The Inerrancy Delusion: An Essay From My Blog

[TheJollyNihilist]

Anybody who knows me will attest to the following: Never has skepticism had a more faithful follower. Quite literally, I’m skeptical about everything. In fact, I’m even skeptical of a notion such as “Fatal defenestration is immoral.” After all, I can conceive of no laboratory test that could be conducted which would demonstrate the immorality of fatal defenestration (morality cannot be measured, tested, quantified or gauged via scientific instrumentation). With such a high degree of skepticism, naturally I look upon extraordinary, supernatural claims with tremendous suspicion. And, as any individual familiar with the Bible will agree, that particular tome is chock-full of extraordinary, supernatural assertions (for example, the Jesus resurrection tale and the Lazarus corpse-to-companion resurrection tale). Considering that the events of the Bible happened millennia in the past, how possibly could they be substantiated now? Theists have the answer.


Many Christians claim that the Bible is inerrant. By virtue of its inerrancy—indeed, by definition—all the fantastic stories in the Bible must be true, resurrections included. The presence of the stories in an inerrant book is sufficient to substantiate them. This answer is satisfactory for about 12 seconds. Thereafter, one recalls the gross inconsistencies, historical inaccuracies, scientific impossibilities and internal incoherence contained within “the truest book ever composed.” A book containing grotesquely egregious inconsistencies, by definition, cannot be inerrant. Inerrancy also eludes any tome that has its historical facts wrong, or its scientific principles scrambled. Indeed, I intend to demonstrate here that the Bible is so unreliable on even the most mundane of matters that it surely cannot be trusted with respect to extraordinary, supernatural claims.


Prior to pontificating any further, I turn the stage over to Tom Flynn, writing in the December 2004 / January 2005 issue of Free Inquiry. In the following passage, Flynn explains some of the basic inconsistencies in the much-beloved Christmas story. It seems that Matthew and Luke simply can’t agree on anything.


"The popular image of shepherds and wise men side by side before the cradle? Matthew says wise men. Luke says shepherds. Neither says both. The star in the East? Only in Matthew. ‘Hark, the herald angels sing’ … but only in Luke. Matthew never heard of them.

"But then, only Matthew heard of Herod’s slaughter of the innocents … That’s right, the indiscriminate killing of every male baby in Judea—with one significant exception—did not merit Luke’s attention. On the other hand, no Roman historian chronicles this atrocity either, not even Flavius Josephus. Josephus reviled Herod and took care to lay at his feet every crime for which even a shred of evidence existed. Had Herod really slaughtered those innocents, it is almost unimaginable that Josephus would have failed to chronicle it.

"Matthew says Joseph and Mary lived in Bethlehem, moving to Nazareth after their flight into Egypt … But Luke says Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth all along; Jesus was born in Bethlehem only because Joseph and Mary had traveled there to enroll in the census … Roman records mention no such census; in fact, Roman history records no census ever in which each man was required to return to the city where his ancestral line originated. That’s not how the Romans did things."


Unfortunately for biblical literalists, the Bible’s indisputable fallibility does not end there. We are provided with conflicting genealogies tracing the ancestral lineage between David and Joseph. In the genealogy according to Matthew, there are fewer than 30 generations separating David and Joseph. In the genealogy according to Luke, there are more than 40 generations. According to Matthew, the relevant son of David is Solomon. According to Luke, the relevant son of David is Nathan. According to Matthew, Joseph’s father is Jacob. According to Luke, Joseph’s father is Heli. The lists have little crossover. Again, these are the mundane, little details that the Bible has all fouled up. One also must wonder why the scribes bothered to list Joseph’s two ancestral histories. After all, Jesus was born to a virgin. As Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, rightly points out, “… if Jesus really was born of a virgin, Joseph’s ancestry is irrelevant and cannot be used to fulfill, on Jesus’ behalf, the Old Testament prophecy that the Messiah should be descended from David.”


