Innerrancy - an open request for help

Strange gymnastics, straining at a knat and
swallowing a camel.
The KJV is wrong, the unclean animal is
NOT the English hare (American rabbit).
the LORD is correct.
The author of Liviticus (ulitmately the LORD
anyway) is correct.

Now go back and read my first rabbit post,
rabbit nibbler

 

Mark Osgatharp: "If you assert that this statment is scientfically inaccurate then you must either:

a. Assert that the Lord made a mistake or....

b. The writer of Leviticus lied when he said that the Lord spoke these words to Moses.

Either way, you are in deep theological trouble."

There is a third posibility, and i'm not in theological trouble.
In fact, i've ascended the theological highground
and won't be turning off the practical minded LIKE YOU DO.

The KJV has an error in it.
The American rabbit, the English hare is
a clean animal, not a cud chewer.

 

Amen, Brother Daniel. I see no problem with a presupposition
that "the Bible is inerrant."
But you can see from my poll
the wide divergance in how folk
define "inerrant.".

http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=4;t=001037

However, if inerrancy is axiomatic, then
if there appears to be a conflict, then
we just note our lack of understanding.
Some would like to limit the conflict/potential
discrepancies to one English version only.
Why not between versions as well?

 

Ed,

Did I say that the animal spoken of was the "English hare"? I wasn't even commenting about the accuracy or inaccuracy of the English translation.

I was commenting on the fact that if this passage is scientifically inaccurate then it is also theologically inaccurate. You apparently do not question the accuracy of the statement and therefore I have no argument with you about it.

I do, however, have a great argument with those who contend (and there are many that do) that such a passage can be scientifically inaccurate without effecting it's theological accuracy.

Mark Osgatharp

 

Are you familiar with the 48-hour day? (i have yet to find it in the dictionary).

 

I have no idea what you are talking about.

Mark Osgatharp

 

I have no idea what you are talking about.

Mark Osgatharp </font>[/QUOTE]I take this then
as your confession that you are not
capable of judging scientific accuracy
or inaccurcy.

You are possibly familiar with the
24-hour day on the Earth which is measured
at one point. If you measure a particular
day all over
the earth, you get a 48-hour day.
That is, a particular day
(like today: 10 Oct 2003) lasts for
48-hours, considering the earth as a whole.
About 17 hours and 20 minutes before
this post, the day Friday, 10 Oct 2003
started just west of the International
Date Line. This day Friday, 10 Oct 2003
will end in 30 hours and 40 minutes just
east of the International Date line.

Needless to say, there are other definitions
of "day". There is the 8-hour work day.
There is the 12-hour daylight day.
There is "day - 8. the appropriate time"
Strangely, in the Bible, especially in
prophetic writings "day8" is the
day spoken about.

I also note one of the meanings of hour
is "the appropriate time". This is nearly
always the definiton of the "hour"
in Bible prophecy. So here is a
a Bible prophecy equation:
hour = day
Isn't God's economy wonderful!

I am nothing.
I + Jesus is everything.
Isn't God's economy wonderful!

And good morning

 

Bzzzt. There are several other explanations.

A. This creature is not what we know today as a rabbit.

B. A translator made a mistake.

C. A scribe made an copying error.

D. This creature is a rabbit and the text is referring to the fact that rabbits eat their own dung, since the Hebrew can just as easily be translated as "it brings up and eats something of little value" (the word translated "cud" can be translated as many things, including even "berry").

E. Some other possible explanation.

F. You are intent on discrediting the accuracy of the Bible and will reject any explanation regardless.

 

So your advice is to rescue the concept of inerrancy by whatever means necessary. Inerrancy can always be "rescued" with sufficent skill and diligence and assumptions.

But then we become guilty of telling the scripture what it must be saying rather than letting the scripture say what it plainly says. Some of us don't want to do that. We respect the scripture too much to do that.

 

Given that the Hebrew translation of "rabbit" is disputable, and that "chew the cud" is an approximation of the Hebrew concept, it is the critic who focuses on this silly issue who is guilty of telling the scripture what it must be saying.

To put it quite bluntly, you (the editorial you) are saying "Because an English translation reads this way, this creature mentioned must certainly refer not only to a rabbit, but it must be exactly the kind of rabbit I know. I also know that the Hebrew should not only be translated as chew the cude, but that act of chewing the cud must only be exactly as I conceive of it, which is the way a cow chews cud, and it cannot possibly mean anything else. I not only know that this text is translated perfectly according to my conception of how it should be translated, I also know (ostensibly because I was there when every copy was made) no scribal error has ever occurred in this case. Therefore the Bible itself has an error."

 

If it were only a matter of this very one passage about rabbits you might have a case but the phenomenon is spread over many passages and many many questionable rescues of the difficulties. Myself, I prefer to start with grasshopper leg counting, somebody else picked the rabbit thing.

 

Both the grasshopper and the rabbit examples are symptoms of the same problem. As it is noted in many Bibles in the footnotes, the precise identification of the animals and insects is uncertain. These problems aren't likely to ever be resolved unless someone stumbles across a document from the same period (when Leviticus was written, for example) that clearly identifies the insects/animals with the same words. Since the meaning of the original word is uncertain, to take the English word and base your conclusion on it is severely faulty reasoning.

