The Last Hurrah of the Inerrancy Doctrine

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1990 / Jan.-Feb. Issue:

by Farrell Till

Many fundamentalist Christians sincerely believe that the Bible is the verbally inspired word of God. As believers in verbal inspiration, they see the Bible much differently from those who respect it as a book with only concepts and ideas that were divinely inspired. Christians who believe in the doctrine of verbal inspiration think that God directed the writing of the Bible on a word-by-word basis so that the authors of the original manuscripts were protected from writing even as much as one word that might inadvertently mislead readers or incorrectly communicate the truths God wanted man to know.

What Third-Day Prophecy?

The New Testament has both Jesus and Paul claiming that the Old Testament prophesied that the Christ would be resurrected from the dead on the third day. The problem for inerrantists is that no such prophecy can be found in the Old Testament. Farrell  Till covers this problem and others. From *The Skeptical Review*, March-April 1996:

By Farrell Till 

New Testament writers claimed that the resurrection of Jesus was prophesied in the Old Testament. The weakness of this claim is apparent in the fact that none of these writers ever cited an Old Testament prophecy whose face-value meaning was so obvious that no reasonable person could deny that the prophets were indeed predicting that the Messiah would rise from the dead. The best they could do was distort a statement in Psalm 16:8-11 to try to make it mean something that the psalmist never intended:

I have set Yahweh always before me; because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore, my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices. My flesh also will rest in hope. For you will not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy: at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Pardon my ignorance, but if there is a clear cut prediction of a resurrection in this passage, I simply cannot see it. Yet the apostle Peter, in a sermon that Luke put into his mouth, quoted this scripture on the day of Pentecost and said that it was a prophecy of the Messiah's resurrection. "Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Therefore, *being a prophet,* and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, He would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne, he, *foreseeing this,* spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption" (Acts 2:29-31).

A Very Great City

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1992 / March-April:

by Dave Matson

Jonah 3:3 informs us that the old Assyrian capital, Nineveh, was an exceedingly great city, being three days' journey across! 'Twas a really, really, really big city!

Assyria was the first world-class power to really collide with Israel, and the size of its fabled capital may have slipped out of focus. At any rate, the Bible gave it the diameter of a three-day journey. Scholars, using old traveler's accounts, usually reckon a day's journey in ancient times as 20 miles or thereabouts. The fact that Jonah was probably on foot is irrelevant since Jonah is not the standard of measurement. For an ancient walker, a day's journey in a well paved city would have been a picnic.

How Likely Is It? (1)

The following is a very thought-provoking post by the late Farrell Till (1933-2012) from the Errancy Discussion list from May 2, 1997. I will be posting a lot of the comments of Farrell Till from the Errancy Discussion list and elsewhere. Till was a former Church-of-Christ preacher; and being a former member of the Church of Christ myself, I appreciate his perspective on the errancy of the Bible. I hope to preserve many of his scholarly, insightful thoughts on this blog:
 
The postings I have been sending about absurdities in the stories of the

exodus and subsequent wilderness wanderings have not been intended to
establish contradiction but to show that the stories are so obviously
unreasonable that no rational person can believe that they actually
happened. Since ancient literature in particular is characterized by
widespread references to miraculous events, the only reasonable way to
assess the events is to critically examine each one in terms of how likely
it is that such events did indeed happen. When this principle is applied to
the conduct of the Israelites throughout the exodus and the wilderness
wanderings, rational people must conclude that it is not very likely that
most of these stories happened as recorded in the Bible.

A detailed analysis of Israelite behavior during and after the exodus may
take as many as two or three postings, but before I begin them, let's first
make a comparison that will help illustrate the problem. [Note: Please find 
under the label, *How Likely Is It?*, a 13-part series entitled *Tall Tales of 
Wilderness Wanderings*, kwh] On this list, we have seen that biblical 
inerrantists will cling to their belief in their god and the inerrancy of the 
Bible no matter how much compelling evidence to the contrary is presented. 
When confronted with glaring biblical inconsistencies or discrepancies, 
they will simply fabricate some how-it-could-have-been interpretations and 
stubbornly insist that biblical errancy has not been proven. Not a one of 
them has ever seen their god, talked to him, or seen him perform miracles 
like the parting of the Red Sea, bringing water from rocks, sending manna 
from heaven, and such like, yet despite the absence of such convincing 
evidence as this, they still maintain their belief that this god exists and that 
he verbally inspired the Bible.

