Category Archives: Difficult Bible Passages

Difficult Bible Passages

Did Jesus Lie to His Brothers?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Patti, a reader of Tough Questions Answered, asked the other day if Jesus lied to his brothers in John 7:8-10.  She claims that an atheist pointed these verses out to her.

So, what’s going on here?  Must we read these verses in John 7 as Jesus purposely deceiving his brothers?  First, let’s look at the passage in question, starting at John 7:1:

After this, Jesus went around in Galilee, purposely staying away from Judea because the Jews there were waiting to take his life. But when the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles was near, Jesus’ brothers said to him, “You ought to leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the miracles you do.  No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.”  For even his own brothers did not believe in him.

In these verses, Jesus’ brothers are taunting him.  They are urging him to go to the Feast and perform public miracles instead of avoiding Judea, where the Feast would be held.  What was Jesus’ response to them?

Therefore Jesus told them, “The right time for me has not yet come; for you any time is right.   The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that what it does is evil. You go to the Feast. I am not yet going up to this Feast, because for me the right time has not yet come.”  Having said this, he stayed in Galilee.

Jesus tells his brothers twice that “the right time has not yet come.”  He tells them to go to the Feast without him.  What does Jesus do next?

However, after his brothers had left for the Feast, he went also, not publicly, but in secret.  Now at the Feast the Jews were watching for him and asking, “Where is that man?”  Among the crowds there was widespread whispering about him. Some said, “He is a good man.”  Others replied, “No, he deceives the people.”  But no one would say anything publicly about him for fear of the Jews.  

Here is where the alleged deception occurs.  In verse 10, Jesus goes to the Feast after all, but in secret.  Did Jesus ever publicly reveal himself at the Feast or did he remain at the Feast in secret?

Not until halfway through the Feast did Jesus go up to the temple courts and begin to teach.  The Jews were amazed and asked, “How did this man get such learning without having studied?”

Jesus chose to publicly reveal himself halfway through the Feast, or about the fourth day.  So, did he purposely try to deceive his brothers?  I think not.

As is clear from the context of the passage, Jesus’ brothers were encouraging him to make a public spectacle of himself at the beginning of the Feast. 

Jesus tells them, simply, that his timing for a public appearance at the Feast is not their timing.  He arrives at the Feast in secret and he does not appear publicly until halfway through the Feast.  Verse 14 pointedly refers to Jesus’ timing, a piece of information that would seem irrelevant if we did not know about Jesus’ conversation with his brothers.

There is simply no deception going on here.  If Jesus were lying to his brothers, and did not want them to know he was going to the Feast, then why did he appear publicly in the middle of the Feast, where he could be sure his brothers would see and hear him preaching?  That scenario does not make sense.

The straightforward reading of this text indicates that the author (John) is trying to contrast Jesus’ timing with his brothers’ taunting.  In order to show that Jesus lied, one has to prove that Jesus told his brothers that he was not going to the Feast at all, and that interpretation of these verses is highly implausible.

Difficult Bible Passages, Skeptics

How Do You Prove a Contradiction in the Bible?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

As I’ve corresponded with skeptics of Christianity over the years, I have been amazed at what I call hyper-skeptics.  These are people who throw the word “contradiction” around when they should really use the word “difference.”

A contradiction occurs between two statements when one statement is “A is B” and the other statement is “A is not B.”  A has to mean the exact same thing at the exact same time in the exact same sense in both statements for there to be a contradiction, and B has to mean the exact same thing at the exact same time in the exact same sense in both statements for there to be a contradiction.  If there is not total and complete identity between A in both statements and B in both statements, there is no contradiction.

Hyper-skeptics often, however, call two statements in the Bible contradictory without ever showing that A and B are identical in both statements, but this is what they must do before claiming a contradiction.  Or to put it another way, hyper-skeptics demand that if two witnesses report the same crime, they must report the facts of the crime in exactly the same way, down to the most minute detail.  Any deviation between the two reports at all renders a verdict of contradiction.  The problem is that two different reports about an event do not constitute a contradiction unless the two different reports make opposite claims (i.e., A is B and A is not B).  Most of the time, the hyper-skeptic fails to show this.

C. Michael Patton of the Parchment and Pen Blog has obviously seen hyper-skeptics in action; he wrote a blog post recently that shed much light on the issue for those of you who are interested.  It’s one of those posts that I wish I had written after I read it.  Take a look and see what you think.

