Can the Bible be in Error, Historically?

[ProVobis]

It depends on what the questioner means by “error”. If by that question is meant the literal placement of a dome over the earth, then the answer must be “yes, the bible has errors”.

If by “error” the questioner believes those items dissolve the inspired and inerrant nature of the bible so as to dilute the purposes of God, then no, the scriptures cannot have errors.* The scriptures accomplish every purpose of God, without error.* Even those dark passages which propose practices which are abhorrent to Christian beliefs accomplish the will of God without error.

In my mind, it almost blasphemy to require of God that he spoon feed us his word in terms and methods our own puny minds can easily organize and comprehend. Who are we to require modern logical streams of thought for his own self communication? We are human beings, God is God. The scriptures express what God wills, in human words. So, scripture is very messy. Why would God allow that??? Ultimately scripture leads us to discover a person, a relationship with Jesus Christ, that brings life to these mysteries.

A spoon feeding would make it easy. In fact, a spoon feeding of God’s revelation makes Jesus Christ unnecessary. It makes it easy for someone to reject the word of God when it can be pointed out the different times of the crucifixion between the Gospels, or the assertion of a dome that does not exist, scientific and historical items we know are not factual. It also makes it easy to delve no further that the literal , and so rob the scriptures of saving power.

We accuse God: “There are discrepancies God! Where is your inspiration, where is your truth?”

It is interesting that both atheists and fundamentalists view the bible in the same way.

Right. Unless it’s infallible, you will always have error. I speak as a physics major whose job was to measure that error. Perhaps it’s negligible in many case but it still is there. Fact of life in history, geology, meteorology, psychology, finance, and translations. Especially translations.

 

[Usagi]

The Magisterium has condemned the opinion that inerrancy only extends to matters of faith or morals.

Very true and very important. But it does extend only to matters the author intends to assert as true, and I’m sure you know that doesn’t always mean “every single affirmative statement that appears in the text.”

As mentioned by others, I think we can agree that Jesus never lied. Yet he often taught in parables. Just because he stated that a certain person did such-and-such doesn’t mean that literally happened, because both he and his audience understood he was telling a story to illustrate a point.

Some believe that the entire book of Jonah is a comedic novel rather than a factual account of the life of a real prophet (or perhaps it is a comedic fictionalization told about a real prophet). They may or may not be correct, but even if they are, that doesn’t affect the book’s inspiration or truth on a broader level. If the writer of Jonah knowingly wrote a novel, then he or she was never asserting the factual truth of the events therein, and no one can claim the Scripture contains error because the details about Jonah’s story are fictional.

Likewise, it is commonly put forth that the creation stories are myths – not in the modern sense of falsehoods or misconceptions, but in the sense of a form of writing that uses fanciful details and direct interaction with deities to explain the origin of some familiar part of the world or the human condition. Under that reading, the actual inerrant assertions made by the author are that God is the sole creator of all things; that our ancestors are the ones who brought bad things into the world by disobeying him; and that God has a plan for fixing that problem, rather than the details about trees and snakes and specific names of the ancestors involved.

Now, this doesn’t work as well for the OP’s concern about the census or the question of Jesus’ birthplace, because it certainly seems as though the evangelists are providing those details to ground the narrative in a particular time and place, which suggests they would report things they believe to be factually true. We do have one poster who suggests that the reference to Quirinius is actually a symbolic nod to the sorrow and death of the world before Christ’s coming, in which case it would not be bound to the requirements of purely factual truth, but I don’t think that’s a common reading.

Usagi

 

[Faith1960]

Right. Unless it’s infallible, you will always have error. I speak as a physics major whose job was to measure that error. Perhaps it’s negligible in many case but it still is there. Fact of life in history, geology, meteorology, psychology, finance, and translations. Especially translations.

So you believe there are errors?

 

[clem456]

So you believe there are errors?