Only very rarely is the faith of an inerrantist shaken badly enough to cause
him to reject his belief. On the other hand, we have the Israelites who had
their god going before them in a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night,
coming down and speaking to them, and performing all sorts of wondrous
miracles. Despite these amazing demonstrations of their god's presence
in their midst, they were constantly bellyaching and rebelling. My postings
that follow this one will be designed to show that it is not at all likely that reasonable people would have behaved as the Israelites did; hence,
it is not at all likely that these stories happened as they are recorded in
the Bible.

Farrell Till

Does Anyone See Any Problem Here?

Exodus 20:5,You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, (NIV)

Yet,

Ezekiel 18:20 ,The one who sins is the one who will die. The child will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the child. The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them. (NIV)

What Have These Sheep Done?

This article from *The Skeptical Review* , 1999 / July-August, is simply devastating to the biblical inerrancy claim. Comments are welcome:

by Farrell Till

One of the most puzzling tales of the Bible is told in 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21. Yahweh or Satan (depending on which account you want to believe) "moved David to number Israel" (v:1). Since biblical inerrantists argue that the Bible is completely free of errors, we will assume that in some sense Yahweh moved David to number Israel. One would think that if Yahweh moved David to number Israel, Yahweh would have been pleased if David did as he had been "moved" and took the census, but if you think this way, you are reasoning like a rational person, and Bible stories aren't necessarily rational. In fact, they many times tax the imagination of those who try to find rationality in them.

That's the case with this story about David. He conducted the census just as Yahweh had "moved" him to do, but for some reason known only to Yahweh and the Gleason Archer type of "apologists" who entertain us with verbal gymnastics that supposedly explain biblical discrepancies, Yahweh was ticked off after David had done exactly what he had been "moved" to do, and so he sent Nathan the prophet to call David on the carpet for taking the census (2 Sam. 24:12). That wasn't really necessary, because David had already realized that in doing what Yahweh had "moved" him to do, he had somehow sinned. That's what the inspired word of God says: "But afterward, David was stricken to the heart because he had numbered the people" (v:10). Why taking a census would be a sin, especially after God had moved David to do it, is anyone's guess. Well, not anyone's guess, of course, because the professional "apologists" like Gleason Archer, Norman Geisler, John Haley, etc. were apparently blessed with special insights that enabled them to know that the Bible didn't really mean what it plainly said. Just read their books, and you'll find all of the answers if you can stop laughing long enough to read them all the way through.

No Contradictions In The Bible?

From Alt.Bible.Errancy, August 2, 1998:

"Paul Russell" <prussell@...> wrote:
I just joined the news group and I see where people 
are so uninformed about the word of GOD. The bible 
never counterdicts itself, it's just you don't understand 
it.

CREA
OK, Paul, if "[t]he bible never counterdicts [sic] itself", as 
you assert, would you please be so kind as to tell us where 
King Josiah died?

At 2 Kings 23:29-30, we are told that he died at 
Megiddo and he was carried from there DEAD in a 
chariot to Jerusalem (where he was buried), but over 
at 2 Chronicles 35:23-24, we are told instead that he 
was grievously wounded at Megiddo and carried ALIVE 
from there in a chariot to Jerusalem, where he died 
and was buried. This appears to be a contradiction to 
this poor old country-boy...

Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Omnibus

Interesting comments from Farrell Till that "if [the Bible] is found to be erroneous in some of the things that can be verified by extrabiblical corroboration, then how can one be sure that it is right about those things that cannot be verified by extrabiblical corroboration?", from Alt. Bible. Errancy, May 31, 1998:

TILL
>No, you have misunderstood me. I would never say that the Bible is
>"useless" if it contains even one error, any more than I would say that

 any book is useless if it contains one error.

>BILL S.
>Then why did you say: "An errant Bible isn't worth the paper it is printed on"?

TILL
Admittedly, that was poorly stated. I should have made it clear that I
meant that an errant Bible used as a basis of religious authority isn't
worth the paper it is printed on.

