New International Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Zondervan Understand the Bible Reference)

652 Pages·2001·3.74 MB·English

New International
ENCYCLOPEDIA
OF BIBLE
DIFFICULTIES
Based on the NIV and the NASB
Gleason L. Archer
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Foreword
Preface
How to Use This Encyclopedia
Recommended Procedures in Dealing With Bible Difficulties
Introduction: The Importance of Biblical Inerrancy
The Pentateuch
Genesis
Exodus
Leviticus
Numbers
Deuteronomy
Joshua
Judges
Ruth
1 Samuel
2 Samuel
1 Kings
2 Kings
1 Chronicles
2 Chronicles
Ezra
Nehemiah
Esther
Job
Psalms
Proverbs
Ecclesiastes
Song of Solomon
Isaiah
Jeremiah
Ezekiel
Daniel
Hosea
Joel
Amos
Obadiah
Jonah
Zechariah
Malachi
The New Testament and the Old Testament
The Synoptic Gospels
Matthew
Mark
Luke
John
Acts
Romans
1 Corinthians
Galatians
Ephesians
Colossians
2 Thessalonians
1 Timothy
2 Timothy
Hebrews
1 Peter
2 Peter
1 John
Jude
Revelation
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Copyright
About the Publisher
Share Your Thoughts
Foreword
Dr. Gleason Archer has written this encyclopedia to show that there is
nothing in the Bible inconsistent with the claim that it is the inerrant
Word of God. In the last century this doctrine has increasingly come
under sharp criticism. Unfortunately Christians who oppose the doctrine
of biblical inerrancy usually misunderstand it. In most cases they
gleaned their view of what it means from an uninstructed Sunday school
teacher or an overenthusiastic radio preacher. Perhaps they have never
had the occasion to consult the work of a serious-minded scholar.
Readers will soon discover that the view of inerrancy set forth by Dr.
Archer is the historical position of the church in all of its major
branches. Behind it stand the illustrious names of Augustine, Aquinas,
John of Damascus, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and a host of others. Put
quite simply, this view of inerrancy holds that the Bible tells us truth
and never says what is not so.
It might be helpful to begin by dispelling some of the most common
misunderstandings of biblical inerrancy. Evangelicals do not try to prove
that the Bible has no mistakes so that they can be sure the Bible is the
Word of God. One might prove that a newspaper article is free from all
mistakes, but that would not prove that the newspaper article is the
Word of God. Christians hold the Bible to be the Word of God (and
inerrant) because they are convinced that Jesus, the Lord of the church,
believed it and taught His disciples to believe it. And ultimately their
conviction of its truth rests on the witness of the Holy Spirit.
Likewise evangelicals do not hold that inerrant inspiration eliminates
the human element in the production of the Bible. True, evangelicals
have stressed the divine authorship of Scripture because this is most
frequently denied and it is this that gives Scripture its unique
importance. But informed evangelicals have always insisted on a truly
human authorship of Scripture. Even those who were willing to use the
word dictation (as did Calvin and the Tridentine Council of the Roman
Catholic church) always made very clear that they were not referring to
the model of a boss dictating to a stenographer. Rather, they meant to
stress the divine (as well as human) responsibility for the words of
Scripture and that the inscripturated words are just as truly God’s
authoritative words as though He had dictated them.
One could argue (illogically) that God could prevent the biblical
writers from error only by eliminating their freedom and their humanity,
but evangelicals have not so argued. Rather, the Bible is both a
thoroughly human and a thoroughly divine product. As a divine product
it possesses absolute authority over the minds and hearts of believers. As
a human product it displays within itself all of the essential marks of its
human writing. No doubt God could have given us a Bible in the perfect
language of heaven, but then who of us would have understood it? He
chose to communicate his will to us through the imperfect medium of
human language with all its possibilities for misinterpretation and
misunderstanding. On the other hand the gift of language is one of our
most trustworthy means of communicating our wishes and our ideas to
one another. God, therefore, chose to communicate to us through this
imperfect instrument of human language.
In writing the Bible, its authors used figures of speech, allegory,
symbolic language, and the various genre of literature employed by
other human authors. Moreover, because they wrote in the language of
the common man of two or more millennia ago, they frequently chose
not to provide specific technical data where that was not important to
their purpose. Never do they speak in the vocabulary of modern science.
They felt no more obligation to be precise and exact in many of their
statements than we do in our ordinary conversation. Divine inspiration
guaranteed only the truth of what they wrote. God preserved them from
error both of ignorance and of deception. But He did not prevent them
from speaking as humans. And only if we take the ridiculous and self-
contradictory position that error is essential to all human speaking and
writing, can we insist that the true humanity of Scripture necessarily
carries with it false statements. While preserving their full humanity,
with all that implies for the character of their writing, the Holy Spirit
kept the writers of the Bible from making erroneous statements. As a
result we do not need to pick and choose what is taught in Scripture. All
of it is God’s truth.
The attempt, like Dr. Archer’s, to show that there are no mistakes or
false statements in the Bible is frequently objected to from opposite
viewpoints. One asks, "Why bother to defend the Bible? You do not
defend a roaring lion from a mouse. Nor should we place ourselves in
the false position of defending the Scripture. We need only to unleash it.