If you are looking at it through the lens of the disciplines Pro Vobis listed, then yes, the obvious conclusion is there are errors. There is no dome over the earth.

Through the lens of faith, the idea of errors is pretty much irrelevant. Because the bible is **(T)**rue.

 

[Tim_D]

Through the lens of faith, the idea of errors is pretty much irrelevant. Because the bible is **(T)**rue.

This thought seems to be going right over the OP’s head.

 

[Faith1960]

This thought seems to be going right over the OP’s head.

No need to get nasty. I know I said it myself but it’s uncharitable coming from you.

 

[Faith1960]

If you are looking at it through the lens of the disciplines Pro Vobis listed, then yes, the obvious conclusion is there are errors. There is no dome over the earth.

Through the lens of faith, the idea of errors is pretty much irrelevant. Because the bible is **(T)**rue.

Can you explain the last sentence further?

 

[Tim_D]

No need to get nasty. I know I said it myself but it’s uncharitable coming from you.

I did not mean it to be an insult. For 9 pages now you have read many knowledgeable people’s opinions as to whether or not “can the Bible be in Error, Historically?” After every answer you still ask again if the poster believes there are errors in the Bible. Its been asked and answered, yet you still ask the same question. Why? How many times does one need to give the same answer until you accept it? Is it because you are afraid that if there are “errors” in the Bible, it somehow means the whole thing is untrue? I’m trying to understand where you are coming from.

 

[Faith1960]

I did not mean it to be an insult.

Is it because you are afraid that if there are “errors” in the Bible, it somehow means the whole thing is untrue? I’m trying to understand where you are coming from.

Yes.

 

[Tim_D]

Yes.

Well, then you needn’t worry about such a thing. As clem456 said, the Bible as a whole is “True,” in that it is a work that attests to and speaks of the Truth of the Incarnate Christ, His death and His resurrection. That some things in the Bible aren’t historically accurate does not detract from this reality; the ultimate purpose of the Bible is to speak of our ultimate salvation in Christ, not to be an encyclopedia of ancient events. It is the spiritual truths in the Bible that ultimately speaks to us, not historical anecdotes.

 

[Faith1960]

Well, then you needn’t worry about such a thing. As clem456 said, the Bible as a whole is “True,” in that it is a work that attests to and speaks of the Truth of the Incarnate Christ, His death and His resurrection. That some things in the Bible aren’t historically accurate does not detract from this reality; the ultimate purpose of the Bible is to speak of our ultimate salvation in Christ, not to be an encyclopedia of ancient events. It is the spiritual truths in the Bible that ultimately speaks to us, not historical anecdotes.

Thanks!

 

[Lily_Bernans]

Thanks!

Errors in translation are not unexpected. The Gospel of Mark is written in very rough Greek. Martin Luther’s crisis and "Tower Experience’ was caused by an error in the Latin Vulgate translation of the Greek. The Greek word “metanoia” was translated as “do penance” when it should have been translated as “repent.” People say things in different ways. The gospel writers wanted to emphasize different things. The Bible is the inspired word of God. As Tim said, it was never meant to be an accurate history of ancient times. More astonishing than a few errors of translation, recollection, etc. is the fact that the Bible, as a whole, was written over a period of thousands of years, by many different authors, yet it all holds together as one coherent book. It could never do that if it were not inspired by God and written under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It should even be read from cover to cover, in sequence because it tells the story of God’s relationship with his creation. What is hidden in the Hebrew Scriptures is revealed in the New Testament. Christ fulfilled more than 400 HS prophecies. That could not have taken place were he not the Messiah and had the Bible not been divinely inspired. You can rely on it with no doubts.

 

[patrick457]

It is interesting that both atheists and fundamentalists view the bible in the same way.

