Tag Archives: Bible

How Should We Not Read the Bible? Part 5

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Continuing from part 4 of this series, we now turn to more of the mistakes critics make when alleging errors in the Bible.  These mistakes are taken from Norman Geisler and Tom Howe’s The Big Book of Bible Difficulties.

Mistake #11: Presuming that the Bible Approves of All it Records.

Not everything recorded in the Bible is approved by the Bible.  The Bible recounts the sinful acts of many people throughout its pages, but it does not promote these sinful acts.  Critics will often point to polygamy, deception, or any number of other immoral acts in the Bible to prove that God actively promotes those acts.  These things are recorded so that the readers of the Bible may learn from the mistakes of others.

Mistake 12: Forgetting that the Bible Uses Non-technical, Everyday Language.

The biblical authors used common, everyday language to convey truth.  They were not attempting to write in scholarly or scientific terms.  As Geisler and Howe state, “The use of observational, nonscientific language is not unscientific, it is merely prescientific. The Scriptures were written in ancient times by ancient standards, and it would be anachronistic to superimpose modern scientific standards upon them.”

Mistake 13: Assuming that Round Numbers Are False.

Much like the previous mistake, it is unreasonable to expect biblical authors, in a prescientific age, to use precise numbers with several significant digits.  Numbers are sometimes rounded off and there is nothing deceptive or false about this practice.  The Bible is not a math textbook.

Mistake 14: Neglecting to Note that the Bible Uses Different Literary Devices.

There are numerous literary styles used in the Bible, including parable, poetry, allegory, historical narrative, apocalypse, personal letter, epistle, song, and others.  These different literary styles make use of metaphor, simile, satire, hyperbole, and other figures of speech.  It is the job of the reader to recognize when a figure of speech is being employed.  “Obviously when the Bible speaks of the believer resting under the shadow of God’s ‘wings’ (Ps. 36:7), it does not mean that God is a feathered bird.”

Three more mistakes to go…

How Should We Not Read the Bible? Part 4

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Continuing from part 3 of this series, we now turn to more of the mistakes critics make when alleging errors in the Bible.  These mistakes are taken from Norman Geisler and Tom Howe’s The Big Book of Bible Difficulties.

Mistake #8: Assuming that a Partial Report is a False Report.

Sometimes multiple authors in the Bible describe the same historical events, but not in the exact same way.  Each report is a partial report from a particular point of view.  Critics attack the biblical authors for recounting different and divergent facts about the same event, but conversely would accuse the authors of collusion or plagiarism if they recounted the exact same facts in the exact same way.

For example, just because the four Gospel writers recorded different details about the life of Jesus does not mean that they are being deceptive.  Every historian chooses particular facts to convey to his readers, depending on what his purpose is.  It is completely unrealistic to expect anything different from the biblical authors.

Mistake #9: Demanding that NT Citations of the OT Always Be Exact Quotations.

Critics sometimes point to NT citations of the OT as proof of error because the citations do not exactly match the words of the OT.  This, however, does not follow.  It was commonly acceptable, and still is today, to paraphrase someone else’s statement as long as the meaning of the statement is conserved, even if the exact words are not.  As Geisler and Howe state, “The same meaning can be conveyed without using the same verbal expressions.”

Mistake 10: Assuming that Divergent Accounts Are False Ones.

This mistake closely resemble mistake number #8, but stresses that not only are partial reports not necessarily false, but neither are divergent accounts.  Again, just because two biblical authors record differing details of one historical event does not mean that they are mistaken or deceitful.

A good example is the account of Judas Iscariot’s death.  “Matthew (27:5) informs us that Judas hanged himself. But Luke says that ‘he burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out’ (Acts 1:18). Once more, these accounts differ, but they are not mutually exclusive. If Judas hanged himself on a tree over the edge of a cliff and his body fell on sharp rocks below, then his entrails would gush out just as Luke vividly describes.”

Seven more mistakes to go…

How Should We Not Read the Bible? Part 3

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Continuing from part 2 of this series, we now turn to more of the mistakes critics make when alleging errors in the Bible.  These mistakes are taken from Norman Geisler and Tom Howe’s The Big Book of Bible Difficulties.

Mistake #6: Basing a Teaching on an Obscure Passage.

Some passages in the Bible are difficult to understand because the author used a word which isn’t found anywhere else in the Bible.  In cases like this, Bible translators try to determine the meaning from context, but sometimes they just don’t know for sure.

