There Is No Special Bible For Lazy People, PART II

In my previous post, I talked about how:

1. We have to actually read the Bible to know what’s in it.
2. Jesus seems to have thought that people’s misunderstandings were worth correcting, so we are to be in the habit of correcting ourselves by our further study.
3. We have to deliberately process what we read in order to get it right.
4. We have to crosscheck what we read in order to understand when one passage alludes to information found elsewhere, such as with the parables or apocalyptic literature.

All this was concerning how it’s hard work to know the Bible—much harder than many assume.

But it gets worse.  Here are yet a few more difficulties the devoted Bible student faces.

Original Languages

Our English Bibles are not in the original language.  No matter how good a translation we have, it is inevitable that some information will be lost or distorted in a translation.  That is, there’s no way that we will glean as accurate an understanding of a passage’s original intent as would a reader fluent in the original language who is reading the text in the original language.

We must understand that when translators do their thing, they are limited by the limitations of the language into which they are translating.  Here’s a great example:

Matthew 5:5  Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth

Our English word meek connotes a person who is weak of will and easily overrun by others.  Thus is it not an accurate translation of the Greek word praus in this passage.  William Barclay in his commentary on Matthew 5:5 says of praus:  “It is the regular word for an animal which has been domesticated, which has been trained to obey the word of command, which has learned to answer to the reins. It is the word for an animal
which has learned to accept control.”  In other words, what is being indicated by the word praus is a person of great strength—one who can keep himself on the straight and narrow, resisting the temptation to turn to the left or to the right.  This is hardly what we get from the word meek.

What does this mean for us?  It means that we don’t know as we read along in English whether we are getting the full sense of the original intent or not.  So how can we know?  Well, we have to look into the original language.  This takes our Bible study effort to a whole new order of magnitude as it forces us to leave the mere task of reading (such as we might read a novel) and consult other reference works.

But wait, it gets even harder still!

The Bible Is Not Complete

This one’s really going to rattle a lot of folks, but so be it; we must follow the truth wherever it may lead.

Many believers have no idea that the Bible is not a complete record of all the things mentioned therein.  The reason they do not know this is very simple; they do not investigate matters deeply enough to discover that many of the questions that arise through the curious reading of the texts are not answered in the texts.

For example:

2 Corinthians 12:2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows.

Paul writes to the Corinthians as if they will understand what he means by “the third heaven”.  Indeed, in this very letter, Paul has already told us something about his way of thinking about the letter he is writing:

2 Corinthians 1:13 For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and understand and I hope you will fully understand—

So if in 12:2 Paul is still holding to this idea of writing only what they can read and understand, then we can assume that Paul thought they would understand his meaning of “the third heaven”.  Otherwise, would he not have stopped to explain it, so that they could “fully understand”, as he hoped they would?

So what’s the problem?  Our problem is that we don’t understand the third heaven.  While there are many means of “heaven” and “the heavens” in the Bible, there is no passage that mentions any other ordinal number (first, second…) regarding any heaven.  No passage tells us how many there are or were in total.  No passage explains the need for more than one.  No passage explains whether the three exist at one time, or whether the first was made obsolete by the second, and the second by the third.  In short, we are simply not told by means of any direct language.  That’s not to say that something couldn’t be figured out with regard to all this, but you’ll not find an explicit statement in this regard anywhere.

There are many such challenging topics, raised by scripture, but not detailed in scripture.  The devout student knows this; the novice is surprised by it.

But wait, it gets even harder still!

Allusions to or Quotations from Extrabiblical Works

What do we do when the Bible quotes or alludes to other writings that are not in the Bible?  Here’s a good example:

Jude 14  It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, ¹⁵ to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

The prophecy quoted here is not found elsewhere in the Bible, but in The Book of Enoch (also called 1st Enoch).  This passage constitutes the whole of Chapter 2 of that book.  Not only does Jude quote it as fact, but he specifically calls it a prophecy.  And that really bakes the noodles of those who have been taught that the Bible is a tidy little package, all wrapped up and complete.  It opens quite an uncomfortable door for the cognitive miser, who must now choose whether to process this information, or simply to ignore it.  (And what do you think that most choose?  Ignoring it is easier by far, provided that one does not keep regular company with devout students of the texts.)

If it increased the Bible student’s work to have to consult reference works in addition to the Bible itself, exploring the extrabiblical works increases the work all the more.

