the skeptical review volumes 1-13

Skeptical Review

Edited by Farrell Till

The Skeptical ReviewVolume One - 1990Farrell Till, editor

Number 1 Volume One, Issue One Number 2 Volume One, Issue Two Number 3 Volume One, Issue Three Number 4 Volume One, Issue Four

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The Skeptical ReviewVolume One, Number One January/February/March 1990Farrell Till, editor

Why Another Religious Publication? The first cover article for the first issue of The Skeptical Review. Describes the purpose of TSR and its editorial policy. The Last Hurrah of the Inerrancy Doctrine Discusses the verbal inspiration of the Bible, the contradiction between Exodus 6:1620 and Exodus 12:40, the original autographs of the Bible. The Inerrancy Doctrine is Found to be Impregnable Fundamentalist pastor Jerry Moffit defends the inerrancy of the Bible and responds to Till's argument about Exodus 6:16-20. The Flat-Earth Belief of Bible-Writers Have you ever heard the claim that "the Bible teaches the earth is flat?" Adrian Swindler surveys the appropriate Biblical evidence to defend this view. The Unfinished Debate Information about the written debate between Farrell Till and Church- of-Christ preacher James H. Laws on the plenary inspiration of the Bible. Other Debates An update on the debates with Jerry Moffitt and Bill Jackson.

Why Another Religious Publication?If there is anything the world already has enough of, surely that would be religious publications. The pouches of our mail carriers bulge with religious journals, magazines, periodicals, and bulletins already circulating through our postal system. The Church of Christ,

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which the publishers of The Skeptical Review were once affiliated with, produces the Gospel Advocate, Firm Foundation, Christian Chronicle, Reason & Revelation, Power, and at least a score of smaller, less known publications, and the journalistic production of many other churches is just as prolific. Why then would anyone want to add anything else to this mountainous glut? We could quibble and say that ours is not a religious publication. In the strictest sense of the word, religion is the expression of belief in and reverence for a supernatural entity, so in that respect ours will certainly not be a "religious" publication. At no time will we be found admonishing our readers to "believe in God"; we won't even get involved in the theismatheism controversy. Being primarily agnostic in our convictions, we will leave this matter to those who are far more sure of their positions (on both sides) than we could ever be. Our purpose will be to promote critical examination of the Bible inerrancy doctrine, and that will make ours an unusual publication. There are journals that devote some space to this subject, but only one other we know about that exists only to challenge traditional assumptions on which this belief has thrived. As our readers get to know us, we suspect that many will concur in saying that we are far from religious. Some might even insist that "irreligious" more appropriately describes us. Nevertheless, our editorial purpose will focus in each issue on an important religious matter--the doctrine of Bible inerrancy--and so to that extent we have to agree that ours is a religious publication. We just can't think of The Skeptical Review as being only "another" religious publication. We think we will be quite different from the others. An important difference will be our editorial policy of publishing competently written responses to our lead articles. Not many religious journals do this. Most of them publish only materials that agree with the particular doctrinal beliefs they were created to promulgate. In this issue, for example, we are publishing "The Inerrancy Doctrine Is Found To Be Impregnable," which Jerry Moffitt was invited to write in reply to "The Last Hurrah of the Inerrancy Doctrine," our lead article that begins on the next page. In future issues, we will continue to publish dissenting views. We had a twofold purpose in adopting this policy. First, we firmly believe that no philosophical opinion, not even our own, is worthy of acceptance if it cannot survive the scrutiny of public forum. Secondly, we believe that printing responses to our articles will demonstrate the soundness of our position. If the best qualified minds in the inerrancy camp cannot refute our arguments--and we believe they can't--that should be a strong indication, at the very least, that our position deserves further consideration. With the publication of our first issue, we earnestly solicit your consideration of our views on this important matter. If you disagree with us, write a response. We will consider it for publication. If you have questions, send them to us. We will try to answer them.

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The Last Hurrah of the Inerrancy DoctrineFarrell TillMany fundamentalist Christians sincerely believe that the Bible is the verbally inspired word of God. As believers in verbal inspiration, they see the Bible much differently from those who respect it as a book with only concepts and ideas that were divinely inspired. Christians who believe in the doctrine of verbal inspiration think that God directed the writing of the Bible on a word-by-word basis so that the authors of the original manuscripts were protected from writing even as much as one word that might inadvertently mislead readers or incorrectly communicate the truths God wanted man to know. Dr. George DeHoff, who is widely recognized in the Churches of Christ as an authority on the subject of verbal inspiration, described its word-by-word process like this: If God had wanted another "i" dotted or another "t" crossed, He would have had it done. The writers did not use one word unless God wanted that word used. They put in every word which God wanted them to put into the Bible, (Alleged Bible Contradictions Explained, p. 23). Other fundamentalist writers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have said essentially the same thing. As far as they are concerned, there is nothing to discuss. The Bible is the word of God and the only word of God, whose writing he himself divinely inspired on a meticulously protected, word-by-word basis. Certain consequences must necessarily follow the postulation of such a rigidly defined doctrine as verbal inspiration. The most obvious of these would be a requirement to believe that the Bible is inerrantly perfect in every detail. After all, the God of the Bible is depicted as an omniscient, omnipotent entity, so if an all-knowing, all-powerful supernatural being supervised the writing of the Bible on a word-by-word basis anything at all like the process described above by Dr. DeHoff, it would have to be that the original text of the Bible was completely free of mistakes of any kind. A perfect God would have guided his chosen writers to produce a perfect book. With this conclusion, Christian fundamentalists have no quarrel. In Finding Inner Peace and Strength (Doubleday, 1982), Jerry Falwell claimed total inerrancy for the Bible: The Bible is the inerrant... Word of God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc., (p. 26). This is not to say that believers in the inerrancy doctrine view the Bible as a textbook in geography, science, history, or other disciplines; it is simply a recognition that the conclusion stated above must necessarily follow their claim of verbal inspiration, for if God is ultimately the author of the Bible, he, knowing everything there is to know about geography, science, history, and all other secular subjects, would have made no errors--not even little ones--in any of these matters.

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The importance of this point has not escaped the notice of Dr. Gleason Archer, a widely respected spokesman for the inerrancy position: If the statements it (the Bible) contains concerning matters of history and science can be proven by extrabiblical records, by ancient documents recovered through archaeological digs, or by the established facts of modern science to be contrary to the truth, then there is grave doubt as to its trustworthiness in matters of religion. In other words, if the biblical record can be proved fallible in areas of fact that can be verified, then it is hardly to be trusted in areas where it cannot be tested, (Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, p. 23). In this statement, Dr. Archer has made an important admission. He has conceded that confidence in the divinely authoritative position traditionally assigned to the Bible will be seriously compromised if erroneous information should be found anywhere within its pages. Obviously, then, the doctrine of verbal inspiration sets a high standard for the Bible to meet. Some insist that it is an impossibly high standard, because the existence of contradictions, discrepancies, absurdities, scientific errors, and other mistakes can be easily established by anyone willing to subject the Bible to objective textual criticism. This is our position exactly at The Skeptical Review. Our staff writers believe the same methods of scientific inquiry that have lifted man to his present state of enlightenment, if applied unbiasedly to the Bible text, will disprove once and for all the doctrine of verbal inspiration. Future articles will examine in detail specific examples of textual errors in the Bible, so for now I will review only briefly a few of the ones that cast serious doubts on the doctrine of Bible inerrancy. An excellent one to begin with would be the obvious contradiction that results when Exodus 12:40 is compared to the Aaronic genealogy found in Exodus 6:16-20. The first passage declares that the Israelites, who were beginning their famous journey to the promised land, had dwelt in Egypt for 430 years. According to the genealogy in Exodus 6, however, the Israelite sojourn in Egypt could have lasted no more than 352 years and probably even considerably less than that. This genealogy, along with its parallels in I Chron. 6:1-3 and 23:6-13, establishes that Moses was the great grandson of Levi. Kohath, the grandfather of Moses, had already been born when Jacob took his sons and their families into Egypt, (Gen. 46:11). If we assume that Kohath was only a suckling infant in his mother's arms when he was taken into Egypt and if we further assume that his last act on earth at the age of 133 (Ex. 6:16) was to sire Amram, the father of Moses, then the very latest date of Amram's birth would have been around 134 years into the Israelite sojourn. If we then make similar assumptions about the birth of Moses, i.e., that Amram sired him just before dying at the age of 137 years (Ex. 6:20), this would mean that Moses could have been born no later than 272 years after the Israelite sojourn began. Since Moses was only 80 years old when Jehovah (Yahweh) called him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt (Ex. 7:7), the sojourn could have lasted no longer than 352 years. But to allow even 352 years for the so-journ would require total abandonment of common sense. For one thing, the custom of listing sons in the order of their births in Jewish genealogies suggests that the Bible writers understood that both Kohath and Amram had younger brothers (Gen. 46:11; Ex. 6:16-18), so Kohath was probably older than an infant when he was taken into Egypt. If he did live to be 133, he undoubtedly fathered Amram,