Some passages in the Bible contain well-known words, but we may not know to what those words refer.  An example of this can be found in 1 Cor. 15:29 where Paul speaks of those “baptized for the dead.”

Geisler and Howe ask, “Is he referring to the baptizing of live representatives to ensure salvation for dead believers who were not baptized (as Mormons claim)? Or, is he referring to others being baptized into the church to fill the ranks of those who have passed on? Or, is he referring to a believer being baptized “for” (i.e., “with a view to”) his own death and burial with Christ? Or, to something else?”

When we aren’t sure about the meaning, there are some guidelines to keep in mind:

First, we should not build a doctrine on an obscure passage. The rule of thumb in Bible interpretation is “the main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things.” This is called the perspicuity (clearness) of Scripture. If something is important, it will be clearly taught in Scripture and probably in more than one place. Second, when a given passage is not clear, we should never conclude that it means something that is opposed to another plain teaching of Scripture. God does not make mistakes in His Word; we make mistakes in trying to understand it.

Mistake 7:  Forgetting that the Bible Is a Human Book with Human Characteristics.

Quoting Geisler and Howe:

With the exception of small sections, like the Ten Commandments which were “written with the finger of God” (Ex. 31:18), the Bible was not verbally dictated. The writers were not secretaries of the Holy Spirit. They were human composers employing their own literary styles and idiosyncrasies.

These human authors sometimes used human sources for their material (Josh. 10:13; Acts 17:28; 1 Cor. 15:33; Titus 1:12). In fact, every book of the Bible is the composition of a human writer—about forty of them in all.

The Bible also manifests different human literary styles, from the mournful meter of Lamentations to the exalted poetry of Isaiah; from the simple grammar of John to the complex Greek of the Book of Hebrews.

Scripture also manifests human perspectives. David spoke in Psalm 23 from a shepherd’s perspective. Kings is written from a prophetic vantage point, and Chronicles from a priestly point of view. Acts manifests an historical interest and 2 Timothy a pastor’s heart. Writers speak from an observer’s standpoint when they write of the sun rising or setting (Josh. 1:15).

They also reveal human thought patterns, including memory lapses (1 Cor. 1:14–16), as well as human emotions (Gal. 4:14).

The Bible discloses specific human interests. For example, Hosea possessed a rural interest, Luke a medical concern, and James a love of nature.

But like Christ, the Bible is completely human, yet without error. Forgetting the humanity of Scripture can lead to falsely impugning its integrity by expecting a level of expression higher than that which is customary to a human document.

More to come!

How Should We Not Read the Bible? Part 2

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Continuing from part 1 of this series, we now turn to more of the mistakes critics make when alleging errors in the Bible.  These mistakes are taken from Norman Geisler and Tom Howe’s The Big Book of Bible Difficulties.

Mistake #3: Confusing Our Fallible Interpretations with God’s Infallible Revelation.

The words of the Bible are infallible, meaning they cannot be broken (see John 10:35).  We can trust everything in the Bible because it is God’s Word and God cannot err.  However, humans must interpret the words of the Bible and our interpretations are not infallible.  We can make mistakes when we handle the Word of God.  Geisler and Howe explain that “the Bible cannot be mistaken, but we can be mistaken about the Bible. The meaning of the Bible does not change, but our understanding of its meaning does.”

Likewise, we must all be careful of pitting scientific findings against Scripture.  Both science and Scripture require fallible human interpretation and so both are open to error.  It is impossible for true scientific interpretations to contradict true interpretations of Scripture, so when we think there is a contradiction, we know that one of the interpretations is false.

Mistake #4: Failing to Understand the Context of the Passage.

No word, sentence, paragraph, or chapter of the Bible can be understood without its context.  In fact, this is true of any written document.  Since modern Bibles include verse and chapter numbers, many readers freely quote phrases and sentences in isolation without anchoring them in their surrounding context.  Because the Bible is so easy to quote (from verses and chapters), critics commonly ignore the context of biblical passages and draw improper conclusions from what they read.

Mistake #5: Neglecting to Interpret Difficult Passages in the Light of Clear Ones.

According to Geisler and Howe, “Some passages of Scripture are hard to understand. Sometimes the difficulty is due to their obscurity. At other times, the difficulty is because passages appear to be teaching something contrary to what some other part of Scripture is clearly teaching.”  In these cases, the best course of action is to take what is clearly taught in Scripture and interpret the difficult passages through what is clearly taught.

More in part 3…


How Should We Not Read the Bible? Part 1

Post Author: Bill Pratt

One of the most common accusations I hear from skeptics is that the Bible is full of errors and contradictions.  How do you and I, as Christians who believe the Bible is without error, deal with these claims?