I submit that, considering the Bible’s gross inconsistencies on mundane, ordinary details, Jesus’ alleged life must also be treated with extreme skepticism. Although I believe it’s probable that Jesus, as a man, actually existed, I doubt very much the narrative commonly accepted among Christians. It’s notable that Jesus’ alleged life has nearly all the hallmarks of the classic hero myth, on which many religious characters were modeled. In The God Delusion, Dawkins writes, “… all the essential features of the Jesus legend, including the star in the east, the virgin birth, the veneration of the baby by kings, the miracles, the execution, the resurrection and the ascension are borrowed – every last one of them – from other religions already in existence in the Mediterranean and Near East region.” In trying to adapt Jesus’ life to conflicting mythologies, the aforementioned contradictions were created. Dawkins continues, “… Matthew’s desire to fulfill messianic prophecies (descent from David, birth in Bethlehem) for the benefit of Jewish readers came into headlong collision with Luke’s desire to adapt Christianity for the Gentiles, and hence to press the familiar hot buttons of pagan Hellenistic religions (virgin birth, worship by kings, etc.).”


Some of the most convincing evidence demonstrating that the Jesus narrative with which we are familiar might be fabricated comes from Saint Paul. One of the earliest associates of the Christian church wrote voluminously about Christianity … but didn’t seem to know one thing about Jesus’ life as we know it. The enlightening film The God Who Wasn’t There broke down Jesus’ crucial life events and then showed just how many Saint Paul apparently never had heard of. Even the things Paul did know about, such as the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension, didn’t happen in the real world, but rather in a realm of myth. There’s very little evidence that Paul ever seriously considered the notion that Jesus walked the same ground as he did. Another meaningful bit of evidence relates to secular historians. No such historians, who lived at the same time as Jesus did, ever made mention of the man. Yes, secular historians did mention Jesus after he was dead. However, none mentions him while he was alive and, allegedly, working amazing miracles.


With respect to Jesus, my conclusion is as follows: Jesus probably lived, but his life was nothing like what is portrayed in any of the Gospels. His life, as recounted differently in each Gospel, was a construction to fulfill the scribes' varied agendas. His life simply was wedged into the writer’s mythology of choice.


And finally, to biblical veracity. Letting my arguments speak for themselves, I will close with a question to which I hope I’ve given readers the answer. If the Gospels are demonstrably contradictory, historically inaccurate, and fallible on the most mundane and ordinary of details, why should one believe them when it comes to their most incredible, extraordinary claims? In the final analysis, it seems inerrancy has come up bankrupt.


If you would like me to post additional essays I've written for my blog, be sure to let me know. I have several I'd be happy to share here! Feel free to disperse the content, as long as credit is given. Thx!

[benddem]

1. good job

you could probably write something as big as the old testament refuting the stories there.

[NAO]

2. I think documenting and popularizing Biblical Errancy is the best approach

to secularizing the credulous Evangelical True Believers.

Until the Bible's aura of being the "Inerrant Word of God" is shattered by overwhelming evidence of contradictions, absurdities, redaction, etc they are completely immune to other rational arguments. Even overwhelming evidence is often dismissed by Christian apologists, who can, through sophistry of the worst sort, reconcile anything with anything.

Consider the death of Judas. Matthew says he hung himself. Luke (in Acts) says he fell headlong (or swelled up) and burst asunder, and all his bowels gushed out. So either he hung himself, or he fell down and exploded. Nope. The Christian will say that see, he hung himself, but he used cheap rope (either because he gave the money back, as related by Matthew or because he used the money to buy a field, as related by Luke) and while he was hanging the rope broke, he fell down, and burst asunder, and all his bowels gushed out. So there is no contradiction at all. Sorry Mr. Skeptic, it was only an "apparent contradiction".

And you can pretty much see in that paradigmatic case how apologists can reconcile any evidence of errancy. Still, some thoughtful and intellectually honest Christians, (as I once was) will be compelled by honesty and respect for truth to see that the sophistry of the apologists is absurd, and that the scriptures are in fact errant and entirely human productions.

So biblical errancy research is, IMHO, the best means of helping to free humankind from religious superstition.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. Old news, really old news

cf. ex-Bishop John Shelby Spong's Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism or indeed, any mainstream theology course in the last 150 years.

