Evolution is a fact only at a very small scale. It is fantasy when it is used to explain how plants and animals came into existence or how human beings supposedly evolved from apelike ancestors. We might summarize the fantasy by saying that, where the theory of evolution is true, it is not very interesting, and where it is most interesting, it is not true.
If "evolution" merely refers to a process of cyclical (back and forth) variation in response to changing environmental conditions, then evolution is a fact that can be observed both in nature and in laboratory experiments.
For example, when a population of insects is sprayed with a deadly chemical like DDT, the most susceptible insects die but the individuals most resistant to the poison survive to breed and leave offspring, which inherit the genes that provide resistance. After many generations of insects have been sprayed, the entire surviving population may be comprised of the DDT-resistant variety, and some new form of insect control will have to be applied. Such changes are not permanent, however, because the resistant mosquitoes are more fit than the others only for as long as the insecticide is applied. When the environment becomes free of the toxic chemical, the insect population tends to revert to what it was before.
A similar effect explains how disease-causing bacteria become resistant to antibiotic drugs like penicillin, which then are no longer as effective in controlling the disease as they formerly were.
Almost all illustrations of "evolution in action" in textbooks or museum exhibits are similar to these examples. They involve no increase in complexity or appearance of new body parts or even permanent change of any kind. Small-scale, reversible population variations of this sort are usually called microevolution, although "adaptive variation" would be a better term.
It is misleading to describe adaptive variation as "evolution," because the latter term commonly refers also to macroevolution. Macroevolution is the grand story of how life supposedly evolved by purely natural processes from very simple beginnings to become complex, multicelled plants and animals, and eventually human beings, without God's participation being needed at any step along the way.
Charles Darwin assumed that macroevolution was merely microevolution extended over very long periods of time. Biology textbooks, museums, and television programs still teach people to make the same assumption, so that examples of microevolution are used as proof that complex animals and even human beings evolved from simpler organisms by a similar process.
The primary flaw in the story of macroevolution is that all plants and animals are packed with information-the complicated instructions that coordinate the many processes enabling the body and brain to function. Even Richard Dawkins, the most famous living advocate of Darwin's theory, admits that every cell in a human body contains more information than all the volumes of an encyclopedia, and every one of us has trillions of cells in his or her body, which have to work together in marvelous harmony.
The greatest weakness of the theory of evolution is that science has not discovered a process that can create all the necessary information, which can be likened to the software that directs a computer. Without such a demonstrated creative process, evolution is merely a story, because its supposed mechanism can neither be duplicated in a laboratory nor observed in nature.
It is true that there are patterns of similarity among living creatures. For example, humans, apes, mice, worms, and even plants have many similar genes. The important question is not whether there are similarities among all living things but whether those similarities came about through a natural process akin to the observable examples of adaptive variation that we find in textbooks and museum exhibits.
One mistake Christians often make in debating evolution is to take on too many issues at once, rather than starting with the most important problem and solving it first. For example, evolution requires a time scale of many millions of years, while many people understand the Bible to allow for an earth history of only a few thousand years. The evolutionary time scale is debatable, but debating it involves several complex scientific disciplines and distracts attention from the most important defect of the theory of evolution. The only mechanism the evolutionists have is a combination of random variation and natural selection, illustrated by the survival of the insects that happened to be resistant to an insecticide. This Darwinian mechanism has never been shown to be capable of creating new genetic information or new complex body parts such as wings, eyes, or brains. Without a mechanism that can be demonstrated to be capable of the necessary creation, the theory of evolution is " just a fantasy with no real scientific basis.
The Bible teaches, "In the beginning God created" and "In the beginning was the Word." A simple way of explaining this basic principle is to say that a divine intelligence existed before anything else and that intelligence was responsible for the origin of life and for the existence of all living things, including human beings. No matter how much time we might allow for evolution to do the necessary creating, the evidence shows that the process would never get started, because all evolution can do is to further minor variations in organisms that are already living, without any change in their basic classification. When the Bible says, "In the beginning God created" (Gn 1:1), it is presenting us with a fact, which we need to know to understand everything else, including what we were created for and how God wants us to live.
The Bible also says that God created men and women in His own image. That, too, is a fact. If it were not true, there would be no science, because no theory of evolution can demonstrate how intelligence came into existence, including the intelligence of misguided people who misuse science to try to explain creation without allowing any role to God.
"In the beginning was the Word." The Bible says it and, properly understood, the evidence of science confirms it. Anyone who says otherwise is peddling fantasy, not fact.
Extracted from the Apologetics Study Bible.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Are the Days of Genesis to Be Interpreted Literally? By Ted Cabal
This question has stoked controversy among conservative Christians in recent times, but it has proved to be of little interest to theistic evolutionists (those who accept evolution as God's mechanism in creation) and those rejecting Genesis as God's inerrant Word. The debate has been primarily between young- and old earth creationists, who believe that God literally created the various kinds of living things (as opposed to the common descent of Darwinism). Both sides hold that humans have not descended from other species, and both reject the atheism and macroevolutionary theory of neo-Darwinism.
