Can God author a text with errors?

[Vinnie]

(post deleted by author)

[Vinnie]

@Marshall

My best guess is that there are two levels of historical connection. At one level, Israel’s cultural memory preserved a story of someone saved from a flood with their family and animals. I have no problem believing God helped someone in this kind of scenario, and the story endured. Further, in Israel’s perspective in which God is directly responsible for every disaster and blessing, the flood was seen as a punishment from God.

I am a little unclear but I think your answer to my first question is no? God is responsible for all things since He is the creator/sustainer, but He did not specially cause –beyond how he normally runs things– a flood to wipe out an overly wicked humanity? He probably saved some humans from a normal (natural) event (that he sustains and upholds) that made it into collective memory and then inspired them to write a narrative of it as if He specially sent it–or just went with their beliefs?

@Marshall

At a second level, God inspired the formation of an account to show how God deals with humanity, despite our corruption.

If God doesn’t actually send the flood in a special sense as a response to human wickedness like the account suggests, and (if we go this route), he didn’t actually order any of those herem accounts, how is this or those accounts an example of how God deals with humanity when he does no such thing? I can understand an ancient Jewish author writing this, but once we say God wanted it this way or inspired this form of the story I think we run into trouble. I mean, I can see God using a story to teach a lesson, but not a lesson about how God deals with humanity when in fact, our modern sensibilities don’t allow us to interpret the text that way. Unless you think God does deal with humanity this way – whether or not any of these specific accounts occurred?

@Marshall

These chapters take a well-known story (that is also common in surrounding cultures) and reframe it to make a point. These writers had no special access to the historical detail behind that story, but that doesn’t matter because their goal is to teach about God and humanity, not tell history.

Lacking access to historical details is important but most people who accept inspiration would find room for them to get some things right. But that is another issue. What point are they making? That they mistakenly think God sent a flood in response to their wickedness when it was just entirely natural? I understand they don’t make this distinction but that is what it amounts to today if we remove all God’s supernatural judgments because we can’t accept God could cause collateral damage. That was really where I was going with my two questions: Could you accept that God would send a flood to wipe out 50,000 people if their wickedness was so great? I admit I don’t like it but that is not enough to reject what scripture narrates and the rest of it generally takes as a real event in the past.

@Marshall

The ways the story humanizes God are clues it shouldn’t be read flat. God suddenly notices the wickedness of the human heart and is sorry to have created humanity, deciding to wipe us all out except for one family (6:5–7). But it doesn’t work: after the flood God sees that the human heart is still wicked, so God sets down the divine bow and arrows and promises to never punish the earth this way again (8:21; 9:8–17).

That really wasn’t part of my question. Sure, it’s not flat history. God also didn’t parade the animals in front of Adam too see if he could find him a suitable mate only to realize zebras and donkeys didn’t work. I don’t think a single book in the Bible is flat history.

@Marshall

I haven’t thought as much about this one as the flood, but my gut reaction is to make the same moves. At one level, God delivered some Hebrews from Egypt, including through protecting them from a wider judgement that fell on Egypt. At a second level, God inspired ways to tell this story that expanded it and made it revelatory of God’s general character and way of working in the world. God was involved in both that original history and in the history of the text.

So God did something special beyond how he ordinarily runs the world, you just don’t know what?

@Marshall

Because the exodus story is more than flat history of Israel’s origin, Paul asks his gentile audience in Corinth to read it as a story about their ancestors (1 Cor. 10:1). He doesn’t say it’s not historical, but he universalizes the history. It’s instructive to them as much as to Jews in Jerusalem. I think the reason for that is because the story is Scripture. As such, its truth can’t be provincialized or limited to the smaller historical nugget.

I think that is where I was going. If God didn’t actually save his people the story loses its value in my mind. If God doesn’t work such miracles it’s false hope. If he does, well my scripture narrates this here so why not give it the benefit of the doubt where I can? The story is one of God liberating his people. Hearing scripture constantly reference how God liberated Israel from Egyptian bondage kind of needs it to have happened for me to take scripture’s inspiration seriously.

I also don’t think the tenth plague is a historical nugget. Passover, the biggest Jewish celebration there is (millions of people would go to the temple during Jesus’s time for it), is literally named after God passing over the houses with the lamb’s blood–the final plague that led to their freedom. Christians generally believe it prefigured Jesus who, in my interpretation of the last supper, basically identified himself as such as well. Other authors made this connection after him.

I am not saying every detail of the Exodus is history. It certainly isn’t. Logistic problems alone rule that out. That is not what I asked. But imagine passover without an actual passover. To me that is like Christmas without a virgin birth, Christmas without God become man. I am not sure why I should view Passover any different than I do my celebration of Christmas. If Jesus was just a regular man, if he was not God become flesh, I mean, we have a nice day with family but we have lost so much.

If we can swallow passover without a passover, why can’t we swallow a tomb that is not empty? Jesus didn’t really need to be God incarnate and die for us. He could have just been a man. God inspired this story…or the metaphor of God incarnate coming and dying and rising to give us a closer image of how much he loves us. It doesn’t matter if the details are true, only if God’s love is as the story demonstrates it to be. If that were the case I would pass on Christianity and if God didn’t play a central role and do a lot of the things recorded in salvation history, I have to further pass on viewing this text as inspired in any serious sense. Maybe inspired in the same way a mountain inspires an artist to draw it and nothing more.

So if we can argue history for a lot of this stuff in the Old Testament doesn’t matter, why can we not argue the same for Christian beliefs about God become man? All that matters is we understand him as God incarnate who died for our sins. Why does that have to actually be true? Why can’t we just say God inspired the story to call us to a morally higher place and tell us how much he really loves us and that death is not the end?

Vinnie