There are many reasons you will find "apparent" errors in the Bible.

Since we do not have the original texts, we can only assume that they may have been without error. I take it on faith that they were without error, but without the texts themselves, there's no way to prove it.

Given the manuscripts we now have compared to the abundance of historical manuscripts, the consistency and integrity of the text is remarkable. But there is no question that there are several minor scribal errors that have occurred over time. That is clear from the manuscript evidence itself. The "brother of Goliath" is an excellent example of this. A parallel passage omits "brother of" in today's translations, but the "brother of" appears exactly where you'd expect it in the Septuagint. The Septuagint was translated using earlier Hebrew manuscripts than what we currently have available, hence the manuscript evidence suggest that at some point a copyist accidentally omitted "brother of" in the Hebrew scrolls.

There are also several translation issues that result in silly disputes over doctrine. One ridiculous complaint I often see is the claim that the Bible says God created evil. The critic invariably quotes the KJV for evidence, because that's where it says God created evil, But the KJV was translated during a time when people used the word "evil" to describe virtually anything unpleasant, i.e., "The room had an evil odor." Nobody would claim the odor was sinful or had malicious intent, which is how "evil" is used today. Fortunately, the Hebrew word is more accurately translated as "calamity" or something similar in most modern translations.

The principle is the same no matter which problem you raise. Whether the disputed word or phrase is the result of a scribal error, a poor translation, a guessed word (like rabbit or locust) because the original meaning is uncertain, a misunderstood translation because the word had a different usage when the translation was made, a poor translation because there is no perfect equivalent in English (common in both the OT and NT), or what have you, it is ludicrous to point to these trivial problems and use them to discredit the integrity of the Bible. It is even more ludicrous to do so without first educating yourself on the possible reasons these problems exist.

 

Actually there are other possibilities, too. As I pointed out elsewhere, the word could actually refer to a rabbit as we know rabbits. The Hebrew for "chew the cud" is literally translated, "raising up what has been swallowed" or even "raising up something of little value". Rabbits do something called refection, which has the same purpose as chewing the cud. They chew some of their own partially-digested droppings to get the remaining nutrients, which is "raising up what has been swallowed".

 

Actually there are other possibilities, too. </font>[/QUOTE]Yes, thank you.
You have a complete list, whereas
mine were sugestive only.

 

Bzzzt. There are several other explanations.</font>[/QUOTE]None of which have any bearing on my point. As a matter of fact, I pointed out in my post that it is uncertain what animal was being referenced in the passage. But whatever animal it was either chewed the cud or didn't.

My point, then, remains; that if the passage is in scientific error, then it does have deep theological ramifications.

This is sheer speculation and very dangerous speculation at that. If every time the Bible says something that we don't like or understand we say "it was mis-copied" then we have begun to make the Bible over in our own image.

Since I know the Bible to be God's word and without error, I am content to say that whatever animal was referenced by the Hebrew term did whatever the Hebrew meant by "chew the cud". I don't have to know the particulars because I am not under that law anyway and don't have to decide which animals to eat or not to eat.

However, the man who still contends that the passage is in error must admit that it is more than a technical error; it is an error that either makes God ignorant or Moses a liar.

Mark Osgatharp

 

Again, a false dichotomy. There are in fact
numberous options.

 

Both the grasshopper and the rabbit examples are symptoms of the same problem. As it is noted in many Bibles in the footnotes, the precise identification of the animals and insects is uncertain. These problems aren't likely to ever be resolved unless someone stumbles across a document from the same period (when Leviticus was written, for example) that clearly identifies the insects/animals with the same words . . . </font>[/QUOTE]I'm afraid the grasshopper legs item is more robust than that. Check out the scriptures:

Lev 11:22-23 "These of them you may eat: the locust in its kinds, and the devastating locust in its kinds, and the cricket in its kinds, and the grasshopper in its kinds. But all other winged insects which are four-footed are detestable to you." (NASU)

You can see that ALL flying insects are referred to here. Some that are clean and others that are not. News flash - There are NO FLYING CREATURES THAT HAVE FOUR FEET - none at all. Not on THIS planet, anyway. Well, there are some gliders. "flying" squirrels and some "flying" frogs somewhere in South America, but those are clearly not involved in this passage.

Previous defenders of inerrancy on this board have invented out of the air a new catagory of creatures, those with four legs or more. There is no evidence that Hebrews ever used that catagory of thinking except for these verses. That means, of course, that the rescuers of inerrancy have transparantly engaged in inerrancy rescue interpretation. They do this over and over to the point that one begins to realize they can rescue anything they want to. Which then raises the interesting question in my mind - why do they oppose the findings of science concerning evolution and the age of the universe? For they could rescue the inerrancy interpretation in the light of these facts as well, if they wanted to.

As for myself, I approach the scriptures far to respectfully to engage in mere rescue interpretations.

 

I am way more pious than thou art

 

Hmmph. I'll have you know I've walked on water on more than one occasion. Of course, it was frozen at the time . . .

 

Not only that about walking on water
under extreme stress
I pass water