The two creationist camps, however, differ in interpreting the creation days of Genesis. If the days were consecutive 24-hour periods, and if the earth was created on the first day, then calculations based on biblical genealogies reveal that the earth was created only thousands of years ago. If the days were either of indeterminate length or nonconsecutive, then the Bible does not reveal when the earth was created. Interestingly, both sides agree that the genealogies reveal that Adam and Eve were specially created only thousands of years ago.
Young earth creationists (YCs) interpret the days as 24-hour, consecutive periods for reasons such as the following: (1) The days in Gn 1 are consecutively numbered and comprised of an "evening and morning." (2) Exodus 20:8-11 commands a literal week of six days of work and one day of rest based on God's original creation/rest week. The two weeks would seem, then, to be of equal duration. (3) According to Rm 5:12, "sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin," but old-earth creationism would have animal death entering the world before the sin of Adam and Eve.
Old earth creationists (OCs) argue against 24-hour creation days for reasons such as these: (1) The Hebrew word for "day" (yom) is used in different ways in the creation account. For instance, Gn 1:5 refers yom only to daytime (daylight), not nighttime. Also, Gn 2:4, literally translated, speaks of "the yom that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens." (2) God's rest on the seventh "day" has no evening and morning (Gn 2:2-3), and Heb 4:3-11 portrays this same Sabbath as continuing to the present time. (3) Adam could not have named all the birds and animals in 24 hours according to Gn 2.
Both sides believe they have strong arguments favoring their interpretation and rebutting the other side. And historically, debate regarding biblical interpretation has often led to a clearer understanding of God's Word. But it is also highly debatable whether this issue merits the rancor and division often attending it. Some YCs accuse OCs of compromising the Bible with evolutionary science. Some OCs charge YCs with undermining biblical credibility by generating a false conflict between science and the Scriptures.
Happily, one thing is not debatable among those who believe the Bible: even if the correct interpretation of the creation days is not readily apparent in the present generation, the Bible can be trusted in every way. Debates about biblical interpretations should not be interpreted as the failure of Holy Scripture.
Extracted from the Apologetics Study Bible
The two creationist camps, however, differ in interpreting the creation days of Genesis. If the days were consecutive 24-hour periods, and if the earth was created on the first day, then calculations based on biblical genealogies reveal that the earth was created only thousands of years ago. If the days were either of indeterminate length or nonconsecutive, then the Bible does not reveal when the earth was created. Interestingly, both sides agree that the genealogies reveal that Adam and Eve were specially created only thousands of years ago.
Young earth creationists (YCs) interpret the days as 24-hour, consecutive periods for reasons such as the following: (1) The days in Gn 1 are consecutively numbered and comprised of an "evening and morning." (2) Exodus 20:8-11 commands a literal week of six days of work and one day of rest based on God's original creation/rest week. The two weeks would seem, then, to be of equal duration. (3) According to Rm 5:12, "sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin," but old-earth creationism would have animal death entering the world before the sin of Adam and Eve.
Old earth creationists (OCs) argue against 24-hour creation days for reasons such as these: (1) The Hebrew word for "day" (yom) is used in different ways in the creation account. For instance, Gn 1:5 refers yom only to daytime (daylight), not nighttime. Also, Gn 2:4, literally translated, speaks of "the yom that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens." (2) God's rest on the seventh "day" has no evening and morning (Gn 2:2-3), and Heb 4:3-11 portrays this same Sabbath as continuing to the present time. (3) Adam could not have named all the birds and animals in 24 hours according to Gn 2.
Both sides believe they have strong arguments favoring their interpretation and rebutting the other side. And historically, debate regarding biblical interpretation has often led to a clearer understanding of God's Word. But it is also highly debatable whether this issue merits the rancor and division often attending it. Some YCs accuse OCs of compromising the Bible with evolutionary science. Some OCs charge YCs with undermining biblical credibility by generating a false conflict between science and the Scriptures.
Happily, one thing is not debatable among those who believe the Bible: even if the correct interpretation of the creation days is not readily apparent in the present generation, the Bible can be trusted in every way. Debates about biblical interpretations should not be interpreted as the failure of Holy Scripture.
Extracted from the Apologetics Study Bible
The Chronology of The Kings of Israel and Judah by Kirk Lowery
Whether it is a simple story or a complex history, a key element is time. It establishes cause and effect, act and consequence. The books of Kings are not exempt from the need to relate one event to another in time. The author traces the action of kings and rulers throughout time by recording the beginning, end, and duration of one reign after another. Modern readers naturally want to relate the chronology of the books of Kings to the dating systems we use today so we can relate the events narrated there to each other and to contemporaneous events in the lands surrounding ancient Israel and Judah in order to recover the original context of those events.
