One of the most bizarre exchanges I ever had with someone on this was an Orthodox guy who told me that, when the Bible describes God commanding the slaughter of the Canaanites, that was actually a metaphorically exhortation for us to "slaughter" our unholy desires. And it's like... can you imagine a worse way to make a point about moral living than an extended genocide metaphor? If someone wrote a self-help book titled The Final Solution To The Anger Problem: How To Engineer a Holocaust Against Bad Moods, people would probably think that was a little weird.
The stronger version of that statement is that the nations in question were sick societies that centered vice and brutality in their cultures. The slaughter may have been a literal genocide, but its enduring message is that we ought to remove from ourselves any of the traits centered by those nations.
If the Nazis had succeeded, the enduring lesson of the Holocaust for 21st century Nazis would have been to 'destroy all weakness as our noble ancestors once did'.
Treating the text as pure metaphor is as ridiculous as treating it entirely literally.
Of your four explanations, he fourth is the best, though it was only partially presented. The choice by God to use humans to write the holy writ is a core doctrine of Christianity (I can't speak for Judaism). It relates to the incarnation - the word becomes flesh - and relationship between God and humans. The question of error versus not error is a distinctly modern question, as the ancients were not nearly as preoccupied with literal history. Therefore, to understand the Bible, one has to set aside the modern preoccupation with precision and literalness of meaning (a product of, among other things, the printing press and the scientific revolution). Words are symbols, history is narrative, and meaning is fluid. Instead see it as a narrative weaving God into relationship with often primitive and violent humans, attempting to lead them towards a better more godly future. Pulling us out of the muck. Hopefully clarifying our understanding of Him. Setbacks are common. This is the highest view of scripture. Inerrancy is, in my mind, a relatively low view of scripture. The whole question of error, as commonly understood to be literal errors, is kind of irrelevant. This does not mean that certain events did not happen. It just means we need to start by understanding them as the writers themselves understood them (which is the hard part), then add knowledge of God that they may or may not have held, and finally add knowledge we possess but they didn't (i.e., the earth is not flat floating on the waters of the deep, and is not covered by a dome holding back the waters of the heavens).
Divine wisdom took care that certain stumbling-blocks, or interruptions, to the historical meaning should take place, by the introduction into the midst (of the narrative) of certain impossibilities and incongruities; that in this way the very interruption of the narrative might, as by the interposition of a bolt, present an obstacle to the reader, whereby he might refuse to acknowledge the way which conducts to the ordinary meaning; and being thus excluded and debarred from it, we might be recalled to the beginning of another way, in order that, by entering upon a narrow path, and passing to a loftier and more sublime road, he might lay open the immense breadth of divine wisdom.
...
The same style of Scriptural narrative occurs abundantly in the Gospels, as when the devil is said to have placed Jesus on a lofty mountain, that he might show Him from thence all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them. How could it literally come to pass, either that Jesus should be led up by the devil into a high mountain, or that the latter should show him all the kingdoms of the world (as if they were lying beneath his bodily eyes, and adjacent to one mountain), i.e., the kingdoms of the Persians, and Scythians, and Indians? Or how could he show in what manner the kings of these kingdoms are glorified by men? And many other instances similar to this will be found in the Gospels by anyone who will read them with attention, and will observe that in those narratives which appear to be literally recorded, there are inserted and interwoven things which cannot be admitted historically, but which may be accepted in a spiritual signification.
Interesting article. You might be interested in Swinburne's "Revelation - from Metaphor to Analogy" where he defends something called the "Patristic Method" which allows him to hold to a "high view of scripture" without contradicting science or history. The whole book is a very interesting analytic philosophy approach to revelation and formalises some of the ideas from your article.
For those interested in the issue, I found "How to Read the Bible" by James L. Kugel very useful. He does a comparison between how traditional interpreters looked at the Hebrew Bible and how modern scholars understand it in light of better archeological evidence.
One of the thoughts he ends the book with is that the now obvious errors in the Bible are more problematic for more Bible-centric Protestant Christians than other faithful who rely relatively more on tradition than scripture (the author himself is an Orthodox Jew). As someone raised Christian, I think we could say that both scripture and the church are means by which God calls us to him; since He's acted through flawed humans, they bear human flaws.
I did a double-take when I saw the name James L. Kugel, but I looked him up and he actually exists. James is hardly a Jewish name, and kugel is an Ashkenazi food, so the name seemed like a parody or pseudonym at first glance.
I find the human error reply the most persuasive, though it is important avoid falling into the trap of viewing the Bible from a 21st century Western lens. Literary styles were far different in the ancient Near East, and what we might consider “weird” was in fact very normal for the people of that time. For example, as 21st century readers we view factual contradictions within a text as obvious proof of that text’s imperfection. However, in the ancient Near East, it was very often the norm to purposely insert contradictions within a text as a means of extracting entirely different meanings suitable to different readers. I think the stronger case to be made against the Bible’s human authorship is the sheer immorality of some of its passages - even interpreted in the most generous way possible, I can’t excuse the Bible’s support of genocide or its views on slavery.
Interesting. I was with you until you ended by saying, " I can’t excuse the Bible’s support of genocide or its views on slavery.", thereby putting the same "21st century Western lens" that you cooly critiqued in the very same post.
So, to help you over your emotional hurdle, consider that "genocide" is a purposefully loaded and inflammatory term. Some people groups in history--most of em--have not survived. Many of them should not have, morally. Some today, in fact, might be long gone in a world where nations acted as they did for most of human history.
Since we all die, what distinction is it if God (who again, "kills" every single one of us) clears out an evil culture by timing those deaths in a just and fitting punishment? Calling it genocide is just emotionalism.
As for slavery, it is a lot like sex: it is not, in and of itself, wrong (though most ways you might do it are) but it is rather a term that describes a nearly endless category of "human relations". The method and manner prescribed to Jews for slavery was eons ahead of its time in showing us something like human rights. Comparing chattel slavery, as practiced in the American South; Barbary slavery, practiced by Muslims and very brutal; sex slavery, practiced everywhere and every time; to what God permitted His people and the limitations and policies he demanded, is to compare not just apples to oranges, but apples to rotting pig flesh.
There was no social safety net. No welfare. No "jobs for hire". No Grubhub. If your people got themselves conquered, slavery as indentured servitude was an option--a better option, in fact--to being put to the sword or left to slowly starve to death.
