When we look at the sacred texts of the 3 Abrahamic religions, we see many social constructs and structures that were told via the human lens. However, such texts are considered to be the unedited word of God as told to the prophets who were credited with their writing. The question is whether any human prophet could ever really understand the word of God without subjecting it to their own lens of understanding. You know the story. In Christianity, Judaism and Islam, the prophets are to have received the whole word of the God of Abraham and it was documented as such over a time span of 2,000 years as per our understanding of Biblical time (more on this in a future post).
The Bible in particular is considered by many to be inerrant and/or infallible. This means that The Word as has been documented within the 66 prophetic books is considered “error-free” and/or incapable of containing errors despite the fact that numerous human scribes were assigned with putting the texts together and with translating it from the original languages Hebrew, Aramaic & Greek into Latin and many other subsequent, modern-day language versions.
But how would this be possible?
To provide some perspective here, there is probably not one person among us that has not altered something that was told to us in some way once we relay the same information to another person. It’s just human nature to embellish or to put our own spin on the things we’re told. It’s even more interesting to watch small children play “the telephone game”. The game goes like this. One child takes 2 paper cups, cuts out a small hole in each and then threads a string (the telephone wire) through each cup. One child then tries saying something into the end of the cup so that the other child can hear it. The fun part is when the child then tries to repeat back what was said. It is usually not the same thing that was told to them.
So how can we be sure that the prophets told us the unedited revelation from God?
There are some more details to understand here before we can discuss the answer.
How did God make Himself known?
The concept of an omnipotent God always raises many questions with regards to how any human would ever understand the communications from God let alone relay them faithfully and unchanged to the rest of us. Think about this for a minute. A God that is omnipotent would not reside on the same plane as humans since any God as described in the sacred texts would have the capability to come in and out of different time and space and thus, would not even be visible or audible to us unless he decides to come into our specific time/space to make himself known.
Did God speak or reveal Himself?
Then of course, there is the question of whether God actually spoke to the prophets or revealed his Word to their mind irrespective of their language. According to the New International Version of the Bible per Bible Gateway, there are 139 Bible results for “the Lord said to Moses” but there are also 64 instances of phrases where either “The Lord” or “God” revealed His message to other prophets of the Old Testament.
Did The Prophets see God within their time?
Let’s also keep in mind for the moment, the timeframe in human history where the prophets existed. There were rises and falls of kings and queens, with civilizations raised and burned to the ground. There were thrones and conquests, slaves and sacrifice. So the underlying question here is “Did the Prophets put their own spin on God?”
It’s interesting to note that when the prophets speak of God, there are many references to the known monarchial structures and hierarchies on Earth including “King of Kings”, “Prince of Peace”, and very frequent references to God’s throne. The Bible Gateway website returns the following interesting results on this. After doing a few searches, there are
- 4 Bible results for “Throne of God”
- 6 Bible results for “King of Kings”
- 1 Bible results for “Prince of Peace”
- 2 Bible results for “Throne of Grace”
We all know that God is much more than any human king or prince nevertheless, the frequent references to such within the sacred text begs the following question:
If the Bible is considered the complete, unedited Word of God as revealed or spoken to the prophets, did God either speak to them in their language considering the limitations of their knowledge of the world around them at the time or did the prophets merely interpret God’s word to the extent of their own understanding?
It also makes us wonder how God would be described if he made an appearance today. Since we no longer have many monarchies in the world, might we just refer to him as God or the Creator? So, we are then left asking the initial question as to how could human prophets from the epochs of the Bible not interpret The Word via their own mind’s eye?
How Would You Reveal The Word?
So let’s speculate for the moment that we have the mind of God and we want to communicate with humans. Wouldn’t we have to both reveal our mind, our thoughts to them in their language and within their world of the day/time/space? So it’s not really that human prophets necessarily needed to interpret God’s Word but rather that he could’ve revealed His Word to accommodate their level of understanding.
Inerrancy vs Infallibility Revisited
There are still many ongoing discussions on whether the Bible is indeed to be considered inerrant and/or infallible. What is interesting is that while there is no real ambiguity surrounding what is meant by “inerrant” or free from errors, the term “infallible” has been subject to some interpretation. Some believe that the Bible is only infallible to the extent of the divine messages and testimony within the text but that wouldn’t preclude certain historical errors from existing. Thus, advocates for this “interpretive infallibility” confirm that while there can be no errors in the messages from the perfect God, the actual text transcriptions may indeed contain certain errors.
More hardliners nevertheless equate inerrancy on the same level as infallibility so the controversy is still open to what seem to be endless debates on this subject
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But What About Problems with Sacred Text Translations?
Whether you’re an advocate for inerrancy, absolute infallibility or interpretive infallibility, one thing that is absolutely true is the interpretive differences between languages and their translations. Some time ago, I endeavored to learn Hebrew for purposes of studying the original language of the Old Testament. The first lesson I learned was the importance of the Hebrew letter “Aleph” which is the first letter of the first man “Adam”. However, in Hebrew, the name “Adam” quite literally means “the first man” or more literally it means “first blood”. However, does this distinction ever appear in any English Bible translation? I am not aware of any but I am only pointing this out to show how even a small difference between translations from the original biblical languages can really have an impact on The Word and all its messages.
The Message and Its Reliance
It’s not really unusual that differences exist with respect to interpretations and/or translations of the Bible. What is important to remember when reliance upon a sacred text like the Bible comes into question is that the truth is in the message and for all believers, The Word is the truth.
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