Your interpretation above includes the idea that there is fiction in the Bible and that God did it. My response is that nobody takes the position you've laid out. Everyone who believes that the Bible inaccurately describes Egyptian history, for example, believes that men are responsible for the deviation from accuracy. Yet you are insisting that not responding directly from that position that God wrote the Bible is off topic.
I disagree that nobody holds the belief the simultneous beliefs that the Bible contains historical innaccuracies, and that God was responsbile for those inaccuracies. It seems to be one of the oldest traditions of Bible criticism.
The view is that these aren't 'mistakes'. Rather, the Bible is not meant to be a book of history. It's a book of spiritual instruction.
Origen, Bishop of Alexandria in the early 3rd century, certainly seemed to be of this view. He clearly distinguished between Holy Scripture written by men filled with the Holy Ghost, and apocrypha which were simply written by men.
Nevertheless, he didn't consider Scripture to be literally true, since some of it was so clearly not true. God did not literally walk through the Garden of Eden searching while Adam hid behind a tree - Origen takes this as prima facie obvious - meaning the text must be a metaphor for a spiritual meaning, something to do with men turning their faces from God, I guess.
You may think that's fine when discussing the more distant accounts of creation and other spiritual matter, but that in books that deal more with political history the same arguments don't apply, and so Origen's argument isn't relevant in the light of modern archaeological reserch which shows much Bible history to be untrue.
On the contrary, he was not as stupid as modern day Biblical literalists, and was quite capable of seeing historical inaccuracies in the text. His explanation, to me, sounds a bit forced. God put them there on purpose so that we wouldn't get carried away looking for literal meanings all the time and miss the spiritual sense of the text. Noticing errors in the history of Egypt serves to remind us that stories like the Garden of Eden are not historical accounts, but are there for more important reasons. In his own words (or, rather, the words of whoever translated
this online edition of De Principiis)
quote:
But since, if the usefulness of the legislation, and the sequence and beauty of the history, were universally evident of itself, we should not believe that any other thing could be understood in the Scriptures save what was obvious, the word of God has arranged that certain stumbling-blocks, as it were, and offenses, and impossibilities, should be introduced into the midst of the law and the history, in order that we may not, through being drawn away in all directions by the merely attractive nature of the language, either altogether fall away from the (true) doctrines, as learning nothing worthy of God, or, by not departing from the letter, come to the knowledge of nothing more divine. And this also we must know, that the principal aim being to announce the "spiritual" connection in those things that are done, and that ought to be done, where the Word found that things done according to the history could be adapted to these mystical senses, He made use of them, concealing from the multitude the deeper meaning; but where, in the narrative of the development of super-sensual things, there did not follow the performance of those certain events, which was already indicated by the mystical meaning, the Scripture interwove in the history (the account of) some event that did not take place, sometimes what could not have happened; sometimes what could, but did not. And sometimes a few words are interpolated which are not true in their literal acceptation, and sometimes a larger number. And a similar practice also is to be noticed with regard to the legislation, in which is often to be found what is useful in itself, and appropriate to the times of the legislation; and sometimes also what does not appear to be of utility; and at other times impossibilities are recorded for the sake of the more skilful and inquisitive, in order that they may give themselves to the toil of investigating what is written, and thus attain to a becoming conviction of the manner in which a meaning worthy of God must be sought out in such subjects.
Like I said, it seems a bit contrived to me, but he's one clear counter-example to the claim that nobody believes that God wrote purposeful untruths into the Bible and yet still worshipped that God. It's interesting how much more sophisticated is his understanding of Biblical inerrancy than many modern fundamentalists. To Origen, it didn't mean that everything in Scripture was true, it meant that everything in Scripture was there purposefully.
This message copied to here in the main topic. - Adminnemooseus}
Edited by Adminnemooseus, : See red - Message copied to main topic.
™ Version 4.2
(1)