Appreciate your response. I happen to come from a Modern Orthodox Jewish background, so I'm quite familiar with the Bible and the responses you've provided. While I once found these responses plausible, that is no longer the case for the reasons I express below.
Regarding your point on viewing past actions through a 21st century lens, I think you falsely equate literary styles and moral standards. Morality is, in my opinion, clearly objective, while literary styles are clearly subjective. Views on morality and literature have certainly changed with the years, but that does not mean that morality itself has changed. Murdering an innocent child today is just as wrong as it was 5000 years ago. Therefore, the passages in the Bible that sanction such behavior are still immoral, even though they were probably viewed otherwise in biblical times. You are correct that the Canaanite nations, according to historical evidence, fostered abominable cultures. But it does not follow that every Canaanite man, woman and child was evil and deserving of death! So I strongly disagree with your characterization of the Canaanite slaughter as "a just and fitting punishment." Also, your point about all of us dying is a complete non-sequitur. Of course we all die, and God (if you believe in one, as I do) is responsible for this. But how does that justify commanding the slaughter of innocent children? I don't see the connection.
Regarding slavery, you are correct that the Bible's version of slavery was an improvement on ancient Near Eastern practices, and it did in fact provide a social safety net. However, there are aspects of biblical slavery that are difficult to justify in the name of some greater good. For instance, while the Bible requires that Israelite slaves be freed beyond a certain time period, it does not impose the same restrictions on the enslavement of other peoples.
Perhaps you'll counter that the Bible was speaking to an imperfect people who never would have accepted such restrictions. That may be true. But if the Bible were written by a perfectly moral being, wouldn't it have at least encouraged the Israelites to free their gentile slaves? The Bible is shockingly silent on this topic.
To be clear, I'm sure there are mental gymnastics one could perform to alleviate any issue with the Bible. But from a Bayesian perspective, all of the aforementioned Bible difficulties are much more likely under the hypothesis of human authorship than under the hypothesis of divine authorship.
"it was very often the norm to purposely insert contradictions within a text as a means of extracting entirely different meanings suitable to different readers."
Regarding the "evangelical reply" (which is also taken by a lot of traditionalist Catholics and Orthodox Christians), one way of strengthening this response is to appeal to human moral ignorance.
Human societies disagree massively regarding morality, as do individuals within societies. Furthermore, it's not entirely clear that we're getting better over time: we've come to an accurate consensus on some things (e.g. that chattel slavery is always wrong), but on other things (e.g. abortion and sexual morality) things have actually gotten a lot worse. (This might also be true for animal ethics: it's plausible that people had more humane views regarding animals back when factory farms didn't exist and ~90% of the population worked in agriculture.)
One should also add here a traditional Christian doctrine of original sin, one effect of which is to make it harder to know the natural moral law.
With all of that in mind, the hard-liner can give the following response: sure, it sounds implausible to you that e.g. God has the right to command the Israelites to wipe out their enemies, but so what? You're not very good at knowing right from wrong (no knock against you personally, you're just a fallen human like the rest of us); in fact, our inability to reliably grasp ethical truth is a big part of the reason why God gave us divine revelation to begin with! So we shouldn't be surprised to find things in scripture that strike us as extremely surprising and/or force us to revise our moral intuitions.
For what it's worth, I think every traditional Christian will have to employ this response at least *some* of the time: even if one doesn't want to affirm the historicity of e.g. the killing of the Canaanites, one will certainly want to say that Jesus was correct in prohibiting divorce, that Paul's teachings on homosexuality are correct, and so on. So everyone who comes to the Bible from a 21st-century Western liberal background is going to have to do some intuition-revising.
Of course, none of this is to say that one's moral intuitions should play *no* role in how one interprets scripture; it's just to say that one should not let scripture become a Rorschach test, which says whatever one's intuitions dictate that it says.
One issue here is that it's not *just* that, e.g., the genocide commands seem like something God wouldn't command; it's that they *also* seem like the sort of thing Bronze Age people would falsely make up. This is obvious in the case of, say, Mormonism: "all these women need to have sex with Joseph Smith" seems surprising coming from God, but not surprising coming from Joseph Smith. People have claimed divine sanction for war crimes all throughout history, and presumably we both agree that they were almost always wrong; it's kind of weird if it turns out God really did order genocide a couple times, and it happened to be in a context where everybody thought genocide was cool and good.
Another is that it isn't just our moral intuitions that pose a problem. It's not just that the genocide would have been immoral, if it happened; it's also that it didn't happen, based on the archaeological record. It's not just that Paul was wrong about homosexuality; he was also wrong about, e.g., whether the world was about to end, or whether taking communion unworthily will kill you.
And then there are also just flat-out contradictions, ranging from major things like how many gods there are to minor things like who killed Goliath.
I certainly don't think appeals to moral ignorance will work for every difficult text in the Bible (after all, many of them don't involve ethical issues). And of course, when there are other good reasons to doubt the literal historicity of a Biblical story, that will often be good grounds for adopting a non-literal interpretation. (I'm thinking here of things like the scientific evidence against a global flood.) My point is fairly narrow: I don’t think people should be quite so quick to reject the hard-line interpretation of a passage any time it conflicts with their moral intuitions (something I think happens a lot among non-Evangelical Christian academics).
Personally, my favorite model of scriptural interpretation is the one defended by Swinburne, which (as another commentor mentioned) enables one to affirm a high view of scripture without having to reject the findings of historical critical scholarship. (Not that one should never reject the HCS consensus!) I think this model works pretty well for issues like Paul's belief in an imminent Parousia. How it would handle other things (e.g. alleged narrative contradictions in the historical books), I don't know (it's not something I've thought much about).
As for the point about Biblical texts seeming like what you'd expect from ancient civilizations, I wonder how much of a problem this is for the hard-liner. I take it even most strict inerrantists think that the human authors of scripture were true authors, and that God allowed them to retain some of their cultural assumptions, rhetorical flourishes, and so on. So somebody could probably accept that, for instance, the story of the Israelites wiping out the Canaanites really *is* written as you would expect an ancient person to write it (since, after all, an ancient person *did* write it), while also affirming that the text does describe a real historical event (assuming we don't have *other* good reasons to doubt that this is the best interpretation). Of course, if one has a sort of verbal-dictation model of inspiration, then things would be trickier.