Here’s a quote from a book called The Rise and Fall of the Bible (and before anybody gets concerned with the title, it’s about ‘the Bible’ as the modern pop culture caricature of it: a self-consistent, easy to understand divine instruction manual that will magically solve every problem in the world) by author Timothy Beal which really gets to that:

In many ways, those dedicated to removing all potential biblical contradictions, to making the Bible entirely consistent with itself, are no different from irreligious debunkers of the Bible, Christianity, and religion in general. Many from both camps seem to believe that simply demonstrating the Bible is full of inconsistencies and contradictions, as I have just done, is enough to discredit any religious tradition that embraces it as Scripture. Bible debunkers and Bible defenders are kindred spirits. They agree that the Bible is on trial. They agree on the terms of the debate, and what’s at stake, namely its credibility as God’s infallible book. They agree that Christianity stands or falls, triumphs or fails, depending on whether the Bible is found to be inconsistent, to contradict itself. The question for both sides is whether it fails to answer questions, from the most trivial to the ultimate, consistently and reliably.

But you can’t fail at something you’re not trying to do. To ask whether the Bible fails to give consistent answers or to be of one voice with itself presumes that it was built to do so. That’s a false presumption, rooted no doubt in thinking of it as the book that God wrote. As we have seen, biblical literature is constantly interpreting, interrogating, and disagreeing with itself. Virtually nothing is asserted someplace that is not called into question or undermined elsewhere. Ultimately it resists conclusion and explodes any desire we might have for univocality.

We don’t know, and will never know, many details about the history of development of biblical literature. No doubt there have been countless hands, scribal and editorial, involved in writing, editing, copying, and circulating the various versions of various texts that eventually were brought together into a canonical collection. Nor do we know very much for certain about the ancient life situations - ritual practices, oral traditions, legal systems - in which these texts had their beginnings. Nor do we know everything about the complex process by which the canons of Jewish and Christian Scriptures took form. What we do know for certain is that the literature now in our Bibles was thousands of years in the making.

Given how many hands have been involved in so many contexts over such a long time in the history of this literature, can we honestly imagine that no one noticed such glaring discrepancies? Can we believe, for example, that the seam between the first and second creation stories in Genesis, as well as the many other seams found throughout the Torah, were not obvious? That if agreement and univocality were the goal, such discrepancies would have been fixed and such rough seams mended long ago? That creation stories would have been made to conform or be removed? That Job would’ve been allowed to stand against Moses? That Gospel mix-ups concerning who saw what after Jesus’s resurrection would have been left to stand? That Judas would have died twice, once by suicide and once by divine disgorge? And so on? Could all those many, many people involved in the development of biblical literature and the canon of Scriptures have been so blind, so stupid? It’s modern arrogance to imagine so.

The Bible canonizes contradiction. It holds together a tense diversity of perspectives and voices, difference and argument - even and especially, as we have seen, when it comes to the profoundest questions of the faith, questions that inevitably outlive all their answers. The Bible interprets itself, argues with itself, and perpetually frustrates any desire to reduce it to univocality.

 

[patrick457]

I could adapt and tweak what Beal is saying here (because I think his observations are right):

Those committed to ‘debunking’ the Bible, and those committed to ‘defending’ the Bible are just two sides of the same coin. As Beal says: “Many from both camps seem to believe that simply demonstrating the Bible is full of inconsistencies and contradictions …] is enough to discredit any religious tradition that embraces it as Scripture.”

In other words, as I have noted earlier, they have this mental picture in their heads about what the Bible is like, what the Bible should be like. When they find out that it doesn’t really conform to the norms and expectations they are imposing on it, believers find it an embarrassment and go to lengths to explain the difficulty away (which is, while a good-intentioned act, is not always necessarily the best), while the non-believers are quick to pounce on this as if it’s a chink in the armor of belief. Their diagnosis is correct, but their conclusions are wrong.

As I and other posters have (repeatedly!) been pointing out and asking: why should we expect the scriptural books to conform to 21st century modern Western, Greco-Roman, European-American standards, when they are not literature written by modern-day post-‘Enlightenment’ Westerners steeped in philosophies and ideologies ultimately derived from Greco-Roman (not Middle Eastern) thinking? You can’t fail at something you’re not trying to do.