 

 

Bible Interpretation, Difficult Bible Passages

Who Did Joshua Kill in Jericho?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Many Christians, as they read the book of Joshua, are uncomfortable with the accounts of conquest that are recorded there.  The conquest of Jericho is the first in Canaan for the Israelites.  The biblical writer describes the battle of Jericho this way in Josh. 6:20-21:

When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city.  They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.

What causes many of us discomfort is the phrase “men and women, young and old.”  It seems that we must understand Joshua’s conquest of Jericho as a complete annihilation of a major population center, including non-combatants who are women, children and the elderly.

Christian scholar Paul Copan strongly disagrees with this understanding of the attack on Jericho in his book Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God.  Copan marshals a case to dispute the traditional view of Jericho being a major population center with loads of non-combatants living in it.

His argument rests on two primary points.  First, the language found in Josh. 6:21 should be understood as Near Eastern warfare rhetoric.  In other words, Joshua’s original audience would not have understood the sentence, “They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys” as literally meaning that.  Instead, they would have heard Joshua describing a decisive military victory.

Joshua’s conventional warfare rhetoric was common in many other ancient Near Eastern military accounts in the second and first millennia BC.  The language is typically exaggerated and full of bravado, depicting total devastation.  The knowing ancient Near Eastern reader recognized this as hyperbole; the accounts weren’t understood to be literally true.

Copan cites several examples of Near Eastern warfare accounts which used hyperbole to describe their victories, including accounts originating from Egyptians, Hittites, and Assyrians.  This historical data casts new light on how we should understand biblical warfare accounts, especially those recorded in Joshua.

Copan’s second point is that the city of Jericho is not a large population center containing numerous non-combatants which were killed in the assault.  According to Copan, the language used in Joshua 6 is “stereotypical Near Eastern language [which] actually describes attacks on military forts or garrisons, not general populations that included women and children.  There is no archaeological evidence of civilian populations at Jericho or Ai” (emphasis added).

Copan goes on to explain:

Given what we know about Canaanite life in the Bronze Age, Jericho and Ai were military strongholds.  In fact, Jericho guarded the trade routes from the Jordan Valley up to population centers in the hill country. . . . That means that Israel’s wars here were directed toward government and military installments; this is where the king, the army, and the priesthood resided.  The use of ‘women’ and ‘young and old’ was merely stock ancient Near Eastern language that could be used even if women and young and old weren’t living there. . . .  The text doesn’t require that women and young and old must have been in these cities.

If this is true, then what of Rahab?  According to Copan, “Rahab was in charge of what was likely the fortress’s tavern or hostel.”  Evidently it was common for a fortress to have a tavern where “traveling caravans and royal messengers would . . . stay overnight.”  Most of Jericho would have consisted of soldiers, priests, and political leaders.

Copan’s argument is compelling, as it cites ancient Near Eastern historical data to place in context what the original readers of Joshua’s book would have understood.  This is exactly what the historical-grammatical method of biblical interpretation calls us to do.  As we gather more data about the ancient Near East, we must constantly refine our understanding of the biblical texts.

Bible Interpretation, Difficult Bible Passages, Theology

Was the Mosaic Law Meant to Be Permanent?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

No, it wasn’t.  Not only does the New Testament book of Hebrews make clear that it was temporary, but the Old Testament itself promises a new covenant in Jer. 31 and Ezek. 36.  Should we completely ignore the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament where the Law is found, as hopelessly irrelevant for Christians today?

Not exactly.  The Torah does contain timeless commands that reflect God’s nature, but it also contains temporary laws that are directed at a deeply sinful people living in a flawed culture during a specific period of time in history.

Philosopher Paul Copan describes the situation in his book Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God:

When we journey back over the millennia into the ancient Near East, we enter a world that is foreign to us in many ways.  Life in the ancient Near East wouldn’t just be alien to us – with all of its strange ways and assumptions.  We would see a culture whose social structures were badly damaged by the fall.  Within this context, God raised up a covenant nation and gave the people laws to live by; he helped to create a culture for them.  In doing so, he adapted his ideals to a people whose attitudes and actions were influenced by deeply flawed structures.