Here's one way to think about the moral skepticism issue: people who espouse caution wrt saying the apparently bad parts are bad are usually quite fine saying the apparently good parts are good (Israel's law was actually an improvement because XYZ, etc.). I think this only makes sense if we agree our moral sense is pretty reliable, but think a little modesty about it justifies giving the text the benefit of the doubt. But then I want to say: the text has all sorts of crazy, incorrect, even contradictory info on historical, theological, etc. matters, and I don't need to trust my moral intuitions to tell that. Why not think the apparently heinous parts are just further mistakes?
I've only read a bit of the Swinburne book so I don't know it well. But there are parts where the human author seems to teach that, e.g., the world is about to end, God is not the only nor even the first or most powerful God, etc. If we are allowed that nonetheless isn't the canonical reading, why not just do the same for the morally problematic texts...?
To be clear, the issue is not about rhetorical flourishes, etc. The issue is the content: ancient people said variants of "our god helped us massacre those other people" all the time, and presumably were at least almost always wrong. So the odds of claims that God helped the Israelites massacre people making it in even if that wasn't so seem high, if the text contains errors. (This isn't a reason to think the conquest didn't happen--that's from the archaeological record. But it is a reason to think that even if it did, God didn't command it.)
This point probably applies even to texts that aren't morally problematic, really. A lot of the OT, esp., just sort of focuses on weird pointless stuff that fit with the preoccupations of Bronze Age people, but not what you'd expect to be the concerns of the creator of the universe. Even if there's not a reason that God *couldn't*, say, order women having their period to leave camp or whatever, it just feels much more like a rule some old timey would make up.
Re para #1: I guess I'd be theologically worried about any view on which we don't at least have a *presumption* in favor of a literal reading, which requires some really good evidence to overcome (like the evidence against a global flood); otherwise I think we fall into the problem I mentioned in my first comment, where scripture basically just becomes a rorschach test that means whatever we want it to mean (and at that point I'm not sure what the point of God inspiring scripture would be).
Perhaps most importantly, I think we definitely want to say that people should sometimes find themselves revising (even quite strongly held) moral beliefs in light of scripture. (Consider e.g. pagan Romans who accept their society's values coming across Christian scripture for the first time.) It's hard for me to see how that works if we aren't willing to at least (as you put it) give the text the benefit of the doubt.
Re para #2: I think that you (at least in principle) *can* do that for the morally problematic texts; my point is just that we shouldn't *automatically* do that whenever we find something troubling. There are certainly examples of the Fathers doing this; the most well-known example is probably St. Gregory of Nyssa on the killing of the Egyptian firstborns. Even here though, they weren't relying just on their moral intuitions; rather, they invoked other considerations from scripture (for instance, Gregory cites Ezekiel 18:20 against a literal reading of the tenth plague).
Re paras #3 and #4: I'm not really sure how much force this point has. After all, we wouldn't find it very persuasive if someone said "lots of cultures have made claims like 'our God promises to bless us if we perform certain rituals,' so therefore the Jews and Christians are probably wrong when they say that their God has made such a promise to them." When we also factor in the idea that the law of Moses is in part a concession to the primitive Israelities (see e.g. Matthew 19:8), I'm not really sure that the apparent oddness of the Law counts against its having been divinely revealed. (Of course, there may be other passages where a different response is required.)
An important piece of the puzzle is that lot of "contradictions" we see in the Bible are really just a product of us taking many texts written centuries apart and acting as if they all share one voice. This isn't only clearly untrue, but importantly many of the books in the Bible are delibrately in dialogue with each other - with new texts challenging the moral claims of earlier texts. For example, the Book of Job directly challenges Deuteronomistic explanations for suffering (i.e. bad things happen because you offended God) as a cruel and obviously unsastifying answer. That's the point of the text, so that fact that it contradicts earlier Israelite theology can't be a mistake becuase it's entirely intended. The contradictions are features, not bugs.
I think one thing that you omitted that you could have mentioned, is that regarding things that seem contradictory (rather than merely disagree with our moral intuition or something), the evangelical reply tends to be to find some way to harmonize them. For example, one position you sometimes hear is that one of the genealogies is actually about Mary's lineage, one is about Joseph's. For Deuteronomy vs. Ezekiel, the response might be to work out some ways or contexts in which God does, and other ways or contexts in which he does not, punish children for the sins of their fathers. In fact, they both seem to demand something like that, given that in the very same books, they would contradict themselves if you overgeneralized the moral principle (Deuteronomy 24:16, Ezekiel has numerous histories that present Israel or Judah as a single people in their guilt throughout the generations, which doesn't jive all that well with an overly strong reading of Ezekiel 18, maybe also Ezekiel 21:3)
You also missed the additional option of adjusting the boundaries of the canon. Perhaps some of the people gathering the books didn't get it right! Some books were contested for quite a while.
As a Christian I can tell you the 4th explanation is correct. The Scriptures are a series of writings from people giving their thoughts about God. Some parts are accurate history and some probably relay the actual interactions of God and human beings. And naturally I think this is especially true about the New Testament, which I think gives a pretty accurate picture of the words and actions of Jesus.
The insistence from some groups of Christians that the Scriptures are inerrant causes a vast number of problems.
I think the philosophical reply, would be to say that "the complete revelation" was not made through books, but through the incarnation of Jesus, where word became flesh.
The Bible as it stands is an imperfect (or incomplete) copy of the word made by men to understand God. The real understanding of God comes throught the holy spirit and the church fellowship.
I don't really believe any of this but I think, this sidesteps a lot of the "prior implausibilities" of Christianity because it's a rather coherent picture you get for free if you think an incarnatory theology makes sense
Jesus was explicit that much of the Old Testament law wasn’t perfect. I suggest watching Inspiring Philosophy on YouTube explain this. This view is compatible with an inerrantist view, imo. It was also much better than many of the surrounding laws of the time, which would be expected if God pressured them to improve their laws. Here’s part 1 of his series on it: https://youtu.be/jfr4Q-t1Hy0?si=lPXCCSfg7_jC-J1T
Also, most all of the alleged contradictions/errors always seem to have plausible explanations (of course our current translations aren’t going to be error-free because they weren’t inspired by God and scribes definitely made mistakes). I’m not exactly sure if I’m an inerrantist or not because I’m not a scholar, but Christian scholars seem to have quite good explanations for them, and my impression is that every time scholars thought the Bible had some historical error in it and a relevant archaeological dig to that question was made the Bible has been confirmed. But I need to do more research.
