Friday, November 5, 2021

Noel Weeks on "Imprecision and Error" in the Bible

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)