Ä Area: Separation of Church & State ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
Msg#: 348 Date: 10-14-96 04:52
From: Lenny Flank Read: Yes Replied: No
To: Jim Hansen Mark:
Subj: Separtion of
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
JH>My evidence, as if you didn't already know and are just waiting
JH>for me to say,
JH>is the Bible. A book that after thousands of years has yet to be
JH>proven wrong. Or are you the one who has finally done it?
BWA H AH AHAV HA H AH AHA HA HA AH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Can the Bible Be Taken Literally?
by Lenny Flank
(c) 1995
The entire basis of fundamentalism and scientific creationism, as
the creationists themselves have pointed out, is a belief that the
description of creation in Genesis is literally true, and is a correct
historical description of what happened. And, as we have also
seen, this basis is part of a larger faith that the entire Bible itself
is literally true in all that it says, completely free of error or
contradiction.
The fundamentalists who would have us take "the Bible"
literally are rather unclear about WHICH Bible we should view as
inerrant. In addition to the well-known King James version of the
Bible, there are also the Scofield Bible, the Anchor Bible, the
Revised Standard Bible, and several others. A literal Bible might
be easier to accept if all of these versions read the same, but they
do not. The King James Version, for instance, mentions
"unicorns" in several different places:
"God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of
an unicorn." (Numbers 23:22)
"Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib?"
(Job 39:9)
"His glory is like the firstlings of his bullock; and his horns are
like
the horns of unicorns." (Deuteronomy 33:17)
"He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a
young unicorn." (Psalm 29:6)
Unicorns, however, do not and never have existed. The
references to "horns" and "strength" make it likely that the
original verses probably referred to the auroch or wild ox, which is
now extinct but which lived in the Middle East at the time the Old
Testament was written. And, indeed, some of the other versions of
the Bible translate these verses as referring to "wild oxen" rather
than "unicorns".
Perhaps the most famous example of mistranslation is the
Biblical assertion that Christ was "born of a virgin". The original
Hebrew word here is "almah", which means simply "a young
woman". The Hebrew word that refers specifically to a virgin is
"betulah", but this word is not used here. When the Bible was
translated into Greek, the Hebrew word "almah" was translated
into the Greek "parthenos", which means "virgin". (Spong, 1991,
p. 16) Thus, the original Biblical assertion was that Christ was
"born of a young woman", and this indeed is the way it is
translated in several versions of the Bible.
One verse that is NEVER translated correctly in any version of
the Bible is the very first, Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning, God
created the heavens and the earth." The Hebrew word for "God"
here is "elohim", which is actually the PLURAL of the word, and
literally means "the gods". Thus, an accurate translation of this
would be "In the beginning, the gods created the heavens and the
earth." This verse is only one indication that the monotheistic
religion introduced by the Bible was not always monotheistic.
Several other Biblical verses imply that there are, or used to be,
more than one god. Genesis 1:26 says, "And God said, Let us
make man in our own image, after our likeness." In Genesis 3:22,
God is depicted as saying, "Behold, the man is become as one of
us, to know good and evil." During the description of the Tower of
Babel, God is described as saying, "Go to, let us go down, and here
confound their language." (Genesis 11:17)
There are also indications within the Bible that, just as in the
Greek legends of Hercules, who was half-human and half-god, the
Hebrew gods also sometimes mated with humans: "The sons of
God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took
them wives of all they chose . . . and they bare children to them,
the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown."
(Genesis 6:2-4)
Today, Biblical historians have concluded that Judaism was at
one time a polytheistic religion, until the time when the priests of
the storm god Yahweh gained enough political and religious power
to declare that their god was not only the most powerful god, but
was in fact the only one.
The translation problems of the Bible are not helped by the fact
that often several different versions of Biblical events are present,
each of which appears to have come from a different source. There
are two separate versions of the Creation story, for instance, one
in Genesis 1:1- 2:3 and the other in Genesis 2:4-25. There are
three separate versions of the Ten Commandments, in Exodus
20:2-17, Exodus 34:1-27, and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. Biblical
scholars have concluded that the Pentateuch was not written by a
single person (and none of it was written, as tradition held, by
Moses). Instead, the linguistic and
archeological evidence (including the famed Dead Sea Scrolls)