The books of Kings synchronize the reigns of the northern and southern kingdoms of the divided monarchy as well as proving the number of years a king reigned. But there is a very significant problem. These numbers and the synchronomies appear to be in constant contradiction with one another. It appears difficult, if not impossible, to create a chronology that accounts for all these numbers and agrees with established chronologies of the ancient Near East. These conflicts of numbers have led many to conclude that the books of Kings cannot be faithful witnesses to the history of Israel. If the writer got the numbers wrong, what else did he get wrong?
Here is an example of one problem: Often the synchronomy given for the beginning of a reign does not correlate with the total number of years given for that reign. First Kings 15:25 says the reign of Nadab of Israel begins in the second year of Asa of Judah. First Kings 15:28 says Nadab died in the third year of Asa; that is, he reigned for one year. But 1 Kings 15:25 says he reigned for two years. This is one category of conflict. A second category of conflict is concerning, the year a king is supposed to have begun his reign. Second Kings 3:1 says Joram began to reign in Israel in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat of Judah. But 2 Kings 1:17 says he began to reign in the second year of Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat. The sum of regnal years for Israel and Judah is a third source of discrepancy. The total number of years for the kings of Israel from Jehu through Pekahiah is 114 years and 7 months. For the same period of time in Judah (from Athaliah through Azariah) the total comes to 128 years, a 14-year discrepancy. When we compare the sum of the regnal years for Israel as compared to the same period for Assyria, we find Israel's kings reigned 12 years longer than the Assyrian kings. And Judah's kings reigned longer by 25 years! Since the numbers do not match up, we must conclude that either someone made an error or the numbers mean something different than we suppose.
In 1951 Edwin Thiele published The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings in which he presented solutions to the problems outlined above. His discoveries and principles used to harmonize the regnal years of Israel and Judah with an absolute chronology are summarized here.
In the northern kingdom, Israel, the regnal year was calculated from the month of Nisan in the spring, but in Judah, the regnal year began in the month of Tishri in the autumn. Both of these systems overlap the January new year of modern calendars. It must also be kept in mind that both calendar systems are lunar rather than the solar calendar used today; that is, each month consisted of exactly 30 days following the phases of the moon. An important consequence of all this is that a regnal year in Israel begins in the spring and will overlap parts of two regnal years in Judah which begin in the autumn. If a king of Judah came to the throne just before January, his accession year would synchronize with, for example, the third regnal year of a king in Israel. However, if the Judean king came to the throne six months later in the following summer, his accession year would synchronize with the fourth year of the Israelite king.
A second principle used to resolve numeric conflicts is to understand that the method of calculating the regnal years was different in the two kingdoms. Is the first year of a king to include a partial year up to the next new year, or is the first year of a king's reign to be calculated from the following new year's beginning? In the ancient Near East, some countries followed the former method and others the latter. The former method is called "accession year" dating, and the partial year is not counted; it could be called "Year Zero." The latter method is called "non-accession year" dating and counts any partial year as "Year One." This means that nations using the non-accession year dating system are always one year ahead of those that use accession year dating. And for every new king, the rears increase by one in absolute time. For non-accession year dating, one must subtract one year for every king, in order to keep in sync with absolute chronology.
Judah used the accession-year system for Rehoboam through Jehoshaphat; then the non-accessionyear system was employed from Jehoram to Joash. Beginning with the next ruler, Amaziah, Judah returned to the accession-year system until the destruction of Jerusalem. In Israel, the non-accessionyear system only was used throughout its history; that is, from Jeroboam to Jehoahaz. For example, the total number of official years of reign for the Judean kings Rehoboam through Jehoshaphat are 79: the total number of regnal years for the same period in Israel (Jeroboam through Ahaziah) is 86. But when we subtract one year for each of the seven kings of Israel because of Israel's use of the nonaccession-year system, the final sum is 79 years, which agrees with the Judean record.
A further source of confusion is how the regnal years are reported. Since each nation had its own method of reporting (accession year or non-accession-year), it reported the numbers of the other kingdom according to its own method. Thus, Rehoboam had a 17-year reign according to Judah's accession-year recording system, but Israel's non-accession-year system reckoned 18 years for Rehoboam. First Kings 15:25 says Nadab's rule over Israel began in the second year of Asa of Judah. Since Israel used a non-accession-year system, the second year of Asa would be the first year according to Judean accession-year dating. Depending upon which source the author was using the Historical Record of Israel's Kings (1 Kg 14:19) or the Historical Record of Judah's Kings (1 Kg 14:29), the calculation of the regnal years and the synchronization between two kings must take these differences into account.
A fourth principle used to resolve regnal year numeric conflicts is to recognize that some reigns overlap (especially in Israel) and some kings were coregents (especially in Judah). Sometimes these overlappings and coregencies are mentioned explicitly in the text (e.g., 1 Kg 16:21-23) in a form called "dual dating." More often, the overlapping reigns must be deduced and reconstructed. In all, nine overlapping reigns have been identified, six for Judah and three for Israel.
