Position Of Christian Authors WithRegardTo Scientific Error In The Biblical Texts.

A Critical Examination.

One is struck by the diversenature of Christian commentators’ reactions to theexistence of these accumulated errors, improbabilitiesand contradictions. Certain commentators acknowledge someof them and do not hesitate in their work to tacklethorny problems. Others pass lightly over unacceptablestatements and insist on defending the text word forword. The latter try to convince people by apologeticdeclarations, heavily reinforced by arguments which areoften unexpected, in the hope that what is logicallyunacceptable will be forgotten.

In the Introduction to his translation of Genesis,Father de Vaux acknowledges the existence of criticalarguments and even expands upon their cogency.Nevertheless, for him the objective reconstitution ofpast events has little interest. As he writes in hisnotes, the fact that the Bible resumes “the memoryof one or two disastrous floods of the valleys of theTigris and Euphrates, enlarged by tradition until theytook on the dimensions of a universal cataclysm” isneither here nor there; “the essential thing is,however, that the sacred author has infused into thismemory eternal teachings on the justice and mercy of Godtoward the malice of man and the salvation of therighteous.”

In this way justification is found for thetransformation of a popular legend into an event ofdivine proportions-and it is as such that it is thoughtfit to present the legend to men’s faith-following theprinciple that an author has made use of it to illustratereligious teachings. An apologetic position of this kindjustifies all the liberties taken in the composition ofwritings which are supposed to be sacred and to containthe word of God. If one acknowledges such humaninterference in what is divine, all the humanmanipulations of the Biblical texts will be accountedfor. If there are theological intentions, allmanipulations become legitimate; so that those of the’Sacerdotal’ authors of the Sixth century are justified,including their legalist preoccupations that turned intothe whimsical descriptions we have already seen.

A large number of Christian commentators have found itmore ingenious to explain errors, improbabilities andcontradictions in Biblical descriptions by using theexcuse that the Biblical authors were expressing ideas inaccordance with the social factors of a different cultureor mentality. From this arose the definition ofrespective ‘literary genres’ which was introduced intothe subtle dialectics of commentators, so that itaccounts for all difficulties. Any contradictions thereare between two texts are then explained by thedifference in the way each author expressed ideas in hisown particular ‘literary genre’. This argument is not, ofcourse, acknowledged by everybody because it lacksgravity. It has not entirely fallen into disuse todayhowever, and we shall see in the New Testament itsextravagant use as an attempt to explain blatantcontradictions in the Gospels.

Another way of making acceptable what would berejected by logic when applied to a litigious text, is tosurround the text in question with apologetical considerations. The reader’s attention is distracted fromthe crucial problem of the truth of the text itself anddeflected towards other problems.

Cardinal Daniélou’s reflections on the Flood followthis mode of expression. They appear in the review LivingGod (Dieu Vivant) [ No. 38, 1974, pp. 95-112)]under the title: ‘Flood,Baptism, Judgment’, (Deluge, Baptème, Judgment )where he writes “The oldest tradition of the Churchhas seen in the theology of the Flood an image of Christand the Church”. It is “an episode of greatsignificance” . . . “a judgment striking thewhole human race.” Having quoted from Origin in his Homilieson Ezekiel, he talks of ‘”the shipwreck of theentire universe saved in the Ark”, CardinalDaniélou dwells upon the value of the number eight”expressing the number of people that were saved inthe Ark (Noah and his wife, his three sons and theirwives)”. He turns to his own use Justin’s writingsin his Dialogue. “They represent the symbolof the eighth day when Christ rose from the dead”and “Noah, the first born of a new creation, is animage of Christ who was to do in reality what Noah hadprefigured.” He continues the comparison betweenNoah on the one hand, who was saved by the ark made ofwood and the water that made it float (“water of theFlood from which a new humanity was born”), and onthe other, the cross made of wood. He stresses the valueof this symbolism and concludes by underlining the”spiritual and doctrinal wealth of the sacrament ofthe Flood” (sic).

There is much that one could say about such apologeticalcomparisons. We should always remember thatthey are commentaries on an event that it is not possibleto defend as reality, either on a universal scale or interms of the time in which the Bible places it. With acommentary such as Cardinal Daniélou’s we are back inthe Middle Ages, where the text had to be accepted as itwas and any discussion, other than conformist, was offthe point.

It is nevertheless reassuring to find that prior tothat age of imposed obscurantism, highly logicalattitudes were adopted. One might mention those of SaintAugustine which proceed from his thought, that wassingularly advanced for the age he lived in. At the timeof the Fathers of the Church, there must have beenproblems of textual criticism because Saint Augustineraises them in his letter No. 82. The most typical ofthem is the following passage:
“It is solely to those books of Scripture whichare called ‘canonic’ that I have learned to grant suchattention and respect that I firmly believe that theirauthors have made no errors in writing them. When Iencounter in these books a statement which seems tocontradict reality, I am in no doubt that either the text(of my copy) is faulty, or that the translator has notbeen faithful to the original, or that my understandingis deficient.”
It was inconceivable to Saint Augustine that a sacredtext might contain an error. Saint Augustine defined veryclearly the dogma of infallibility when, confronted witha passage that seemed to contradict the truth, he thoughtof looking for its cause, without excluding thehypothesis of a human fault. This is the attitude of abeliever with a critical outlook. In Saint Augustine’sday, there was no possibility of a confrontation betweenthe Biblical text and science. An open-mindedness akin tohis would today eliminate a lot of the difficultiesraised by the confrontation of certain Biblical textswith scientific knowledge.

