That is certainly not a definition of error that is accepted by many or found in a dictionary.
If we simply create our own definitions that differ from those definitions in general use, there is no basis for communication.
Thanks.
I see it’s an audio book; I was hoping for a YouTube presentation. I’ll have to see if there’s a version I can get on my Nook.
Wait a minute – I thought you said it was by John Walton!
Ah, see now we come to the problem: a “definition in general use” is almost automatically and near-invariably not one that fits the scriptures!
The one I gave is what I find from reading in Greek (not much commentary in Hebrew) from back in the centuries around the Incarnation, especially following it. It’s also one that fits the Old Testament, where “word” tended to mean “message” etc., the best example of which being that the Jews did not call the statements given to Moses “Ten Commandments” but “Ten Words” – which tells us that a “word” is a statement, not an individual vocable.
So when in the church Fathers I read an assertion that the inspired words are without error, I recognize that they aren’t talking about the individual vocables, they’re talking about the message. And since they got that concept from the Bible, the claim of inerrancy as applied to all the individual words is unbiblical – and dangerous because it takes the focus off the message and the One the message is about and puts it on a modern human philosophy.
Jesus’s statement on divorce shows up multiple times in the Gospels and in Paul, not only in the sermon. I am not sure why the statement on blinding yourself has any relevance unless I should want to use it as an excuse to soften what Jesus says elsewhere? Sure, we may think Jesus is engaged in hyperbole there, by why does it follow that I should view this as relevant in regards to divorce? Can I take nothing at face value since Jesus engaged in hyperbole on a few things?
I agree context is important. There are several different contexts to imagine in this verse.
-
One context is modern Christians and their proclivity to soften what Jesus says so they don’t have to alter their lifestyle.
-
Another context is the one Jesus ties his teaching on divorce and remarriage to: the created order. Basing his view on the created order doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in viewing it as being relevant only to a few people at that time. In fact, there is nothing about chopping off your hand or gouging out your eyeball in Matthew 19. I am sure most Christians who view marriage as sacred and homosexuality as sinful understand the appeal to the “created order”.
-
The context for Matthew 19 and Mark 10 is Jesus being challenged and tested. It is quite clear Jesus had a teaching on divorce that was dissimilar to other rabbis at the time and the Pharisees are trying to pit him against the law of Moses. This means this teaching by Jesus was well known which is why it shows up in two forms in the synoptics and also in Paul, who rarely every quotes a saying of Jesus directly.
According to the Gospel of Mark:
Jesus forbids divorce and remarriage.
Jesus declared all foods clean.
The earth church didn’t seem to care. Paul offered different rules on divorce and remarriage and the early church also bitterly fought over food laws. Kind of odd since Jesus settled these issues in the 30s. Now Mark probably made the whole food law thing up but the teaching on divorce most certainly goes back to Jesus. I am not saying Paul does not give sound advice. “Marry if you can’t control yourself” sounds a lot like “cut your hand off” in sentiment but they still have friction based on the content. But Jesus was speaking to Jews and Paul to Romans. I don’t think Jesus allowed divorce and remarriage. That is not something a lot of people want to hear today but it seems pretty plain to me. We can choose to not follow what Jesus said on this or relegate his teaching to some small village in Galilee but its there in scripture for all to see.
I don’t read anything Jesus says with a wooden literalism but we are talking about the doctrine of inerrancy and many Christians who are openly anti-homosexual love to appeal to the created order (male and female). Well Jesus did that on divorce and remarriage and someone writing in Paul’s name did it to put women in their place. Maybe none of these three appeals are accurate but if I have to wager on one, I’m going with Jesus.
Vinnie
If you only want to talk to people with the same understanding of scripture and words as you have, then you can make up definitions for you and a close circle of friends all day long.
If you want to interact with other people outside your small group, then you need standardized words.
Anyone who claims “the Bible is inerrant” and secretly means “there are small errors here and there but we ignore those because the message still comes true” is being disingenuous.
I don’t want to mislead people like that.
I’m not sure Jesus had a view that was known; there’s no indication in the text. On the other hand, divorce was a hot issue and there were many views, which made it a good topic to try to trap Jesus on – indeed if He had no stated view at the time they could well have assumed He would be unprepared to respond and would say something they could pounce on.
And as usual He caught them off guard.
Probably not, actually – but the editorial comment in the text is almost certainly hindsight, not something the disciples recognized at the time.
Why are they testing him if he is just going to say “do whatever Moses told you”? I’d guess they expected something different. The popularity of this saying in the surviving tradition stands at odds with it not being well known.As noted, Paul rarely evert quotes Jesus directly but he does on this and it shows up in two versions in the synoptics. Historically speaking, his teaching on divorce is one of most certain things we can know about Jesus.
And how do you know divorce was a hot issue? There is no real evidence anyone prior to the Temple destruction questioned the male ability to divorce his wife. The Shammai-Hillel stuff shows up much later in Rabbinic tradition and cannot be attributed to early first century debate. When does the Gittin actually date to? Philo and Josephus show no knowledge of any such debate. Jesus stands alone here. See volume 4 of John Meier’s Historical Jesus booklet for a good discussion of divorce.
The editorial gloss is the part I am saying is made up. The rest of it makes perfect sense even for Jews who would never think of eating shellfish and pork. I have heard one scholar attribute the gloss to Jesus himself saying that it was about ceremony. Jesus wasn’t declaring shellfish and pork okay to eat. Jesus and Jews did not consider either food. When he said all foods are clean he meant all foods Jews normally eat. It was an issue of hand washing and defilement and may have had nothing to do with shellfish and pork…again…assuming its not just a Markan editorial gloss in line with Pauline thought on food laws.
