It is easy to see how a fundamentalist would like to believe that God has always been in control, and ensured that his book contained the exact words that he wanted it to contain. This view of inspiration comforts the believer that they really do have “all things pertaining to life and godliness”, the unadulterated words of God himself, which are “able to make one wise unto salvation”, in which not one jot or tittle is missing.[1] These are passages often quoted to flesh out the fundamentalist concepts of inspiration and Sola Scriptura.[2] But as we will see, especially in the chapter on when God left Israel, where God’s promises seem to keep getting put off, there is much in the Bible that is very uncomforting, just like our walk through the valley of death that is this life on Earth, a major subject of the Bible which often goes without explanation, as in the book of Job particularly.
This article is taken from my book, When Humans Wrote Scripture.
We cited a few examples in the previous chapter where what is commonly considered inspired Scripture appears to have not been given, at least word for word, by God, such as when Paul stepped out of his prophetic voice to blatantly state that he was giving his own opinion. It would be beneficial to cite a few more examples here of questions regarding whether exact wording was always given, to further round out our understanding of what the biblical authors themselves suggested about inspiration.
Original Composition?
Aphorisms and Hymn Arrangements
I remember reading the long sequence of aphorisms in Proverbs in my youth, and noticing repeating ones.[3] Even in the Torah, several of the laws show up more than once in different lists, sometimes with extra details.[4] Surely a perfect God would not give the exact words of the whole book and forget that he had said that he had already written a particular aphorism or command. Of course, one could argue that he meant to repeat them, maybe for emphasis, or some other divine reason difficult for mere mortal understanding to grasp. Certain repetitions seem to be intentional, such as the continual emphasis to keep the Sabbath holy,[5] but others, not so much. And as covered elsewhere, the Bible contains copyist errors, and clear evidence of seams between different sections where documents were spliced, and other causes of duplication. Any of these could explain the repeated aphorisms or laws that appear randomly throughout the Bible, but especially in the most ancient core of the Bible, the Torah.
The composition of the book of Psalms is another interesting case of a book that could not have been dropped from the sky all at once; in fact, many passages are attributed to different authors, one to Moses, many to David and later individuals. It is not the diversity of authors of the books, however, that many fundamentalists might take issue with, but evidence related to their arrangement. Many people are not aware that the “book” of Psalms as we now know it is composed of five books, each of which is a collection of psalms that tend to develop a subtheme, each of which support the main theme of the entire collection, the sovereignty of YHVH.[6] Headings can be found in most Bibles to distinguish each of the five books. It might seem logical for a fundamentalist to conclude that this arrangement was therefore part of YHVH’s plan; and maybe this is so. However, after the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls at Qumran in the mid-20th century—now our most ancient copies of Hebrew scripture[7]—scholars note evidence of a different ordering of the last two books of Psalms as we know them today.[8] This is made even more significant when we consider that out of the approximately 220 scrolls found at Qumran that are from the Bible, the Book of Psalms has more copies (in whole or part, as many are small fragments) than any other book. Perhaps even more disturbing to modern fundamentalists, there are at least 15 additional psalms not found in modern Bibles, nine of which were previously unknown. Although there are some variants across scrolls for the first three books of Psalms, variants in both content and composition of the last two books of Psalms are so numerous in the Qumran scrolls that scholars argue that the canon was still being formed during this time. Of course, this alternative ordering and content of books four and five may have been a minority of what was available at the time. A text found at Masada, dating to the 1st century CE, supports the conventional psalter. And the Septuagint, a Greek translation from around the same time period as the Qumran documents, largely follows the conventional psalter, but it too has many variants, including the addition of Psalm 151. However, as examined in the previous chapter, Psalm 151 appears to be a later addition, as Psalm 150 has a perfectly logical conclusion to the entire psalter.
Seams
I’ve mentioned seams in the biblical documents a few times, and it’s been my experience that these are glossed over in most Bible classes, as if they’re not there, and every book is a unity. So let’s point out just a few illustrative examples; we’ll cover more later. We’re going to ignore obvious compositions such as the lengthy histories and Psalms, which most believers probably would not have an issue with being composite.
We’ve mentioned the two additional chapters tacked onto the end of Proverbs already. You still hear in churches that Solomon wrote Proverbs. Only occasionally do you hear that there are sections that he didn’t. And I’ve even heard that Lemuel, the claimed author of the last chapter, was Solomon! Of course, the tendency to associate him with a known king is at least partially understandable, since we have no record of such a king. This is also a good place to point out that this is yet another example of a biblical writer citing a human source, not God, as he said his mother taught him this wisdom. But let’s return to the topic of seams in the book. I noted before that there were repeated proverbs. Part of the reason may be that there is a glaring seam back at the beginning of chapter 25, where an interesting redactional comment is thrown in: “these also are proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied.” Not only has an editor(s) tacked on the last two chapters to supposedly Solomon’s holy book, but redactors have actually added some content as early as chapter 25, and given us one of the Bible’s rare mentions of the source for their documents. The book of Proverbs then is undeniably a composite work.
