In a chapter entitled “Imprecision and Error,” Protestant Noel Weeks, in his book, The Sufficiency of Scripture, wrote the following:
It is obvious that the Bible uses
approximations. Sometimes these have been used as proof of the fallibility of
the Bible. An example would be the dimensions of the laver in Solomon’s Temple.
These are given as a diameter of 10 cubits and a circumference of 30 cubs (1
Kings 7:23). Obviously this involves an approximation of 3 for π. This has been used as evidence for error in
the Bible.
Since π is an infinite non-repeating decimal any
figure given is technically in error. If it were so, the whole of the Bible
would be taken up in giving the ‘correct’ dimensions of the laver. God has chosen
to reveal himself in ordinary language. Hence it is ordinary language which has
privileged status.
Granting privileged status to ordinary language
will not please those who have sought to boost their own status by the use of a
complex jargon. Yet God chose to reveal himself in ordinary language. Technical
disciplines are still possible but they are under the authority of a revelation
in ordinary language, not vice versa. By not becoming lost in technical detail
the Bible can be a general authority. As an example of the laver shows, a work
that depends for authority on completeness and ‘accuracy’ of detail would never
finish giving the details about just one thing. To judge the Bible because it
does not come up to that standard is self-defeating. No human can come up to
such a standard. . . . If you insist on a certain sort of precision, it is
erroneous. However, such precision cannot be insisted upon once we grant that
God chose to use ordinary language. The so-called ‘error’ [in Matt 27:9] is
really not in this particular instance. It is in God’s choice of the language to
use. Then we are back with the whole point of whether technical language has
privileged status over all the language.
Another example of the same sort of problem
is found in Leviticus 11:2-6. Several animals are said to chew the cud but not
divide the hoof. They include the rock hyrax and the rabbit. (Perhaps the hate
is meant rather than the rabbit, but it does not matter greatly in this
discussion.) Both would today not be classified as ruminants and hence would be
deemed not to chew the cud. Perhaps the solution lies in a problem of translation,
and the animals concerned are not the rock hyrax and the rabbit. However that
does not appear a likely solution. Perhaps there is a reference to the rabbit’s
passing of partly-digested faeces which are re-ingested. However this seem a
rather extreme way out of the difficulty. For the sake of the argument let us
ignore these proposed solutions to the problem.
It has been frequently pointed out that these
animals make movements of the mouth that look like chewing the cud. Hence the
suggestion that herein lies an explanation of the Biblical statement. Once
again we will take this as being the explanation.
How then do we interpret what we have
discovered? Some people see it as evidence of error in the Bible on a scientific
matter and hence proof that the Bible is not to be made an authority on such
matters. Others, in reaction to that possibility, would reject what has been
suggested here as the most likely possibility. (They may be right in this case
but there would be other similar problems in other passages.) Some would see it
as an error, but to be excused because of the Bible’s resort to popular language.
As there is what many would call an ‘error’
this case may seem different from those previously considered. Is it really so?
Does it not come down to the way one chooses to classify animals? Our
classification systems are very much based upon what dissection reveals to be
the structure. Perhaps another Biblical example will make this clearer. In 1
Kings 4:33 Solomon is said to have spoken of trees, ‘from the cedar that is in
Lebanon even to the hyssop that grows on the wall’. This has been used as
evidence that the Hebrews follows the ‘primitive’ system of botanical
classification according to size, whereas the modern botanist uses a ‘scientific’
system largely based on the structure of the flower. Of course, the attempt to
deduce the Hebrew botanical classification system from this passage is absurd,
but once more for the sake of the argument, let us accept it. The issue then
becomes: plants can be classified according to size or plants can be classified
according to flower shape. Both ways yield a system which has some order and
some anomalies that will not fit neatly into our boxes. In other words, both
systems are dealing with an ordered creation in one system of classification
deemed ‘primitive’ and the other which takes us back through Greek philosophy’s
influence on the early botanists would probably embarrass the modern ‘scientific’
botanist. The sort of answer is all that is needed for our purposes. One system
classifies plants according to their obvious external appearance. Another dos
so by dissecting their flowers. Ae are conditioned to think that one reveals a
more real and basic system than the other. Classification by dissection as
priority over classification by appearance.
Yet we must ask whether our assumptions are
necessarily correct. If classification by flower-structure yielded the
rationalist’s dream of a complete, consistent, and elegant scheme we might give
it priority. The botanist is well aware that it does not. It is another case of
a functional- system which is not the final system.
Much the same applies in the case of the ‘cud-chewing’
animals. Does one classify them according to appearance or does one classify
them by cutting the animal open to reveal anatomical structure. Both systems
are functionally useful.
Note clearly, that I have not said that
calling these animals cud-chewers is a concession to the unphilosophical and
unscientific. Rather I have questioned the idea that there is only one basis on
which you can put animals amongst the cud-chewers. . . . What does a person
really say when he objects to the Bible because it fails such a rationalist
test? He really says that he refuses to consider the possibility of the Bible being
an authority. He refuses because he already has an authority in a rationalist sort
of precision. The conflict between the two authorities did not lead him to
debate which was right. It led him to reject the Bible in terms of the authority
to which he already clings. (Noel Weeks, The Sufficiency of Scripture
[Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1988, 1998], 33, 34-36)
