It's Hard To Think The Bible Is Infallible When You Read It
Lots of it is just really weird!
I’m currently working my way through the NKJV bible. I began with the book of Genesis, which I have now completed, and then skipped to the Gospel of John. And let me tell you, the book of Genesis is weird in a way that doesn’t seem divine. For example, very early, it tells this story:
10 Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. 11 As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. 12 When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. 13 Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.”
14 When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was a very beautiful woman. 15 And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. 16 He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels.
17 But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai. 18 So Pharaoh summoned Abram. “What have you done to me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? 19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!” 20 Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had.
That’s a weird enough story. But then the same thing happens again to Abraham. In Genesis 20:1-5, it says:
20 Now Abraham moved on from there into the region of the Negev and lived between Kadesh and Shur. For a while he stayed in Gerar, 2 and there Abraham said of his wife Sarah, “She is my sister.” Then Abimelek king of Gerar sent for Sarah and took her.
3 But God came to Abimelek in a dream one night and said to him, “You are as good as dead because of the woman you have taken; she is a married woman.”
4 Now Abimelek had not gone near her, so he said, “Lord, will you destroy an innocent nation? 5 Did he not say to me, ‘She is my sister,’ and didn’t she also say, ‘He is my brother’? I have done this with a clear conscience and clean hands.”
And then, the same thing happens to Isaac:
26 Now there was a famine in the land—besides the previous famine in Abraham’s time—and Isaac went to Abimelek king of the Philistines in Gerar. 2 The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live. 3 Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham. 4 I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring[a] all nations on earth will be blessed,[b] 5 because Abraham obeyed me and did everything I required of him, keeping my commands, my decrees and my instructions.” 6 So Isaac stayed in Gerar.
7 When the men of that place asked him about his wife, he said, “She is my sister,” because he was afraid to say, “She is my wife.” He thought, “The men of this place might kill me on account of Rebekah, because she is beautiful.”
8 When Isaac had been there a long time, Abimelek king of the Philistines looked down from a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebekah. 9 So Abimelek summoned Isaac and said, “She is really your wife! Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’?”
Isaac answered him, “Because I thought I might lose my life on account of her.”
Look, I have done some weird things in my life. But I have never passed my wife off as my sister, and certainly not three times in rapid succession. Here are 3 possibilities:
Inerrancy: The book of Genesis came down directly from Moses with these stories. They are true. It really happened that three times back-to-back, one of the Jewish patriarchs passed off his wife as his sister to avoid being killed. This is very improbable, that the same thing would happen so quickly, in such rapid succession, twice involving Abimelech.
Narrative: The story didn’t literally happen but was metaphorical, intended to tell a story. Maybe, as Gavin Ortlund has suggested to me, it was intended to describe that the wrongdoing of the father was passed on to the kid. This is possible but very unlikely. First of all, the story seems, based on the writing, to be intended to be telling history. Second of all, it’s a very weird story to draw a lesson from, and not ideal.
Standard Bible Criticism: There were various different sources with similar stories who compiled them into one book. The stories overlapped but differed from being told in different contexts. They did not have a good editor.
The third hypothesis is obviously the best by far. It’s very hard to believe that it would be narratively ideal to describe an event as niche as this happening THREE TIMES. It’s similarly hard to believe this particular event happened THREE TIMES in rapid succession, and then never again in the Bible or, to my knowledge, in the rest of antiquity.
This is far from an isolated incident, just one I found very early on reading Genesis. One can still be a religious Jew or Christian, of course. But it’s very hard to think the Bible is infallible.
There’s other stuff in the Old Testament that is pretty barbaric. A lot of God killing people—Canaanites, Egyptian first-born children, etc. But more than that, it’s just weird! It’s weird in the way an ancient anthology of similar documents is weird, not in the way the word of God is weird!
One way of perhaps comprehending the Bible is that it is a collection of various books: some meant to be strict histories, some meant to be more allegorical, and some poetic by nature. Ultimately, the way I perceive the Bible is a collection of inspired books that can lead one to understand the nature of God better. In our post-modern era, fundamentalism and strict, literal readings of ancient texts has led us to think that either the Bible is literally true in every sense and distinction or it is completely made-up.
A similar event of this nature happening three times on the bounce is highly improbable for a random dynasty. But the Old Testament isn't a collection of stories about what just so happened to occur to a random dynasty. It is about a dynasty chosen by God, who ordains the events of the world and particularly, perhaps, of this dynasty. This is where options 1 and 2 blend into one another: God might have ordained things such that these events did occur *so that* they could be recorded, tell a narrative, moral lesson, etc.
A lot of the Old Testament seems much less weird when viewed in a much bigger picture. This podcast (Mere Fidelity as a whole, but this episode in particular) is a good example of this in practice - I'd really recommend it, though it presumes a little familiarity with the OT (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-deception-of-isaac/id885758537?i=1000654121564). There's this quite profound way that the OT (less so than the NT) rewards deeper readings.