hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu (07/21/89)
I'm sort of surprised you haven't ever had a response to your request for Biblical errors. There are a number of sort of standard lists. Some classic ones are: - Gen 4. traces all shepherds and musicians to the sons of Enoch. Unfortunately, Noah's flood destroyed all but Noah's family, and Noah was a descendant of Seth. - In I Cor 10:8, Paul quotes Num 25:1-9. Unfortunately he gets the number of people who died slightly wrong. - In the Resurrection account: Mat: an angel opens the tomb while the women are there. Jesus is not, but will meet them in Galilee. Mark: when they arrive the stone is already rolled away. A young man is there. Jesus is not, but will meet them in Galilee. Luke: when they arrive the stone is already rolled away. Two men dressed in dazzling clothes are there. Jesus is not. Reference to Galilee is somewhat different. John: the stone is already rolled away. Two angels and Jesus are there. - Acts 9:26-30 is very hard to reconcile with Gal 1:16-19. It almost sounds like Paul had heard to account that lies behind Acts and is denying it. This is obviously just a sample. None of these have any doctrinal importance. They just go to show that what we've got is ordinary historical reporting, not some sort of superhumanly accurate reporting. I have yet to see anything in Scripture that says that there are no errors of fact. Just that Scripture may be relied on for our faith. That this implies inerrancy is a deduction based on a supposition that is not itself in Scripture. This supposition is that in order to be useful for faith, we must be able to utilize it without making any decisions. This idea of the way God wants Christians to act seems contrary to everything we know about him. You might want to look at the passages you quoted in more than one translation. I checked a number of translations, and Ps 138:2 doesn't say that his word is above his name in any of them. (Even if it did, it's not clear that it would imply inerrancy in the modern sense.) NJPS comments that the Hebrew of this passage in unclear, so it may be that scholars in different periods guess its meaning differently. 2 Pe 1:16-19 certainly talks about the transfiguration confirming the prophecies (presumably OT) about Jesus. But I don't see where you get that the word is more sure than the voice of God. Again, even if all these passages really said these things, the question is what it means for Scripture to be sure. I'm not arguing that Scripture is inaccurate. Just that it's accurate in the same sense that any human product can be said to be accurate. I agree with you that it is to be seen a both a produce of human work and of God. But as far as I can see, God allowed the biblical authors to operate in fully human fashion. As for the fear that this view somehow robs the Bible of its usefulness, you may want to look more carefully at what the problems really are in dealing with the Bible. Sure, there are people who think that Jesus' resurrection, etc., are all mythological additions. But the view that scripture is "substantially accurate" takes the same position you do on such questions. In fact if you look back over the discussions here and in talk.religion.misc, I think you'll see that the difference between inerrancy and "substantial accuracy" would never have affected the outcome. The real issues in dealing with Scripture aren't claimed errors, but rather differences in how to apply things addressed to 1st Cent. readers to 20th Cent. contexts. The debates over the role of women, homosexuals, etc., aren't really whether Paul's advice is wrong. Rather, the question is whether his advice was tailored to the specifics of the people he was addressing, and would be different in our situation. Inerrancy per se doesn't answer that. The debates over Christian attitudes to the Law again weren't over whether the Bible was authoritative, but over what it said. The problem with strict inerrancy is that anybody who looks at the first three Gospels can easily see that in the literal sense they aren't consistent (just to take an example). Not that there's any significant difference. But that if you try to think of them as tape recordings of the exact words Jesus said, they can't be. Take a look through something like "Gospel Parallels" sometime. (It places correponding passages from the gospels side by side.) The more extreme inerrant position ends up trying to harmonize obviously differing accounts, as in the case of the resurrection cited above. This does Christianity terrible harm. It suggests to people that you can't be a Christian unless you're willing to close your eyes to facts. The level of factual error on the Bible is so low that it would have no significance whatever, if we just didn't try to deny it. There are people who talk about inerrancy, but really seem to mean something else. What they really mean is what I call "immediate applicability". For example, we can take Paul's advice on social issues and apply it to the 20th Cent. without further consideration. This is really separable from inerrancy, because the issue isn't one of error.
