bird’s, possibly even idiosyncratic. The problem, however, is that many people in my context (North American evangelicalism) use the term infallibility as a contrast term to inerrancy, meaning something like “true in matters of faith and practice.” In other words, in my context, infallibility often means “limited inerrancy” (i.e., limited to matters concerning God and salvation).

–Van Hoozer on Bird’s POV in “Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy”

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deuteroKJ

I know, but you commented on it without dismissing its relevance to your OP.

In context, you mean specific translations. Individuals, yes. But which groups and which institutions? Other than KJV onlyists (which is a relatively small group), who is claiming a flawless English translation and then condemning others with it?

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There are two different statements–one on inerrancy and one on hermeneutics. I suspect you’re talking about the one on hermeneutics, right? I also struggle with that one.

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me too. ffrf.org

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For the many readers who may be unfamiliar with this topic, here is that statement:

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The Bible is clearly not inerrant in a strict sense (insects don’t have four legs, neither do stars only produce light at night), but a claim to infallibility is basically untestable, if you equate infallibility with trustworthiness in its overarching message.

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The popular misunderstanding of the naming and counting of insect appendages (a topic of amusement on many anti-Bible websites) is one of my personal favorites and I’ve often used it as a classroom illustration of translation complexities. I did a quick a search on PS and found that I last posted on this topic in February:

One other thought: The Ancients Weren’t Stupid.

We moderns immediately jump to the conclusions that the ancients were in error when something doesn’t make sense to us. My favorite example is the silly complaint that the Bible is wrong about the number of legs on a grasshopper. Do we really think it likely that the ancients were unable to count the appendages of a pest which could spell the difference between feast and famine? Seriously? (See the Skeptics Annoted Bible for yet another idiotic face-palm.)

Any competent comparative linguist can explain that cultures classify and label things differently. We today may look at a grasshopper and see six legs—but someone in another cultures sees four appendages of virtually identical structure and calls them “legs” while noticing two very different and very large appendages toward the posterior and calls them “springs” or “jumpers.” (After all, those two big things in the back don’t look anything like the four in the front and the grasshopper doesn’t use them in the same way.) So one culture may speak of six legs while the others describes the same six appendages as four legs and two jumpers. If we could interview native speakers of that ancient culture, we could easily resolve such issues. Our alternative is to assume that ancient writers were somehow incapable of counting appendages on a insect very familiar within their everyday lives.

(Inerrancy Doesn't Survive the "Kings vs. Chronicles" and "Ezra vs. Nehemiah" - #7 by AllenWitmerMiller)

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True, but they were limited and made a lot of errors.

I disagree. We moderns, especially those who use the scientific approach conclude the ancients are in error if their claims don’t agree with rigorously observed data.

It is wrong. Simple.

No, to both questions, but they still got its anatomical description wrong.

This is exactly why the ancients got it wrong. The large size of the back hind limb probably made them think it was completely morphologically different from the middle and front jointed legs, but it was made of the same component parts. The front, middle and back legs are composed of a femur, tibia, and tarsus with the size of the limbs increasing from the front to the back limbs:

legs3a

https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~wjh/jumping/legwrk.htm

In addition, if the ancients used the “springboard” action of the grasshopper hind limb as a basis for not calling it a leg, then they were clearly in the wrong because there are other jumping insects without long hind limbs (like springtails).

The Bible made a clear error in anatomical description here. The ancients were fooled by what they saw in the grasshopper’s external anatomy just like how they were fooled into thinking whales are fishes or the sun moves around the earth.

Please which ancient cultures spoke of “two jumpers”? The Bible clearly wasn’t part of them, if there are any. More importantly, any culture that doesn’t regard the long hind limbs as legs is plain wrong.

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I think we can all agree on that.

In this context you are applying modern scientific principles anachronistically. (And you doubled-down by repeating the popular fallacy that the ancients somehow made an error by using the same word for whales (aquatic mammals) and fish. That’s an anachronism fallacy. These are basic Linguistics 201 concepts. It is folly to critique other cultures on their compliance/non-compliance to the nomenclatures of one’s own culture/era. (These are also PRATTs which we discuss on PS every now and then.)

No, it is not wrong. But it is also not simple—at least not simple for those who do not understand how languages work and how translation is not a mathematically-equivalent generation process.

No, they did not. They didn’t speak and write in English so your argument is flawed even before it gets started. (The ancient Hebrew word for “leg” should not be considered a modern anatomical term.)

You are making the same sorts of errors people make when arguing that:

(1) “The term “guinea pig” is erroneous because a cavy is not a pig at all.”

(2) “The phrase “raining cats and dogs” is erroneous because everybody knows that cats and dogs don’t fall from the sky when a storm comes through.” I assume that I don’t have to explain what is wrong with this complaint. (Believe it or not, this argument has appeared in a popular email which has circulated for years. It was a response to another viral email which claimed that cats and dogs used to sleep on thatched roofs in the Middle Ages and if heavy rains soaked the thatch roofs, those animals would start falling through and landing on the people in the house.)

(3) “The Old Testament is wrong when it refers to bats as birds.” No. Translations often have to approximate the semantic domains of a noun in the source language by finding the nearest equivalent—but not necessarily “perfect” equivalent—in the target language. In our culture we commonly distinguish between birds and bats but in many cultures (including the Semitic culture which spoke ancient Hebrew) a single noun labeled a category which included all winged animals. If an English translation of the Hebrew word tried to capture all of its meaning and nuances, the result would be a very wordy and clumsy translation. Professional translators (in general, not just those who translate Biblical texts) must often balance accuracy, readability, conciseness, and beauty of style in their choice of words. Some Bible translations provide supplementary footnotes and translation commentary to round out and resolve the types of problems people often misconstrue from the Biblical text. (For example, they sometimes leave the “literal rendering” in the main text but explain the meaning of idioms in a footnote. For example, the Hebrew phrase “King X slept with his fathers” gets explained as “X died.” However, BOTH renderings would be valid translations.)