I think the best way to address the weirdness is a combination of (2) and (4). It's a human document telling the progressive story of relations to the divine (at least up to ~150 CE)--and since then, around when the canon closed, centuries of midrash and commentaries and theology and homiletics on the Bible have done a similar job as scripture itself.
It's inspired because different communities throughout the millennia have recognized spiritual value in it and built faith communities on it as a superstructure, not because it's a way to access literal truths. You turn to it because it has a proven spiritual track record, essentially.
Of course, on top of this, you can do take a leap of faith to also think that the writers of the Bible were also inspired in some more direct sense (which you should be somewhat comfortable with as a theist--surely God would not lead two of the world's biggest religions completely astray with their choices of scripture), but I don't think that inspiration is robust and literal in the ways people often imply it is, and I don't think that that much spiritual value comes from a doctrine of inspiration beyond the bare affirmation that the Biblical writers were inspired by God in any sense.
A couple broad ideas from a Christian and lover of scripture as a resource that has greatly enriched my life.
1. Jesus quotes the Old Testament and says “God said” in the gospels. Whatever that means in relation to the important questions you raise, it is clear that the One we Christians follow considered it authoritative.
2. Regarding the things God directed to be done in regard to war and slavery in the Old Testament, one important value to exercise is humility. (I’m not suggesting that you don’t!) A humility that asks: to what extent are people really situated to be able to question the God that made everything that exists? I’m not saying we shouldn’t use our full intelligence and investigative powers,
but we do it realizing that God is in a position to understand that we will never be in.
3. How can I ever question the love and goodness and justice of God who
choose to suffer a death worse than I can imagine so that I can be perfectly reconciled to him?
Humility and gratitude are gifts that help a Christian immensely!
One more thing I forgot to mention in my comment. When we think about things that God does that offend us, remember, as CS Lewis taught us in Narnia: “Aslan (the Christ figure) is not a tame lion.” I love that line.
All it means is that God as philosophized by Lewis is not a vending machine. You can't just insert a prayer and have it deliver your choice. But did he mean it was like a real non tame lion? Predatory in every fiber and impulse.
Honestly, I don’t remember the exact context he wrote this. But I think he means we can’t put him in a box as if we can just expect and explain his every move.
I have a book manuscript titled: What is the Bible and What is the Bible for? Religious Epistemology for Theists, Atheists, and Everyone. In this manuscript, I argued for several interconnected views: Given the dual authorship of the Bible and due to the human authors, I argue that it is reasonable to *expect* some errors in the Bible about (1) matters of fact ( example: science)— empirical claims, and morality, that (2) God did not unilaterally control what human authors thought and believed about the world and God because they exercised their free will in the writing of the Bible and their backgrounds and experiences played a role; and (3) the human recipients of the Bible are capable of using reason and relying on their experience to distinguish truth from falsity in the Bible, including truths about redemption, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who also guided the initial writings of the Bible regarding the message of redemption. In the Bible, I argue that God's role is limited to revealing the basic spiritual truths essential for redemption. God gave us a brain to figure out how his creation works—that is for science-- and, to some degree, to learn about God.
The key to my view is that the distinction between *ultimate authority* regarding what is true and what is revealed to humanity about God in the Bible is located in God or God is the ultimate source of knowledge regarding God; the Bible has a *derivative authority*. The debate about biblical inerrancy dissolves, given my proposal—there is no error in God, but any error in the written text is due to the writers, and it is to be expected. Since God does not need perfect humans, say, to communicate the Good News now, there was no need to use perfect humans in the writing process of the Bible—of course, there are no perfect humans for God to use to accomplish his purpose anyway. Note about the God-Incarnate—the Incarnation is the point of God’s redemptive intervention.
Note: The authors of the Bible did not have us in mind when they wrote the books that were later collected by *others* to be one unified Book. I even argue that the Bible is not needed to teach humans about morality or ethics--what humans need for a moral life, in general, can be gained by reason and experience. I propose that following Christ as a moral exemplar is sufficient for how we should live our lives. We can still learn many things about morality from the Bible—but nothing surpasses the life Jesus has lived. If Jesus Christ was God in human form, having him as our moral exemplar is sufficient for how we should live our lives. What better example can we ask for to serve as an example of how humans should live than God in human flesh?
In my view, none of the morally flawed "divine commands” anywhere in the Bible, especially in the OT, are from God--they are *the views of the human authors*--they *believed* God had commanded this or that. In short, the Bible is a record from a long time ago about what humans, the authors, believed or thought about God, and what they wrote was a record of their experiences. Insofar as what the authors believed about God was a reflection or an accurate account of God, which we can check using reason and experience, the authority of the Bible is still relevant in the way I noted above. In that case, the Bible contains many, many truths about God, the world, humanity, etc. I assume there is only one true God, and this God is equally available to anyone, anywhere, and anytime. Our experience, if we write and collect it, would have a much similar view about God. Some exceptions are about Jesus, what he taught as reported in the New Testament, and his resurrection. Humans can use the same method of establishing the historicity of the NT as they study any ancient historical claims. Humans can identify what is true and what is not in the Bible—otherwise, what is the point? I see no reason why God would give us the ability to reason and want humans to believe anything that we can tell is false about God or about the world. So many things people have debated or fought over for centuries about the Bible are not essential for humans to have a personal relationship with God or for redemption. I claim that adopting my view preserves what is essential for any person to understand God adequately. I’m also committed to modest claims of natural theology. I argue that my proposal is largely consistent with historic Christianity. This is the gist of what is written in over 73,000 words. I need to revise/edit and work on publishing it. I started the process but paused it for some personal reasons. I hope sharing my thoughts here helps some.
One of the most bizarre exchanges I ever had with someone on this was an Orthodox guy who told me that, when the Bible describes God commanding the slaughter of the Canaanites, that was actually a metaphorically exhortation for us to "slaughter" our unholy desires. And it's like... can you imagine a worse way to make a point about moral living than an extended genocide metaphor? If someone wrote a self-help book titled The Final Solution To The Anger Problem: How To Engineer a Holocaust Against Bad Moods, people would probably think that was a little weird.
