It is always
interesting to see defenders of inerrancy speak from both sides of their mouth.
A prime example comes from the following, wherein the author states that the
authors of the Bible, as well as the intended audience, believed in an unscientific
cosmology, notwithstanding (albeit, implicit) texts purportedly teaching a
scientific cosmology (so much for the perspicuity of the Scriptures when read
by believers):
Now the Jews in the Old Testament, and in the
New, had a very kindergarten idea of astronomy; they did not know that the
earth was round and there was no reason why God should have revealed it to them—though,
incidentally, in Scripture there are indications that the earth is a globe—the Bible
is never contrary to science, remember. But the Jews did not understand that
the earth was round, a globe; they thought of it as a great flat plain, floating
through space as a broad leaf floats through the air. And the upper part of the
leaf, if you like, was lit by the sun and inhabited by the living, our world;
the underside of the leaf was dark, unlit by the sun, gloomy, and was the abode
of the dead. So that, to the very simple thinking of the early people of the
Bible, you are on the upper part of the leaf when you are alive and when you
die you go underneath. So every reference to Sheol in the Old Testament is
down, and we have such expressions as “Sheol beneath”. It is always
subterranean, under the earth. The underworld, you see. Amos said: “If thou dig
into Sheol”—always that idea of going underneath the earth to the under-side.
Sometimes it is translated “the nether part of the earth”. So Paul in Ephesians
iv. says: “He descended into the lower parts of the earth,” thus keeping to the
old conventional idea of the underworld. (Geoffrey R. King, The Forty Days: Studies in the last six
weeks of our Lord’s earthly life, from Calvary and aster to the Ascension [London:
Henry E. Walter Ltd., 1948], 15-16)