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Moses' father, long before he died, because, it is completely unreasonable to assume circumstances of birth anything at all like those theorized above. The aged Abraham fell on his face and laughed when Yahweh told him that he would soon father a son. "Shall a child be born unto him that is a hundred years old?" Abraham asked, (Gen. 17:17). By the same token, we can ask if it is reasonable to believe Kohath and Amram were able to father children when they were well past the age of 130. In the final analysis, however, whether the sojourn lasted as long as 352 years doesn't really matter. The genealogical data in Exodus 6:16-20 clearly indicate the belief in an Egyptian sojourn substantially shorter than 430 years, so that puts this Bible passage in unequivocal conflict with Exodus 12:40, Genesis 15:13, and Acts 7:6, all of which teach that the sojourn lasted at least 400 years. There is an obvious contradiction in the Bible text. A hundred articles like this one would not be enough to discuss the numerous other textual contradictions in the Bible. Many of the same events from Hebrew history reported in the books of Samuel and Kings were also recorded by the writer(s) of the Chronicles, and the two accounts often vary significantly in reporting key details. There are contradictions in the genealogical records in the Bible, in the synoptic gospels (especially their accounts of the resurrection of Jesus), in the Christology of the New Testament epistles. In a word, the Bible is a veritable maze of irreconcilable contradictions. Yet fundamentalist preachers never tire of proclaiming the Bible to be a perfectly harmonious, inerrant record of God's dealings with man. Traditionally, purveyors of the Bible inerrancy doctrine have profited from the ignorance, superstition, and gullibility that characterize societies in which mystical religions thrive, but recent discoveries and developments in biblical archaeology and criticism, coming in an age of increased scientific enlightenment, have cut deep inroads into territory once firmly held by the forces of inerrancy. Early Christian apologists, for example, claimed that not just the original Bible autographs were inspired of God but also all copies and translations that scribes and linguists had transmitted to later generations. Such a position was sustainable in a time when illiteracy was commonplace, Bible manuscripts rare, and textual criticism all but nonexistent, but with the discovery of Bible manuscripts unknown to previous generations of Christians, the invention of the printing press and the ensuing proliferation of vernacular translations, the contributions of archaeology and higher criticism to the field of Bible research, and the advent of public education, the absurdity of this belief became so obvious that it could not survive. Today, not even the staunchest fundamentalist would dare claim that all copies and translations of the Bible have been divinely protected from error. After losing this decisive battle, the defenders of inerrancy retreated to the only high ground left for them. They found refuge in claiming that at least the original autographs of the Bible were inspired of God and so by necessity inerrant. Since none of the original autographs had survived the passing of the centuries, perhaps the inerrancy advocates thought that they had at last set up an impenetrable line of defense. After all, if there are no original autographs in existence, how could anyone possibly prove that they were not inerrant? The fallacy in this line of reasoning should be obvious to anyone who has even rudimentary skills in critical thinking. Logicians call it the argument from ignorance. The fact that one

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cannot disprove an assertion does not prove the truth of the assertion, since the absence of negative evidence by itself is never conclusive positive evidence. The theist who says, "You cannot disprove the existence of God, so it must be true that God does exist," is guilty of the argument from ignorance. One could just as well argue that a failure to disprove the existence of elves must mean that elves do exist, and with that kind of logic one could prove just about any fantastic claim. The argument from ignorance also disregards the burden-of-responsibility principle of logic. This often ignored principle obligates the claimant of a proposition to prove that his claim is true. The challenger of the proposition is under no obligation to prove that it is not true. Accordingly, the one who claims that inerrant autographs of the Bible once existed is obligated to prove that they did indeed exist. To demand that those who question the inerrancy doctrine prove that inerrant original autographs did not at one time exist is a resort to the argument from ignorance. If a believer in Islam should demand proof that the angel Gabriel did not inspire the prophet Mohammed to write the Koran, even the most radical Christian fundamentalists would see the fallacy in his reasoning, yet they cannot recognize the same faulty logic when they apply it to their belief in Bible inerrancy. Obviously, then, the claim that all original autographs of the Bible were error free is a postulation that no fundamentalist can ever hope to prove. Furthermore, this claim not only does not validate the inerrancy position, it makes Yahweh appear even more ridiculous than some of the stories attributed to him in the Bible, for if God (Yahweh) deemed inerrant original autographs of the Bible necessary for the people living at the time the originals were written, then surely he would have considered inerrant copies and translations of the originals necessary for succeeding generations. To argue that God (Yahweh) carefully protected the original Bible autographs from error but then left all subsequent transmissions of them to careless, uninspired scribes and translators is, as I said, to make God look perfectly ridiculous. In Inspiration of Scripture: Problems and Proposals, Paul Achtemeier very competently explained the absurd implications of this last-ditch effort of Bible fundamentalists to save their cherished inerrancy doctrine: It has been frequently pointed out that if God thought errorless Scripture important enough to inspire its composition, he would surely also have further inspired its copying, so that it might remain error free. Surely a God who can inspire error-free composition could also inspire error-free copying. Since he did not, it would appear he did not think our possession of errorfree Scripture very important. But if it is not important for us, why was it important originally? (pp. 71-72). Until inerrancy advocates can give a satisfactory explanation to the problem Achtemeier has here identified, they would do well to cease talking about "inerrant original autographs." Such talk only makes their position look even more ridiculous. We live in an age of advancing technology when Bible scholars (true Bible scholars) are demonstrating a readiness to combine that technology with recognized principles of scientific criticism to test old assumptions about the origin of the Bible. Computer analyses of Biblical manuscripts have been done that cast serious doubts on traditional theories of authorship. Archaeological studies have completely debunked the old myth that says the Bible is absolutely inerrant in matters of history, geography, and science, as well as faith and practice.

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In a word, recent developments in Biblical criticism have not been kind to the inerrancy doctrine. Even staunchly conservative churches once regarded as impregnable bastions of Christian fundamentalism have begun to count their losses. In the April 1989 issue of the Gospel Advocate, editor F. Furman Kearley described the problem that liberalism now poses to traditional inerrancy beliefs in the Churches of Christ: We have college professors who speak unrebuked and un-refuted at Christian college lectureships affirming that we must accept the results of higher criticism. These professors reject the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch and the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture. They are supported by their administrators.... We have in the church today quite a number occupying prominent pulpits and professorships who call Genesis 1 and 2 myth and reject the universal flood clearly described in Genesis 6-9 and in 2 Peter 3:1-7. I am concerned about those few who are doing such teaching, but I am far more concerned by the silence of many others who have not spoken out to refute such false teaching and to make clear that they or their institutions oppose such, ("Unfaithful in Little; Unfaithful in Much," p. 27). From the sound of Dr. Kearley's lament, a genie has been released that hard- line conservatives in the Church of Christ are going to have a difficult time getting back into its bottle. Truth has a stubborn way of "hanging tough," so if in this fundamentalist body half as many ministers and college professors as Dr. Kearley implies have finally seen the truth about the Bible's origin, the situation isn't likely to get any better for the old guard. The principle at work here is the same as the one suggested by a question asked in an old World War I song: "How are you ever goin' to keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree?" Apparently, a lot of preachers are at long last beginning to see the Paree of responsible Bible criticism, and no one is ever going to get them back down on the inerrancy farm.

The Inerrancy Doctrine Is Found To Be ImpregnableA reply to "The Last Hurrah...."Jerry MoffittIt is with great pleasure that I lift my pen in defense of God's word. Surely it is an act of grand benevolence that men can be allowed to so serve an all-powerful God. But God's goodness toward us is surely equaled by His love and patience toward skeptics in that He allows His eternal existence and His act of revealing His will to man to be so loudly but ineptly challenged by what must appear to Him to be but microscopic specks in the universe. Yet, I

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do not want to take away from the fact that the editor of The Skeptical Review graciously invited me to respond to the article "The Last Hurrah of the Inerrancy Doctrine." On the editor's part, it is truly an act of justice, honesty, and fairness, all of which traits Mr. Till learned from the Bible rather than from skepticism. As a soldier of Christ (II Tim. 2:3), whose weapons are not of the flesh (II Cor. 10:3-5), I do not want to appear crass, cold, or vituperative. However, Jesus dealt with different people in different ways, so in this situation I choose to be bold, frank, and bluntly honest throughout. Mr. Till's article seems to me to be little more than several pages of orchestrated malarkey. It is held together with bubble gum and kite string. He comes to us bent over double with wild assertions, and if he has one keen ability, it is to invent imaginative straw men none of us ever believed. The article starts off "kind of funny in the head" and then it gets even worse. Let me quickly deal with all that sort of "stuff," and then I want to deal with the two best of what could be called arguments.