At the beginning of the Torah, God lays down the ideals for mankind in Gen. 1 and 2.  According to Copan, those first two chapters “make clear that all humans are God’s image-bearers; they have dignity, worth, and moral responsibility.  And God’s ideal for marriage is a one-flesh monogamous union between husband and wife.”  But the subsequent historical narrative, as recorded in the remainder of Genesis, and then Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, is characterized by humanity’s precipitous fall into moral degeneracy.

How did God choose to move Abraham and his flawed descendants in the right direction?  After all, they had moved far away from the ideals laid down by God in the Garden.  We find in the Torah that God decided to meet them where they were, to accommodate imperfect, human-created social structures in order to move his people in the right moral direction.  Thus, the Mosaic Law (starting in Ex. 20) ends up being focused on a specific people living at a specific time.

Copan elaborates on God’s plans:

We know that many products on the market have a built-in, planned obsolescence.  They’re designed for the short-term; they’re not intended to be long-lasting and permanent.  The same goes for the the law of Moses: it was never intended to be enduring.  It looked forward to a new covenant (Jer. 31; Ezek. 36).

Copan quotes biblical scholar N. T. Wright: “The Torah is given for a specific period of time, and is then set aside – not because it was a bad thing now happily abolished, but because it was a good thing whose purpose had now been accomplished.”

Difficult Bible Passages, General Apologetics, Jesus Christ, Skeptics, Top Ten Posts of 2010

Are There Things that Really Bother You about Christianity? – #1 Post of 2010

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Does it bother you that the Bible is composed of 66 different books instead of one single tome?

What about the fact that there were errors made in copying some of the Bible manuscripts over the last few thousand years?

Does it cause you to doubt Christianity because there are some difficult passages in the Bible?

Do you wish Jesus didn’t say some of the harsh things he said?

Do you find it strange that the biblical authors come from vastly different backgrounds (e.g., shepherds, kings, fishermen)?  Or that they composed poetry, historical narrative, allegory, and apocalyptic letters instead of a theological/moral textbook with each point being carefully outlined (e.g., “see section 11.3.4.7 for why murder is wrong”).

Does it irritate you that Jesus only ministered for a few years and covered a limited range of topics?

Are you worried about the way the canon of Scripture developed over time in the church instead of God sending Scripture to earth in a black obelisk, like  in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey?

Do you wish Jesus and the apostles had addressed more social ills than they did?

Listen carefully: If these kinds of things really eat at you, you have either rejected Christianity or you have erected barriers around your faith so that you can shut off your brain and not think any more.

You see, what you fail to realize is that God has chosen to use flawed and fallible human beings in the framework of human history to accomplish his purposes.  We are included in his plans and he allows us to be important actors in the drama he has written, but there is a catch with this approach: Christianity turns out to be messier than some of us would like.

Jesus is both divine and human; the Bible is both divine and human.  Both of these are tenets of Christianity, so why do so many of us want to drop the human part of the Bible and the human part of Jesus?

Jesus, as the God-man, was sinless during his life in earth, but that doesn’t mean he was some kind of emotionless Spock with no feelings and no passion.  The Bible, because it is divinely inspired, is inerrant in what it teaches, but that doesn’t mean that God had to compose the Bible as a dry textbook that dropped from the sky one day, avoiding all human interference.

Learn to appreciate the fact that God has included humanity in his plans.  The sooner you do, the better you’ll understand Christianity.

Difficult Bible Passages, Heaven, Sin, Theology, Top Ten Posts of 2010

Can God Be in the Presence of Sin? – #3 Post of 2010

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

The Bible clearly teaches that God is morally perfect and holy, that he hates sin.  Habakkuk 1:13 says that God is too pure to look on evil.  Christians often say that God cannot allow any sin in his presence.

But, this is not the whole story.  There are also several instances in the Bible where Satan and other demons are said to be in God’s presence (e.g., Job 1:6; 2 Chron. 18:18-21; Rev. 12:10).  In addition, the prophet Isaiah, himself a sinful man, was in the presence of God, as recorded  in Isaiah 6.

We also know that God is omnipresent, which means he is present everywhere.  “‘Am I only a God nearby,’ declares the Lord, ‘and not a God far away?  Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?’ declares the Lord.  ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord” (Jer. 23:23-24).  If he is present everywhere then he cannot but be in the presence of sinful creatures.