[struggle4progress]

4. It's not clear how many Christians consider the Bible inerrant -- nor,

perhaps, would it matter much if it were, since none of its regular readers are inerrant.

How much energy is devoted in this forum to explaining, other and over again, that one can find apparent contradictions in the Bible, as well as stories that one has a hard time understanding, if one takes the view that the stories are intended as a rigorous and scientific history? How many posts here express a belief that such apparent contradictions have completely escaped the notice of the religious community, who are expected to suddenly awaken when these facts are pointed out?

Yawn ... People have been reading such texts for thousands of years, and there is more than one rich tradition of commentary upon the texts. A number of the devote readers have actually been quite intelligent people and have said interesting and insightful things. Reading, of course, is a skill: sometimes one takes from a text what one brings to it, sometimes one takes what one can excavate from it, and sometimes one takes what others have brought to it. Those who don't find reading such texts profitable, perhaps shouldn't read them. But perhaps those whose major interest in reading the texts is to ridicule others who read them, might consider finding a a more productive use of time.

[TheJollyNihilist]

5. The point of the essay...

Is not to ridicule those who read the Bible. Rather, it's that if the Bible can't be trusted on mundane and ordinary matters, why should one possibly trust it when it comes to extraordinary, incredible claims? Essentially, my argument is that the Bible has no actual credibility, and thus supporting evidence for the aforementioned extraordinary claims would need to come from an extra-biblical source.

[cosmik debris]

6. Who are you trying to convince?

Are you under the impression that some Christians in this forum support the in-errancy of the Bible?

[TheJollyNihilist]

7. Not trying to "convince" anybody, per se...

Just sharing my work, and hoping it's of interest to the general membership.

[struggle4progress]

9. As I just said, reading is a skill.

[TRYPHO]

8. To answer your question (as I see it)...

I will close with a question to which I hope I’ve given readers the answer. If the Gospels are demonstrably contradictory, historically inaccurate, and fallible on the most mundane and ordinary of details, why should one believe them when it comes to their most incredible, extraordinary claims?
---
There's a missing link in history which needs highlighting here. Jesus arguably lived to around year 40 C.E. and spoke Aramaic and cavorted with Jews who spoke Aramiac. After he died his sect, lets call them Nazarenes, thought his words, and deeds were important, that as a leader of his people his ideas and ideals were so important they should be shared. So his supporters wrote his words down, in Aramaic, on parchments or papers and added those words to the pot of words that their past and present leaders had spoken.

Then, around the years 66-75 C.E., between the great Jewish rebellion in Rome, and the fall of Masada and the destruction of the 2nd Temple in Jerusalem, all hell broke loose. Jews of all sects were scattered far and wide, in a mixing pot of fear and hatred and loss.

Judaism had to re-invent itself as a religion without a Temple, and at the same time the Presbyters of Jesus' sect were sharing their brand of Judaism to the Jews of the Mediterranean, North Africa and near East. These may have been competing theologies, or diverging theologies, no-one has any knowledge; but the initial concept was Jewish/modern by design (or re-design) whichever groups theology was favoured. Yavneh college went with a synagogic formula whilst the Nazarene's may have chosen an easier path to follow, but in my opinion they probably did not, since the Nazarenes were extremist followers of the Torah.

I can only wonder how Jesus' words became so distorted as to mean the exact opposite of what He would most likely have said, how His words became so widespread in so many differing and, as you say, erroneous and mutually exclusive testaments, though it isn't that difficult to speculate some logical answers to all of this (see Q document and add a few "apostles" spreading the Word). And I can only wonder why the accepted entries in to the New Testament were allowed without sufficient revisions to make them more logical! (....since they were clearly amended by non-divine hands to have arrived at such failings in the first place).

So, to answer your question. I would imagine that the erroneousness of the New Testament invites such questioning by believers as to pique their interest and wonder at the hidden truths within. Whereas for those of a more evidence based existence simple see the failings as a sign to move on to more pythagorean interests.

Perhaps it is the first test?

Probably it was just hellish to translate Aramaic in to Greek :-)

TRYPHO