>TILL
>>...However, I do agree with Archer's view on the trustworthiness of

 the Bible. If it is found to be erroneous in some of the things that can 
be verified by extrabiblical corroboration, then how can one be sure 
that it is right about those things that cannot be verified by extrabiblical 
corroboration? 

>BILL S.
>As we've agreed, it would be impossible to prove such things to you -
>that is why they call it "faith". If I read a newspaper, I can't be
>sure all of the facts have been perfectly reported, however I can have
>reasonable confidence that there is at least some truth in what is
>being reported. I don't stop reading the newspaper because one day it
>got it's facts wrong. Similarly, I can trust in certain "truths" in
>the bible even if the bible is shown to contain errors. 

TILL
Well, I learned a long time ago that blind acceptance of what is 
printed in newspapers is a foolish course to follow. However, you 
are comparing apples to oranges, because newspapers report 
that which is commonplace and ordinary. They make no effort to 
indicate that readers who don't believe what is printed in them run 
the risk of incurring dire consequences. If I believe an error that 
was published in a newspaper, then all I have done is believe an 
error published in a newspaper. The process usually ends there.
I don't take this error from door to door in my neighborhood in 
efforts to make others believe it, and I certainly don't continue to 
believe the error once that its falsity has been demonstrated. 
Needless to say, this is not the case with biblicists. No matter 
how much evidence may be presented to show that there are 
errors in the Bible, they will continue to believe that they are 
truth and will work feverishly to try to make others believe them
too. Surely, you can see the difference.

BILL S

>I don't expect to convinve you to beleive as I do - but I do object to
>your implications that the Bible cannot be trusted on anything if it
>can be shown to contain even one error.

TILL
As a source of authority, it cannot be trusted if it can be 
demonstrated that it contains error. If, for example, it can be 
demonstrated--as it has been--that the Bible is wrong in saying 
that Joshua destroyed a city named Ai in his conquest of Canaan 
(Josh. 7-8), then how can I be sure that the Bible is correct when 
it claims that Moses received God's law on Mt. Sinai? If the Bible 
is wrong about an ordinary, commonplace claim that an army 
once destroyed a city, by what logic does one conclude that 
even though the Bible has been shown to be wrong in 
commonplace matters, we can still trust that it is right about 
extraordinary claims that it makes. What we're really talking 
about here is the widely accepted rule of evidence that says 
"falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus," which means, "False in one 
thing, false in everything." This rule of evidence doesn't actually 
mean that if a witness is shown to be wrong in one point of 
testimony, that means that he/she is wrong in every point 
of testimony. It merely means that if a witness has been caught 
in one falsehood, the jury will be justified to doubt him/her in 
anything testified to that cannot be confirmed by independent 
corroboration.

Farrell Till

Biblical Anachronisms

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1999 / May-June:

by Farrell Till

Anachronisms occur in written documents when they make references to anything (persons, places, events, etc.) that did not belong to the era in which the documents were set. If a history of the Civil War made references to aerial bombardments and said that Thomas Jefferson was the president at this time, these would be anachronisms, because airplanes didn't exist then and Jefferson was president 50 years earlier. Anyone seeing such references in a history book would immediately realize that the writer was poorly informed about some aspects of this war. Certainly, no one would consider the author to be an infallible writer.

There's A Living In It

From *The Skeptical Review* 1992/March-April:

by Farrell Till

A subscriber in Florida recently raised an interesting question: "Why can't these preachers simply admit that the Bible is not the inerrant book it has been proclaimed to be and stop lying to their congregations?" The question was asked in the context of comments the reader was making about the thoroughness of TSR's exposure of flaws in the inerrancy doctrine.

I have to admit that I have often wondered the same thing. Ten issues of The Skeptical Review have now been published containing over 30 major articles and several short ones that focused on discrepancies in the Bible text. In every issue, we have offered inerrancy defenders the opportunity to rebut our lead articles, but twice we had to publish without rebuttals because we could find no one willing to argue the inerrancy view on the subject we were featuring. We have been especially persistent in challenging Wayne Jackson, the editor of Christian Courier, to defend his inerrancy views, because he is especially vocal in his articles about "the uncanny reliablility" of the Bible in even "the smallest details" ("The Bible Passes the Test," Biblical Notes, Nov./Dec. 1991, p. 9). Jackson, like many of his inerrancy colleagues, has repeatedly declined our offers of space to defend his claim that the Bible is inerrant. We find it hard to understand why an inerrancy believer who writes as frequently on the subject as Jackson does would refuse an offer of free publishing space to write on the subject if he sincerely believes in what he preaches.