Present-day specialists, on the contrary, go to greattrouble to defend the Biblical text from any accusationof error. In his introduction to Genesis, Father de Vauxexplains the reasons compelling him to defend the text atall costs, even if, quite obviously, it is historicallyor scientifically unacceptable. He asks us not to viewBiblical history “according to the rules ofhistorical study observed by people today”, as ifthe existence of several different ways of writinghistory was possible. History, when it is told in aninaccurate fashion, (as anyone will admit), becomes ahistorical novel. Here however, it does not have tocomply with the standards established by our conceptions.The Biblical commentator rejects any verification ofBiblical descriptions through geology, paleontology orpre-historical data. “The Bible is not answerable toany of these disciplines, and were one to confront itwith the data obtained from these sciences, it would onlylead to an unreal opposition or an artificialconcordance.” [Introduction toGenesis, page 35.] One might point out that thesereflections are made on what, in Genesis, is in no way inharmony with modern scientific data-in this case thefirst eleven chapters. When however, in the present day,a few descriptions have been perfectly verified, in thiscase certain episodes from the time of the patriarchs,the author does not fail to support the truth of theBible with modern knowledge. “The doubt cast uponthese descriptions should yield to the favorable witnessthat history and eastern archaeology bear them.” [Introductionto Genesis, page 34.] In other words. if science is useful in confirming theBiblical description, it is invoked, but if itinvalidates the latter, reference to it is not permitted.

To reconcile the irreconcilable, i.e. the theory ofthe truth of the Bible with the inaccurate nature ofcertain facts reported in the descriptions in the OldTestament, modern theologians have applied their effortsto a revision of the classical concepts of truth. It liesoutside the scope of this book to give a detailed exposeof the subtle ideas that are developed at length in worksdealing with the truth of the Bible; such as O. Loretz’swork (1972) What is the Truth of the Bible?(Quelle est la Vérité de la Bible?) [ Pub. Le Centurion, Paris]. This judgment concerning science willhave to suffice:
The author remarks that the Second Vatican Council”has avoided providing rules to distinguish betweenerror and truth in the Bible. Basic considerations showthat this is impossible, because the Church cannotdetermine the truth or otherwise of scientific methods insuch a way as to decide in principle and on a generallevel the question of the truth of the Scriptures”.
It is obvious that the Church is not in a position tomake a pronouncement on the value of scientific ‘method’as a means of access to knowledge. The point here isquite different. It is not a question of theories, but offirmly established facts. In our day and age, it is notnecessary to be highly learned to know that the world wasnot created thirty-seven or thirty-eight centuries ago.We know that man did not appear then and that theBiblical genealogies on which this estimate is based havebeen proven wrong beyond any shadow of a doubt. Theauthor quoted here must be aware of this. His statementson science are only aimed at side-stepping the issue sothat he does not have to deal with it the way he oughtto.

The reminder of all these different attitudes adoptedby Christian authors when confronted with the scientificerrors of Biblical texts is a good illustration of theuneasiness they engender. It recalls the impossibility ofdefining a logical position other than by recognizingtheir human origins and the impossibility ofacknowledging that they form part of a Revelation.

The uneasiness prevalent in Christian circlesconcerning the Revelation became clear at the SecondVatican Council (19621965) where it took no less thanfive drafts before there was any agreement on the finaltext, after three years of discussions. It was only thenthat “this painful situation threatening to engulfthe Council” came to an end, to use His GraceWeber’s expression in his introduction to the ConciliarDocument No. 4 on the Revelation [ Pub. Le Centurion, 1966, Paris].

Two sentences in this document concerning the OldTestament (chap IV, page 53) describe the imperfectionsand obsolescence of certain texts in a way that cannot becontested:
“In view of the human situation prevailing beforeChrist’s foundation of salvation, the Books of the OldTestament enable everybody to know who is God and whois man, and also the way in which God, in his justice andmercy, behaves towards men. These books, even thoughthey contain material which is imperfect and obsolete,nevertheless bear witness to truly divineteachings.”
There is no better statement than the use of theadjectives ‘imperfect’ and ‘obsolete’ applied to certaintexts, to indicate that the latter are open to criticismand might even be abandoned; the principle is veryclearly acknowledged.

This text forms part of a general declaration whichwas definitively ratified by 2,344 votes to 6;nevertheless, one might question this almost totalunanimity. In actual fact, in the commentaries of theofficial document signed by His Grace Weber, there is onephrase in particular which obviously corrects the solemnaffirmation of the council on the obsolescence of certaintexts: ‘”Certain books of the Jewish Bible have atemporary application and have something imperfect inthem.”

‘Obsolete’, the expression used in the officialdeclaration, is hardly a synonym for ‘temporaryapplication’, to use the commentator’s phrase. As for theepithet ‘Jewish’ which the latter curiously adds, itsuggests that the conciliar text only criticized theversion in Hebrew. This is not at all the case. It isindeed the Christian Old Testament alone that, at theCouncil, was the object of a judgment concerning theimperfection and obsolescence of certain parts.