I’ll repeat what everyone said: the Bible is, has been mentioned, inspired and contains inspired truths in it; not just of faith and morals, as advocates of ‘limited inerrancy’ often imply, but also ‘historical’ truths as well. But just because there are historical truths being asserted in the Scriptures, do not make the whole of Scripture a ‘history’ book in the 21st century Western sense.

This is what the debunkers and the overzealous fundamentalists fail to understand, even after many people have come and gone and warned them: the books of the Bible are not your books - they were not written in your time, in your culture. It’s plain arrogance to judge something by standards that it does not subscribe to. This is the same fault committed by many early modern Western scholars toward non-Western literature, cultures and religions: they assumed that their worldview is the only correct, universal one and in so doing, forced it onto cultures that in reality, do not see the world in the same way that they do. They condemned these cultures for being ‘backward’ and ‘superstitious’, in need of being converted and wakened up to the supremacy of Western concepts and values. (It’s the old missionary drive minus Christianity: instead of the gospel, they now peddled ideologies, worldviews and values. ‘Reason’, ‘rationalism’, ‘empiricism’ and ‘the scientific method’ have replaced the faith.)

What if the biblical writers actually did not see the world in the same way that we do - in fact, I’m pretty sure that they did not see the world in the same way that we do. Their standards are not ours, and vice versa. Different worlds, different rules, different standards.

 

[CHRISTINE77]

Here’s a quote from a book called The Rise and Fall of the Bible (and before anybody gets concerned with the title, it’s about ‘the Bible’ as the modern pop culture caricature of it: a self-consistent, easy to understand divine instruction manual that will magically solve every problem in the world) by author Timothy Beal which really gets to that:

In many ways, those dedicated to removing all potential biblical contradictions, to making the Bible entirely consistent with itself, are no different from irreligious debunkers of the Bible, Christianity, and religion in general. Many from both camps seem to believe that simply demonstrating the Bible is full of inconsistencies and contradictions, as I have just done, is enough to discredit any religious tradition that embraces it as Scripture. Bible debunkers and Bible defenders are kindred spirits. They agree that the Bible is on trial. They agree on the terms of the debate, and what’s at stake, namely its credibility as God’s infallible book. They agree that Christianity stands or falls, triumphs or fails, depending on whether the Bible is found to be inconsistent, to contradict itself. The question for both sides is whether it fails to answer questions, from the most trivial to the ultimate, consistently and reliably.

But you can’t fail at something you’re not trying to do. To ask whether the Bible fails to give consistent answers or to be of one voice with itself presumes that it was built to do so. That’s a false presumption, rooted no doubt in thinking of it as the book that God wrote. As we have seen, biblical literature is constantly interpreting, interrogating, and disagreeing with itself. Virtually nothing is asserted someplace that is not called into question or undermined elsewhere. Ultimately it resists conclusion and explodes any desire we might have for univocality.

We don’t know, and will never know, many details about the history of development of biblical literature. No doubt there have been countless hands, scribal and editorial, involved in writing, editing, copying, and circulating the various versions of various texts that eventually were brought together into a canonical collection. Nor do we know very much for certain about the ancient life situations - ritual practices, oral traditions, legal systems - in which these texts had their beginnings. Nor do we know everything about the complex process by which the canons of Jewish and Christian Scriptures took form. What we do know for certain is that the literature now in our Bibles was thousands of years in the making.

Given how many hands have been involved in so many contexts over such a long time in the history of this literature, can we honestly imagine that no one noticed such glaring discrepancies? Can we believe, for example, that the seam between the first and second creation stories in Genesis, as well as the many other seams found throughout the Torah, were not obvious? That if agreement and univocality were the goal, such discrepancies would have been fixed and such rough seams mended long ago? That creation stories would have been made to conform or be removed? That Job would’ve been allowed to stand against Moses? That Gospel mix-ups concerning who saw what after Jesus’s resurrection would have been left to stand? That Judas would have died twice, once by suicide and once by divine disgorge? And so on? Could all those many, many people involved in the development of biblical literature and the canon of Scriptures have been so blind, so stupid? It’s modern arrogance to imagine so.