How is the relative chronology of the Hebrew kings correlated with contemporary historical events? Lists of Assyrian kings record an eclipse which astronomical calculations determine to have occurred on June 15, 763 B.C. This allows us to fix the absolute date of most of the Assyrian kings and hence the various events of their reigns from their court records. In the sixth year of Shalmaneser III, the Assyrians fought a coalition of Aramean kings (now modern Syria) called "the Battle of Qarqar" in 853 B.C. and among the names of the kings listed is Ahab of Israel. (This event is not recorded in the Bible.) In the eighteenth year of Shalmaneser III, in 841 B.C., Assyrian records show that Shalmanese III, in 841 B.C., received tribute from Jehu, king of Israel. There are 12 years between the Battle of Qarqar and the receipt of Jehu's tribute and also 12 years between the death of Ahab and the ascension of Jehu (1 Kg 22:51). Thus. Ahab died in 853 B.C. and Jehu ascended the throne in 841 B.C. This allows for further calculations of absolute dates for many other kings of Israel and Judah. Another synchronization from Assyrian records is the year 701 B.C. when Sennacherib of Assyria besieged Jerusalem during the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign (2 Kg 18:13). From the Battle of Qarqar in 853 B.C. to Sennacherib's campaign against Hezekiah in 701 B.C. is a span of 152 years, according to Assyrian chronology. According to the properly calculated years of Israelite and Judean kings from the death of Ahab to the fourteenth year of Hezekiah is also 152 years, proving the synchronization and method of reckoning regnal years is correct.
The history of biblical studies in the twentieth century has shown again and again that ma "problems" of the biblical record have been the result of modern ignorance of the ancient world. The resolution of the apparent conflicts of the chronology of the books of Kings shows the reliability and trustworthiness of the biblical record to the history of the ancient Near East.
See the chart of kings in the section of charts and maps at the back of the Bible. This chart an absolute chronology of the kings of Israel and Judah, taking into account the beginning of regnal years, overlapping reigns, coregencies, dual datings, and accession- and non-accession-year dating systems.
The books of Kings synchronize the reigns of the northern and southern kingdoms of the divided monarchy as well as proving the number of years a king reigned. But there is a very significant problem. These numbers and the synchronomies appear to be in constant contradiction with one another. It appears difficult, if not impossible, to create a chronology that accounts for all these numbers and agrees with established chronologies of the ancient Near East. These conflicts of numbers have led many to conclude that the books of Kings cannot be faithful witnesses to the history of Israel. If the writer got the numbers wrong, what else did he get wrong?
Here is an example of one problem: Often the synchronomy given for the beginning of a reign does not correlate with the total number of years given for that reign. First Kings 15:25 says the reign of Nadab of Israel begins in the second year of Asa of Judah. First Kings 15:28 says Nadab died in the third year of Asa; that is, he reigned for one year. But 1 Kings 15:25 says he reigned for two years. This is one category of conflict. A second category of conflict is concerning, the year a king is supposed to have begun his reign. Second Kings 3:1 says Joram began to reign in Israel in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat of Judah. But 2 Kings 1:17 says he began to reign in the second year of Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat. The sum of regnal years for Israel and Judah is a third source of discrepancy. The total number of years for the kings of Israel from Jehu through Pekahiah is 114 years and 7 months. For the same period of time in Judah (from Athaliah through Azariah) the total comes to 128 years, a 14-year discrepancy. When we compare the sum of the regnal years for Israel as compared to the same period for Assyria, we find Israel's kings reigned 12 years longer than the Assyrian kings. And Judah's kings reigned longer by 25 years! Since the numbers do not match up, we must conclude that either someone made an error or the numbers mean something different than we suppose.
In 1951 Edwin Thiele published The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings in which he presented solutions to the problems outlined above. His discoveries and principles used to harmonize the regnal years of Israel and Judah with an absolute chronology are summarized here.
In the northern kingdom, Israel, the regnal year was calculated from the month of Nisan in the spring, but in Judah, the regnal year began in the month of Tishri in the autumn. Both of these systems overlap the January new year of modern calendars. It must also be kept in mind that both calendar systems are lunar rather than the solar calendar used today; that is, each month consisted of exactly 30 days following the phases of the moon. An important consequence of all this is that a regnal year in Israel begins in the spring and will overlap parts of two regnal years in Judah which begin in the autumn. If a king of Judah came to the throne just before January, his accession year would synchronize with, for example, the third regnal year of a king in Israel. However, if the Judean king came to the throne six months later in the following summer, his accession year would synchronize with the fourth year of the Israelite king.