Walton handles the OT survey which takes up the majority of the lectures
1 Like
I’m not making anything up, I’m trying to push people into a biblical perspective.
That’s true only if I don’t want people to learn anything. Interacting with people within the parameters of their accepted worldview will never move them an inch towards understanding a different worldview, or even towards them understanding that there can be a different worldview.
No, it’s a matter of prying people away from a modern materialistic, linear, binary view of things and getting them to grasp the definitions that are appropriate to the topic. “Inerrant” did not mean to the early church what it means when used by YECists and other literalists today, and the only honest way to discuss the topic is to begin by recognizing that by using a modern definition we are not actually talking about the Bible but about a human construct being forced onto the Bible.
The ancient view of “without error” would look at your statement above and wonder what you were talking about – that’s how different the worldview was, and if we’re going to understand the scriptures we have to grasp the ancient worldview and work with it. Trying to discuss the Bible using only modern concepts instead of asking what the Bible’s concepts are is just theological thumb-twiddling.
Using only modern concepts instead of those from back in the day is inherently misleading.
All it takes is a synopsis to render this incorrect. If you want to suggest the overall message of the Bible is true I will agree with you. I don’t find it inerrant in the least and to suggest otherwise with a narrow definition of inerrancy is just going to lead to confusion. Maybe it is the teacher in me but I prefer to use words the way everyone else does. People expect to read the Bible and if God wrote it they expect it to be true. My wife, for example, is no theologian and she asks honest questions about the Bible like this. She is not a skeptic trying to assault it. She just tries to make sense of what she is reading and I am not going to try to sell her inerrancy with 75 caveats. I explain scripture differently to her. When the plain meaning of so many things just in’t true keeping “inerrancy” does more harm than good to me. If I have to qualify inerrancy 700 ways until Sunday I am just going to come up with a better way to describe my model of Biblical inspiration that isn’t tortured, convoluted and retreating.
You’re mixing two time frames: when the question was asked, and after most of the New Testament documents were in circulation.
Why would they think He would say, “do whatever Moses told you”? He certainly wasn’t known for such simplistic responses!
That’s really reading things into the text! At the time that could well have been how His audience understood it, but the principle itself applies to anything humans would eat – which is where the editorial gloss comes from using hindsight.
I don’t see any way that Jesus Himself made the statement; it doesn’t fit with the flow of the narrative at all, in fact it’s a bit of a clumsy insertion (something our entire second-year Greek class noticed). It’s a gloss, and one that at a bare minimum puts the completion of Mark’s Gospel sometime after the Council in Jerusalem related in Acts 15.
Therein lies a problem: I just read an article last week which detailed at least six different meanings of the term “inerrant” just among American ‘evangelicals’!
So I prefer to ignore them and try to expound what the early church meant. No, the one I stated as reasonably viable isn’t from the early church, it’s from somewhere between the Great Schism and the Reformation; I don’t recall where. But it does illustrate that God didn’t have to dictate all the words for the writings to be inerrant, only to intervene to keep them from errors – and that BTW is the strongest form of inspiration I can stomach; dictation in my view is too much like possession.
I would explain the concept as it was held by the early church and use that to show that the modern version is not even wrong because it rests on a misunderstanding of the scriptures.
No, you are making up your own definition of inerrancy that disagrees with almost everyone and that disagrees with every dictionary.
You aren’t pointing people towards a Biblical perspective, as the Bible never claims inerrancy nor defines inerrancy.
But feel free to continue to create some alternate reality where inerrant means containing errors that don’t matter.
Citations please
1 Like
The statement is historical. It goes back to the HJ. They were trying to specifically trap him as they did many times by getting him to disagree with Torah. They were not just asking a random or idle opinion of him. Jesus says no divorce and remarriage. Moses says give your wife a certificate. Just like “render unto Caesar” Jesus was very clever in working out of this trap.
Notice that Mark also says:
"10 Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 11 He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, 12 and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
Jesus offers multiple public teachings on divorce and remarriage, his enemies try to trap him and he speaks in private about it with his disciples. Paul quotes it.
Of course, Mark messes up because Jesus most likely would not have spoken to a bunch of Jewish guys saying “and if she divorces her husband.” Mark had adapted Jesus’s saying to a Roman audience where wives could divorce husbands. A Jewish wife divorcing her husband was an extremely rare thing and that part would have raised more controversy than anything else in 1st century Palestine.
The scriptures have a definite concept of what “word” is and what an error is, and my point is to get people to grasp that perspective. If all you want to do is stick with erroneous terms, fine, but that won’t teach anyone anything!
And your final statement indicates that’s what you’re doing since even after reading about the biblical perspective you just go back to the incorrect understanding!
This is why I just drop the term all together. I don’t know why people feel the need to so strongly hold on to the word “inerrant.” Its like an intellectual security blanket or something. The Bible has errors all across the spectrum that rule out even “inerrant in regards to only morality and doctrine.”
Citations please
Where do the scriptures define error?
We do agree on that
This context, from the Sermon on the Mount
Matthew 5: Adultery
27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ 28But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to desire her hasalready committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your righteye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away! It is better tolose one of your members than to have your whole body throwninto hell. 30 If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off andthrow it away! It is better to lose one of your members than to have your whole body go into hell.
Divorce
31 “It was said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife must give her a legal document.’ 32 But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
You can call it hyperbole, but I think the message is that we all sin, and need salvation.
1 Like
It’s interesting (and indicative) that necessary technical and esoteric definitions are refused in academic and theological discussions, not to mention scientific and medical ones.