The stronger version of that statement is that the nations in question were sick societies that centered vice and brutality in their cultures. The slaughter may have been a literal genocide, but its enduring message is that we ought to remove from ourselves any of the traits centered by those nations.
If the Nazis had succeeded, the enduring lesson of the Holocaust for 21st century Nazis would have been to 'destroy all weakness as our noble ancestors once did'.
Treating the text as pure metaphor is as ridiculous as treating it entirely literally.
>The Final Solution To The Anger Problem: How To Engineer a Holocaust Against Bad Moods
You might in fact have had this in mind when writing your comment, but there's an old Onion video based on precisely this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4PC8Luqiws
Hahaha now that you mention it, I do remember seeing that! I think I just grew up in the era of these horrible self-help books with bizarre themes.
Of your four explanations, he fourth is the best, though it was only partially presented. The choice by God to use humans to write the holy writ is a core doctrine of Christianity (I can't speak for Judaism). It relates to the incarnation - the word becomes flesh - and relationship between God and humans. The question of error versus not error is a distinctly modern question, as the ancients were not nearly as preoccupied with literal history. Therefore, to understand the Bible, one has to set aside the modern preoccupation with precision and literalness of meaning (a product of, among other things, the printing press and the scientific revolution). Words are symbols, history is narrative, and meaning is fluid. Instead see it as a narrative weaving God into relationship with often primitive and violent humans, attempting to lead them towards a better more godly future. Pulling us out of the muck. Hopefully clarifying our understanding of Him. Setbacks are common. This is the highest view of scripture. Inerrancy is, in my mind, a relatively low view of scripture. The whole question of error, as commonly understood to be literal errors, is kind of irrelevant. This does not mean that certain events did not happen. It just means we need to start by understanding them as the writers themselves understood them (which is the hard part), then add knowledge of God that they may or may not have held, and finally add knowledge we possess but they didn't (i.e., the earth is not flat floating on the waters of the deep, and is not covered by a dome holding back the waters of the heavens).
Origen, De Principiis IV
Divine wisdom took care that certain stumbling-blocks, or interruptions, to the historical meaning should take place, by the introduction into the midst (of the narrative) of certain impossibilities and incongruities; that in this way the very interruption of the narrative might, as by the interposition of a bolt, present an obstacle to the reader, whereby he might refuse to acknowledge the way which conducts to the ordinary meaning; and being thus excluded and debarred from it, we might be recalled to the beginning of another way, in order that, by entering upon a narrow path, and passing to a loftier and more sublime road, he might lay open the immense breadth of divine wisdom.
...
The same style of Scriptural narrative occurs abundantly in the Gospels, as when the devil is said to have placed Jesus on a lofty mountain, that he might show Him from thence all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them. How could it literally come to pass, either that Jesus should be led up by the devil into a high mountain, or that the latter should show him all the kingdoms of the world (as if they were lying beneath his bodily eyes, and adjacent to one mountain), i.e., the kingdoms of the Persians, and Scythians, and Indians? Or how could he show in what manner the kings of these kingdoms are glorified by men? And many other instances similar to this will be found in the Gospels by anyone who will read them with attention, and will observe that in those narratives which appear to be literally recorded, there are inserted and interwoven things which cannot be admitted historically, but which may be accepted in a spiritual signification.
In other contexts we call it gaslighting
Interesting article. You might be interested in Swinburne's "Revelation - from Metaphor to Analogy" where he defends something called the "Patristic Method" which allows him to hold to a "high view of scripture" without contradicting science or history. The whole book is a very interesting analytic philosophy approach to revelation and formalises some of the ideas from your article.
For those interested in the issue, I found "How to Read the Bible" by James L. Kugel very useful. He does a comparison between how traditional interpreters looked at the Hebrew Bible and how modern scholars understand it in light of better archeological evidence.
One of the thoughts he ends the book with is that the now obvious errors in the Bible are more problematic for more Bible-centric Protestant Christians than other faithful who rely relatively more on tradition than scripture (the author himself is an Orthodox Jew). As someone raised Christian, I think we could say that both scripture and the church are means by which God calls us to him; since He's acted through flawed humans, they bear human flaws.
I did a double-take when I saw the name James L. Kugel, but I looked him up and he actually exists. James is hardly a Jewish name, and kugel is an Ashkenazi food, so the name seemed like a parody or pseudonym at first glance.
I find the human error reply the most persuasive, though it is important avoid falling into the trap of viewing the Bible from a 21st century Western lens. Literary styles were far different in the ancient Near East, and what we might consider “weird” was in fact very normal for the people of that time. For example, as 21st century readers we view factual contradictions within a text as obvious proof of that text’s imperfection. However, in the ancient Near East, it was very often the norm to purposely insert contradictions within a text as a means of extracting entirely different meanings suitable to different readers. I think the stronger case to be made against the Bible’s human authorship is the sheer immorality of some of its passages - even interpreted in the most generous way possible, I can’t excuse the Bible’s support of genocide or its views on slavery.
Sorry, the stronger case *in favor* of the Bible’s human authorship
Interesting. I was with you until you ended by saying, " I can’t excuse the Bible’s support of genocide or its views on slavery.", thereby putting the same "21st century Western lens" that you cooly critiqued in the very same post.
So, to help you over your emotional hurdle, consider that "genocide" is a purposefully loaded and inflammatory term. Some people groups in history--most of em--have not survived. Many of them should not have, morally. Some today, in fact, might be long gone in a world where nations acted as they did for most of human history.
Since we all die, what distinction is it if God (who again, "kills" every single one of us) clears out an evil culture by timing those deaths in a just and fitting punishment? Calling it genocide is just emotionalism.
As for slavery, it is a lot like sex: it is not, in and of itself, wrong (though most ways you might do it are) but it is rather a term that describes a nearly endless category of "human relations". The method and manner prescribed to Jews for slavery was eons ahead of its time in showing us something like human rights. Comparing chattel slavery, as practiced in the American South; Barbary slavery, practiced by Muslims and very brutal; sex slavery, practiced everywhere and every time; to what God permitted His people and the limitations and policies he demanded, is to compare not just apples to oranges, but apples to rotting pig flesh.
There was no social safety net. No welfare. No "jobs for hire". No Grubhub. If your people got themselves conquered, slavery as indentured servitude was an option--a better option, in fact--to being put to the sword or left to slowly starve to death.