The Bible canonizes contradiction. It holds together a tense diversity of perspectives and voices, difference and argument - even and especially, as we have seen, when it comes to the profoundest questions of the faith, questions that inevitably outlive all their answers. The Bible interprets itself, argues with itself, and perpetually frustrates any desire to reduce it to univocality.

This is EXACTLY what makes the Bible so great, so fascinating and wonderful! The Bible is an awesome book creating over centuries of time, by many, many voices all searching for the meaning of life and God. There is NO book in the world like the Bible.

 

[ProVobis]

So you believe there are errors?

As compared to what? I brought up the point of what else was available at the time. I believe there are fewer errors in the Bible than Greek mythology or other pagan writings, for example. Today archaeologists and historians are discovering things that can be better expressed in English but it doesn’t necessarily mean that what was written at the time is one-big error in historical facts. We modernists after all have been given the advantage of having more time to research them.

 

[ProVobis]

Errors in translation are not unexpected. The Gospel of Mark is written in very rough Greek. Martin Luther’s crisis and "Tower Experience’ was caused by an error in the Latin Vulgate translation of the Greek.

How was it translated in the Vetus Latina, an older Latin version of the Bible?

 

[clem456]

In regard to error we have the issue of intent and consequence.

Does a discrepancy imply ill will on the part of the author, or on the part of God? Hardly. Many times our modern sense of error is naturally followed by an assumption of deception.

Does it imply ignorance? Yes in the sense that the author did not have the advantages of knowledge we currently have, or had a faulty memory. But ignorance in the way of stupidity or blindness? No. For us, “errors” usually implies something like that, so as to make the source untrustworthy.

Consequences:
These discrepancies have little effect on the Truth to be conveyed.

 

[Trevor_Dewey]

Proverbs XXV:2 “It is the glory of God to conceal the word, and the glory of kings to search out the speech.”

Errors in translation are not unexpected. The Gospel of Mark is written in very rough Greek. Martin Luther’s crisis and "Tower Experience’ was caused by an error in the Latin Vulgate translation of the Greek. The Greek word “metanoia” was translated as “do penance” when it should have been translated as “repent.”

I recall having this discussion with Mr. Patrick, St. Jerome wrote an inspired translation, so, in general, (e.g. excluding Baruch which Jerome didn’t translate), I’m going to assume the Vulgate uses the correct work and correct translation regardless of the current modernist thinking on the topic. I’m will assume from your background that you are absolutely correct on the Greek, but I will also assume that the Vulgate translation was made to “penance” by St. Jerome, not as an error in translation, as you suggest, but because St. Jerome, inspired by the Holy Spirit, translated the word in the most suitable way for the Catholic population going forward.
Perhaps, and I have no basis to make this statement, I provide it merely for example, that in the First Century, metanoia which means “repent” was also shorthand for “repent and do penance” just as I might tell a friend today “I’m going to confession”, meaning I’m going to confession and then Mass, given that confession times always precede Mass (at my local Church) and that when I go to confession I always go to Mass (though the reverse is not true).

Patrick457:

What if the biblical writers actually did not see the world in the same way that we do - in fact, I’m pretty sure that they did not see the world in the same way that we do. Their standards are not ours, and vice versa. Different worlds, different rules, different standards.

There aren’t any contradictions in the Bible, there are some copyist errors (some of which, such as changes to the Masoretic text from the original, may be deliberate), I cited the best example I’m aware of from the Douay/Jerome Vulgate that could be a copyist error with the father/son names reversed, however, I appreciate that it is possible that the reversal was to make a point that I’m simply not smart enough or wise enough to understand. But in general, if someone thinks there is a contradiction they just don’t understand the passage(s) properly.