AssertionsHe claims there are discrepancies, absurdities, scientific errors, and contradictions in the genealogical records and the synoptic gospels that make the Bible a veritable maze of irreconcilable contradictions. He claims that an age of increased scientific enlightenment has cut deep inroads into the inerrancy doctrine. Now if such assertions were facts, inerrancy would be in extremely deep trouble. But such boastful claims are not new. Thomas Paine thought his The Age of Reason would destroy the Bible. He predicted that within one hundred years Bibles would be found only in "museums or in musty corners of second-hand bookstores." He died in 1809, and today the Bible remains a bestseller. Voltaire said it took centuries to build up Christianity and "I'll show how just one Frenchman can destroy it within fifty years." Twenty years after his death, the Geneva Bible Society purchased his house to be used to print the Bible. Later it became the Paris headquarters for the British and Foreign Bible society. I do not wish to be unkind, but I sincerely believe Farrell Till is no Voltaire, and The Skeptical Review is no Age of Reason. I challenge Mr. Till to continue to invite me and his other opponents to review every so-called discrepancy, absurdity, and contradiction he imagines. We will, by God's help, show that there are no true contradictions proven to be in the Bible. Further, we will be glad to show just how kind archaeology has been to the Bible. But this one thing we will admit: the Bible predicted that there would always be apostasy and false teaching ( II Tim. 3:13; I Tim. 4:1-3; I Jn. 4:1; II Pet. 2:1-3). Liberalism, modernism, and higher criticism fulfill, in part, those predictions. We do not find it strange that liberals deny inerrancy. Knowing that they also deny almost every other major doctrine of Christianity as well makes it useless that Mr. Till the skeptic seeks help from them. Liberals do not believe in inerrancy, true. They also do not believe in biblical miracles, hell, heaven, that Jesus Christ was God, or that there is a personal devil. The problem is not the Bible; it is a problem of liberalism, which is simply the age-old problem of unbelief. Mr. Till asserts that early Christian apologists claimed all copies and translations were inspired. We all, even today, speak in similar language of copies and versions. That does not mean we do not recognize tampering exists, that parts of a version may not have been rendered faithfully by translators, or that only the originals were inerrant. The apostles knew their words could be twisted (II Pet. 3:16). They even warned against adding to or taking from

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them, (Rev. 22:18-19). Pickering (The Identity of the New Testament Text, p. 107) says the following: Marcion's truncated canon evidently stirred the faithful to define the true canon. But Marcion also altered the wording of Luke and Paul's Epistles, and by their bitter complaints it is clear that the faithful were both aware and concerned... Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth (168-176), complained that his own letters had been tampered with, and worse yet the Holy Scriptures also. Irenaeus defended 666 over 616 as the correct number in Revelation 13:18. He warned of future punishment for those who changed the text. No, they did not argue that every version or copy was inspired, inerrant, untampered with or unchanged; they knew certain versions, like Marcion's, could deviate from the original. Till asserts that after losing a decisive battle on all copies and translations being inspired, we retreated to the position that only the original manuscripts were inspired. The above quotations regarding Marcion's version prove that claim silly, and for lack of a better name we will call all that "unremittent hokum" and go on toward more responsible claims. As for higher criticism, the more we study it the less confidence we have in it. Spawned by German liberalism, which denied the miracles of the Bible, its roots lie in the attempt to explain away miraculous prophecy. To do that, they must try to prove the prophecy was made at the same time or after, not before, the event. Thus, they have to claim the prophecy wasnot made at the time it claims or by the prophet it claims. Having first settled all that in their minds, they then set out to prove it by higher criticism. Again, I do not want to be uncharitable, but I suspect that regarding such writers the more warm and overheated their imagination, the more the editor of The Skeptical Review will cherish them. He claims that the theist who says, "You cannot disprove the existence of God, so it must be true that God does exist," is guilty of the argument from ignorance. So he says that to demand that those who question the inerrancy doctrine prove that inerrant original autographs did not at one time exist is a resort to the argument from ignorance. Will someone inform him it is equally true that to demand proof from opponents of his errancy doctrine that errant original autographs did not at one time exist is a resort to his argument from ignorance? What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The truth is, what we say is this: he must take the multitude of copies that do exist and show that no other explanation is possible than that they came from errant originals. If he fails to do this, he utterly fails to disprove the Bible is inspired and inerrant in the original autographs.

One "Argument"He argues through Paul Achtemeier that the inerrancy doctrine makes God look perfectly ridiculous for this reason: "If God thought errorless Scripture important enough to inspire its composition, he would surely also have further inspired its copying, so that it might remain error free.... If it is not important for us, why was it important originally?" First, we are not so bold as to decree what is and what is not important to God. For all we know, He may well have gotten across His will to man through errant originals if He had chosen to do so. The originals may just happen to be inerrant because in the truest sense of the

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word they are God's word, and God cannot lie (Tit. 1:2), and neither can the Spirit of truth (Jn. 16:13) affirm error. Second, God often brings an original thing into existence--as He did Adam and Eve--by miracle; then He wants that item to carry on and produce naturally, under mere providence. Third, on top of that, we have a Bureau of Standards on which we may check all copies. God may have wanted perfect standards to be available to those who really seek. We believe that in the thousands of manuscripts available today, we have all the original readings. The science of textual criticism assures us of that very fact. After all, Jesus said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away," (Matt. 24:35).

Another "Argument"--Exodus 6:16-20Mr. Till says according to Exodus 12:40 the Israelites sojourned in Egypt 430 years. But Exodus 6:16-20 indicates that there were only three generations between Levi and Moses and Aaron. That would stretch things to get even 352 years from those generations. We agree with that, if there were only three generations, but the Bible often gives genealogies by listing the main characters in the genealogies according to the general purpose of the writer. Notice Matthew 1:1: The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Between Christ and David 26 ancestors are left out. Between Abraham and David 12 ancestors are left out. That was the way they abbreviated according to their own individual purposes. As for Exodus 6:16-20, I Chronicles 6:1-3, and I Chronicles 23:6-16, let us notice it is a similar case. Gleason Archer (Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, pp. 111-112) says: In common with almost all the genealogies of this type recorded in the Pentateuch (cf. Numbers 26:28-34), the general practice is followed in Exodus 6 of listing a person's family tree by tribe, clan, and family group. Archer further points out that Numbers 3:27-28 says the combined total of Amramites, Izharites, Hebronites, and Uzzielites came to 8,600. If Amram claimed one fourth of those and if that same Amram fathered Moses and Aaron, as Till argues, Moses and Aaron (by Till's argumentation) would have had around 2,150 brothers. That should be hard for even a dedicated skeptic like Farrell Till to swallow. No, these figures indicate the genealogy of Exodus 6:16-20 is listing only the main links just as Matthew does in Matthew 1:1. The first Amram is a kind of clan head of a person's family tree. Furthermore, Archer points out that other genealogies in I Chronicles indicate that there were nine or ten generations between the sons of Jacob and the time of Moses. There were ten links between Ephraim and Joshua (I Chron. 7:25), seven between Bezalel and Jacob (I Chron. 2:120), and nine between Elishama and Jacob (I Chron. 7:22-27). Nine or ten links fit the 430year time span perfectly. Agreeing with all this, Arndt says (Bible Difficulties, p. 80), "It was not at all uncommon in the Hebrew genealogical tables to omit names which were considered unimportant." In the old classic work of John Haley (Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, p. 420), Haley says, "It has been conclusively shown by Kurtz and others that the omission of several names in a

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genealogy was common; and the words 'bear' and 'beget' are used with reference to somewhat remote ancestors." So all that is the best Mr. Till can bring up, and it has all been answered time and time again, long, long ago, over and over.

CONCLUSIONThe truth is that the Bible is inerrant, absolutely so in all its original autographs. God cannot lie and scripture is His word ( Num. 23:19; Titus 1:2; Heb. 6:18; I Jn. 2:21; II Tim. 3:16-17). Notice a few quotations: "Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and thy law is truth," (Ps. 119:142). "The sum of thy word is truth," (Ps. 119:160). "And now, O Lord Jehovah, thou art God, and thy words are truth," (II Sam. 7:28). Jesus said not one jot or one tittle would pass away from the law till all things be accomplished, (Matt. 5:17-19). A jot was not only a single letter; it was the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Some Hebrew characters looked alike, so writers distinguished between them by putting a little horn out on the ends of some of them. That tiny horn was called a tittle. It is Jesus' way of saying the dotting of the i's or the crossing of the t's would not pass away until all things were accomplished. Truly, "the scripture cannot be broken," (Jn. 10:35). (Jerry Moffitt's address is 709 Cass, Harrisonville, MO 64701.) EDITOR'S NOTE: With a few inches of available space left in this issue, we were tempted to comment on Mr. Moffitt's "explanations" of the contradictions identified in the article he replied to, especially the old "skipped-generations" theory he used to reconcile the Exodus-6 genealogy with the Bible claim of a 430-year Israelite sojourn in Egypt. Not wanting to take unfair advantage in a situation Mr. Moffitt could not immediately react to, we proposed another exchange on the subject for our spring issue that will be mailed in late March, and he has accepted the invitation. Farrell Till will show that, contrary to the Archer-Haley-ArndtMoffitt theory of skipped generations, a proper interpretation of the Bible proves that the writer of the Exodus-6 genealogy intended for readers to see it as a complete family tree from Israel (Jacob) through Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron. Mr. Moffitt will respond. We suggest that readers keep this issue of TSR available for reference. In his article, Mr. Moffitt challenged us to continue to invite him and others to "review every so-called discrepancy, absurdity, and contradiction he (Till) imagines." We hope this second invitation will convince him that we intend to do just that.