It will conquer by its own power without our feeble endeavors to
support it.”
But the faith of some troubled souls is hindered by misunderstanding
the Scripture. They are confused by what seems to them to be false
statements or self-contradiction. We need, therefore, to clear away such
false obstacles to faith. If there remains any obstacle to faith, it should
be the stumbling block of the cross or the cost of discipleship rather than
an imaginary obstacle that could easily be eliminated. In spite of what
we sometimes hear, God never asks us to crucify our intellects in order
to believe.
A second objection to dealing seriously with alleged discrepancies and
mistakes in the Bible comes from the opposite position that it is not
worthwhile to do so because it is perfectly obvious that the Bible is full
of errors. There is no uniformity in the way in which this second type of
judgment comes, but all forms of it stem basically from too little faith in
the Bible. World-famous theologian, Karl Barth, for example, declares
that the Bible shouts from the housetop that it is a human book and that
an essential part of its humanity is to err. Others hold that the Bible is a
book God inspired in order to give us religious truth but not precise facts
of science and history. To waste time defending the Bible in these latter
areas is to do it a disservice, they say. It diverts attention away from the
real purpose of the Bible, which is rather to instruct us in spiritual and
moral matters. A variant of this position is that the purpose of the Bible
is to lead us to the personal truth of Christ. The Bible may be wrong on
many points, but it points to the Savior; and to focus attention on points
of geography, history, astronomy, and biology is only to divert it from its
true goal—personal faith in Christ.
Of course, there are also others who hold that the Bible is full of errors
because its authors were simply children of their times. Miller Burrows,
former professor of New Testament at Yale University, accurately
summarizes this rather typical modern viewpoint: "The Bible is full of
things which to an intelligent educated person of today are either quite
incredible or at best highly questionable…. The protracted struggle of
theology to defend the inerrancy of the Bible (i.e. its complete truth)
against the findings of astronomy, geology, and biology has been a series
of retreats ending in a defeat which has led all wise theologians to move
to a better position.ȍ (Outline of Biblical Theology [Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1946], pp. 9, 44)
Common to all of these objections is the conviction that any defense of
biblical inerrancy is at best a waste of time and at worst positively
harmful because it leads one away from the true purpose of the Bible,
which is to bring us to God.
The inerrantist’s response is quite simple. For him the basic issue is:
Who is Jesus Christ? If the Bible is so far from the truth that it is all
wrong as to who Jesus Christ is, then there can be no question about it:
the Bible is full of erroneous statements. It is nonsense to discuss
whether or not the Bible tells us only the truth in all it teaches if, in fact,
it is really dead wrong on the main thrust of its teaching. In short,
evangelical inerrantists have no quarrel with radicals who reject Jesus
Christ as their religious guide. But for those who accept Jesus Christ as
their divine Lord, the teaching of Jesus Christ must be taken with
dreadful seriousness. It is consistent to deny Jesus Christ as Lord and
also to reject the full authority of the Bible, but it is inconsistent to
confess Him as Lord and then reject His teaching. On this matter, the
evangelical seeks only to be consistent. Jesus is Lord, and the evangelical
believes what He taught about the full truthfulness of the Old Testament.
By the Holy Spirit He also promised to give similar authority to His
disciples for their guidance of the church after He had completed His
own earthly ministry.
The evangelical, moreover, does not feel the overwhelming force of
the discrepancies and errors alleged by some to be profusely scattered
throughout the Bible. He finds that most such problems dissolve the
moment one sees clearly that the Bible is a human book written in the
ordinary language of two thousand and more years ago. It is only when
we try to make the Bible into a book written in the exact, precise style
that we have become accustomed to in a modern laboratory report that
we run into difficulty.
For the same reason the evangelical considers it unreasonable for
anyone to demand that he must be able to demonstrate the complete
harmony of all Bible passages before he can reasonably accept them as
true. The Bible was written millennia ago by independent authors drawn
from various cultures and scattered over many centuries. In view of the
nature of the Bible, it is much more reasonable that we should not be
able to demonstrate on the basis of our limited knowledge a neat
harmony of all biblical data. Quite to the contrary, the evangelical is
amazed that there are as few apparently insoluble problems as there are.
Inerrancy is not unbelievable nor does it require a sacrifice of the
intellect. Rather, the actual situation with respect to biblical problems is
precisely what we should expect in view of the fact that the Bible is a
book of inerrant truth coming to us from across many centuries and
alien cultures.
Finally, just a word needs to be said about Dr. Archer and his special
qualifications for this task. Few scholars are so uniquely equipped in
their command of ancient languages and of the tools of biblical
scholarship as is Dr. Archer. In addition to his own integrity as a scholar,
he is a dedicated student of Scripture and a trustworthy guide for those
who wish to understand Scripture better. His book will be a rich gold
mine for those who hold to the inerrancy of Scripture and who need help
in seeking to bring that conviction into harmony both with what they
read in the Bible and the facts of the empirical world about them. I
believe this book will prove immensely valuable to many earnest
Christians and I heartily commend it to the church and to all serious
Bible students.
Kenneth S. Kantzer