With respect to the bolded part: we live in the same Cosmos with the same rules as the human authors (and ultimately Divine author) of the Bible.

/Mystical Aside Begin.

Let me get mystical for a moment (at which point the one person who has read this far should skip to the next post): I’ve mentioned the rule of four before: such as when Noe sent four birds (Raven, Dove (returns), Dove (returns with olive branch), Dove (doesn’t return)). Where the Bible lists four things: one of which is different from the other three (here the Raven) and two of the three similar items are more similar to each other than to the third (the two Doves that return). Similarly we have the Gospels: John is distinct from Matthew, Mark and Luke, and Luke and Matthew are more similar to each other (in length and use of Mark) than Mark is to either of them (shorter and no obvious use of Luke or Matthew by Mark)). This pattern is throughout the Bible from the beginning (Genesis: Adam, Eve, Serpent and God in the garden) in Genesis to Revelation (for all the sevens, you can find a lot of things grouped in four). It’s even found in parables (Parables XXX for example) and it is so consistent (necessarily so for the reason given below) that I’ve become cautious with any book, and in particular prophetic works that don’t reference the rule of four in their prophecies.

Now with respect to the Cosmos, we have four fundamental forces (Gravity, Strong ,Weak, Electromagnetic) of which one is quite distinct (Gravity) and Three are more similar (S,W,EM) and two are much more similar (Weak and Electromagnetic) to each other than to the third. The simplest form of actual matter is the Hydrogen Atom (1 proton, 1 electron), which is made from four fermions: the electron and three quarks making up the proton (Up-Red, Up-Blue, and Down-Green [colors are arbitrary but must be distinct]) so again, one quite distinct element (electron), three similar (quarks) and two more similar to each other than the third (Up-Red and Up-Blue). There are four states of matter: Solid, liquid, gas and plasma. One is distinct (solid) and two of the other three are more similar to each other (plasma, gas) than to the third. As in the Bible, this rule doesn’t hold for everything, but it holds for a lot of fundamental structures (e.g. the four lobes of the brain).

In both cases this is because the Bible and Cosmos were created by God, ultimately through His name (the Tetragrammaton) which, as we know has four letters, one of which is quite distinct (Yod) and of the other three, two are much more similar to each other than to the third (n.b. as we all know, the letters are the same letter (Heh) but no one can say if they are exactly the same when spoken as part of God’s name because the original pronunciation with vowel sounds has been long lost and they may have been, and probably were, pronounced slightly differently). Being created through His name, the Cosmos and the Bible, must reflect that Holy Name in some fashion and they do.

/Mystical Aside End.

Point being: same world, same rules, same standards, but the Bible is a tesseract and we’re stuck in a three-dimensional worldview thinking it is a cube.

 

[Faith1960]

Errors in translation are not unexpected. The Gospel of Mark is written in very rough Greek. Martin Luther’s crisis and "Tower Experience’ was caused by an error in the Latin Vulgate translation of the Greek. The Greek word “metanoia” was translated as “do penance” when it should have been translated as “repent.” People say things in different ways. The gospel writers wanted to emphasize different things. The Bible is the inspired word of God. As Tim said, it was never meant to be an accurate history of ancient times. More astonishing than a few errors of translation, recollection, etc. is the fact that the Bible, as a whole, was written over a period of thousands of years, by many different authors, yet it all holds together as one coherent book. It could never do that if it were not inspired by God and written under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It should even be read from cover to cover, in sequence because it tells the story of God’s relationship with his creation. What is hidden in the Hebrew Scriptures is revealed in the New Testament. Christ fulfilled more than 400 HS prophecies. That could not have taken place were he not the Messiah and had the Bible not been divinely inspired. You can rely on it with no doubts.

Thanks again!