The Flat-Earth Belief of Bible WritersVolume 1990 - 2002 Page 12 of 2049 Issue

Skeptical Review Adrian Swindler


All Christian sects recognize the Bible as the primary source of revelation. This compiled material was allegedly inspired by God and written by chosen authors to reveal him and his will to man. The Bible, then, is the foundation of the Christian religion. To Christian fundamentalists who believe in verbal inspiration, the Bible is an infallible foundation. They claim that "the Holy Spirit so dominated and guided the minds and pens of those who wrote (the Bible) as to make their writings free from mistakes of any and all kinds, whether it be mistakes of history or chronology or botany or biology or astronomy, or mistakes as to moral and spiritual truth pertaining to God or man, in time or eternity," (Wilbur F. Tillett, "The Divine Elements in the Bible," The Abingdon Bible Commentary). Despite the obvious sincerity of those who so view the Bible, the inerrancy doctrine has no basis in fact. That the Bible contains mistakes in every area mentioned by Mr. Till is a truth widely recognized by reputable Bible scholars. One of the most consistent scientific errors that Bible writers made concerned their misconception of the earth's shape. In Psalm 24:2, for example, it was said that "the world and all that is in it belong to the Lord; the earth and all who live on it are his. He built it on the deep waters beneath the earth and laid its foundations in the ocean depths," (GNB). This passage and others like it in the Bible make no sense until they are interpreted in terms of the ancient Hebrew conception of the world as represented in the graphic illustrations on the following page that were published in the New American Bible and The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible. (Similar ones appear in other Bible dictionaries.) If you will study the graphics and then read the above quotation again, the psalmist's meaning will become quite clear. He thought the earth rested on foundations or pillars that God had set in the ocean depths. Needless to say, modern science knows better. Here are just a few of the many other passages that prove Bible writers were ignorant of Earth's spherical shape: Daniel 4:7-8, "I saw a tree of great height at the center of the world. It was large and strong, with its top touching the heavens, and it could be seen from the ends of the earth." This was allegedly an inspired dream, yet it conveys a flat-earth concept, because no matter how tall a tree would be, people on the other side of a spherical earth could not see it. Matthew 4:8, "The devil took him (Jesus) to a very high mountain and displayed before him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence...." The only plausible reason for the "very high mountain" was that the altitude would make it possible to see to the ends of the earth. Only on a flat earth would this be remotely possible, so the New Testament writers were as ignorant as the Old. In Genesis 11:4, the people wanted to build a tower up to heaven. If you look at the graphics above, you can see their concept of heavenly bodies under the dome, not all that far away. Presumably, the Lord was afraid they would be able to accomplish their plan, so he caused them to speak various languages. This, of course, is not the reason people speak different languages, but nothing is too fantastic for the ignorant to believe.

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1990 - 2002 Page 13 of 2049

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The following references show that Bible writers thought there was water above a solid dome with floodgates (look at the graphics again) that could be opened to make it rain: Job 38:22, "Have you entered the storehouse of the snow, and seen the treasury of the hail?" Look at items two and three in the graphic from the Interpreter's Dictionary, and the intended meaning of this statement becomes very clear. Psalm 104:3, 13, "You stretch the heavens out like a tent, you build your palace on the waters above.... You water the mountains from your palace." Here God dwells in a palace above the waters over the firmament or dome. To water the mountains, he opens the floodgates. Quite unscientific! Genesis 1:6-7, "Let there be a dome to divide the water and to keep it in two separate places... and it was done. So Godmade a dome, and it separated the water under it from the water above it." So the NAB and The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible are quite correct in their graphic representations of what the Bible writers believed and taught. How many of you readers believe the earth is flat? The Bible teaches it is! Christian fundamentalists have used various scriptures to try to prove that Bible writers knew the earth was round. Since I have already shown that these writers thought the earth is flat, if some verses actually do teach that it is round, then there is a contradiction in the Bible and the fundamentalists lose anyway. Job 38:13-14 is sometimes quoted as a round-earth text: "Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place; that it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it? It is turned as clay to the seal; and they stand as a garment." Claim is made that the statement about the earth "turn(ing) as clay to the seal" was a reference to the earth's rotation, but this passage has nothing to do with movement. The word used was haphak, which meant "to convert, to change, or to make clear." It is the same word that was used in Exodus 7 in reference to Aaron's rod turning into a serpent and the waters of Egypt turning to blood, so rather than the word meaning turning in the sense of movement, it meant turning in the sense of changing. The GNB clarifies the meaning in Job 38:14: "Daylight makes the hills and valleys stand out like the folds of a garment, clear as the imprint of a seal on clay." So, far from teaching the revolution of the earth, this was merely a reference to the effects of sunlight in the morning. Notice also that the KJV refers here to "the ends of earth." This would indicate a flat earth, since there are no ends to a globe. Job 26:7 has also been cited as proof that the writer of this book knew that the earth was a sphere: "He stretcheth out the north over the empty place and hangeth the earth upon nothing." An NAB footnote at this verse says, "The North: used here as a synonym for the firmament, cf. Is. 14:13," (emphasis inserted). Thus, we read, "He stretches out the dome (firmament) over the empty space." In other words, the dome was unsupported in the middle. The reference in Isaiah 14:13 says, "You (King of Babylon) were determined to climb up to heaven and place your throne above the highest stars (see the graphics). You thought you would sit like a king on that mountain in the north where the gods assemble." The "north" was

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indeed used as a synonym for the heavens or firmament, so the passage was actually speaking of a "mountain in the heavens where the gods assemble." "He... hangeth the earth upon nothing" simply expressed a Hebrew belief that the flat earth, although supported by pillars, did not rest on the back of Atlas or a turtle or an elephant, as their pagan neighbors believed. In this Job was right but not because he was inspired; otherwise, he wouldn't have said in the same context, "The pillars of the heavens tremble (see the graphics) and are stunned at his thunderous rebuke," (26:11). He thought the thunder was God's voice! Fundamentalists use Isaiah 40:22 to argue that Earth's rotundity was known to the writer: "It is he (God) that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in." They misunderstand the first half of the verse, which is clarified by the placement of "God's throne" in the NAB graphic, and they avoid the second half. The NAB gives us a proper translation of the verse: "He sits enthroned above the vault (dome) of the earth.... He stretches out the heavens like a veil, spreads them out like a tent to dwell in." See the graphic illustrations again and check the Hebrew concept of firmament as explained in Eerdmans and other reliable Bible dictionaries. The Hebrews were inspired by nothing more than their political and religious motivations. Thus, being ignorant of scientific facts, they thought the earth was flat, that sick people were possessed by demons, and that essentially everything was caused by either gods or demons. Unfortunately, many people are still just as ignorant. (Adrian Swindler's address is P. O. Box 695, Elmwood, IL 61529.)

The Unfinished DebateOn May 10, 1988, James H. Laws, Jr., a Church-of-Christ preacher and a professor of apologetics at Tennessee Bible College, challenged Farrell Till to a written debate on the inerrancy issue. His letter proposed the following propositions: RESOLVED: I know that the Bible is the plenarily inspired word of God to man. RESOLVED: I know that the Bible is not the plenarily inspired word of God. He concluded the letter with a solemn pledge that he would not assume this responsibility in a "light hearted way." "I will put everything I have into such a discussion (knowledge, ability, sincerity), " he promised. After preliminary discussions in which Till questioned the phrasing of the propositions, objecting especially to presumptuous implications in the word "know," an agreement was signed to use Mr. Laws' propositions essentially as he had submitted them. The only change was the substitution of verbally for plenarily.