Appreciate your response. I happen to come from a Modern Orthodox Jewish background, so I'm quite familiar with the Bible and the responses you've provided. While I once found these responses plausible, that is no longer the case for the reasons I express below.
Regarding your point on viewing past actions through a 21st century lens, I think you falsely equate literary styles and moral standards. Morality is, in my opinion, clearly objective, while literary styles are clearly subjective. Views on morality and literature have certainly changed with the years, but that does not mean that morality itself has changed. Murdering an innocent child today is just as wrong as it was 5000 years ago. Therefore, the passages in the Bible that sanction such behavior are still immoral, even though they were probably viewed otherwise in biblical times. You are correct that the Canaanite nations, according to historical evidence, fostered abominable cultures. But it does not follow that every Canaanite man, woman and child was evil and deserving of death! So I strongly disagree with your characterization of the Canaanite slaughter as "a just and fitting punishment." Also, your point about all of us dying is a complete non-sequitur. Of course we all die, and God (if you believe in one, as I do) is responsible for this. But how does that justify commanding the slaughter of innocent children? I don't see the connection.
Regarding slavery, you are correct that the Bible's version of slavery was an improvement on ancient Near Eastern practices, and it did in fact provide a social safety net. However, there are aspects of biblical slavery that are difficult to justify in the name of some greater good. For instance, while the Bible requires that Israelite slaves be freed beyond a certain time period, it does not impose the same restrictions on the enslavement of other peoples.
Perhaps you'll counter that the Bible was speaking to an imperfect people who never would have accepted such restrictions. That may be true. But if the Bible were written by a perfectly moral being, wouldn't it have at least encouraged the Israelites to free their gentile slaves? The Bible is shockingly silent on this topic.
To be clear, I'm sure there are mental gymnastics one could perform to alleviate any issue with the Bible. But from a Bayesian perspective, all of the aforementioned Bible difficulties are much more likely under the hypothesis of human authorship than under the hypothesis of divine authorship.
"it was very often the norm to purposely insert contradictions within a text as a means of extracting entirely different meanings suitable to different readers."
How do you kow this?
Regarding the "evangelical reply" (which is also taken by a lot of traditionalist Catholics and Orthodox Christians), one way of strengthening this response is to appeal to human moral ignorance.
Human societies disagree massively regarding morality, as do individuals within societies. Furthermore, it's not entirely clear that we're getting better over time: we've come to an accurate consensus on some things (e.g. that chattel slavery is always wrong), but on other things (e.g. abortion and sexual morality) things have actually gotten a lot worse. (This might also be true for animal ethics: it's plausible that people had more humane views regarding animals back when factory farms didn't exist and ~90% of the population worked in agriculture.)
One should also add here a traditional Christian doctrine of original sin, one effect of which is to make it harder to know the natural moral law.
With all of that in mind, the hard-liner can give the following response: sure, it sounds implausible to you that e.g. God has the right to command the Israelites to wipe out their enemies, but so what? You're not very good at knowing right from wrong (no knock against you personally, you're just a fallen human like the rest of us); in fact, our inability to reliably grasp ethical truth is a big part of the reason why God gave us divine revelation to begin with! So we shouldn't be surprised to find things in scripture that strike us as extremely surprising and/or force us to revise our moral intuitions.
For what it's worth, I think every traditional Christian will have to employ this response at least *some* of the time: even if one doesn't want to affirm the historicity of e.g. the killing of the Canaanites, one will certainly want to say that Jesus was correct in prohibiting divorce, that Paul's teachings on homosexuality are correct, and so on. So everyone who comes to the Bible from a 21st-century Western liberal background is going to have to do some intuition-revising.
Of course, none of this is to say that one's moral intuitions should play *no* role in how one interprets scripture; it's just to say that one should not let scripture become a Rorschach test, which says whatever one's intuitions dictate that it says.
One issue here is that it's not *just* that, e.g., the genocide commands seem like something God wouldn't command; it's that they *also* seem like the sort of thing Bronze Age people would falsely make up. This is obvious in the case of, say, Mormonism: "all these women need to have sex with Joseph Smith" seems surprising coming from God, but not surprising coming from Joseph Smith. People have claimed divine sanction for war crimes all throughout history, and presumably we both agree that they were almost always wrong; it's kind of weird if it turns out God really did order genocide a couple times, and it happened to be in a context where everybody thought genocide was cool and good.
Another is that it isn't just our moral intuitions that pose a problem. It's not just that the genocide would have been immoral, if it happened; it's also that it didn't happen, based on the archaeological record. It's not just that Paul was wrong about homosexuality; he was also wrong about, e.g., whether the world was about to end, or whether taking communion unworthily will kill you.
And then there are also just flat-out contradictions, ranging from major things like how many gods there are to minor things like who killed Goliath.
I certainly don't think appeals to moral ignorance will work for every difficult text in the Bible (after all, many of them don't involve ethical issues). And of course, when there are other good reasons to doubt the literal historicity of a Biblical story, that will often be good grounds for adopting a non-literal interpretation. (I'm thinking here of things like the scientific evidence against a global flood.) My point is fairly narrow: I don’t think people should be quite so quick to reject the hard-line interpretation of a passage any time it conflicts with their moral intuitions (something I think happens a lot among non-Evangelical Christian academics).
Personally, my favorite model of scriptural interpretation is the one defended by Swinburne, which (as another commentor mentioned) enables one to affirm a high view of scripture without having to reject the findings of historical critical scholarship. (Not that one should never reject the HCS consensus!) I think this model works pretty well for issues like Paul's belief in an imminent Parousia. How it would handle other things (e.g. alleged narrative contradictions in the historical books), I don't know (it's not something I've thought much about).
As for the point about Biblical texts seeming like what you'd expect from ancient civilizations, I wonder how much of a problem this is for the hard-liner. I take it even most strict inerrantists think that the human authors of scripture were true authors, and that God allowed them to retain some of their cultural assumptions, rhetorical flourishes, and so on. So somebody could probably accept that, for instance, the story of the Israelites wiping out the Canaanites really *is* written as you would expect an ancient person to write it (since, after all, an ancient person *did* write it), while also affirming that the text does describe a real historical event (assuming we don't have *other* good reasons to doubt that this is the best interpretation). Of course, if one has a sort of verbal-dictation model of inspiration, then things would be trickier.