indicates that the stories of the Bible existed only as oral tradition
for hundreds of years before they were written down, and that
there are at least four separate sources for the text of the Old
Testament, known as the Yahwist source, the Elohist source, the
Priestly source, and the Deuteronomist source, with each section
written at different times. All of these varying sources were edited
together into their final form by an unknown person or persons
known as the Redactor, who probably performed this task in about
400 BC.
The Yahwist source is believed to be the earliest, and probably
lived in the tenth century BC during the time that Solomon was
King of Israel (960-920 BC). He probably lived in the part of the
kingdom known as Judah, and in his narratives he emphasizes
the righteousness and accomplishments of the Israeli monarchy
(which also came from Judah). The Yahwist is believed to have
written large segments of Genesis and Exodus. It is from this
source (known as the "Yahwist" because of his habit of referring to
God by the name "Yahweh") that we get the second of the two
Creation narratives in Genesis. Although Genesis chapter two
appears later in the Bible, it was apparently written earlier than
chapter one. The Yahwist version of the Ten Commandments, for
instance (Exodus 34) makes no mention of Yahweh resting on the
seventh day and blessing it as the Sabbath--apparently because
the seven-day chronology given in the first chapter of Genesis
hadn't been written yet.
The Elohist source (so-called because of his habit of referring to
God as "Eloha", or "The Lord", in accordance with a religious law
then in effect which forbade the use of God's name) lived about
100 years after the Yahwist. He is believed to have been a resident
of the northern part of the Kingdom of Israel, and unlike the
Yahwist source was unsympathetic to the Israeli monarchy (as was
much of the northern kingdom at the time). Some scholars believe
the Elohist was an anti-royalist priest at the shrine of Bethel. The
Elohist source wrote parts of Genesis and Exodus, but apparently
did not write his version of the Creation story. If he did, it has not
been included in the final compilation we know as the Bible.
The Deuteronomist source, as the name implies, wrote much of
the Biblical book of Deuteronomy. The Deuteronomist's materials
first appeared in 621 BC, when a copy of his writings were
reportedly discovered hidden away during repair work at the
temple of Solomon. Although traditionally Moses is held to be the
author of this work, it was most likely prepared by a member or
members of a group of priests who were then agitating for religious
reform in the kingdom, which coincidentally would bring the
priests greater political control over Israel. After it was "found",
the book was taken to King Josiah, who immediately implemented
all of the reforms it called for. The new writings were merged with
those of the Yahwist and Elohist to form most of the Biblical books
of Deuteronomy, Joshua, First and Second Samuel, and First and
Second Kings.
The Priestly sources date from the fall of Jerusalem to
Nebuchadnezzer in 596 BC and the period of Hebrew captivity in
Babylon (587-538 BC). In exile in Babylon, the Hebrew priests
made an effort to keep the culture and religion of their people alive
by a thorough revision of the sacred traditions. The Priestly
source (it is unknown whether this was one man or a group of
priests working together) added large sections to the Bible which
lay out detailed rituals and religious laws, all designed to keep the
religious practices of the Hebrews intact and to prevent them from
becoming culturally assimilated into their Babylonian
surroundings. It is from this source that the complicated
religious rituals of Leviticus were compiled, as well as most of the
books of the prophets. The existing Biblical texts were also edited
to emphasize the importance of religious ritual. The story of Noah,
for instance, was altered. The Yahwist had written: "And of every
living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the
ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.
Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every
creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall
come unto thee to keep them alive." (Genesis 6:19-20) For the
Priestly source, however, it was important that Noah be able to
maintain all of the ritual sacrifices and offerings demanded by
religious law, so to this narrative was added, "Of every clean beast
thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female; and of
beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female."
(Genesis 7:2)
It is from the Priestly source that we get the first chapter of
Genesis, which, although it is first in the Bible, was actually one of
the last parts of the Old Testament to be written. The Priestly
version of the Creation story, which runs from Genesis 1:1 to
Genesis 2:3, presents an entirely different emphasis than the
Yahwist version, found in Genesis 2:4 to 2:25. The Yahwist skips
over the details, so to speak, and, without any explicit chronology
or timetable, simply states that God created the heavens and the
earth and placed Adam there, made in the image of God. The
Priestly source, however, goes into considerable detail about how
and when God created the sun, the moon, and the stars.
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Ä Area: Separation of Church & State ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
Msg#: 349 Date: 10-14-96 04:53
From: Lenny Flank Read: Yes Replied: No
To: Jim Hansen Mark:
Subj: Separtion of
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
In First Samuel 16:1-23, we are told the story of how David
came to be in the court of Saul (and later became King of Israel).
According to this account, God tells Samuel that David will be the
next King. Shortly after, King Saul asks for somebody who can
play the harp, and somebody mentions David, the son of Jesse.