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The debate began with Mr. Laws defending his proposition. Three manuscript exchanges were made, and then there was a three-month silence on Mr. Laws' end. After two letters of inquiry were directed to him, Laws wrote on May 17, 1989, just one year and one week after he had issued his challenge, to say that he was quitting the debate and would communicate with Till no further about the matter. Laws refused to accept a letter that Till mailed him on May 20th in response to the unilateral withdrawal. Why would Mr. Laws quit a debate that he himself had proposed? Ostensibly, he withdrew because of increased responsibilities that came with his acceptance of a new position as minister of the Getwell Church of Christ in Memphis, but we suspect a different reason. By the end of Till's third rebuttal, the central argument on which Laws had based the defense of his proposition had been so demolished that he had nowhere to turn, so he chose to withdraw. We urge readers who might be inclined to accuse us of biased judgment to let the debate speak for itself. Despite almost frantic efforts by Mr. Laws to block their publication, Skepticism, Inc., will publish the three exchanges that were made. Printed in the two-column format you are now reading, this fifty-page volume will be available February 1st for $3.00, a cost that will barely cover publishing and mailing. Orders should be addressed to P. O. Box 617, Canton, IL 61520.

Other Inerrancy DebatesFarrell Till now has written debates in progress with Jerry Moffitt and Bill Jackson, both prominent ministers in the Church of Christ. An oral debate between Till and Moffitt will be held on August 13, 14, 16, and 17, at the 39th Street Church of Christ, 15331 East 39th Street, Independence, Missouri. Propositions in all the debates are essentially the same. Moffitt's and Jackson's position is that the Bible is verbally inspired of God and therefore completely inerrant; Till contends that contradictions and other errors in the Bible disprove its claim to divine inspiration. We encourage all readers who can to attend the oral debate. The written debates will be published when finished.

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1990 - 2002 Page 16 of 2049

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The Skeptical ReviewVolume One, Number Two March/April/May 1990Farrell Till, editor

The Skeptical Review: 1990: Number TwoWe Come Not to Destroy the Bible Till discusses reader reaction to the first issue of TSR and explains that he does not want to destroy the Bible, but he wants people to understand it. Holes in the Two-Amrams Theory Till responds to the Two-Amrams Theory presented by Jerry Moffitt in the previous issue of TSR. Plugging "Holes" in the Two-Amrams Theory Fundamentalist pastor Jerry Moffitt responds to to the above article by Farrell Till. A Perfect Work of Harmony? Till discusses "the divergent views of Jehu's slaughter of the royal family of Israel" in II Kings 9; 10:1-30 and Hosea 1:4, as an example of the inconsistencies in the Bible.

We Come Not to Destroy the BibleReaction to our first issue was mainly what we had expected. We received a few letters of praise, but most of the mail was very negative. A young lady in Louisiana wrote and asked us to take her name off our mailing list. "As far as I'm concerned," she said, "it (TSR) is trash." We could only assume that she thought Jerry Moffitt's rebuttal article was trash too, and that's too bad. We thought that, for the position it defended, it was a well written article.

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Many copies were returned to us with "refused" stamped or written above the address labels, and we have to wonder about the objectivity of people who aren't even willing to consider opinions that disagree with theirs. Do they seriously believe this is the way to discover truth? Two of those who refused to accept their copies are actively involved in publishing The Spiritual Sword, a guardian-of-the-faith paper sponsored by the Getwell Church of Christ in Memphis. If they had mailed us a complimentary copy of their paper and we had refused to accept it, they would undoubtedly accuse us of being terribly close-minded, yet they probably see their own actions as some kind of bold stand for the truth. Incidentally, we are not really expecting to receive a complimentary copy of The Spiritual Sword, because we have twice sent to its editors subscription checks that have never been acknowledged or cashed. If we can't even buy it, we aren't very likely to get it free. Some of the most abusive letters came from relatives and former friends and associates of our missionary days. Many of these we have not bothered to answer, because we can see nothing to be gained from trying to reason with people determined to base friendship on matters of individual conscience. When Peter and the other apostles were charged "not to teach in this name," they said, "We must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:28-29), so all that we ask of former friends and associates is the same kind of consideration: the right to respect our consciences rather than follow what others think is the correct course for us. After all, what good would it do us to fill a pew or a pulpit if we just cannot believe what we would hear or be required to preach? We have often been accused of wanting to destroy the Bible, but the charge is simply not true. We have no desire to destroy the Bible; we just want people to understand it. In the sermon on the mount (if it occurred as recorded), Jesus tried to reassure those who thought he may have wanted to destroy the law: "Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets; I came not to destroy, but to fulfill," (Mat. 5:17). In the same way, we can honestly say that we are not publishing this journal or engaging in public debates with the hope that our activities will destroy the Bible. If any person should seriously advocate that Bibles be collected and burned, we would raise our voices in opposition to the proposal as loudly as any inerrancy advocate. It would be the height of folly to destroy a book that has probably had more influence on western civilization than any other single document. A better understanding of the Bible is what we hope to accomplish. The problem is that the average "God-fearing" person doesn't really know much about the Bible; he just knows that he is supposed to believe it is the inspired, inerrant word of God. At home, his Bible is lying unopened, collecting dust. If our quarterly journal or any of the debates we participate in result in just one person like this studying the Bible in a serious, intelligent way to see if the inerrancy doctrine can be sustained, we will consider our work worth the time and effort we are putting into it. If after such a study, anyone chooses to continue believing in the inerrancy of the Bible, he will at least have our respect, but what we can't respect are the many who believe in Bible inerrancy without knowing why they believe it. They just know that they are supposed to believe it. This makes them no better than a Moslem who believes in the inspiration of the Koran, because... well, just because he is supposed to believe it.

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1990 - 2002 Page 18 of 2049

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Holes in the Two-Amrams TheoryFarrell TillIn our first issue of The Skeptical Review, I exchanged arguments with Jerry Moffitt on the general question of Bible inerrancy. Much of what we said focused on the problem of reconciling Exodus 12:40, which claims a 430-year Israelite sojourn in Egypt, with Exodus 6:16-20 in which a genealogy gives at least a surface impression that Moses and Aaron were only three generations removed from Levi, whose family had come into Egypt with Jacob and Levi's brothers, (Gen. 46:8-11). My position was that a 430-year span would cover many more than just three generations. To this, Moffitt said, "We agree with that, if there were only three generations...." (winter issue, p. 8). He went on, of course, to argue that many more generations of Israelites, probably as many as nine or ten, had actually lived in Egypt during the period of bondage. He justified this claim by what is sometimes called the skippedgeneration theory. He cited a few examples of where Bible writers had obviously skipped generations in genealogical listings and from there went on to argue that this was what had been done in the Exodus-6 genealogy. Before examining Mr. Moffitt's theory, I first want to thank him for admitting that he agrees with my conclusion about the length of the sojourn, if there were only three generations, because he has greatly simplified my task. When I show, as I will, that the Exodus-6 genealogy was presented as a complete Aaronic family tree from Levi through Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, Mr. Moffitt will then have to concede that there is a discrepancy in the "verbally inspired" Bible text. The crux of Moffitt's argument hinges on Numbers 3:27-28 where a census of the male Kohathites (so named because they had descended through Levi's son Kohath) put their number at 8,600. These were in turn divided into Amramites, Izharites, Hebronites, and Uzzielites, because Kohath, as indicated in Exodus 6:18, had had four sons named Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel. The argument of Mr. Moffitt and the sources he quoted is that the Amram who was the father of Aaron and Moses could not have been the Amram who was Kohath's son; otherwise, this would suggest (on the basis of an equal division of the 8,600 Kohathite males into their four clans) that Aaron and Moses had had "around 2,150 brothers," (p. 8). "That should be hard," Moffitt said, "for even a dedicated skeptic like Farrell Till to swallow." For this reason, Moffitt concludes that there had to have been at least two Amrams, one who was Kohath's son and head of the Amramites and another who fathered Aaron and Moses by Jochebed, (Ex. 6:20). The writer of the Exodus-6 genealogy had simply "skipped" some generations between the two Amrams, so the theory goes, and this has caused some people to wrongly conclude that the Amram who was Moses' father was the same Amram who was Kohath's son. It all comes out sounding very pat, but it's a theory with more holes in it than a sieve. For one thing, unless Moffitt has been living on another planet, he has to know that a major argument against the Bible inerrancy doctrine is based on the outrageous exaggeration of census figures in the books of Exodus and Numbers. Exodus 12:37 states that when the Israelites left Egypt the number of men on foot (not counting women and children) was 600 thousand! When a