A second principle used to resolve numeric conflicts is to understand that the method of calculating the regnal years was different in the two kingdoms. Is the first year of a king to include a partial year up to the next new year, or is the first year of a king's reign to be calculated from the following new year's beginning? In the ancient Near East, some countries followed the former method and others the latter. The former method is called "accession year" dating, and the partial year is not counted; it could be called "Year Zero." The latter method is called "non-accession year" dating and counts any partial year as "Year One." This means that nations using the non-accession year dating system are always one year ahead of those that use accession year dating. And for every new king, the rears increase by one in absolute time. For non-accession year dating, one must subtract one year for every king, in order to keep in sync with absolute chronology.
Judah used the accession-year system for Rehoboam through Jehoshaphat; then the non-accessionyear system was employed from Jehoram to Joash. Beginning with the next ruler, Amaziah, Judah returned to the accession-year system until the destruction of Jerusalem. In Israel, the non-accessionyear system only was used throughout its history; that is, from Jeroboam to Jehoahaz. For example, the total number of official years of reign for the Judean kings Rehoboam through Jehoshaphat are 79: the total number of regnal years for the same period in Israel (Jeroboam through Ahaziah) is 86. But when we subtract one year for each of the seven kings of Israel because of Israel's use of the nonaccession-year system, the final sum is 79 years, which agrees with the Judean record.
A further source of confusion is how the regnal years are reported. Since each nation had its own method of reporting (accession year or non-accession-year), it reported the numbers of the other kingdom according to its own method. Thus, Rehoboam had a 17-year reign according to Judah's accession-year recording system, but Israel's non-accession-year system reckoned 18 years for Rehoboam. First Kings 15:25 says Nadab's rule over Israel began in the second year of Asa of Judah. Since Israel used a non-accession-year system, the second year of Asa would be the first year according to Judean accession-year dating. Depending upon which source the author was using the Historical Record of Israel's Kings (1 Kg 14:19) or the Historical Record of Judah's Kings (1 Kg 14:29), the calculation of the regnal years and the synchronization between two kings must take these differences into account.
A fourth principle used to resolve regnal year numeric conflicts is to recognize that some reigns overlap (especially in Israel) and some kings were coregents (especially in Judah). Sometimes these overlappings and coregencies are mentioned explicitly in the text (e.g., 1 Kg 16:21-23) in a form called "dual dating." More often, the overlapping reigns must be deduced and reconstructed. In all, nine overlapping reigns have been identified, six for Judah and three for Israel.
How is the relative chronology of the Hebrew kings correlated with contemporary historical events? Lists of Assyrian kings record an eclipse which astronomical calculations determine to have occurred on June 15, 763 B.C. This allows us to fix the absolute date of most of the Assyrian kings and hence the various events of their reigns from their court records. In the sixth year of Shalmaneser III, the Assyrians fought a coalition of Aramean kings (now modern Syria) called "the Battle of Qarqar" in 853 B.C. and among the names of the kings listed is Ahab of Israel. (This event is not recorded in the Bible.) In the eighteenth year of Shalmaneser III, in 841 B.C., Assyrian records show that Shalmanese III, in 841 B.C., received tribute from Jehu, king of Israel. There are 12 years between the Battle of Qarqar and the receipt of Jehu's tribute and also 12 years between the death of Ahab and the ascension of Jehu (1 Kg 22:51). Thus. Ahab died in 853 B.C. and Jehu ascended the throne in 841 B.C. This allows for further calculations of absolute dates for many other kings of Israel and Judah. Another synchronization from Assyrian records is the year 701 B.C. when Sennacherib of Assyria besieged Jerusalem during the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign (2 Kg 18:13). From the Battle of Qarqar in 853 B.C. to Sennacherib's campaign against Hezekiah in 701 B.C. is a span of 152 years, according to Assyrian chronology. According to the properly calculated years of Israelite and Judean kings from the death of Ahab to the fourteenth year of Hezekiah is also 152 years, proving the synchronization and method of reckoning regnal years is correct.
The history of biblical studies in the twentieth century has shown again and again that ma "problems" of the biblical record have been the result of modern ignorance of the ancient world. The resolution of the apparent conflicts of the chronology of the books of Kings shows the reliability and trustworthiness of the biblical record to the history of the ancient Near East.
See the chart of kings in the section of charts and maps at the back of the Bible. This chart an absolute chronology of the kings of Israel and Judah, taking into account the beginning of regnal years, overlapping reigns, coregencies, dual datings, and accession- and non-accession-year dating systems.
Numbers In The Bible by Kirk Lowery
The modern reader of the Bible-especially of the Old Testament-often finds its use of numbers strange. The ancient world did not use numbers for every aspect of life. Their technology did not require many places past the decimal point of precision, or even a decimal point at all. The Bible has been closely read and interpreted by many cultures through more than four millennia. So the modern reader reads these ancient texts through the lens of all this history of interpretation. How others in the past have interpreted the numbers of the Bible influences a reader's understanding. How ought the numbers found in the Bible to be understood? They are to be understood in the same way that any other part of the text is understood: by how they are used and by keeping in mind both the textual context in which numbers occur and also the cultural context of how numbers were used by those ancient societies with which Israel lived and interacted.