Saul sends for him: "And David came to Saul, and stood before
him; and he loved him greatly, and he became his armorbearer.
And Saul sent to Jesse, saying, Let David, I pray thee, stand
before me, for he hath found favor in my sight. And it came to
pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David
took an harp, and played with his hand, so Saul was refreshed,
and the evil spirit departed from him." (I Samuel 16:21-23)
In the very next chapter, however, we are given a totally
different story of how David came to become a part of Saul's
court--perhaps the most famous story in the Bible, the tale of
David and Goliath. Now, we are told that David's three older
brothers joined Saul's army to fight the Phillistines, and David
went home to watch the sheep (no mention here of David being an
"armor-bearer" in Saul's army). When his father asks him to take
some corn and bread to his brothers at Saul's camp, David arrives
just in time to hear Goliath challenge the Israeli army, and he
asks the people around him why somebody doesn't just kill
Goliath. He is taken before Saul, who, from this account, gives
no sign that he already knew David as the guy who played the
harp and who he "loved greatly". Instead, Saul tells him he can't
fight Goliath because he is just a kid.
David then goes out and kills Goliath, causing King Saul to ask
"Whose son is this youth?" (I Samuel 17:55). David is brought
before Saul, and Saul, apparently having no idea who David is,
asks again, "Whose son art thou, young man?" David answers, "I
am the son of thy servant Jesse the Bethlehemite." (I Samuel
17:58) But this makes no sense. How can Saul not know who
David is, or know that he is the son of Jesse, when just a short
time before he had been smitten by this same David's
harp-playing and begged his father Jesse to let him stay?
Throughout the whole "David and Goliath" story, Saul gives no
sign at all that he already knows David as his armor-bearer, yet
the earlier verses make it clear that this was how Saul met David.
The two accounts are mutually exclusive. Both cannot be right.
These differing accounts become understandable when it is
realized that they are not historical accounts, but oral traditions
which were passed down for hundreds of years before being
written into the Bible at different times and by different people.
In such a process of transmission, errors and omissions are
inevitable. They only become a problem when one attempts to
take these stories as literal historical truth.
Like the Old Testament, the New Testament also existed as oral
tradition for a long period of time before being reduced to writing.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the New Testament is also
riddled with inaccuracies and inconsistencies.
The most glaring inconsistencies (and the ones most difficult
for the literalists to explain away) are found between the Gospels
of Matthew and Luke. Since Biblical prophecy stated that Christ
would be a descendent of King David, both of these gospels trace
Jesus's lineage back to the time of David (and before). However,
these genealogies are not consistent with each other. In Matthew
1:16, we are told that "Jacob begat Joseph, who begat Jesus."
But in Luke 3:23, we are told something totally different: "Heli
begat Joseph, who begat Jesus." To make things worse, the
lineage given by Matthew 1:2-26, traces Christ's ancestry back to
David's son Solomon. But the genealogy given in Luke 3:23-38
makes Christ a descendent of David's son Nathan. Either
the ancestors of Jesus were genetic recombinants, or someone's
genealogy is wrong. On top of this, Matthew lists a total of 55
generations from the patriarch Abraham to Jesus, while Luke lists
only
40 generations between the two.
These are not matters of differing interpretations or theological
dispensations; they are a simple recounting of what purports to be
a historical fact--the ancestry of Christ-- and they do not agree
with
each other. What could be more simple than telling us the name of
Christ's grandfather? Or which former prince of Israel he can trace
his ancestry to? Or how many generations have passed between
Christ and his ancestors? No other conclusion can be reached than that
one of these two writers is wrong. Both of these lineages cannot be
correct. This, of course, is not a problem when one realizes that
neither
of these writers ever met Jesus, and neither had access to any
first-hand
information--one (or perhaps both) of them simply passed on mistaken
information. This is, however, a major problem for those who want to
take the Bible as literally inerrant and historically accurate.
Other inconsistencies between the four gospels abound. Since the
gospel of John was the last book to be written, and was apparently
written independently of the other three, it is not surprising that it
should contradict the others on numerous points. In John 2:13-17, for
instance, the driving out of the money-changers from the temple by
Christ is placed at the beginning of his ministry, just after his
picking
of the Apostles. In all of the other gospels, this incident is
described
as happening just before the crucifixion (Matthew 21:12-13,
Mark 11:15-19, and Luke 19:45-48). John's account places the
miracle of the catch of fish as a post-resurrection event: "This is
now
the third time that Jesus shewed himself to his disciples, after that
he
was risen from the dead." (John 21:14) But Luke describes this as the
incident which caused Peter, James and John to join the disciples at
the
beginning of Christ's ministry (Luke 5:4-7). Matthew 26:17, Mark
14:12
and Luke 22:17 all describe the Last Supper as being the Passover
meal--but John 13:1-9 describes it as taking place the week before
Passover.