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census was taken in the wilderness (Num. 1:46), it claimed the men of military age (20 years old and up) numbered 603,550! If we assume an equal number of women in this age group-and I guess I can do this if Moffitt can assume an equal division of the Kohathites within their four clans--this would mean the adult population older than 20 numbered around 1,200,000. Then with the children of both sexes under 20 added on, there would have been a total population of two and a half to three million! (Since the Israelites had been breeding like flies in Egypt, we could reasonably assume that the younger, under-the-age-of-twenty group would have surely represented an equal, if not larger, proportion of the total population.) Regardless, the fact is that there were an awful lot of people in the exodus, according to the Bible. There were so many, in fact, that one wonders why, given the relatively small size of the Sinai peninsula, a few of them at least didn't accidentally stumble onto the promised land before the end of the forty-year period of wandering, especially since they must have also driven along with them herds of sheep and cattle numbering in the millions in order to have had enough lambs to meet the requirements of forty Passover commemorations and to feed the tabernacle altar the perpetual sacrifices (for three million people) described in Leviticus and Numbers. I'm having a little fun at Mr. Moffitt's expense, of course, but only to make a serious point. He would be hard pressed to find a reputable Bible scholar anywhere who will say that the population figures in Exodus and Numbers were anywhere close to being realistically accurate. Yet he wants to use one set of those figures as the sole basis for arguing that the Amram who was Moses' father wasn't the same Amram who was Kohath's son. He said that even a dedicated skeptic like me would have a hard time swallowing the possibility that Moses and Aaron could have had 2,150 brothers, but his reasoning here was a little fuzzy around the edges. At the time of the exodus, Aaron had already had four sons (Ex. 6:23), and Eleazar, one of those sons, had had at least one son, Phinehas (Ex. 6:25). Moses had also had at least two sons, (Ex. 18:3). These would have all been Amramites, so since the Israelites, as we have already noted, were breeding like flies at this time, it doesn't necessarily follow that an equal distribution of the 8,600 Kohathites into four clans would have meant that Moses and Aaron had "around 2,150 brothers." Many of them could have been their sons and grandsons or nephews and great-nephews through their sister Miriam. Since Moffitt established in his article that probably as many as nine or ten generations of Israelites had lived in Egypt, we could even imagine that many of these 2,150 Amramite males were their grandsons or greatgrandsons. This theory would certainly fit into the Exodus-6 genealogy as Moffitt sees it. The writer had just "skipped" some of the generations between Aaron and Phinehas. It might well be, for example, that Eleazar wasn't actually Aaron's son; he could have been his grandson. And maybe Phinehas wasn't Eleazar's son; perhaps he was his great-grandson. This is all very compatible with the skipped-generation theory and makes it quite possible that the 2,150 Amramites had all descended from the same Amram who was the father of Moses. But I'm not going to swap far-fetched, how-it-could-have-been scenarios with Mr. Moffitt. That's a game inerrancy believers have to play. I'm going to return Moffitt's favor and say that I agree with him. If he can establish the reliability of the census figures in Numbers 3:27-28, then I will agree that the Amram who was Moses' father was not the same Amram for whom the Amramites were named. Until he can do that, however, he shouldn't expect us to be too impressed with an argument that relies on one probable Bible discrepancy to explain another one. The exodus census numbers have long been suspect in scholarly circles, and, quite frankly, I would find it much easier to swallow the possibility that Moses and Aaron had had

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2,150 brothers than that two to three million Israelites had wandered around for forty years in the Sinai desert with immense herds of sheep and cattle. Another point in Mr. Moffitt's article that we certainly don't want to overlook is his claim that as many as nine or ten generations of Israelites had lived in Egypt. He used certain genealogies in I Chronicles to support his claim, and if the sojourn lasted for 430 years, we would certainly agree that nine or ten generations would be a more reliable estimate than the four implied in the Exodus-6 genealogy. The tragedy for him, however, is that even if he is right on this point he still loses. In Genesis 15:13-16, a prophecy about the Hebrew bondage in Egypt was made to Abram presumably by Yahweh himself: "Know of a surety that thy seed shall be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; and also that nation whom they shall serve, will I judge; and afterward shall they come out with great substance.... And in the fourth generation they shall come hither again...." So if Mr. Moffitt is right and nine or ten generations of Israelites did live in Egyptian bondage, he makes his God Yahweh a false prophet. Yahweh said that the Hebrews would come out in the fourth generation, but they really didn't make it out until the 9th or 10th. I look forward to seeing what "figurative" explanation Mr. Moffitt will devise to explain away this problem. That's another game the inerrancy defenders play. No matter how compelling the evidence for textual contradictions and discrepancies may be, they always manage to come up with some "figurative" interpretation of the problem passage to show how "it could have been" or what "it may have meant." With all of Mr. Moffitt's quibbles out of the way, we can now look at evidence that clearly disputes the claim that generations were skipped in the Exodus-6 genealogy. First, we should notice that the theory of skipped generations in this genealogy is just that--a theory. It is based on nothing but pure speculation. As Moffitt has noted, Matthew did call David the son of Abraham, and other writers at times clearly did skip generations in expressing genealogical relationships, but in all of these cases we know that generations were skipped because of information provided outside the genealogical texts. As the Bibletells its story, for example, we read about Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Boaz, Jesse, and the many other generations that Matthew skipped in calling David the son of Abraham, but where is the Bible passage(s) that tell(s) of the generations presumably skipped between the two Amrams of Exodus 6? Unfortunately for Mr. Moffitt, they simply do not exist. Every time the Levitical genealogies of either Moses or Aaron are listed in the Bible, they always show the same order: Levi, Kohath, Amram, and Moses and/or Aaron, ( Ex. 6:16-20; Num. 26:57-59; I Chron. 6:1-3; 23:6-13). As much as the Bible emphasized genealogies, it seems strange, to say the least, that a complete genealogy of two of its most important figures--Aaron and Moses--is to be found nowhere in the sacred text. But this is the conclusion we are driven to if we accept the skipped-generation theory. Furthermore, this theory ignores a clear intention of the Exodus-6 genealogy, which the writer began as if he meant to give a complete genealogy of all of Jacob's sons: "These are the heads of their fathers' houses. The sons of Reuben the first-born of Israel: Hanoch, and Pallu, Hezron, and Carmi.... And the sons of Simeon: Jemuel, and Jamin, and Ohad, and Jachin, and Zohar, and Shaul the son of a Canaanitish woman...." (6:14-15). But after Levi, Jacob's (Israel's) third son through whom the Levitical priests had descended, the writer stopped listing the Jacobite sons; thereafter, nothing was mentioned of Judah, the son through whom Jesus descended, or Gad or Asher, etc., etc., etc. Everything suddenly focused on Levi and his

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sons, and soon thereafter the focus became Aaron and his sons. Even the descendants of Moses were dropped. Aaron and sons assumed center stage. Clearly the writer of this genealogy was trying to make what he thought was an important point about Aaron. What could that have been except to establish that Aaron was clearly a direct descendant of Levi? To understand why the writer of this genealogy would have had such an interest, one must know about the struggle that the Aaronic branch of the Levites waged with other family branches through much of Israel's history to win recognition as the only divinely recognized Levitical priests. To show that such a struggle did happen would take more space than I have left, but it is a position I am prepared to prove if Mr. Moffitt or anyone else wants to challenge it. In the light of such a struggle, the writer's purpose in Exodus 6 becomes clear. He wanted to establish that the first priests, the ones who had served the Israelites in the wilderness, had descended from Levi through Aaron. Most reputable Bible scholars, in fact, believe that the writer of this passage was himself an Aaronic priest. If that is so, then he had an important point to make--important to him at least--and he couldn't very well have done it by skipping generations in this genealogy. He went to elaborate extremes, in fact, to make his point. At the end of the genealogy, he wrote, "These are the heads of the fathers' houses of the Levites according to their families" (v:25), so clearly his intention was to present a family tree from Levi through Phinehas and not a general genealogy of Jacob's family as it appeared when he began it. But why the focus on Aaron and his sons? Why weren't the other Levite families important enough to extend as far as the writer went with Aaron's family? He surely had a purpose, and I believe that purpose has been best explained by scholars who have identified the writer of this genealogy as a priest who had himself descended from Aaron. The writer's hand was further tipped as he continued his conclusion of the genealogy: "These are that Aaron and Moses, to whom Jehovah (Yahweh) said, Bring out the children of Israel from the land of Egypt according to their hosts. These are they that spake to Pharaoh king of Egypt, to bring out the children of Israel from Egypt: these are that Moses and Aaron," (vv:26-27). Somehow, the writer felt compelled to drive home the fact that the Aaron and Moses in this genealogy were the very Aaron and Moses famous for having led the Hebrews out of Egypt. From cover to cover, the Bible mentions no other Aaron and Moses except these, so why did the writer go to such extremes to make it clear what Aaron and Moses he meant? Clearly, he wanted it understood that the first Levitical priests to serve Yahweh's people were descended from Levi through the same Aaron who was Moses' brother. He had a vested interest in selling that point to his readers. This writer's extreme care, however, raises another question. Is it reasonable to believe that someone as redundant as this writer was in identifying which Moses and Aaron he meant would list one Amram in a genealogy, skip a generation or two (or three), and then resume listing the generations with a second Amram and not tell his readers the two weren't the same person! It stretches credibility too far to imagine it. Besides, we have another case where Mr. Moffitt loses even if he is right. Anyone who knows anything at all about effective writing will agree that if there really were two different Amrams, then whoever wrote this genealogy used extremely poor transition, for in the short space of just two verses, he went from one Amram to another person of the same name without letting his readers know the change was