Assyria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome used the decimal system for numbers. That is, numbers were expressed in base 10. ("Number" refers to the mathematical entity of quantity. "Numeral" refers to the symbol used to represent a number.) Sumerians and ancient Babylonians used the sexagesimal system, base 60, which is not unfamiliar to us since we use it every day-our system of timekeeping and navigation uses the sexagesimal system: 60 seconds to one minute, 60 minutes to one hour; 360 degrees to a circle subdivided into 60 minutes/degree and 60 seconds/minute. The ancient Israelites used the decimal system, as did their immediate neighbors in Canaan. For the most part, the major inscriptions of early Israel write out the numbers by words-"ten" rather than "10"-as is also true of the Old Testament itself. There is no instance of symbols being used, but all numbers are written out as words. The earliest (c. 140 B.C.) use of the Hebrew alphabet for numerals is to be found on Maccabean coins.
How did the biblical writers use numbers? They used them to count things and people. They used them for weights, measures, and time. They were familiar with arithmetic: addition (Gn 5:3-31; Nm 1:20-46), subtraction (Gn 18:26ff), and multiplication (Lv 25:8; Nm 3:46ff). Arithmetic processes are not mentioned in the New Testament. The frequent use of fractions shows a basic understanding of division: half (Ex 24:6); one fourth-(Neh 9:3; Rv 6:8); one fifth (Gn 47:24); a tenth (Nm 18:26). Numbers are important in Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation. In summary, the biblical writers used numbers literally, rhetorically, and symbolically. They are never used mystically. Each use is addressed in turn below.
When the Bible uses numbers in the ordinary way, do they mean what they apparently mean? Some interpreters suppose that since the biblical writers were "pre-scientific," the numbers are not to be taken seriously. This supposition is flawed, however, for many non-scientific cultures record numbers that can be taken perfectly seriously (such as the astronomical observations of the Babylonians or the administrative records of the ancient Egyptians). The use of numbers is very culture-specific: Some languages have only the numbers "one, two, many," because they do not need greater precision than that. Modern society is permeated with numbers for every conceivable aspect of life. The ancient world was not that way. The ancients did not give a unique number to their citizens, did not number their roads, etc. But regardless of the level of technological development, every society has to deal with numbers in a real way to function. For some, the system may be simple, for others, very complex. Ancient Israel was no exception: Tolls and taxes were recorded, censuses were taken.
The biblical writers often used round numbers, a fact that should be noted in questions of reliability and trustworthiness of the biblical record. For example, we find "a hundred" (and "100") used as a round number (Gn 26:12; Lv 26:8; 2 Sm 24:3; Ec 8:12; Mt 19:29), as well as "a thousand" (Dt 1:11; 7:9). The word "about" often precedes rounded numbers: "about 3,000 men" (Ex 32:28). On the other hand, numbers which could be interpreted as rounded numbers are often intended as actual amounts: "1,000 pieces of silver" (Gn 20:16). In general, one should assume a number is not rounded, unless there is reason to believe otherwise. Smaller numbers are less likely to be rounded than larger ones
Much ink has been spilled debating the meaning of large numbers in the Bible. There are the large, indefinite numbers, and these do not present an interpretive problem. The highest recorded numbers are one million (2 Ch 14:9), ten thousand times ten thousand (Dn 7:10), thousands of thousands (Rv 5:11), and 200 million (Rv 9:16), the highest number recorded.
The long life spans of the pre-flood patriarchs have been compared to the Sumerian king list, whose life spans are recorded in the tens of thousands of years. The Sumerian kings' life spans have been called "mythical," so why not the biblical patriarchs' ages? After all, everyone knows humans rarely live beyond 100 years, never mind 500 or 1,000. The actual fact is that we don't know. The Sumerian king list records life spans on an order of magnitude greater than the biblical names. If both reflect a tradition about antediluvian times, what they may both be saying is that those ancient people lived an extraordinarily long time. Some have suggested that environmental conditions could explain it; others suggest mankind's closer proximity to its original sinless estate explains it. We just don't know how to explain the apparently impossible life spans. What we have is a witness (the Bible) that has proved trustworthy too often to dismiss.
The Bible records the number of men capable of bearing arms at the time of the exodus to be 603,550 (Nm 1:46). From this, it has been calculated that the entire population leaving Egypt would be about two million. Could such a number survive in the wilderness? The answer is no. Neither could a hundredth of that many survive on their own. It required God's provision because that part of the world would have been simply unable to support large numbers of nomads, especially without modern farming methods and technology. It required God to actively intervene in Israel's physical history in order for them to leave Egypt and subsequently survive. That is the point of the Exodus narrative.