Several years ago, I purchased a book by Norman Geisler and Tom Howe called When Critics Ask, now re-published under the name, The Big Book of Bible Difficulties.  This book has been a loyal companion to me when skeptics confront me with a Bible difficulty which I have not analyzed before.  If you interact with skeptics of Christianity, I highly recommend this book to you.

One of the most important sections of the book is in the Introduction, where Geisler and Howe list 17 mistakes that critics of the Bible make when they attempt to cite errors.  The next few blog posts will briefly discuss these mistakes so that we can better understand how not to read the Bible.

Mistake #1: Assuming that the Unexplained Is Not Explainable.

There are, indeed, many passages in the Bible which are difficult to understand.  Nobody who has read the Bible could say otherwise.  But for those who take the Bible seriously, its contents have been vindicated many times throughout history as more information has become available through the fields of history, archaeology, the physical sciences, and even linguistics.

Geisler and Howe cite a couple examples of how critics have been proven wrong in the past:

For example, critics once proposed that Moses could not have written the first five books of the Bible because there was no writing in Moses’ day. Now we know that writing was in existence a couple of thousand years or more before Moses. Likewise, critics once believed that the Bible was wrong in speaking of the Hittite people, since they were totally unknown to historians. Now, all historians know of their existence by way of their library that was found in Turkey.

Since we have seen the Bible proven right so many times in the past, it is reasonable to believe that those things in the Bible which are today unexplained, will some day be explained.

Mistake #2: Presuming the Bible Guilty Until Proven Innocent

Critics often begin with the supposition that the Bible is wrong until it is proven right, but this is an unfair approach.  Other books are presumed innocent until proven guilty, and so should the Bible be presumed innocent.  As a book that has shaped western civilization over the last 2,000 years and which contains some of the most important literature ever written, even critics need to treat it with respect and approach it with the same attitude that they would approach any other great literary work.

I will continue with Geisler and Howe’s list in the coming days.  Stick around!

Why Don’t Mormons Have the Peace That Passes All Understanding?

Post Author: Darrell

God has given believers of Jesus Christ the promise of “a peace which passes all understanding” (Phil 4:7). What a wonderful promise! This peace does not come from anything the world can give us. Rather, it comes from having a relationship with Christ, being forgiven, and knowing that our salvation is assured. In fact, our salvation as believers is so certain that God has told us we can approach the throne of grace with confidence (Heb 4:16).

While a member of the Mormon Church, I never experienced this peace.  In fact, during my time as a Mormon I often wondered about my salvation.  I wondered if I had done enough to merit God’s grace and if I would be able to spend eternity with Him in the Celestial Kingdom (Mormon version of what Christians call Heaven).  Coming into a true relationship with Christ opened my eyes, and I now understand what is meant by the “peace that passes all understanding” because I have it!

My experience in Mormonism is not uncommon.  Over the years I have had several LDS friends confide in me and their experiences are very similar.  This is due mainly to the works based salvation that the LDS Church teaches. Mormonism teaches Christ’s atonement opened the doors for salvation to us; however, we have to earn the right to receive this salvation by our works… faith in Christ is not enough. In a 2001 Ensign article, James E. Faust, then counselor in the First Presidency of the Mormon Church, had this to say:

Many people think they need only confess that Jesus is the Christ and then they are saved by grace alone. We cannot be saved by grace alone, “for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.” . . . All of us have sinned and need to repent to fully pay our part of the debt. When we sincerely repent, the Savior’s magnificent Atonement pays the rest of that debt.  [Emphasis Mine]

It is only after we do all that we can do and after we completely repent that Christ’s sacrifice comes in to help us.  Since true, sincere, and complete repentance in required, what must one do to repent? LDS.org has this to say about repentance:

Although confession is an essential element of repentance, it is not enough. The Lord has said, “By this ye may know if a man repenteth of his sins—behold, he will confess them and forsake them” (D&C 58:43). We must maintain an unyielding, permanent resolve that we will never repeat the transgression. . . . Full obedience brings the complete power of the gospel into our lives .

Until one completely forsakes a sin, they have not repented. I don’t know about everyone else, but I can think of several sins that, try as I might, I can honestly say I still struggle with.  Sure, I may be able to point to the big sins (adultery, fornication, murder) and say I am okay. But what about the standard Christ set?  He said if we get angry with someone unjustifiably that we have committed murder in our hearts.  By this standard I think we can all say we are murderers.  Christ also said that if we look upon someone to lust after them that we have committed adultery in our heart. Sounds like we are all adulterers!