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being made. Thus, if Moffitt could actually prove this is not a case of factual error, it would still be a serious compositional error. Shouldn't an omniscient God know how to direct his inspired writers to use sound writing practices? But in this case he didn't--if Moffitt is right. So far all my evidence has been circumstantial. None of it actually proves that only one Amram was intended in the genealogy, but now that is about to change. The genealogy says that Kohath had four sons: Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel, (v:18). If I am right in saying that the Amram in this verse was the same Amram identified in verse 20 as the father of Aaron and Moses, then Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel were the uncles of Aaron and Moses. Is there any proof that they were? Unfortunately for the skipped-generation theory, there is. Mr. Moffitt is no doubt familiar with the story in Leviticus 10:1-2, where Yahweh incinerated Nadab and Abihu, the priestly sons of Aaron, for using "strange fire" in their censers. I wouldn't even try to estimate how many you-better-toe-the-line sermons by Church-of-Christ preachers have been based on this story. Perhaps Mr. Moffitt has preached a few of them himself. At any rate, after the fire had "devoured them," we read this: "And Moses called Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of Uzziel the uncle of Aaron, and said unto them, Draw near, carry your brethren from before the sanctuary out of the camp," (v:4). Here it plainly says that Aaron had an uncle named Uzziel. Was this the same Uzziel as the one in Exodus 6:18 who was "the first Amram's" brother? Notice that Aaron's Uncle Uzziel had two sons named Mishael and Elzaphan (Lev. 10:4) and that the Uzziel in the Exodus-6 genealogy (brother of Amram I) had three sons: Mishael, Elzaphan, and Sithri, (v:22). What will Mr. Moffitt say about this? Will he now come forth with a skipped-generation, two-Uzziels theory? Furthermore, we have the fact that Exodus 6:20 states that Amram, the father of Aaron and Moses, "took him Jochebed his father's sister to wife; and she bare him Aaron and Moses." Now if Amram's wife Jochebed was his father's sister and if this Amram who married Jochebed was the same Amram who was Kohath's son, then Jochebed would have been Levi's daughter, because Kohath was Levi's son. Is there anything in the Bible to indicate that Jochebed, the mother of Aaron and Moses, was indeed Levi's daughter? In relating the circumstances of Moses' birth, Exodus 2:1-10 says that his mother was "a daughter of Levi," (v:1). Mr. Moffitt will argue that she was a daughter of Levi only in the sense that she was a descendant of Levi, and he could probably get away with this were it not for Numbers 26:57: "And the name of Amram's wife was Jochebed, the daughter of Levi, who was born to Levi in Egypt: and she bare unto Amram Aaron and Moses, and Miriam their sister," (ASV). Inerrancy believers have desperately tried to deny the clear conclusion this passage leads to, even to the point of tampering with the text. The NIV renders it like this: "The name of Amram's wife was Jochebed, a descendant of Levi, who was born to the Levites in Egypt...." Most versions, however, faithfully represent the Hebrew meaning as it was translated in the ASV quoted above. Nevertheless, Bible fundamentalists still adamantly insist that Jochebed wasn't literally Levi's daughter, that she had been "born to Levi" only in the sense that any Levite woman of Jochebed's time had been born to Levi. Those who so argue have never been able to explain why the passage states that Jochebed had been born to Levi in Egypt. Why specify that it was in Egypt that she had been born to Levi? In the maze of genealogical information in Exodus, Numbers, I Chronicles, and elsewhere, no other person of Jochebed's

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time was identified as a daughter (or son) of Levi who had been born to him in Egypt. If there was no special significance to the expression, then it would have been appropriate to say of any woman of Jochebed's tribe and generation that she had been "born to Levi in Egypt." Yet it was never said, except in the case of Jochebed. Surely there was a reason why. We have already noticed the intense interest of the Exodus-6 genealogy in establishing Aaron's descent from Levi. Scholars generally recognize this genealogy and Numbers 26:5759 both as parts of the P Document redacted into the Bible by an Aaronic priest. If so, that would explain the preoccupation of both passages with establishing Aaron's descent from Levi. He wasn't just a descendant, specifically a great-grandson, of Levi; his mother was even a daughter (literally) of Levi, so he was Levi's grandson as well as a great-grandson. That would have made him about as "Levitical" as anyone could claim. Possibly realizing that some readers of his redaction would challenge the claim that Jochebed was Levi's daughter on grounds that no daughters were credited to Levi in earlier genealogies (Gen. 46:11), the writer took care to specify that she was Levi's daughter because she had been born to him in Egypt. To say the least, Mr. Moffitt has his work cut out for him. To establish any kind of credibility in his two-Amrams theory, he must repair the holes the facts in this article have shot into it. In particular, he must explain away Aaron's uncle Uzziel and his mother Jochebed, who was said to be the "daughter of Levi" who had been "born to Levi in Egypt." If he can't do this, by his own admission (as noted earlier), he must agree that the Israelite sojourn in Egypt spanned only three generations, which would have been considerably less than 430 years. If he persists in claiming that other genealogies show a span of nine or ten generations during the sojourn, all he will prove is that intertextual contradictions are in the Bible, and this is what we have been arguing all along. So even when he wins he loses.

Plugging "Holes" in the Two-Amrams TheoryJerry MoffittA reply to "Holes...." Any success, benefits, or accomplishments in any task are directly related to Him in whom we have complete dependence. We have prayed for His providence and guidance as we approach this opportunity to serve Him. I said earlier that Mr. Till's first article was held together with bubble gum and kite string. In his second article I do not see how any skeptic could have done a better job with the available evidence than Mr. Till has done. He has marshalled his evidence with precision from the least persuasive toward the most persuasive. Yet his second article in one way is worse than the first. It seems to me to be held together with not much more than a strained look and static electricity. For example, when he sent his article, he said

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it was composed of 3,650 words. He said I could use an equal amount in reviewing it. Out of his 3,650 words, I want you to inspect 78 of the key ones. Notice these pivotal words by which the article is sewed together: "If we assume... and I guess I can assume this... we could reasonably assume that... would have surely... one wonders why... doesn't necessarily follow... many of them could have been... we could even imagine... this theory would certainly fit... it might well be... and maybe... and makes it quite possible... I would find it much easier to swallow... believe that the writer of this passage... if that is so... is it reasonable to believe... if so... possibly realizing...." Now does that sound as if someone is actually proving anything? Does it have the flavor of logic and the scientific method? It's a pretty "iffy" document for one who claims the Bible is a "veritable maze of irreconcilable contradictions." Surely when it comes to proof, facts, truth and error, "assumption don't feed the bulldog." Let me just go through Mr. Till's article point by point, treating quibbles or major points as they arise. Remember, I showed that Mr. Till's position required Moses to have 2,150 brothers. Mr. Till mumbled something about the "outrageous exaggeration" of census figures in the books of Numbers and Exodus. Then he said he couldn't believe two or three million people wandered about for 40 years in the Sinai peninsula. Why didn't a few of them stumble accidentally into the promised land, given the small size of the peninsula, he wonders. Now isn't that foolish? Sinai is over 20,000 square miles and easily double the size of the promised land. It is about the size of West Virginia, twice the size of Maryland, four times the size of Connecticut, and half the size of Ohio. New York City alone, in 1989, had more than twice the population of the whole nation Moses brought out. The Israelites were organized into a close mass and miraculously sustained with manna, flesh, and water. Using a little "outrageous exaggeration" of his own, he says I would be hard pressed to find one reputable Bible scholar who says the figures in Exodus and Numbers are close to being realistically accurate. Unless the definition of "reputable Bible scholar" is "one who agrees with Farrell Till's assertions," I find many, and that fact doesn't help Mr. Till's credibility. Edersheim says the population was upwards of two million (Old Testament Bible History, Alfred Edersheim, II, 45). Further, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE) defends both 600,000 for warriors and 2.5 million for the whole congregation. It successfully argues that seventy souls could multiply into 2.5 million in 215 years, much less 430 years (IV, 2166). Next, Halley's Bible Handbook, so popular that it has gone through 61 printings, puts the figure at 3,000,000 (pp. 146-147). Then The Bible Commentary, editor F. C. Cook, takes the numbers as authentic. It points out that the camp was arranged with a military precision and would cover an area of around three square miles (I, 660). Also, Commentary on the Old Testament in Ten Volumes by C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch says, "Modern critics have taken offense at these numbers, though without sufficient reasons," (III, 5). We could go on, but that's enough. Mr. Till says if I could establish the reliability of the figures in Numbers 3:27-28 he would agree there were two Amrams as per Archer's Book. Oh? Numbers 3: 27-28 says the Kohathites in Moses' day numbered 8,600. Is 8,600 reliable? Could they have gotten to be that number in nine or ten generations. Let's see. Let's say Kohath had only three sons instead of