There have been various attempts to reduce the real numbers of the exodus by understanding the Hebrew term for "thousand" (eleph) as "captain" or "family, clan." There is evidence for this use of thl term in Nm 1:16; Jdg 6:15; 1 Sm 10:19; and Mc 5:2. But in the census lists of the book of Numbers the numbers of the tribes is calculated in terms of thousands, hundreds, and fifties. Gad, for example numbered 45,650 (Nm 1:25). And the total given to Israel's army (Nm 1:46) can only be arrived at if we calculate using eleph as meaning "thousand." Difficult to explain or not, the text is clear as to it intended meaning.
Numbers are also used in the Bible for rhetorical effect. They are used for contrast in poetic parallelism: "As they celebrated, the women sang: Saul has killed his thousands, but David his ten of thousands" (1 Sm 18:7). Perhaps the most common is to use the formula x... x + 1 to express progression, intensification, completion, or some sort of climax: "The LORD says: I will not relent from punishing Israel for three crimes, even four. .." (Am 2:6). Amos used the phrase in a string of condemnations of the sins of the surrounding lands. By using the same phrase for Israel and Judah he was saying "you are no better than they," and so had a stronger impact upon his audience. The x... x + 1 formula is also used in the NT (e.g., Mt 18:20). Perhaps the most popular interpretation c numbers in the Bible is their symbolic meaning. The numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 12, and 40 among others have been assigned various meanings such as "unity," "perfection," "completion," and "generation Where do these interpretations come from? The surprising fact is that only one number in the entire Bible is explicitly said to be symbolic: "Here is wisdom: The one who has understanding must calculate the number of the beast, because it is the number of a man. His number is 666" (Rv 13:18). Nowhere else are we told that numbers are used symbolically in any way. Any other symbolism for a number must be inferred from the biblical text itself by demonstrating a frequent association of a particular number with a particular concept. The only candidate for such an association is the number 7. And its usage is so diverse (seven days of creation; Jacob's seven years of service for Rachel; seven-fold curse of Cain; praising God seven times a day as in Ps 119:164) that it is hard to pin down a consistent meaning, but "completeness" or "perfection" appear to be the intended symbolism most of the time.
Where do all the other traditionally associated meanings and instances of symbolism come from? Modern lists of symbolic meanings of the biblical use of numbers most closely follow the system of meanings proposed by the sixth century B.C. Greek mathematician and philosopher, Pythagoras. Famous for his "Pythagorean Theorem," he also founded a religious cult with the belief that the "real" world was the realm of numbers and that those numbers explain why the physical world is the way it is. He speculated on the mystic and symbolic properties of numbers, which are the early origins of number theory. His ideas were picked up by the Gnostics in the apostolic and post-apostolic eras. Even the early church fathers were influenced by this approach to biblical interpretation, although not universally. Irenaeus (c. A.D. 140-200) classified it with other heresies: "Nor should they seek to prosecute inquiries respecting God by means of numbers, syllables, and letters.... For system does not spring out of numbers, but numbers from a system; nor does God derive His being from things made, but things made from God. For all things originate from one and the same God" (Against Heresies, Bk 11:25:1). This is a direct refutation of Pythagorean metaphysics.
It is a small step from looking for symbolic meaning in numbers to seeking hidden meaning in numbers. After Alexander the Great conquered Palestine, Greek philosophies influenced Jewish thinking. From Pythagorean influence sprang Jewish Gematria, the system of interpretation that says there is hidden, intended meaning in the numeric values of a word. Since the Greeks had no separate writing system to express numerals, the ancients used Greek letters instead. Words could be broken up into letters, and mathematical operations could be done on the numeric values of those letters. Those numeric values were given mystical meanings loosely based upon Pythagorean numeric metaphysics described above. The Jews applied these procedures to the words of the Hebrew . Bible using the letters of the Hebrew alphabet for numbers and claimed to discover hidden meaning and messages from God intended for the faithful. The church fathers were attracted to this form of interpretation of the Bible because of its apparent value in proving the inspiration and truth of the scriptures. In this way, Gematria passed into Christian circles and is still practiced today by many.
There is no historical or archaeological evidence of any culture using letters for numerals before the Greeks. The human authors of the Old Testament would have had no cultural model or literary form to suggest to them that they write a message in code. There is no hint in the Bible that there is any message encoded in the letters of the text. There is no procedure or mathematical operation common to the time of the writers of the Bible that the writers could conceivably expect a reader to know to use to discover the encoded meaning. We must conclude that the only way intelligible results can be obtained this way is by starting with the message one wishes to find! Then, using mathematical deduction, one proceeds to create the steps needed to get to that message from the numeric values of the biblical text, just like one would attempt to prove a theorem in number theory.
God's message of salvation for mankind was intended to be intelligible to everyone, of all ages and from all cultures. Certainly numbers in the Bible are sometimes difficult to understand, and there are "mysteries" about the future that are deliberately couched in ambiguous or symbolic wording. But at no time-with the one exception in Revelation noted above-is the reader exhorted to resort to mathematics. God does not speak to us in "code."