There are also inconsistencies between the other gospels.
Matthew,
for instance, is the only one of the gospels to mention the miraculous
star over Bethlehem. (Matthew 2:1-2) In Mark 10:35-37, we read:
"And
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came unto him, saying, Master, we
would that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we desire. And he said
unto them, What would ye that I should do for you? They said unto him,
Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on
thy left hand, in glory." But in Matthew 20:20-21, there is a
different
version of this story: "Then came to him the mother of Zebedee's
children with her sons, worshipping him and desiring a certain thing of
him. And he said unto her, What wilt thou? She saith unto him, Grant
that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, the other
on
the left, in thy kingdom." Here, it is James and John's mother which
makes this request, not the disciples themselves.
Again, none of these discrepancies are disturbing if we remember
that these were oral traditions that were passed down for decades
before
being written. But for the Biblical literalists, they present
embarrassing problems of consistency.
Even more disturbing to the literalist fundamentalists (as well
as
the creationists) are those passages of the Bible which deal directly
with verifiable history. The Bible is rife with passages which are
simply not historically accurate. In Daniel 1:1, we read: "In the
third year of the reign of Jehoiakin . . . came Nebuchadnezzer . . .
unto
Jerusalem, and besieged it." From archeological data, we know that
Jehoiakin began his reign in the year 609 BC, thus this Biblical siege
must have taken place in 606 BC. But Nebuchadnezzer wasn't even the
King of Babylon in 606 BC, and he didn't attack Jerusalem for the
first
time until 597 BC (Asimov, 1968, p. 599) Another passage in Daniel
5:1-2 states: "Belshazzar the King . . . commanded to bring forth the
gold and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzer had
taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem." Belshazzar was
indeed
a historical figure, but he was not Nebuchadnezzer's son and he was
not
the King--he was a viceroy to Nebuchadnezzer's son King Amel-Murduk.
(Asimov, 1968, p. 605)
The prophet Ezekiel predicted that Nebuchadnezzer would take the
city of Tyrus (Tyre) and sack it: "For thus saith the Lord thy God;
Behold, I will bring upon Tyrus Nebuchadnezzer king of Babylon . . .
and
he shall set engines of war against thy walls, and with his axes he
shall break down thy towers." (Ezekiel 26:7-9) Nebuchadnezzer,
however,
never conquered Tyre--he was forced to lift his siege after fifteen
years of fighting. (Asimov, 1968, p. 588) Ezekiel also predicted
that
Egypt would be conquered and made a subordinate kingdom: "And I will
bring again the captivity of Egypt, and will cause them to return into
the land of Pathros, into the land of their habitation; and they shall
be there a base kingdom". (Ezekiel 29:14) This never happened.
There are also many incidents described in the Bible which have no
extra-Biblical confirmation--and some of these are the most famous
stories of the Bible. In Daniel 4:33, we are told that Nebuchadnezzer
was afflicted by God when he didn't repent his sinful ways: "He was
driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with
the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagle's feathers,
and
his nails like bird's claws." Had such an affliction suddenly struck
the king of Babylon, the most powerful man on earth at the time,
someone
would certainly have noticed, but there is no mention of such an
incident
in any Babylonian, Sumerian or any other Middle Eastern records.
Similarly, when the sun stood still at God's command so that Joshua's
Israeli army could finish slaughtering the Amorites (Joshua 10:12-14),
such an extraordinary event would have been noticed by people all over
the globe, yet there is no written record of such an event outside of
the Bible--not a word from Mayan astronomers or Chinese astrologers or
anybody else.
Likewise, there are no records anywhere in the voluminous Egyptian
hieroglyphic records of any Biblical Plagues (surely the Egyptians
would
have noticed if all of their first-born children died--it would have
decimated the country and left Egypt a shattered state ripe for
conquest). There are no extra-Biblical records of a non-Egyptian aide
to the Pharaoh named Joseph, and no Sumerian, Babylonian or Assyrian
records of the sudden destruction of the cities of Sodom and
Gomorrah.
