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When people say they believe the Bible contains errors, it\u2019s a good practice to ask them to name those errors so you can open a Bible and look at them together.<\/p>\nWhen people say they believe the Bible contains errors, it\u2019s a good practice to ask them to name those errors so you can open a Bible and look at them together.<\/p>\n
Sometimes they will raise old and easily answered questions such as \u201cWhere did Cain get his wife?\u201d But usually they can\u2019t name many supposed errors, if any at all. Often, they\u2019ve taken as truth the word of other people that the Bible contains errors, without investigating for themselves.<\/p>\n
When you take the time to talk about their concerns, you can demonstrate that you have investigated it for yourself, that you’ve done your homework, and are convinced that when God says all Scripture is \u201cGod-breathed\u201d (2 Timothy 3:16), He means that it is all accurate and reliable. Of course, if you haven\u2019t actually done that, it\u2019s time to start! Don\u2019t be afraid, because God\u2019s Word will hold up under your scrutiny. (It certainly has under mine!)<\/p>\n
Remember, if someone asks a question you don\u2019t know the answer to, it\u2019s okay to say, \u201cThat\u2019s a great question. Let me research it, and I\u2019ll get back with you.\u201d\u00a0The Christian Research Institute\u00a0gives this advice: \u201c\u2026rather than taking a fearful attitude when faced with an alleged biblical contradiction, we should view these occasions as opportunities to search and explore the Scriptures.\u00a0One thing I can guarantee is this:\u00a0your awe of the majesty of Scripture will deepen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s go back to Cain\u2019s wife. She is referred to in\u00a0Genesis 4:17\u00a0as the mother of Enoch. The typical claim is that Cain couldn\u2019t have had a wife since only he and Abel were born to Adam and Eve.<\/p>\n
This fails to recognize that\u00a0Genesis 5:4\u00a0specifically tells us that Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters. Considering their long lifespans they likely had many childbearing years. But is there a problem since\u00a0Genesis 4:17\u00a0precedes\u00a0Genesis 5:4? Not at all. The narrative is not strictly sequential. It\u2019s very common for books of history to talk about one person\u2019s life, tracing out what they did for decades, then move back to deal with another of their contemporaries.<\/p>\n
With Cain, the text of Genesis has fast-forwarded decades, and by then he likely had a number of sisters of marriageable age. He obviously married one of them, or if it was multiple decades later, possibly one of his nieces. If in those days no one had children by a close relative, the human race would have quickly become extinct.<\/p>\n
The problem of Cain\u2019s wife is no problem to anyone but the most superficial reader of Scripture (and to those who have heard others say it is a problem).<\/p>\n
There are many claims of various errors in the Bible; I\u2019ll deal with just a couple.<\/p>\n
Some say that since it groups bats with birds, the Bible falsely teaches that bats are a type of bird (Deuteronomy 14:11,\u00a018). First, there was no scientific definition or established classification of a bird in that time. It makes perfect sense that bats could be grouped with birds due to the fact that both fly.<\/p>\n
The inspired original manuscript, in reference to bats, used a Hebrew word meaning a kind of animal that can fly. Unfortunately, some English translations render the word as \u201cbird.\u201d When a bat is involved, a better English translation would be \u201cflying animal.\u201d Obviously, it\u2019s not an error to categorize a bat as a flying animal!<\/p>\n
Some critics claim attribution errors, such as in\u00a0Matthew 27:9-10: \u201cThen was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying,\u00a0\u2018And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel,\u00a0and they gave them for the potter\u2019s field, as the Lord directed me.\u2019\u201d This reference is actually found in\u00a0Zechariah 11:13, not in the book of Jeremiah.<\/p>\n
The answer to this lies in early Judaism\u2019s understanding of the canon of the Old Testament. The standard Jewish practice was to group the prophets together, even as Jesus did in referring to \u201cthe Law and the Prophets\u201d in\u00a0Matthew 22:40. According to Jewish scholar Nahum Sarna, Jeremiah was once regarded as the first book of the prophets, before Isaiah.<\/p>\n
He further explains \u201c\u2026in the Jewish way of labeling things you call a book by its first few words, and you call a collection of books by the first book in that collection.\u201d So a learned Jewish exegetic would see nothing strange in Matthew\u2019s attributing this fulfilled prophecy of the potter\u2019s field to Jeremiah.<\/p>\n