Responsibility, What Is Yahweh's Policy?

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne

Dave Matson asks the question concerning the god of the Bible, Does God Need Praise and Glory?. The Bible clearly teaches that this god wants but doesn't need praise and glory. The men who wrote the Bible wrote themselves into a corner on this one. You see they describe this god as perfect and complete, therefore needing nothing. So these authors of the Bible have him only wanting praise and glory. But even if there are other alleged reasons why he created man, creating man was not something that he needed.

The Bible's authors claim that their god is all-knowing (plus all-powerful, all-loving, all-wise, perfect and complete and a few more I'm probably leaving out). And sure enough in Mt 7:13-14, they claim he knew that the majority of his beloved(?) humans would wind up in his eternal hell. Oops! So the Bible's hapless authors in their attempt to make their god-creation omni-everything, plus have the ultimate in punishment to scare people into their new religion, went too far. They have their all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving, all-wise, perfect and complete  etc., god-creation willing for billions of his allegedly beloved humans to suffer unspeakable horrors in his eternal hell for something he only wanted but didn't need.

Then they have the absolute gall to claim this god loved his human creation so much that he sent his son to be crucified (bloodshed, injustice, pain and murder are around this god like flies on feces) to keep man from going to hell when he knew all along this "wonderful, loving sacrifice" would "save" only a comparative handful. If this sordid tale were true it would be more of an obligation on the part of this god for putting this flawed creation in such a precarious situation to begin with. This is no description of a God of love much less an all-loving God. This is a description of a infinitely terrible fiend. And what kind of an example is this god setting for humans concerning responsibility? The average human is much more responsible than this--responsibility, what's your policy? Every day millions of people choose to do the right thing. It is inconceivable that allowing billions of sentient humans to be tortured for eternity is the right thing. Responsibility, what is Yahweh's policy? His policy is infinite irresponsibility.

The Bible has the Creator allegedly acting in an infinitely horrible, irresponsible manner that no rational, loving human would ever be guilty of. Therefore, the god of the Bible cannot be anything but pure fiction.

God Was Refreshed?

From the Errancy II Discussion list, Sept., 2003:

DOUG
Exodus 31:17 (KJV)
"It [is] a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: 
for [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on 
the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed."

It is difficult enough to explain why an allegedly omnipotent being 
would need to rest, or what it would mean for such a being to rest, 
but that god was "refreshed" makes it absurd. To refresh means 
to replenish one's power.

If god is omnipotent, this makes no sense. To refresh would mean 
that god would be more powerful after replenishing his power than 
he was before replenishing his power. Which would imply that god 
was sometimes more powerful than he is at other times, but if god 
is omnipotent, this is logically impossible.

God's Name

Adapted from a post by Farrell Till on the Errancy Discussion list 5-8-97:

...Ex.6:2-3 has Yahweh saying very clearly to Moses that he was not 

known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by his name Yahweh, yet there are

numerous examples in Genesis that dispute this:

Genesis 22:14 states that Abraham named the place where he was 
going to offer up Isaac Yahweh-jirah, which meant "Yahweh will provide." 
How did Abraham know to call the place this if he did not know that the 
name of his god was Yahweh? 

Genesis 24:25-52 certainly shows that Abraham's servant, who was sent 
to find a wife for Isaac knew Yahweh's name. When he encountered 
Rebekah, he "knelt bowing to Yahweh"(v:26). He said, "Praise Yahweh, 
the Elohim[God] of my master Abraham. Yahweh has led me on this 
trip to the home of my master's relatives."(v:27). Several more times 
in this passage, Abraham's god was called Yahweh. It is certainly 
strange that Abraham's  servant knew the name Yahweh, but Abraham, 
despite evidence to the contrary, presumably didn't. 