Here's one way to think about the moral skepticism issue: people who espouse caution wrt saying the apparently bad parts are bad are usually quite fine saying the apparently good parts are good (Israel's law was actually an improvement because XYZ, etc.). I think this only makes sense if we agree our moral sense is pretty reliable, but think a little modesty about it justifies giving the text the benefit of the doubt. But then I want to say: the text has all sorts of crazy, incorrect, even contradictory info on historical, theological, etc. matters, and I don't need to trust my moral intuitions to tell that. Why not think the apparently heinous parts are just further mistakes?
I've only read a bit of the Swinburne book so I don't know it well. But there are parts where the human author seems to teach that, e.g., the world is about to end, God is not the only nor even the first or most powerful God, etc. If we are allowed that nonetheless isn't the canonical reading, why not just do the same for the morally problematic texts...?
To be clear, the issue is not about rhetorical flourishes, etc. The issue is the content: ancient people said variants of "our god helped us massacre those other people" all the time, and presumably were at least almost always wrong. So the odds of claims that God helped the Israelites massacre people making it in even if that wasn't so seem high, if the text contains errors. (This isn't a reason to think the conquest didn't happen--that's from the archaeological record. But it is a reason to think that even if it did, God didn't command it.)
This point probably applies even to texts that aren't morally problematic, really. A lot of the OT, esp., just sort of focuses on weird pointless stuff that fit with the preoccupations of Bronze Age people, but not what you'd expect to be the concerns of the creator of the universe. Even if there's not a reason that God *couldn't*, say, order women having their period to leave camp or whatever, it just feels much more like a rule some old timey would make up.
Re para #1: I guess I'd be theologically worried about any view on which we don't at least have a *presumption* in favor of a literal reading, which requires some really good evidence to overcome (like the evidence against a global flood); otherwise I think we fall into the problem I mentioned in my first comment, where scripture basically just becomes a rorschach test that means whatever we want it to mean (and at that point I'm not sure what the point of God inspiring scripture would be).
Perhaps most importantly, I think we definitely want to say that people should sometimes find themselves revising (even quite strongly held) moral beliefs in light of scripture. (Consider e.g. pagan Romans who accept their society's values coming across Christian scripture for the first time.) It's hard for me to see how that works if we aren't willing to at least (as you put it) give the text the benefit of the doubt.
Re para #2: I think that you (at least in principle) *can* do that for the morally problematic texts; my point is just that we shouldn't *automatically* do that whenever we find something troubling. There are certainly examples of the Fathers doing this; the most well-known example is probably St. Gregory of Nyssa on the killing of the Egyptian firstborns. Even here though, they weren't relying just on their moral intuitions; rather, they invoked other considerations from scripture (for instance, Gregory cites Ezekiel 18:20 against a literal reading of the tenth plague).
Re paras #3 and #4: I'm not really sure how much force this point has. After all, we wouldn't find it very persuasive if someone said "lots of cultures have made claims like 'our God promises to bless us if we perform certain rituals,' so therefore the Jews and Christians are probably wrong when they say that their God has made such a promise to them." When we also factor in the idea that the law of Moses is in part a concession to the primitive Israelities (see e.g. Matthew 19:8), I'm not really sure that the apparent oddness of the Law counts against its having been divinely revealed. (Of course, there may be other passages where a different response is required.)
An important piece of the puzzle is that lot of "contradictions" we see in the Bible are really just a product of us taking many texts written centuries apart and acting as if they all share one voice. This isn't only clearly untrue, but importantly many of the books in the Bible are delibrately in dialogue with each other - with new texts challenging the moral claims of earlier texts. For example, the Book of Job directly challenges Deuteronomistic explanations for suffering (i.e. bad things happen because you offended God) as a cruel and obviously unsastifying answer. That's the point of the text, so that fact that it contradicts earlier Israelite theology can't be a mistake becuase it's entirely intended. The contradictions are features, not bugs.
I think one thing that you omitted that you could have mentioned, is that regarding things that seem contradictory (rather than merely disagree with our moral intuition or something), the evangelical reply tends to be to find some way to harmonize them. For example, one position you sometimes hear is that one of the genealogies is actually about Mary's lineage, one is about Joseph's. For Deuteronomy vs. Ezekiel, the response might be to work out some ways or contexts in which God does, and other ways or contexts in which he does not, punish children for the sins of their fathers. In fact, they both seem to demand something like that, given that in the very same books, they would contradict themselves if you overgeneralized the moral principle (Deuteronomy 24:16, Ezekiel has numerous histories that present Israel or Judah as a single people in their guilt throughout the generations, which doesn't jive all that well with an overly strong reading of Ezekiel 18, maybe also Ezekiel 21:3)
You also missed the additional option of adjusting the boundaries of the canon. Perhaps some of the people gathering the books didn't get it right! Some books were contested for quite a while.
As a Christian I can tell you the 4th explanation is correct. The Scriptures are a series of writings from people giving their thoughts about God. Some parts are accurate history and some probably relay the actual interactions of God and human beings. And naturally I think this is especially true about the New Testament, which I think gives a pretty accurate picture of the words and actions of Jesus.
The insistence from some groups of Christians that the Scriptures are inerrant causes a vast number of problems.
I think the philosophical reply, would be to say that "the complete revelation" was not made through books, but through the incarnation of Jesus, where word became flesh.
The Bible as it stands is an imperfect (or incomplete) copy of the word made by men to understand God. The real understanding of God comes throught the holy spirit and the church fellowship.
I don't really believe any of this but I think, this sidesteps a lot of the "prior implausibilities" of Christianity because it's a rather coherent picture you get for free if you think an incarnatory theology makes sense
Jesus was explicit that much of the Old Testament law wasn’t perfect. I suggest watching Inspiring Philosophy on YouTube explain this. This view is compatible with an inerrantist view, imo. It was also much better than many of the surrounding laws of the time, which would be expected if God pressured them to improve their laws. Here’s part 1 of his series on it: https://youtu.be/jfr4Q-t1Hy0?si=lPXCCSfg7_jC-J1T
Also, most all of the alleged contradictions/errors always seem to have plausible explanations (of course our current translations aren’t going to be error-free because they weren’t inspired by God and scribes definitely made mistakes). I’m not exactly sure if I’m an inerrantist or not because I’m not a scholar, but Christian scholars seem to have quite good explanations for them, and my impression is that every time scholars thought the Bible had some historical error in it and a relevant archaeological dig to that question was made the Bible has been confirmed. But I need to do more research.