Have you completely forsaken the sin of unjustified anger? Can you honestly say you won’t ever look upon someone of the opposite sex again? If not, then according to the Mormon Church, you have not sincerely repented and your sins are not forgiven. In fact, according to D&C 82:7, if you recommitt a sin you have supposedly repented of, all the times you have committed it return and you will be judged for each of them.  Does this sound like a gospel that provides a “peace that passes all understanding?”

All praise be to my great God and Savior Jesus Christ! For He, and He alone, has atoned for our sins.  Praise Him that we can know with confidence we have been forgiven!

How Should We Communicate the Truths of Christianity?

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Any serious student of the Bible knows that the biblical authors employed a large variety of written literary genres.  The Bible contains poetry, historical narrative, wisdom literature, personal letters, parables, theological and philosophical arguments, and much more.

As an apologist, I have always been drawn to the theological and philosophical argumentation found in the Bible and in later Christian authors.  When I present Christianity, I usually use logical and rational arguments from the fields of history, theology, philosophy, and science.  Rational argumentation can be very effective with certain kinds of people, but completely ineffective with others.

Jesus certainly presented a rational case for believing he was the Son of God (see Geisler and Zukeran, The Apologetics of Jesus).  However, one of his favorite communication techniques was the parable.  Parables were fictional stories that Jesus used to teach powerful lessons about the Kingdom of God.  Why did Jesus speak in parables instead of just using his unparalleled knowledge and wisdom to slay opponents with irrefutable, logical arguments?

Several years ago I was speaking to a skeptic about Christianity and he said that if God really wanted to reveal himself, then the Bible should read like a textbook.  It should be expository, non-literary, and full of lists and facts.

As an engineer, I could relate to this skeptic.  But as I’ve learned over the years, story is the absolute supreme way that human beings communicate to each other.  Think about it.  We love to read stories, see stories played out in movie theaters, and hear stories from our friends.  Our conversations are often built around story-telling.  Our free time is spent listening to and watching stories.  There is nothing more intriguing to human beings than stories.

The Bible, it turns out,  is a sweeping narrative about God’s interaction with the human race.  God, through the human authors of the Bible, has woven together the world’s greatest story, and with multiple literary genres throughout.  Jesus’ use of the parable is a reflection of the power of story-telling.  Why tell parables?  Because they are effective!

God used the primary vehicle, story, to reveal himself to mankind, but he made sure that within The Story there was poetry, wisdom literature, rational argumentation, and all kinds of other literary forms to capture readers.  These other literary forms are there to support the overarching narrative.

Christians need to communicate the  truths of Christianity employing all means of communication.  All of our methods, however, must always point back to The Story.  The arguments, the sermons, everything we say and do, always have to lead back there.

How Do Textual Critics Choose Among New Testament Manuscript Variants?

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Textual critics are the scholars who study the manuscript evidence for the New Testament and determine which readings among the various manuscripts are likely to be the original (see previous post for background).  Although the vast majority of the variants are simple spelling or word order errors made by copyists, there are some variants in the manuscripts that are more significant.

Textual critics use some basic criteria to help determine which readings are most likely the original and which variants were added or modified by copyists.

The first category of criteria is external.  External evidence has to do with the kinds of manuscripts that support a reading.

The first criteria is the age of a manuscript.  Generally, the older the manuscript, the more likely it contains the original text.

Second, the number of manuscripts that support a reading must be taken into consideration.  If we only have a variant reading in a single manuscript, it probably was not in the original text.

Third, the geographical range of a textual variant must be considered.  If a variant reading can be found in manuscripts from many different locations, it is more likely original.  A reading found in manuscripts from only one geographical region is more suspect.

Fourth, many, but not all, textual critics favor the readings from the Alexandrian family of manuscripts, as opposed to the Byzantine and Western families of manuscripts.  Why?  They argue that the Christian scribes in Egypt were more careful copyists.

The second category of criteria is internal.  Internal evidence has to do with the actual words of the text.

The first criteria has to do with intrinsic probabilities, probabilities based on what the author of the text most likely would have written.  Textual critics study the vocabulary, writing style, and theology of an author and see if the textual variant is something that author would have written.  If the text in question is completely different in style, vocabulary, and theology, it renders the reading somewhat suspect.  The opposite is, of course, true.