(4) “The Bible mistakenly treats Pi as equal to 3.” That’s one of my personal favorites. You can probably find that PRATT several times via the Peaceful Science search function.

By the way, don’t assume that I’m a hard-core, hyper-inerrancy fundamentalist who explains away every difficult passage in the Bible. (In actual fact, I get my share of heat from some conservative evangelicals for pointing out problematic and controversial features in the Biblical text.) I’m just being a consistent judge in identifying popular myths about the Biblical text which don’t hold up under basic linguistic scrutiny.

Irrelevant. That’s not how language works. Labels can be applied to items and concepts for all sorts of reasons, not just those labels preferred by modern-day taxonomists and anatomists. Would you say that all English speakers are in error (and anatomically ignorant) when they say, “Ouch! I hit my funny bone!” when—in actual fact—they hit the ulnar nerve which is not a bone at all? How about when an English speaker says, “My stomach hurts!” but they are grimacing while pressing their hand against their intestines instead. A friend of mine taught anatomy at a medical school until his retirement and yet I’ve heard him utter that very sentence. He simply followed the conventions of the English language which often treats the word stomach as a synonym for _abdomen. He didn’t make an “error”.

Do you complain when someone speaks of the bearcat they saw at a zoo, because it is neither a kind of bear nor a cat? A king cobra has that common name because it reminds people of cobras in general, even though it is not considered a true cobra by any herpetologist. How about a mention of an electric eel, which is certainly “electric” but not a taxonomically-classified eel at all? Likewise, mountain goat is recognized by English language speakers even though a taxonomist recognizes that it is not a member of the Capra genus at all (so not truly a goat.) How about a killer whale which is not a whale at all but a kind of dolphin? Or a horny toad or a koala bear, neither of which is classified as a toad or a bear by any scientist I know?

Obviously, lots of English labels got applied to animals well before Linnaeus developed his taxonomic categories. That doesn’t make those labels “wrong”. The same goes for ancient languages—and modern ones.

[My examples are drawn from American English. I can’t guarantee that all of them will be equally familiar to the English speakers of other nations, such as Nigeria.]

No. They didn’t think whales are fishes. (Among other reasons, the English language didn’t yet exist and those words didn’t exist yet.) They thought what we call whales were “aquatic animals” or “swimming animals with fins”. Nothing wrong with that. When translating the Hebrew word into English, it is entirely appropriate to use the nearest target language equivalent that meets the general requirements. In any case, most English Bible translations don’t speak at all of whales. “Great fish” is a reasonable equivalent to the Hebrew word—and it certainly reads more smoothly than “aquatic finned-creature of large proportions.” If I recall correctly, the KJV Bible of 1611 used the English word “whale” because John Wycliffe’s Bible had done so. Needless to say, they didn’t have a library of Hebrew-Aramaic lexicons and commentaries nearly as large as mine. So I’m willing to give them a pass on making a poor word choice in their translation.

No. You are simplistically assuming that your language gets it “right” and therefore cultures which make other classifications must be wrong.

This example of a culture which calls a grasshoppers largest legs “jumpers” (that is, they use a word in their language which basically means “jumpers” in English) is found in a remote area of the Amazon forest. I was a speaker at a Summer Institute of Linguistics translation field directors’ conference in 1980 and the professor who spoke just before me provided that memorable example in his lecture. I’m sorry I can no longer recall the name of the tribe and language. However, I can assure you that there are plenty of other cultures which make similar alternative classifications and labels for common things in their environment. Anyone who has studied semantics in any university department of linguistics can attest to what I’m telling you. However, some of the most interesting stories I’ve heard have also come from field anthropologists.

One more example: Tonight is New Year’s Eve. Some office parties in the USA will cut corners and simply combine vodka and orange juice into what is known as a screwdriver.

Hint: That term has nothing to do with the popular hand tool. Consuming it in large quantities may prove to be a bad idea—but the noun is not necessarily an “error” of classification and labeling. (One of my favorite linguistics professor told me that, allegedly, the term was first dubbed when some oil workers in the Persian Gulf mixed some canned frozen orange juice with vodka and used a screw-driver from their tool belt to break up the clumps and mix the concoction.)

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Hey Kenneth,

Yes I realize that I picked the wrong one ;).

Now I am reading through the one on inerrancy.

On article V, Jesus’ passage on being the Lord of the Sabbath contradicts this

On article X, the autograph argument basically presupposes divine intervention to prevent changes

On article XII, seems to run into problems same as with Galileo, then runs into “it is only a hypothesis” argument

On article XIII, seems to merely be a stopgap to prevent the structure from collapsing. God wrote Scripture to all humans and to assume such things when the majority of humans will have lived in a semi-scientifically literate society kinda breaks this idea.

On article XVI, sounds like a mere assertion (also side note, why are these claims not backed up by data?)

On article XVIII, feels like a purposeful selective choice to get to a pre-determined outcome

Anyways, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this statement :slight_smile:

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Well, now, they may not have been stupid but they did make a number of mistakes of simple observation. Aristotle miscounted the number of teeth that humans have. Lots of people think men have more ribs than women. It may seem farfetched for a biblical author not to know how many legs a grasshopper has, but it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility, and similar things have happened.

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