But that’s not all, folks!

Dealing With All The False Ideas

The devoted student of the Bible has to swim through a veritable sea of confusion as to what the Bible is, where it came from, what was its purpose, how it works, what time it is now, and what we should make of it in our own lives.  He or she will quickly discover that a great many beliefs about the Bible are held very strongly, even with very little supporting evidence—and sometimes, even against the evidence.

Here are some examples of commonly-held beliefs that are hard to support from the Bible:

1. “God determined exactly what would be in the Bible.”  No passage of scripture says this.
2. “The Bible is complete.”  No passage of scripture says this.
3. “The Bible replaced the apostles and prophets.”  No passage of scripture says this.
4. “The _________ version was translated infallibly with the help of God himself.”  No passage of scripture says this, and it doesn’t take much investigation to confirm that it’s a false idea.
5. “Every word in the Bible was written by direct inspiration, as if God himself were holding the pen.”  Not only does no passage say this, but it’s very clear in the original languages that the style of writing changes from document to document in the Bible, indicating that it is not the work of a single author.
6. “There are no contradictions in the Bible.”  This is simply not true.  For example, compare the order of events in the various accounts of the Last Supper and see that they accounts do not all agree.  (Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22, 1 Corinthians 11)  Dishonest students will lie about this and pretend that there are no contradictions, or alternatively, that they “don’t matter”.  The fact of the matter, however, is that it tells us something very important about the nature of the Bible when we stop and observe the obvious.
7. “The Bible is life’s instruction manual.”  No it’s not.  There’s nothing in it about a great many things we need to know in life.
8. “The Bible is a blueprint for the church.”  If that’s what it is, it is grossly incomplete.  There are a great many questions that arise quite routinely in the practice of “church” that are not answered in the Bible.  This is further evinced by the great variation from one church to another today; they have answered these questions by some means other than direct answers in the texts—because not all the answers are there.  (They have also strayed from some of the answers that are there, but that’s another topic!)
9. “The Bible was written to us.”  No, it wasn’t.  There is not one passage in the Bible that is explicitly addressed to any audience later than the First Century AD.  This is quite obvious, but many lie about it, preferring to pretend otherwise.
10. “All Bible study should end with life application.”  This is a really bad idea, for the cognitive miser finds himself in a rush to figure out what to “do” about every passage he reads.  This distracts him from what should be the primary goal of study:  to determine what was believed, what happened, and what it meant to the writer.  To divorce ourselves from the meaning of the texts in a rush to “do something” is to divorce ourselves from our chances of figuring out accurately what should be done!  Those who study the whole Bible generally have considerably different ideas how to conduct themselves than do those who only read parts of it.

The devout student of the texts will have to swim against the tide of popular opinion.  This includes not only such items as those in the brief list above, but also the accusations of cognitive misers who are made uncomfortable at the idea that they, too, probably need to invest more effort in their own study.  From this are born accusations such as “you think too much”, which are commonly launched against the devout student in an attempt to get him to shut up about his findings.

The fact of the matter, of course, is that we have 1,000+ pages of Bible about which to think, and the typical cognitive miser believer generally concerns himself with only a few one-liners from scripture—often only from those printed in the New Testament, and often only those printed in red letters.  From these, they simply guess at the meanings with no intent whatsoever to confirm or deny those guesses from the rest of the 1,000+ pages.

Conclusion

There is no Bible that eases the load of the cognitive miser.  There’s no way around it.  Assuming that the Bible contains things that pertain to God, then the person who is really interested in God is going to be interested in everything that’s in it.  I think that one’s level of curiosity about understanding the texts may well be a good indicator of one’s interest in God himself.  I am reminded of the account of the “Rich Young Ruler”, who simply didn’t consider a radical investment in Jesus to be worth the cost:

Mark 10:17  Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, “One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” ²² But at these words he was saddened, and he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much property.

Is this really any different from someone who would like a family, but not a full-time family?  Is it any different from one who would like an occasional lover, but not a spouse?  Is it any different from one who would like lots of money, but not lots of work?

The fact of the matter is that a full and accurate understanding of the scriptures is a very costly thing.  Much ado is made in the churches about “knowing God”.  From this, we may infer that “knowing God” is considered a very important thing.  Yet if we study the habits of those making such proclamations, we generally see that very few of them are interested in knowing everything that can be learned from the very texts that they hold to be God-breathed.