jhpb@garage.att.com (Joseph H. Buehler) (07/31/89)
I am rather puzzled by one of the examples our moderator gave of supposed errors in Sacred Scripture. As a Catholic, I am required to believe in the inerrancy of Scripture in a very strong sense. (The details are perhaps too complicated to go into at the moment.) The particular example of the Resurrection passages must be a standard exercise in the harmonization of the Gospels by now. This was brought up in t.r.m some time back, though I didn't have a harmonization at hand. Well, now I do, so here's a harmonization of the four Gospels for Easter Sunday morning, from the Catholic Encyclopedia article on the Resurrection. (Scripture references ommitted for brevity's sake.) -------- 1. The holy women carrying the spices previously prepared start out for the sepulchre before dawn, and reach it after sunrise; they are anxious about the heavy stone, but know nothing of the official guard of the sepulchre. 2. The angel frightened the guards by his brightness, put them to flight, rolled away the stone, and seated himself above the stone. 3. Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James, and Salome approach the sepulchre, and see the stone rolled back, whereupon Mary Magdalene immediately returns to inform the Apostles. 4. The other two holy women enter the sepulchre, find an angel seated in the vestibule, who shows them the empty sepulchre, announces the Resurrection, and commissions them to tell the disciples and Peter that they shall see Jesus in Galilee. 5. A second group of holy women, consisting of Joanna and her companions, arrive at the sepulchre, where they have probably agreed to meet the first group, enter the empty interior, and are admonished by two angels that Jesus has risen according to His prediction. 6. Not long after, Peter and John, who were notified by Mary Magdalene, arrive at the sepulchre and find the linen cloth in such a position as to exclude the supposition that the body was stolen; for they lay simply flat on the ground, showing that the sacred body had vanished out of them without touching them. When John notices this, he believes. 7. Mary Magdalene returns to the sepulchre, sees first two angels within, and then Jesus Himself. 8. The two groups of pious women, who probably met on their return to the city, are favoured with the sight of Christ arisen, who commissions them to tell his brethren that they will see Him in Galilee. 9. The holy women relate their experiences to the Apostles, but find no belief. 10. Jesus appears to the disciples at Emmaus, and they return to Jerusalem; the Apostles appear to waver between doubt and belief. 11. Christ appears to Peter, and therefore Peter and John firmly believe in the Resurrection. 12. After the return of the disciples from Emmaus, Jesus appears to all the Apostles excepting Thomas. -------- If you haven't seen the like before, now you know how harmonization attempts work. Any particular Evangelist doesn't always relate everything that happened. To get the whole picture, you sometimes have to look at all four. You also have to be careful about people, etc., that at first appear to be identical in the various passages but in fact may not be. [Of course I've seen harmonization before. Some of the details can in fact be handled that way. However not all can. Mat. says that the two Marys went to the tomb. I suppose Salome could be a "detail", but I think that stretches things a bit. Your harmonization isn't clear about whether the women were present when the angel rolled away the stone. Mark says clearly that when they arrived it had already happened. Mat says clearly that they saw it happen. What bothers me about harmonization is that it leads people to adopt unlikely interpretations of the text in order to avoid these problems. --clh]
jhpb@granjon.garage.att.com (07/30/90)
Chuck Hedrick (our moderator) wrote:
The largest group that does not accept inerrancy is the Catholic
Church.
Which is curious. I may not understand what you meant by "inerrancy".
Here is some official Catholic teaching on the subject:
From the encyclical letter of Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, 1893, on
the study of Sacred Scripture:
The books, all and entire, which the Church accepts as sacred and
canonical, with all their parts, have been written at the dictation
of the Holy Spirit; so far is it from the possibility of any error
being present to divine inspiration, that it of itself not only
excludes all error, but excludes it and rejects it as necessarily as
it is necessary that God, the highest Truth, be the author of no
error whatsoever.
(Please don't anyone get too worked up over the word "dictation" in that
paragraph. I am quoting passages dealing with inerrancy, not the
meaning or mode of inspiration. The word "dictation" is not being used
in a literal sense here.) (I am also not going into the exact meaning
of "inerrancy".)
The following proposition was condemned in a famous 1907 decree of the
Holy Office concerning the "Errors of the Modernists":
11. Divine inspiration does not so extend to all Sacred Scripture
that it fortifies each and every part of it against all error.
Benedict XV also issued an encyclical on Sacred Scripture on the 15th
centenary of the death of St. Jerome (1920), called Spiritus Paraclitus,
which goes into some detail on Catholic doctrine of inerrancy. I will
not quote it for brevity's sake.
Joe Buehler
[The question is what it means to be free of error. My classification
of the Catholic Church as rejecting inerrancy is based on two things:
a detailed treatment of the doctrine on inspiration in the material
accompanying the New American Bible, and observation of recent
Catholic Biblical scholarship.
The article in the NAB (which comes with an imprimatur) quotes Prov.
Deus of Leo XIII as allowing for scientific errors. It says that God
was not trying to teach science, but salvation, and spoke of material
things "according to their appearances". It comments that Benedict
XV, in Spir. Par., rejected the equivalent treatment of historical
matters on a blanket basis, as history was often part of the message
being conveyed. However it left open the nature of the historical
truth in the Bible. Pius XII in Divino Afflanto Spiritu asked
scholars to look into the issue for the OT. Verbum Dei of the 2nd
Vatican Council emphasizes the salvific character of revelation. The
NAB prefatory material goes on to suggest a model of revelation that
emphsizes what the authors, and God through them, was trying to say.
Thus matters are inerrant only to the extent that they are affirmed by
the authors. This means considering what point the author is trying
to make, and what degree of certainty is indicated. The authors are
free to venture opinions and even make guesses, and I get the
impression that material referred to in passing but not crucial to the
point being made is not necessary considered inerrant.
In fact Catholic scholars participate in the general Biblical
scholarly community. I've read a number of commentaries by Catholic
authors, all with imprimaturs. I'd say that they are generally at the
conservative end of those who reject inerrancy. The article quoted
above seems to characterize pretty accurately the basis on which the
Catholic scholars I've read seem to be operating.
--clh]rmurtha@uunet.uu.net (Rob Murtha - Lotus) (08/06/90)
Has anyone read a book called The Two Babylons? It supposedly reveals many of the roots of catholic traditions. Rob rmurtha@voyager.lotus.com [It's a notorious anti-Catholic smear. There are plenty of real differences between Protestants and Catholics to worry about, without involving this. The best place to learn about Catholics is from talking to Catholics and reading sources such as the Catholic Encyclopedia. They aren't exactly secret about their ideas. --clh]