I will have you know that Jimmy Carter is not dead - don't believe the fake news - and by God, he will live to be 230 million years old.
I think the best way to address the weirdness is a combination of (2) and (4). It's a human document telling the progressive story of relations to the divine (at least up to ~150 CE)--and since then, around when the canon closed, centuries of midrash and commentaries and theology and homiletics on the Bible have done a similar job as scripture itself.
It's inspired because different communities throughout the millennia have recognized spiritual value in it and built faith communities on it as a superstructure, not because it's a way to access literal truths. You turn to it because it has a proven spiritual track record, essentially.
Of course, on top of this, you can do take a leap of faith to also think that the writers of the Bible were also inspired in some more direct sense (which you should be somewhat comfortable with as a theist--surely God would not lead two of the world's biggest religions completely astray with their choices of scripture), but I don't think that inspiration is robust and literal in the ways people often imply it is, and I don't think that that much spiritual value comes from a doctrine of inspiration beyond the bare affirmation that the Biblical writers were inspired by God in any sense.
Thanks for your great writing and thinking!
A couple broad ideas from a Christian and lover of scripture as a resource that has greatly enriched my life.
1. Jesus quotes the Old Testament and says “God said” in the gospels. Whatever that means in relation to the important questions you raise, it is clear that the One we Christians follow considered it authoritative.
2. Regarding the things God directed to be done in regard to war and slavery in the Old Testament, one important value to exercise is humility. (I’m not suggesting that you don’t!) A humility that asks: to what extent are people really situated to be able to question the God that made everything that exists? I’m not saying we shouldn’t use our full intelligence and investigative powers,
but we do it realizing that God is in a position to understand that we will never be in.
3. How can I ever question the love and goodness and justice of God who
choose to suffer a death worse than I can imagine so that I can be perfectly reconciled to him?
Humility and gratitude are gifts that help a Christian immensely!
God bless!!
One more thing I forgot to mention in my comment. When we think about things that God does that offend us, remember, as CS Lewis taught us in Narnia: “Aslan (the Christ figure) is not a tame lion.” I love that line.
All it means is that God as philosophized by Lewis is not a vending machine. You can't just insert a prayer and have it deliver your choice. But did he mean it was like a real non tame lion? Predatory in every fiber and impulse.
Honestly, I don’t remember the exact context he wrote this. But I think he means we can’t put him in a box as if we can just expect and explain his every move.
I have a book manuscript titled: What is the Bible and What is the Bible for? Religious Epistemology for Theists, Atheists, and Everyone. In this manuscript, I argued for several interconnected views: Given the dual authorship of the Bible and due to the human authors, I argue that it is reasonable to *expect* some errors in the Bible about (1) matters of fact ( example: science)— empirical claims, and morality, that (2) God did not unilaterally control what human authors thought and believed about the world and God because they exercised their free will in the writing of the Bible and their backgrounds and experiences played a role; and (3) the human recipients of the Bible are capable of using reason and relying on their experience to distinguish truth from falsity in the Bible, including truths about redemption, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who also guided the initial writings of the Bible regarding the message of redemption. In the Bible, I argue that God's role is limited to revealing the basic spiritual truths essential for redemption. God gave us a brain to figure out how his creation works—that is for science-- and, to some degree, to learn about God.
The key to my view is that the distinction between *ultimate authority* regarding what is true and what is revealed to humanity about God in the Bible is located in God or God is the ultimate source of knowledge regarding God; the Bible has a *derivative authority*. The debate about biblical inerrancy dissolves, given my proposal—there is no error in God, but any error in the written text is due to the writers, and it is to be expected. Since God does not need perfect humans, say, to communicate the Good News now, there was no need to use perfect humans in the writing process of the Bible—of course, there are no perfect humans for God to use to accomplish his purpose anyway. Note about the God-Incarnate—the Incarnation is the point of God’s redemptive intervention.
Note: The authors of the Bible did not have us in mind when they wrote the books that were later collected by *others* to be one unified Book. I even argue that the Bible is not needed to teach humans about morality or ethics--what humans need for a moral life, in general, can be gained by reason and experience. I propose that following Christ as a moral exemplar is sufficient for how we should live our lives. We can still learn many things about morality from the Bible—but nothing surpasses the life Jesus has lived. If Jesus Christ was God in human form, having him as our moral exemplar is sufficient for how we should live our lives. What better example can we ask for to serve as an example of how humans should live than God in human flesh?
In my view, none of the morally flawed "divine commands” anywhere in the Bible, especially in the OT, are from God--they are *the views of the human authors*--they *believed* God had commanded this or that. In short, the Bible is a record from a long time ago about what humans, the authors, believed or thought about God, and what they wrote was a record of their experiences. Insofar as what the authors believed about God was a reflection or an accurate account of God, which we can check using reason and experience, the authority of the Bible is still relevant in the way I noted above. In that case, the Bible contains many, many truths about God, the world, humanity, etc. I assume there is only one true God, and this God is equally available to anyone, anywhere, and anytime. Our experience, if we write and collect it, would have a much similar view about God. Some exceptions are about Jesus, what he taught as reported in the New Testament, and his resurrection. Humans can use the same method of establishing the historicity of the NT as they study any ancient historical claims. Humans can identify what is true and what is not in the Bible—otherwise, what is the point? I see no reason why God would give us the ability to reason and want humans to believe anything that we can tell is false about God or about the world. So many things people have debated or fought over for centuries about the Bible are not essential for humans to have a personal relationship with God or for redemption. I claim that adopting my view preserves what is essential for any person to understand God adequately. I’m also committed to modest claims of natural theology. I argue that my proposal is largely consistent with historic Christianity. This is the gist of what is written in over 73,000 words. I need to revise/edit and work on publishing it. I started the process but paused it for some personal reasons. I hope sharing my thoughts here helps some.
I appreciate all the work you put into this.
>God gave us a brain to figure out how his creation works—that is for science-- and, to some degree, to learn about God.
Then what’s the Bible for exactly? Smoke screen? A test of our resolve?
I don’t understand why perfection dictates leaving a mistaken document as humanity’s primary source of the universe’s most important knowledge.