In the New Testament, Matthew describes the "slaughter of the
innocents", in which Herod tries to eliminate the Christ child by
killing every male under three years old. There are no records of
such
an incident in any Jewish, Roman or Greek historical records of the
period, and this slaughter is not even mentioned in any of the other
books of the Bible. It does, however, have remarkable parallels with
the earlier Biblical story of the birth of Moses (where another leader
tries to have a prophesied rival eliminated by killing children--and
which also has no extra-Biblical references). Most Biblical scholars
believe that Matthew cribbed the Herod story and based it on the
account of Moses.
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Ä Area: Separation of Church & State ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
Msg#: 350 Date: 10-14-96 04:56
From: Lenny Flank Read: Yes Replied: No
To: Jim Hansen Mark:
Subj: Separtion of
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
To the creation "scientists", of course, the crux of the matter
is
the Bible's reliability as it applies to scientific matters,
particularly to the events described in Genesis. But here, too, the
Bible demonstrates itself to be no more sophisticated than were the
simple goat-herders who wrote it. In First Kings 7:23, we are told of
a large vessel that was made for King Solomon: "And he made a molten
sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other . . . and a line of
thirty cubits did encompass it round about." (I Kings 7:23) The ratio
of the diameter of a circle to its circumference is known as "pi", and
pi has a numeric value of approximately 3.15 . Thus, a circular
vessel of diameter ten cubits would have measured about 31.5 cubits
round, not 30 as described here (and if the vessel were not circular,
the circumference would have been even larger). Either the
measurements cited here are incorrect, or the Bible is claiming that
the value of pi is 3.0 . This, of course, is a trivial matter to most
of us--the unsophisticated Biblical writers, who had no idea what "pi"
even represented, simply gave the wrong measurements. But to the
Biblical literalists, who view the Bible as historically and
scientifically inerrant, it is inexplicable. They prefer not to talk
about the fact that the Bible gives the wrong value for pi.
In Leviticus 11:13-19, as part of the dietary restrictions
imposed
on the Jews, we see another example of the unsophisticated view which
the Biblical authors took towards the natural world: "And these are
they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall
not
be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and
the osprey, and the vulture, and the kite after his kind; every raven
after his kind; And the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and
the hawk after his kind, and the little owl, and the cormorant, and
the
great owl, and the swan, and the pelican, and the gier eagle, and the
stork, the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the bat."
Bats,
of course, are NOT birds, but to the unsophisticated Hebrew tribesmen,
anything with two wings that flew was "a fowl". Further in these
dietary laws, the Bible makes the surprising assertion that some
insects have only four legs: "Even of these may ye eat of every
flying creeping thing that goes upon all four, which have legs above
their feet, to leap withal upon the earth; the locust after his kind,
and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and
the grasshopper after his kind. But all other flying creeping things
which have four feet, shall be an abomination unto you." (Leviticus
13:22-23) Grasshoppers and beetles certainly are "flying creeping
things", but they have never had only four feet.
Another place where the Bible makes a mish-mash of science is
Genesis 30:31-43. In this story, we are told that Jacob is given the
opportunity to take all of the livestock from Laban which are spotted
or striped and keep them. To insure a better take, we are told, Jacob
cleverly took willow sticks and carved them into a striped and
spotted
pattern, "And he set the rods which he had piled before the flocks in
the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink,
that
they should conceive when they came to drink. And the flocks
conceived
before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled
and spotted." (Genesis 30:38-39) In other words, Jacob, by allowing
cattle to view spotted sticks during the act of mating, was able to
induce them to produce spotted cattle, which is just as impossible as
producing striped human babies by having sex in front of a barber
pole.
Today, with our knowledge of genetics, we know this Biblical story to
be scientific nonsense, but to the ancient Hebrew herders, such
"magic" was widely accepted and was not questioned.
In fact, the Bible accepts completely the primitive view of these
ancient pastoral societies. The earth was assumed to be flat, with
the
sun revolving around it and the stars embedded in the "firmament", a
hard dome that covered the earth. Above the firmament was Heaven. It
was because of this world-view that the ancient Hebrews saw no
problems
with the story of Joshua commanding the sun to stop in the sky (the
sun, of course, doesn't move around the earth). Similarly, those
Biblical verses which indicated that the earth was immovable and flat
were not questioned until the time of Galileo. In Daniel 4:10-11, we
are told of a vision in which Daniel sees "a tree in the midst of the
earth, and the height thereof was great. The tree grew, and was
strong, and the height thereof reached unto heaven, and the sight
thereof to the end of all the earth." On a sphere such as the planet
Earth, it is impossible to see "to the end of all" from any one spot,
no matter how high. But, since the writers of the Bible believed the
world to be flat, this presented no problems. Similarly, in Psalms
104:5, the poet writes that God "laid the foundations of the earth,
that it should not move forever". The earth, of course, DOES
move--and a sphere has no "foundation". But, since the Psalmist
believed that the earth was flat and rooted to a fixed spot, this
presented no problems either.