Some claim that when Jesus said the mustard seed was the \u201csmallest of all the seeds on earth\u201d (Mark 4:31), He was mistaken, since there are smaller seeds.<\/p>\n
According to botany experts, the seed of the black mustard variety was in fact the smallest garden-variety seed commonly used in Palestine\u2014even the entire eastern world\u2014at that time. It grew into a very large shrub. Jesus used it as an illustration twice, and both times was speaking proverbially with statements about faith (Matthew 17:14-20) and the Kingdom of God (Mark 4:30-34).<\/p>\n
John Piper lends\u00a0a helpful perspective\u00a0by clarifying the proper definition of error for judging the reliability of any literature. Thus when Jesus said the Kingdom of God is \u201clike a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth\u201d (Mark 4:31), His basic intention was \u201cnot in the least botanical\u2026Jesus capitalized on the proverbial smallness of the mustard seed to make a perfect, inerrant point about the kingdom of God.\u201d<\/p>\n
It matters because if we cannot trust the Bible\u2014if we can\u2019t rely on it to tell us the truth in everything it speaks to\u2014then it cannot be, as 2 Timothy 3\u00a0says, \u201cprofitable\u201d for us. We can\u2019t correct ourselves with it if it’s sometimes incorrect.<\/p>\n
And if it isn\u2019t reliable in this and that area, why would I think it is correct about love, holiness, grace, justice, idolatry, greed, gossip, fornication, adultery, homosexuality, or even the Gospel itself? If the Bible cannot be trusted to tell us the truth in all things\u2014big or small\u2014how can it be trusted at all?<\/p>\n
And if God considers truth so precious, and His Word so powerful, why would He claim to breathe out Scripture from His mouth (2 Timothy 3:16) and carry along the writers of Holy Scripture (2 Peter 1:21), and then fail to guard that Scripture against error?<\/p>\n
In the early church, God\u2019s Word, all of it, was viewed as the standard by which God\u2019s people should evaluate any and all teachings. The Berean Christians were commended for measuring the apostle Paul\u2019s words against the Old Testament Scriptures: \u201cNow the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true\u201d (Acts 17:11, NIV).<\/p>\n
Unless the Bible were fully inspired, fully true, \u201cexamining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were true\u201d would be meaningless. We can’t take something containing untruths\u2014with no objective way to decide what\u2019s true and what isn\u2019t\u2014and use it to measure whether something else is untrue. If you had a tape measure you knew to be inaccurate, would you bother using it?<\/p>\n
Ironically, without studying Scripture or researching the actual facts, countless believers embrace the claims of the Bible\u2019s critics. Yet most of those critics\u2019 claims are nothing new. The Bible has been criticized incessantly for the last 150 years, and long before that. The charges just haven\u2019t stuck. \u201cForever, O LORD, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens\u201d (Psalm 119:89).<\/p>\n
I\u2019m reminded of what the Huguenots said of the Bible and its critics: \u201cHammer away ye hostile hands; your hammers break, God\u2019s Anvil stands.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read Randy\u2019s longer article on inerrancy, Can We Trust the Bible? Is It Without Error?<\/span><\/a> Also, see his devotional Truth: A Bigger View of God’s Word<\/span><\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Copyright 2017, Randy Alcorn, Eternal Perspective Ministries<\/span><\/a>-All rights reserved<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When people say they believe the Bible contains errors, it\u2019s a good practice to ask them to name those errors so you can open a Bible and look at them together. Sometimes they will raise old and easily answered questions such as \u201cWhere did Cain get his wife?\u201d But usually they can\u2019t name many supposed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":18327,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-discipleship","8":"wp-image-borders","9":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/6561cb1f7104dff9cf25cac5ec8f4b4d789.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4bgnN-4Lz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18325"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18337,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18325\/revisions\/18337"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"image_pdf\"](\"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/wp-content\/plugins\/pdf-print\/images\/pdf.png\" "\\"View")
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