So what are we to make of all this?  I think the simple answer is that Habakkuk 1:13 is a commentary on God’s moral perfection and holiness.  It is not meant to be a statement about proximity.  In fact, the full rendering is, “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil.”  But we know God does not literally have eyes!  God is spirit (John 4:24) and does not have a physical presence.

The Bible teaches that God is opposed to sin and evil, that he is holy and righteous.  We know that eventually he will quarantine evil from good when he creates the New Heaven and Earth (Rev. 21).  At that time, God will physically separate those who love him from those who don’t.  Those who love him will no longer be in the presence of sin from that point forward.

Until then, God tolerates the presence of sin in order to accomplish his purposes with mankind.  Thank goodness, because if God truly could not be in the presence of sin, none of us would be here!

Church History, Difficult Bible Passages

Was the Early Church Communist?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In the most recent edition of the Christian Research Journal, Jay W. Richards addressed this topic.  The verses that have led some to make the claim that the early church was communist are Acts 4:32-35.  But is that the correct interpretation of these verses?  If so, is communism the ideal for the church?

Richards argues against this view, giving several reasons.  First, Richards notes that modern communism, based on the writings of Marx, is about class warfare and the evil of private property.  According to Richards, “There’s none of this class warfare stuff in the early church in Jerusalem, nor is private property treated as immoral.  These Christians are selling their possessions and sharing freely and spontaneously.”

Second, communism is associated with state control of resources, but the state is not involved in the early church.  “No Roman centurions are showing up with soldiers.  No government is confiscating property and collectivizing industry.  No one is being coerced.”  Again, the early church was sharing their property voluntarily, with no state involvement at all.

Third, the communal life described in Acts 4:32-35 is never prescribed for all churches everywhere.  Richards explains, “What Acts is describing is an unusual moment in the life of the early church, when the church was still very small.  Remember this is the beginning of the church in Jerusalem.”  In addition, we know that other early churches had different arrangements.  Take, for example, the Thessalonians.  Paul addresses the situation in their local church when he warns them, “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.”  Paul’s words hardly exemplify the ideals of communism.

Richards concludes, “The take-home lesson should be clear: neither the book of Acts nor historical experience commends communism.  In fact, full-bodied communism is alien to the Christian worldview and had little to do with the arrangement of early Christians in Jerusalem.”

To read the complete article, you need to be a subscriber to the Christian Research Journal, which happens to be one of my favorite magazines.  If you are interested at all in Christian apologetics, it is a must-read.

Bible Interpretation, Difficult Bible Passages

How Do Biblical Proverbs Operate?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

The Bible contains numerous proverbial sayings (not just in the Book of Proverbs), and these sayings have some characteristics that must be kept in mind when reading them.  These characteristics can also be found in non-biblical proverbial literature.

Biblical scholar Walter Kaiser lists a few of these characteristics in his book The Uses of the Old Testament in the New.  Here is Kaiser’s list:

1.  Universal moral statements in proverbial literature may be limited to:

a. only a certain tendency of some thing(s) to produce a certain effect (e.g., Prov. 15:1 – though there are times when it may have no effect on wicked men)

b. only telling what generally or often takes place without making it an irreversible rule for any and all situations (e.g., Prov. 22:6 – though some children occasionally will refuse the best of parental leadership and help)

c. only noting what is the normal course of action without listing some implied or understood exceptions (e.g., Matt. 5:34 – though this does not forbid us from taking legitimate oaths in court)

2.  Universal moral truths in proverbial literature may often be stated as direct opposites when they are meant to be understood in terms of priorities or to be taken comparatively in such expressions as:

a. “I desire mercy, not sacrifices” (Hos. 6:6; Matt. 9:13; Matt 12:7)

b. “To obey is better than to sacrifice” (1 Sam 15:22; Ps. 51:17, 19; Jer. 7:22-23)

3.  Universal moral truths in proverbial literature often assume that the correspondingly proper circumstance is also understood, thus:

a. Prov. 26:4

b. Prov. 26:5

I hope these three points help you to better understand what’s going on when you read proverbs in the Bible.

Bible Interpretation, Difficult Bible Passages

Has God Promised You New Revelation?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Some Christians seem to think so, based on John 14:26, John 15:26, and John 16:12-13.   Here are each of these passages:

“But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” – John 14:26

“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me.” – John 15:26

“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.” – John 16:12-13

After reading these passages, some Christians claim that the verses are promises to all believers, that the Holy Spirit will reveal new truths about God, will teach new things that have never been heard before to each of us.  They claim these verses promise that privilege.  Is that really what these verses are saying?