Once you are not under the preconception that each book of the Bible had to be written or composed by a single author, you begin to see evidences of seams, such as an odd change in content, or even just these editorial comments that crop up to explain something. And these are more rule than exception. Many books have them. Jeremiah, for instance, has several, which may help explain why there are so many different versions of it in our most ancient extant copies of it, where different sections are placed in different spots, or are missing altogether.[9] Isaiah also has some pretty major seams, as explained in footnote 158 in the last chapter. But some of perhaps the most controversial glaring seams are those found in the Torah, which we’ll come back to in a couple of chapters.
Quotes
Other Repetitions and Internal Quotes
As we’ll note in following chapters, the long histories, such as Samuel/Kings and Chronicles, show clear indications of being composite works, drawing on source materials, many of which they even cite. There are even major differences between them. However, the lengthy four chapters from Isaiah 36 to 39 are taken straight out of 2 Kings 18:13 to 20:19, or vice versa; and they totally break with the prophetic passages before and after in Isaiah. I recently saw a dissenting post in a social media group dedicated to the Bible that this is a clear indication that no god could have inspired the text. Again, I believe this is an imposition of Western thought on what divine inspiration must look like, not a clear proof against divine origin at all. And again, I am not trying to argue for divine inspiration, but to flesh out what inspiration looked like for the authors, who probably had no problem with certain passages sourcing others to make their points, or even with Moses adapting the ten commandments in a sermon. The New Testament authors certainly sourced the Tanakh[10] thoroughly with the intent to show that Jesus was the fulfillment of prophecy. It’s ironic then that what’s sometimes offered as divine proof by the authors (e.g., a citation of another authoritative prophet) is not only recognized as such by even scholars today, but is presented against such authority. The Bible raises enough legitimate questions about its divine origins without having to resort to lazy speciousness, and we will get to quite a few of the major ones in due course. When we get to the New Testament, we’ll see how their quotes of the Hebrew Bible were definitely not exact wording, and usually came from an often questionable Greek translation, the Septuagint. To read more, check out my book, When Humans Wrote Scripture.
[1] 2 Peter 1:3; 2 Timothy 3:15-17; Matthew 5:18. Gone are the days when authors could not put such phrases in quotes or give references and readers still know that they were from the Bible.
[2] Sola Scriptura is Latin for “Scripture Alone”, and is the name for a doctrine held by many (but not all) Protestant groups, which states that the Bible is the only source of authority. Its popularity began in the 15th century, taking off with the advent of the printing press and Protestant Reformation. Of course, not even the New Testament teaches Sola Scriptura, as there were many prophets mentioned there (e.g., I John 4:1), unless you count one passage as Paul’s prediction regarding the closing of the canon (I Corinthians 13:8). Of course, the canon did close, but when is not agreed upon; and whether there are still prophecies is an ongoing debate.
[3] 10:1 and 15:20 are nearly verbatim. Also see 21:9 and 25:24. And there are many more.
[4] See the chapter on differences in the Torah for more on this topic. But one example is Exodus 22:21 and 23:9, the law against oppressing a foreigner.
[5] E.g., Exodus 16; 20:8-11; 31:13-16; 35:1-3
[6] For an incredibly detailed and enlightening analysis, see Encountering the Book of Psalms, by Hassell Bullock.
[7] Dating to roughly the three centuries before Christ, and a few decades after.
[8] The publication of scrolls 11QPsa, 11QPsb, and 4QPse was one of the main evidences for this drastically different order (see The Dead Sea Psalms Scroll, James Sanders). Although I’ve seen the blanket statement in scholarship that the Dead Sea scrolls are evidence that the current ordering of the last two books of Psalms were not yet formed, other scrolls actually testify to our present ordering. And, this “alternative” psalter appears to be unique to the Qumran community . For an analysis of the sheer volume of variants in the last two books of Psalms, see “The Qumran Psalms Manuscripts and the Consecutive Arrangement of Psalms in the Hebrew Psalter”, Gerald Wilson, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 45, July 1983, pages 377-388, also available at jstor.org.
[9] See the previous chapter on the Septuagint, and When God Spoke Greek, by Timothy Law, ch. 3.
[10] Another term for the Hebrew Bible.