Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Bible the word of God? Message-ID: Date: 13 Nov 90 09:18:53 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia Lines: 177 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article , gt1104c@prism.gatech.edu (SILVERT,STANLEY DAVID JR) writes: > That's not true. One only has to point to one error to get a proof by > contradiction to the statement "The Bible is perfect." > The Bible claims in Mark 4:31 that the mustard seed is the smallest seed in > the world. We know that there are other smaller seeds (the orchid for one). > Therefore, a contradiction is made and the statement "The Bible is perfect" is > false. I've seen Biblical inerrancy defined by a Catholic author as the notion that the Bible contains no mistakes in things pertaining to salvation. The trouble with that is that as a criterion it is practically useless; if I _decide_ solely on the bases of my own preference and of what will enable me to fit in with the contemporary world that the ethical teachings of the NT do not pertain to salvation then I will smugly ignore them and tell people who are bewildered by my apparent intellectual disintegrity "yes I believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God, inerrant in all that it teaches pertaining to salvation, but no, I don't believe any of that stuff about ethics, that's obviously mistaken." We need a view of the Bible which will allow _it_ to correct _us_. On the other hand, we have the fact that the Bible exists in the form of written documents and is subject to copying errors (what a _pity_ that we didn't adopt the error detection techniques of the Jews!) and to both intentional and unintentional errors in translation. (Which is one of the reasons why I recently bought a copy of the Tanakh, the fresh 1986 translation brought out by the Jewish Publications Society. So far it is reassuringly familiar, although they do say "a wind from God moved on the face of the waters".) Yet even these imperfect copies, and even slanted translations, are effective in bringing people to Jesus, so absolute literal perfection can't be _necessary_. I haven't completely worked out what I believe about inerrancy, to be frank. One thing to bear in mind is the philosophy-of-science distinction between "naive falsificationism" and "methodological falsificationism". Lakatos points out that Newton's theory of gravity is not falsifiable. In just the same way, a theory of the Bible as "perfect" (modulo variations in extant texts) is not falsifiable. But Newton's theory of gravity _was_ eventually dropped, because the implicit "research programme" (when experimental results do not agree with the predictions of the theory, assume that the experimental setup was not what you thought it was, e.g. look for hitherto unnoticed forces) began to look less plausible than the research programme based on Einstein's theory. What am I getting at? "Inerrancy" is best understood as a RESEARCH PROGRAMME rather than as a THEORY. The idea is that when we detect what appears to be an inconsistency the "inerrancy" programme is to doubt our interpretation. Instead of sticking fast to our interpretation and claiming that that falsifies the Bible, we look for another interpretation. We look for _methods_ of interpretation which minimize difficulties, using the assumption of the Bible's trustworthiness to criticise the _methods_ rather than the other way around. If you believe that the Bible speaks with authority, then you ought to have the utmost respect for the text. You should be concerned to hear what the text _is_ saying rather than what you _think_ it is saying. This involves attention to genre: some of the Bible is "teaching stories" but a very great deal of it isn't. It involves attention to the distinction between quoting and affirming. And so on. So what _does_ Mark 4:31 say. _Does_ it "claim" "that the mustard seed is the smallest seed in the world"? Bearing in mind the adage "a text without a context is a pretext", let's look a bit at the context. Bracketed [alternatives|choices] or [omissions] reflect textual variants. Mark 4:30 Kai elegen [tivi|pos] homoiosomen ten basileian tou theou; And he said [to what|how] shall we compare the kingdom of God? e en [poia parabole parabalomen auten|tivi auten parabole thomen]; or [with what parable shall we compare it|what parable shall we use to set it forth]? Mark 4:31 Hos [kokko|kokkov] sinapeos, hos, hotan sparon EPI TES GES like a grain of mustard, which, when it has been sown ON THE LAND [mikroteros|mikroteron on] panton ton spermaton [estin] [is|being] less than all the seeds [ton EPI TES GES], -- Lachmann's text omits this [which are ON THE LAND], -- phrase, the others have it Mark 4:32 kai hotan spare, anabainei, and when it has been sown, it grows up, kai ginetai [panton ton LACHANON meixon|meixon panton ton lachanon], and becomes greater than all the {other} HERBS GROWN ON LAND CULTIVATED BY DIGGING, kai poiei kladous megalous, hostei dunasthai hupo ton skian autov and produces large branches, ta peteiva tou ouranou kataskenoun. so that the flying birds of the sky can come and dwell under its shade. Q1. What is the genre of this text? A1. Parable. It is an analogy. Q2. What is Jesus claiming here? A2. The kingdom of God is like a cultivated plant that starts out small, grows up big, and then provides shelter. Q3. Could Jesus' hearers have possibly understood him as claiming that mustard was the smallest seed in the world? A3. No. There's a word for "tree" (dendron), there's a word for "plant" (phyteia), and there's a word for "herb grown in ground cultivated by digging" (lachanon). Since the plant in question only grows to about 3 metres (10 feet) tall, it's clearly not "bigger than all the plants including trees", so "lachanon" shouldn't be taken outside its usual meaning. Q4. But doesn't it say "in all the world"? A4. No. The phrase which has been twisted to "in all the world" literally says "on the land", and in context, that's the natural way to read it. Rearranged somewhat, here it is again: When a grain of mustard seed has been sown on the land it is the smallest seed [sown] on the land but when it is grown it is the largest of cultivated herbs. The relevant category is quite obviously herbs grown in Judea by sowing them onto ground that had been prepared by digging. So the other poster who objected that orchids aren't sown on the land was perfectly correct. If the seeds of leeks or onions or any of the garden vegetables cultivated at the time in Judea are smaller than mustard seeds, THEN we have a false claim in the text. What strategy have I used to this point? BEFORE CLAIMING THAT THERE IS A MISTAKE IN THE BIBLE, OR IN ANY DOCUMENT WHICH DID NOT ORIGINATE IN YOUR OWN TIME IN YOUR NATIVE LANGUAGE, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE AS GOOD A TRANSLATION AS YOU CAN GET. THE _TRANSLATOR_ MAY BE AT FAULT, NOT THE AUTHOR. That's not an "inerrancy" strategy, it's elementary honesty in scholarship. Suppose we discovered that there was a garden vegetable of the time which had smaller seeds than the mustard plant. Then we would not be able to hold (as in this case we currently _are_ able to hold) that the text was literally true. What then? Well, look at the genre. It's a parable, an analogy. For that to work, the "known" end of the analogy has to be something the hearers accept as true. Was Jesus interested in mustard seed as such? No, what He wanted to convey to His audience was an idea about the kingdom of God. That'll work even if their belief about mustard seed is wrong. So one might get away with arguing that Jesus is here QUOTING a popular belief or saying about mustard seed (like our "Great oaks from little acorns grow"), not TEACHING it. I would be very uneasy about adopting that argument. What I'd want to see before accepting it is independent evidence that the idea _was_ accepted or proverbial, which would mean surveying a lot of 1st century text. So the strategy I would accept here is IF there is independent evidence that something was accepted or proverbial or idiomatic, AND the dubious claim can be read without straining the text as an illustration of some kind rather than a central claim THEN tentatively assume "quoted, not taught". This needs to be safeguarded at both ends: you need to _demonstrate_ that the claim in question is likely to be proverbial &c and you need to check that the claim is not elsewhere used as a basis for doctrine which is relevant to salvation. In _this_ case, however, what we have is a bad translation, _not_ a mistake in the Bible. -- The problem about real life is that moving one's knight to QB3 may always be replied to with a lob across the net. --Alasdair Macintyre.