On two occasions, the Bible leaves the realm of reality
altogether, and asserts that humans and animals have conversed
together in spoken language. In Numbers 22, we find the story of
Balaam, who was riding a donkey when the road was blocked by an angel
that only the donkey could see. When the donkey refused to move
ahead, Balaam whipped it, whereupon the donkey turned and said to him,
"What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three
times?" Balaam, rather than falling off the donkey in astonishment
(what would YOU do if your dog suddenly turned to you and told you to
stop hitting him for peeing on the rug?), instead calmly explains that
he wished he had a sword so he could kill the donkey. Whereupon the
donkey talks again, and says, "Am I not thine ass, upon which thou
hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? Was I ever wont to
do so unto thee?" (Numbers 22:28-30) Needless to say, donkeys do
not, and never have, talked, and lack all the physical traits
necessary for speech.
The most famous of all the talking animals is the serpent in
Genesis, which is supposed to have talked to Eve: "Now the serpent
was
more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.
And he said unto the woman, Yea, Hath God said, Ye shall not eat of
every tree of the garden?. And the woman said unto the serpent, We
may
eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the
tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not
eat of it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall
not surely die." (Genesis 3:1-4)
Snakes, of course, have no vocal cords or other physical
prerequisites for speech. Biblical literalists often attempt to
explain away this absurdity by postulating that the serpent was really
Satan in disguise. This, however, is undermined by the fact that God
curses the serpent for tempting Eve, and makes the serpent crawl on
its
belly as punishment (a Christian version of a Kipling "just-so"
story--"why the snake has no legs"). If indeed it was Satan tempting
Eve, and not really a talking snake, then why did God curse the poor
innocent serpent for something it could not have done? As Clarence
Darrow pointed out during the Scopes trial, the whole "serpent" story
is impossible to take as a literal description of an actual event.
During his cross-examination of William Jennings Bryan concerning the
literal accuracy of the Bible, Darrow asked Bryan, " 'Upon thy belly
thou shalt go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.' Do
you think that is why the serpent is compelled to crawl upon its
belly?" Bryan answered, "I believe that." Darrow asked, "Have you
any idea how the snake went before that time?" Bryan answered, "No
sir." Darrow asked, "Do you know whether he walked on his tail or
not?" Bryan, to the laughter of the crowd, answered, "No sir, I have
no way to know." (Wills, 1990, p. 23)
One other item in Genesis makes a literal reading impossible.
According to the creationist time scale, God created the universe in
six days, as recorded by Genesis. After each act of creation, the
Bible intones, "And the evening and the morning were the first day".
A "day", of course, is measured by the revolution of the earth near
the sun. But, according to Genesis, the sun wasn't created until the
fourth
"day", and the "day" wasn't divided from the "night" until then.
(Genesis 1:14) What meaning, then, can the word "day" have
when applied to the period of time before this?
The old-earth creationists, of course, have postulated that the
"days" mentioned in Genesis are really indeterminately long periods of
time (the Hebrew word translated as "day" is "yom", which can mean "a
length of time" as well as a "day"). Assuming that each "day" was
really several hundred million years, however (as the day-age
creationists do) only raises other problems. According to the
Biblical
account, plants were created on the third "day", while the sun wasn't
created until the fourth "day". If each "day" were really a long
period of millions of years, it would have been impossible for plants
to have existed before the sun was created, since plants are dependent
upon photosynthesis for survival.
It is simply not possible to take the Genesis story literally,
any
more than it is possible to take the Flood story or any other part of
the Bible as inerrant. The Bible is not a history book and not a
science text--it is a spiritual book that deals with theological and
spiritual matters. To attempt to force the Bible into literal
inerrancy on historical and scientific matters is to distort it and
cheapen it, and such attempts inevitably turn Christianity into a
laughingstock. Just as we remember with contempt the Inquisition's
attempts to stop the spread of Galileo's heretical notion that the
earth moved around the sun, so will future historians view the
Biblical literalists' attempts to stop the teaching of evolutionary
"heresy".
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