DEFENDING BIBLE HEROES

Why are false teachings about the Bible promulgated and why do we sometimes believe them? The causes are many, and most are not very admirable. One of the most common motives was identified early on by Paul: "There are also many rebellious people...teaching for sordid gain what it is not right to teach." (Titus 1:10-11)  But in addition to greed, other motives include wanting to believe only those things that are to our personal benefit, the gnostic desire to teach and learn something that few other people know, to gain power over others, etc.

But there are more admirable reasons that teachers sometimes twist the Scripture slightly. Some want to simplify passages to eliminate anything that might upset readers of the Bible. One example from The Daily Bible comes to mind:The parallel accounts of David conducting a census differ in who was inciting David to do it, Satan or God. The Daily Bible eliminates the reference to God (which seems to be an immoral action by Him) while at the same time eliminating the discrepancy between the two accounts. 

Then there was the special speaker our home Bible study group brought in for a series of talks. His first two lectures were peppered with one outrageous and unsubstantiated statement after the other: Noah's ark had been found, Jesus' DNA had been analyzed and shown to possess non-human characteristics, the exact number of people Saul/Paul was responsible for killing had been determined, dinosaurs were mentioned in the Bible, and the location of God's "hometown" was found. I cornered him at one point and told him that I had tried to track down the sources for this information and failed to do so. He admitted privately that there might be a little uncertainty in some of his pronouncements, but defended his actions by saying that he put them into his talk to keep people's interest up so that they would listen when he got to presenting the Gospel message later on.

 Here is an interesting question posed by a Christian animal rights organization: Did Jesus kill 2,000 pigs? On their website, they explain that of course Jesus didn't kill a herd of pigs when he cast the legion of demons out of the possessed man. That would have been horribly cruel of him to do to those innocent piggies. In fact, it wasn't a miracle story at all. Instead it was a political parable put into the NT to teach that the Jews needed to expel the Roman “legions” from Israel, not legions of demons at all. This is a prime example of the trend C. S. Lewis once described. In a nutshell, people start out by talking about the Bible and animal rights, then it becomes animal rights in the Bible, and finally their true motive comes out when they deny the clear meaning of the Bible if it doesn't fit in with their prime concern, which is animal rights. 

Here is another altruistic, but misplaced, motive: trying to defend the “heroes” in the Bible. One noted example is how both Christian and Jewish teachers try to explain away Abraham's actions in twice misleading rulers who wanted to take Sarah as their wife. Both times Abraham said that she was only his sister, in order to save his own neck. One particular internet source concludes that Abraham may have deceived those rulers with his half truth (she was related to him), but that isn't at all the same as actually lying. Then there are other commentators who try to explain that it was the custom for a patriarch who had a favorite wife to also adopt her as his sister. So Abimelech misunderstood Abraham when all he was trying to do was explain that Sarah was an especially dear wife to him.

Concerning the rather embarrassing episode of Aaron and the golden calf, here are some examples of ancient rabbis trying to defend the actions of characters in the incident, taken from Brevard Child's commentary on Exodus:

“Why Aaron chose to make expressly a calf is not explained in the text, but has evoked a variety of theories from commentators. B. Jacob's explanation that Aaron wanted to make something completely nonsensical to expose their folly misses the mark badly.”

In reply to Aaron's statement that he threw the gold into the fire and a calf came out, “Jewish commentators tend to defend Aaron and accept his defense at face value.”

“Israel as a nation was not chiefly to blame, but the trouble began with the 'mixed multitude' who came from Egypt.” 

And there are many other examples in rabbinical commentaries trying to explain away the dubious actions of Miriam, King David, etc. These sorts of justifications might make sense in a works-based religion but they have absolutely no place in a religion of grace. In spite of that, I will admit that I was quite surprised a few years ago when I was teaching a lesson in our home Bible study on David and Bathsheba. I asked what the group thought of Bathsheba's actions. There ensued an almost violent argument in which a majority of the people thought that it was all Bathsheba's fault for enticing David in the first place. I have to believe that their major motive was to defend David, the man after God's own heart.