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four, and each of those sons had only three sons. A geometric sequence or progression of only eight generations would be 30 + 31 + 32 + 33 + 34 + 35 + 36 + 37 + 38 = 9,841. This number is more than enough and consistent with I Chronicles, where I showed several individuals contemporary with Moses were in the ninth or tenth generation from those who entered Egypt. And, fatal to Mr. Till, it is consistent with what we have been arguing for Exodus 6. So the figures are very reliable, even if one counts only the last two or three generations. But we will not demand that Mr. Till accept Archer's "Two-Amrams Theory" unless he wants to. Let's move on. Alas, things get even worse. Remember, if Amram were responsible for one fourth of the 8,600 Kohathites and that same Amram was the father of Moses and Aaron, then Moses and Aaron would have had around 2,150 brothers, according to Mr. Till's position. But Mr. Till responded, saying that maybe they were sons and grandsons of Aaron and Moses, and through their sister Miriam they could have been nephews and great-nephews. Let's say the 8,600 is composed also of sons and grandsons. Let's help him by supposing that Amram and each of his three brothers had four sons (which they didn't; I'm being generous to Mr. Till's theory) and each of those four had four sons and so on. How many males would we arrive at by the time of the grandsons? There would be the generations of Kohath, Amram, Aaron, Eleazar, and Phinehas. Notice: 40 + 41 + 42 + 43 + 44 = 341. That's 8,259 short, a far cry from 8,600! Well, what about the nephews and great-nephews? First, if Miriam married a descendant of Kohath, the children would already have been counted as one of the sons descended from Kohath. Second, if she married outside of Kohath, Merari for example, her children would not have been Kohathites. Mr. Till is just not thinking. But all this led Mr. Till to believe that maybe there are missing links in the genealogy. He is forced to think this way because of the problem of 2,150 brothers of Moses. So he says maybe the writer skipped some generations between Aaron and Eleazer and between Eleazar and Phinehas. Could he be right that the skips are between Aaron and Eleazar and between Eleazar and Phinehas? Notice Numbers 25:11: "Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest...." This clearly says Phinehas was the son of Eleazar and Eleazar was the son of Aaron. See also Ex. 28:1; Num. 3:4; Lev. 10:16; Num. 4:16; Num. 20:26; Jud. 20:28 Josh. 24:33; and Num. 25:11. But Mr. Till will probably point out that "son" or "daughter" can mean "descendant," and he would be right. But in this case he would be wrong. Notice two passages: And Aaron took him Elisheba, the daughter of Amminadab, the sister of Nashon, to wife; and she bare him Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, (Ex. 6:23). And Eleazar Aaron's son took him one of the daughters of Putiel to wife; and she bare him Phinehas, (Ex. 6:25). It is hard to figure out how Eleazar could have been born to the wife of Aaron and yet be Aaron's grandson. Similarly, it is painful for even a dedicated enemy of the Bible to swallow that Phinehas was born to the wife of Eleazar but then was Eleazar's grandson. These are the kinds of things that give skeptics brief moments of religion that they have to bravely fight down.

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But now, let's locate the missing links somewhere else. Let's put them between Kohath and the four: Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel. But again, Exodus 6:18 calls them all sons of Kohath. True, but we have said "son" or "daughter" can be used in the sense of "descendant." Notice: "of the sons of Kohath, Uriel the chief, and brethren a hundred and twenty," (I Chron. 15:5). Uriel was not the literal son of Kohath. (See also verses 6, 7, 8, 10; I Chron. 23:20; 24:24.) Too, Shubael is called a son of Amram, although Shubael lived in David's day, (I Chron. 24:20). Similarly, Shebuel is called "the son of Gershom, the son of Moses," (I Chron. 26:24). That was way up in David's time. "Sons" is copiously used in the sense of "descendant" throughout. See I Chronicles 23:43; II Chronicles 29:14 I Chronicles 2:42-43. We can see how a man's four literal sons could, because of their relationship with Moses and Aaron, have divided all Kohath descendants among them. Yet, Uzziel, Amram, Izhar, and Hebron did not have to be literal brothers but only descendants of Kohath and near kinsmen to each other. This is a more normal division. But isn't Uzziel called the uncle of Aaron? Yes. Would not that make him the literal brother of Amram? No! The word in Hebrew for "uncle" is doud. It is used, according to Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, around 58 times. In the King James version, it is translated 38 times as "beloved," eight times "love," and 17 times "uncle," (I, 184). Too, The New Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew and English Lexicon says it can mean "beloved one," "friend," or "kinsman," (p. 187). In Amos 6:10, the ASV gives a footnote for it as "kinsman." So Mr. Till's line of argumentation is becoming dreadfully becalmed. Let's continue on. Let's easily handle his Genesis argument. God said, "Know of a surety that thy seed shall be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; and also that nation whom they shall serve, will I judge; and afterward shall they come out with great substance.... And in the fourth generation they shall come hither again...." Mr. Till points out that they were to come out of bondage in the fourth generation, not the eighth, ninth, or tenth. Mr. Till underlined "and in the fourth generation." I underlined "four hundred years." When you put them together, you can see that in an age when men lived well over one hundred years, God was using "generation" as equivalent to "century." Four generations are four centuries. The context clearly argues "generations" were not numbered by counting the number of people in a lineage line but by counting centuries. Notice what the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament says generation can mean: "The circle of a man's lifetime, from birth to death. This is the apparent meaning at Genesis 15:16 where four generations cover an epoch of 400 years (cf. Gen. 15:13)," (III, 186). This reference quotes Keil in his commentary, "In the times of the patriarchs it was reckoned at a hundred years," (216). It adds, "So among the Romans the word seculum originally signified an age or generation of men and was later transferred to denote a century." That was the way God was using it, as a century, as the context proves. Mr. Till claims they were not in Egypt 400 years, but he didn't discuss the "four hundred years" of Genesis 15:13, if he noticed them, although he quoted the passage. Regardless, his Genesis argument just went belly up. Then Mr. Till admitted that there are skipped generations in the Bible, but he said that there has to be a Bible passage that says they were skipped. Well, if by God's grace I enter heaven, I will ask Moses if Moses was aware of Mr. Till's new rule of Hermeneutics. In the meantime, I should point out that Genesis 15:13-16 (400 years) and the genealogies of I Chronicles, which show 8 to 10 generations, and Numbers 3:27-28 (Moses having to have 2,150 brothers if there

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are no skipped generations) all clearly show that some generations were elided in Exodus 6 for the sake of brevity. Such eliding in genealogy is biblically common. Next, Mr. Till sees something astounding in the text. There seems to be a hidden agenda. Everything focuses on Levi and his sons. The writer is trying to make a point. What could it be? Why, he is trying to prove that Aaron is a direct descendant of Levi! Mr. Till seems to think there was a continuing struggle between the Aaronic branch of Levi and other branches, yet Korah's rebellion did not have a thing to do with whether or not Aaron descended from Levi but whether all the people could be priests or just Aaron's family. Members of the tribe of Reuben were even involved, (Num. 16:1). But Mr. Till and his scholars seem to insist Moses didn't write Exodus 6. Too, they seem, in a kind of hysterical way, to know all kinds of things about this fairy scribe who supposedly did write this portion. It is a shame to spoil a really good cock-and-bull story; however, notice a few things they don't know. They don't know of a scripture or any ancient document that says this man even existed. Do they know he was a priest? No. Do they know where he lived? No. Do they know his family? No. Do they know when he wrote? No. Could he be imaginary? Yes! This sly priest, like Melchizedek, had neither father nor mother, beginning of days or end of life, (Heb. 7:3). One of the main differences between the two is that Melchizedek had a name while this other mysterious priest did not. It seems a disgrace that Mr. Till should cruelly force him to parade before us without even a name, so I think we should give him one. From now on I'll just call him Skeeter. Further, Mr. Till says that Moses shifted from one Amram to another with very poor transition. Mr. Till claims it is a "serious compositional error." Let's have a little Christian charity, Mr. Till. It was difficult for Moses to get it right. After all, he lived over 3,000 years before Mr. Till's English Grammar was published. Second, we have shown that there was one Amram. But Mr. Till says this Amram took a wife, Jochebed, his father's sister, Levi's daughter ( Ex. 2:1-10; Num. 26:59). Like the demon who was afraid he might be tormented before his time (Matt. 8:29), Mr. Till said, "Mr. Moffitt will argue that she was a daughter of Levi only in the sense that she was a descendant of Levi, and he could probably get away with this were it not for Numbers 26:57: 'And the name of Amram's wife was Jochebed, the daughter of Levi, who was born to Levi in Egypt....'" He claims the New International Version tampered with the text, rendering it: "The name of Amram's wife was Jochebed, a descendant of Levi, who was born to the Levites in Egypt." Mr. Till was slanderously wrong, although I'm sure he did not

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