I think the answer is clearly “no” when we carefully read these verses in context.  All of these verses are from Jesus’ Upper Room discourse.  In this discourse, Jesus is specifically addressing his disciples about what is to come, with one of the primary themes being Jesus’ promise of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit would remind them of what Jesus said to them during his earthly ministry, but the Spirit would also give them new revelation.  What we have is an indication of how the New Testament letters and books would come together – the Holy Spirit acting in concert with Jesus’ disciples.  What we do not have is an open promise to all believers to receive new revelation from the Holy Spirit.  These promises were only for the disciples of Jesus who lived with him.

Old Testament scholar Walter Kaiser is worth quoting at length here from his book The Uses of the Old Testament in the New :

As any serious student of the Bible will recognize those passages were not directed to believers at large, but to those disciples who had been with Jesus during His earthly pilgrimage.  The promise was for additional revelation and thus we are given some hints as to how the NT canon was shaped.

Almost every cult and aberration from the historic Christian faith has appealed at one time or another to these three texts as the grounds for adding to or bypassing the inscripturated Word of God.  But all fail to meet the tests given in these texts because they never personally walked with our Lord on this earth.  They never heard instruction from His lips, so how could they recall what they never once heard?  Neither were they witnesses from the start of his three-year ministry.  But the apostles were!  Therefore, they were the ones who would record the life, words, and works of Christ in the gospels with the Holy Spirit’s aid of recollection (John 14:26); they were the ones who would teach doctrine (“what is mine,” John 16:14-15); and they were the ones who would predict the future (John 16:12); for they had been eyewitnesses and auditors of all that had happened to and was spoken by Christ (John 15:26-27).

These verses, my friends, do not promise that we will all receive a new word from God.  Instead they promised the inspiration of the Word of God we now have in the New Testament.  Instead of wishing for new words from God, maybe we should cherish the words He has already given us.

Books of the Bible, Creation, Difficult Bible Passages

Does Genesis 2 Contradict Genesis 1?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

A common misunderstanding of the Book of Genesis is how chapters 1 and 2 are related.  Specifically, chapter 1 claims that land animals were created before Adam (see Gen. 1:24-26), but chapter 2 seems to claim that Adam was created before land animals (see Gen. 2:19).  Is it possible that these two creation accounts are contradictory?

The alleged contradiction is refuted when we look more closely at Gen. 2:19.  The NIV translates the verse, “Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.”

Notice that the verse says that God had formed the animals, meaning that the animals were already formed before Adam.  So the contradiction evaporates.

Some translations (e.g., NAS), however, don’t translate the word had, but leave it out (either translation of the verse from Hebrew to English is permissible).  Does this make it a contradiction?

No, not really.  When we look at the focus of chapter 1, it seems to be on the order of creation, but the focus of the passages surrounding Gen. 2:19 is on the naming of animals and the creation of Eve.

According to Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe,

Genesis 1 gives the order of events; Genesis 2 provides more content about them. Genesis 2 does not contradict chapter 1, since it does not affirm exactly when God created the animals. He simply says He brought the animals (which He had previously created) to Adam so that he might name them. The focus in chapter 2 is on the naming of the animals, not on creating them. Genesis 1 provides the outline of events, and chapter 2 gives details. Taken together, the two chapters provide a harmonious and more complete picture of the creation events.

A footnote in The Apologetics Study Bible explains:

Chapter 2 is a second creation account only in the sense that it gives a more detailed accounting, not a contradictory one.  While chapter 1 provides a general description, chapter 2 is specific.  Twofold accounts were common in ancient theories of creation (e.g., the Babylonian story of Atrahasis).  The differences in the order of the creation events are due to the narratives’ respective purposes.  The first gives a loosely chronological account, gathering creation events into a discernible pattern to show the symmetry of creation’s purpose.  The second is topical, focusing on the sixth day by expanding on the creation and the relationship of the man and the woman.  Genesis 2 presupposes chapter 1 and does not duplicate all the creation events.

So Genesis 2 does not contradict Genesis 1 at all, once we see the different purposes for the two different creation narratives.  In fact, they are complementary to each other, with Genesis 2 filling in details from the creation account of Genesis 1.