The second internal criteria is called transcriptional probability.  This criteria asks whether a textual variant is more or less likely to have been created by a scribe or copyist.  Copyists generally tended to harmonize texts that appeared contradictory and expanded upon shorter texts.  So when there are two variants to be compared, the shorter one which does not attempt to harmonize is to be preferred.  Another way to state this is that readings which are more difficult to explain and which are shorter in length are usually preferred.

None of these criteria can be applied in isolation, but these are the kinds of questions that textual critics ask.  It is obviously not an exact science, but most of the time these kinds of questions can lead scholars to the most likely reading of a text.  In fact, no essential doctrines of Christianity are in question because of textual variants.  There is almost no question that we have the words of the original authors in 99+% of the text of the New Testament.

If you’re interested in some of these variants, many of them are found in the footnotes of most English Bible translations.  Check them out for yourself!

Where Does the English New Testament Come From?

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Christians are often confused about this question, so I want to give a quick summary.

The 27 books of the New Testament (NT) were originally written in the common Greek language of the first century.  They were all hand-written, likely on papyrus.  These hand-written manuscripts were then copied, by hand, for hundreds of years by various Christian laypeople, professional scribes, and even monks.  In the middle of the 15th century, the printing press was invented and the NT, from that time onward, was primarily copied on printing presses.

All of the original NT documents have been lost, mostly because papyrus decays rapidly, and must be stored under dry conditions to last more than just decades.  However, we have many hand-written copies of the words of the NT that were produced between about A.D. 100 and A.D. 1450.

The words of the NT were preserved in three ways.  First, we have copies of partial and complete NT books written in Greek, the original language.  We have discovered about 5,800 of these.  Second, we have copies of partial and complete NT books written in Latin, Coptic, Syriac, and other ancient languages.  These manuscripts number around 19,000 and were produced starting in the late second century.  Third, we have the writings of church leaders from the first few centuries.  We have enough quotes from the NT in the church fathers (thousands of them) that we could reconstruct a good bit of the NT with just this material.

Modern scholars (called textual critics), using these three sources, then construct a Greek New Testament.  Since there are textual variants among the manuscripts, textual critics must apply tests to determine which variants likely represent the original writing of the NT authors (more about these tests in a future blog post).

There are a couple major versions of this Greek New Testament that are used by scholars and Bible translators today: Nestle-Aland (NA 27th edition) and United Bible Societies (UBS 4th edition).

The publishers of an English Bible will use these Greek New Testaments to create their particular translation.  Each translation also must decide how they will translate — word-for-word or thought-for-thought or something in between.

Typically a large committee of scholars will actually create the English translation.

It is important to understand that most English translations are using the same Greek New Testament as their source, so the differences among English versions come down to the method of translation employed by the translation committees.

That’s it in a nutshell.  Now you know the basics!

Should We Read the Bible Literally?

Post Author:  Bill Pratt

My seminary professor, Norm Geisler, used to say, “Everything the Bible affirms is literally true, but not true, literally.”  What he meant by this is that we cannot read the Bible in a wooden, “literal” way when it is clearly using figurative language.

A good Catholic friend of mine once asked me how I interpreted Bible passages.  I answered, “I try to understand what the author’s intended meaning was in the historical context in which he wrote.”  She answered, “Oh, well that’s exactly how I interpret the Bible.  I thought that evangelicals interpreted everything literally.”

Clearly we have a failure to communicate!  There seem to be at least two ways that the word literal is used.  First, literal can mean interpreting language in a way that does not allow for any symbolism or figures of speech.  If someone said, “I have traveled to the four corners of the earth,” a literalist in this sense would assume that the earth must be a flat, four sided shape, and that I actually did travel to each corner of this geometric shape.

Second, literal can mean interpreting language in the exact way it was intended by the author without unduly introducing symbolism or figurative language where it was never intended.  This is what most evangelicals mean when we say that you should interpret the Bible “literally.”  We do not mean that there is no use of figurative language in the Bible.  There obviously is.  As Bill Foster says in his book, Meet the Skeptic, “Informed Christians recognize that the Bible is full of literary devices and figurative language such as metaphor, simile, metonymy, typology, allegory, personification, and so forth.”

The reason conservative Christians tend to emphasize reading the Bible literally is because some readers do tend to interpret passages in the Bible that seem to be written in a non-figurative way as figurative.  There are those that claim that the resurrection of Jesus should be taken figuratively, for example.  Traditional Christians point out that the authors of the New Testament clearly meant the resurrection accounts to be taken literally, not figuratively.  Jesus Christ actually rose from the dead in a physical body.

So, yes, we should read the Bible literally, as long as we agree on what literal means.