Genesis 26:22 says that Isaac dug a well and called the name of it 
Rehoboth and said, "Now Yahweh has made room for us, and we will 
prosper in this land." How could Isaac have said this if he did not know 
that his god's name was Yahweh?

Genesis 26:23-25 says that Isaac went to Beersheba and "That night 
"Yahweh appeared to Isaac, and said 'I am the Elohim of your father 
Abraham.' Isaac then built an altar and "worshiped Yahweh." I guess 
we are supposed to believe that Isaac worshiped a God that he didn't 
even know.

Genesis 28:10-13 says that Jacob saw Yahweh on the way to Haran, 

and Yahweh said to him, "I am Yahweh, the Elohim of your grandfather
Abraham and the Elohim of Isaac." I guess Jacob was hard of hearing 
and didn't catch the name Yahweh.

Genesis 28:20-21 Says that Jacob made a vow that if Yahweh would take
care of him on his way back to his father that he would make Yahweh his
Elohim [God]. How could Jacob have made Yahweh his God if he didn't 
even know the name Yahweh? 

Sins Of The Fathers (4)

Till gives a good summation of the facts in this debate in his second response in this post, which Ariel has repeatedly side stepped:

ARIEL

sub 1: As an aside, my reference to an already existing three  year famine is not NEEDED to advance my point. It is based  as follows. II Samuel starts with an introduction that God was  already angry. Therefore God was quoted as offering 7 years  of famine. That means a full 7 years. 3 already and 3 to come  (the 7th is because after 6 years of famine, the ground may  be ready to produce in the 7th but the field must be planted and the crop grown and harvested. Since the people are still  waiting for food in year 7 it is the 7th year of famine).  I Chronicles does not prelude by saying "And God was angry".

TILL
No, the Chronicler didn't say this. In fact, he said that Satan 
had moved David to take the census. This is consistent with 
the Chronicler's whitewashing efforts in which he cut out all 
of the dirt about David and tried to make him look like Mr. 
Goody Two Shoes.

Authorship Of "Matthew"

From the Errancy Discussion list, 10-4-97:

MATT

The consensus of biblical scholars normally means 'higher criticism', something I am none too impressed with. The Gospel is attributed to the disiciple Levi ooopppsss sorry Nancy :) Matthew, if there is evidence to say otherwise then Let's hear it.

TILL

Well, how about this "evidence", Matt? Those critics whom you aren't at all impressed with have recognized that the author of "Matthew" used the gospel of Mark as his source, because over 90% of the gospel of Mark is embedded in the gospel of Matthew. If Mark really wrote Mark, then he was not an eyewitness to the events he wrote about, but if Matthew wrote Matthew, he was an eyewitness to most of the events. Why would an eyewitness have to rely on an account written by someone who was not an eyewitness in order to write a biography of Jesus?

Prayer Problems

From the mailbag section of *The Skeptical Review*, May-June, 1994. A Christian reader of TSR tells Farrell Till that she's praying for him. An excerpt from Till's reply:

...As for the prayers she is uttering for me, I wish I had a nickle for everyone who has told me he is praying for me. There must be thousands of people out there praying for me at any given moment. So I wonder when we can expect to see any results from all these prayers. God wants all men to be saved: "This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our saviour, who would have all men to be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:3-4). Therefore, if the Bible is truly the infallible word of God, as Mrs. Kaley no doubt believes, then she must agree that God certainly wants Farrell Till to be saved. So I see a dilemma for her when this scripture is considered in conjunction with 1 John 5:14-15: "And this is the boldness which we have toward him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us: and if we know that he heareth us whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked of him." Now please notice that this passage does not say that if we ask anything according to God's will, he may hear us and grant it; it flatly says that we can know that he hears it and will give us what we ask.

From this, I can only conclude that the New Testament promises that God will hear and grant the prayer of any Christian who asks ANYTHING in accordance with God's will. So since it is obviously God's will that Farrell Till be saved, then why haven't the many prayers on my behalf been answered? I once presented this dilemma to a Baptist preacher who had told me that he was praying for me. His response was that I am not dead yet, so there is still the possibility that I will yet be "saved." I suppose that he is technically right, but if I should die without returning to my former beliefs--and I really don't believe there is even a remote possibility that I will return--would this not constitute logical proof that the Bible is not inerrant?