Assyria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome used the decimal system for numbers. That is, numbers were expressed in base 10. ("Number" refers to the mathematical entity of quantity. "Numeral" refers to the symbol used to represent a number.) Sumerians and ancient Babylonians used the sexagesimal system, base 60, which is not unfamiliar to us since we use it every day-our system of timekeeping and navigation uses the sexagesimal system: 60 seconds to one minute, 60 minutes to one hour; 360 degrees to a circle subdivided into 60 minutes/degree and 60 seconds/minute. The ancient Israelites used the decimal system, as did their immediate neighbors in Canaan. For the most part, the major inscriptions of early Israel write out the numbers by words-"ten" rather than "10"-as is also true of the Old Testament itself. There is no instance of symbols being used, but all numbers are written out as words. The earliest (c. 140 B.C.) use of the Hebrew alphabet for numerals is to be found on Maccabean coins.
How did the biblical writers use numbers? They used them to count things and people. They used them for weights, measures, and time. They were familiar with arithmetic: addition (Gn 5:3-31; Nm 1:20-46), subtraction (Gn 18:26ff), and multiplication (Lv 25:8; Nm 3:46ff). Arithmetic processes are not mentioned in the New Testament. The frequent use of fractions shows a basic understanding of division: half (Ex 24:6); one fourth-(Neh 9:3; Rv 6:8); one fifth (Gn 47:24); a tenth (Nm 18:26). Numbers are important in Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation. In summary, the biblical writers used numbers literally, rhetorically, and symbolically. They are never used mystically. Each use is addressed in turn below.
When the Bible uses numbers in the ordinary way, do they mean what they apparently mean? Some interpreters suppose that since the biblical writers were "pre-scientific," the numbers are not to be taken seriously. This supposition is flawed, however, for many non-scientific cultures record numbers that can be taken perfectly seriously (such as the astronomical observations of the Babylonians or the administrative records of the ancient Egyptians). The use of numbers is very culture-specific: Some languages have only the numbers "one, two, many," because they do not need greater precision than that. Modern society is permeated with numbers for every conceivable aspect of life. The ancient world was not that way. The ancients did not give a unique number to their citizens, did not number their roads, etc. But regardless of the level of technological development, every society has to deal with numbers in a real way to function. For some, the system may be simple, for others, very complex. Ancient Israel was no exception: Tolls and taxes were recorded, censuses were taken.
The biblical writers often used round numbers, a fact that should be noted in questions of reliability and trustworthiness of the biblical record. For example, we find "a hundred" (and "100") used as a round number (Gn 26:12; Lv 26:8; 2 Sm 24:3; Ec 8:12; Mt 19:29), as well as "a thousand" (Dt 1:11; 7:9). The word "about" often precedes rounded numbers: "about 3,000 men" (Ex 32:28). On the other hand, numbers which could be interpreted as rounded numbers are often intended as actual amounts: "1,000 pieces of silver" (Gn 20:16). In general, one should assume a number is not rounded, unless there is reason to believe otherwise. Smaller numbers are less likely to be rounded than larger ones
Much ink has been spilled debating the meaning of large numbers in the Bible. There are the large, indefinite numbers, and these do not present an interpretive problem. The highest recorded numbers are one million (2 Ch 14:9), ten thousand times ten thousand (Dn 7:10), thousands of thousands (Rv 5:11), and 200 million (Rv 9:16), the highest number recorded.
The long life spans of the pre-flood patriarchs have been compared to the Sumerian king list, whose life spans are recorded in the tens of thousands of years. The Sumerian kings' life spans have been called "mythical," so why not the biblical patriarchs' ages? After all, everyone knows humans rarely live beyond 100 years, never mind 500 or 1,000. The actual fact is that we don't know. The Sumerian king list records life spans on an order of magnitude greater than the biblical names. If both reflect a tradition about antediluvian times, what they may both be saying is that those ancient people lived an extraordinarily long time. Some have suggested that environmental conditions could explain it; others suggest mankind's closer proximity to its original sinless estate explains it. We just don't know how to explain the apparently impossible life spans. What we have is a witness (the Bible) that has proved trustworthy too often to dismiss.
The Bible records the number of men capable of bearing arms at the time of the exodus to be 603,550 (Nm 1:46). From this, it has been calculated that the entire population leaving Egypt would be about two million. Could such a number survive in the wilderness? The answer is no. Neither could a hundredth of that many survive on their own. It required God's provision because that part of the world would have been simply unable to support large numbers of nomads, especially without modern farming methods and technology. It required God to actively intervene in Israel's physical history in order for them to leave Egypt and subsequently survive. That is the point of the Exodus narrative.
There have been various attempts to reduce the real numbers of the exodus by understanding the Hebrew term for "thousand" (eleph) as "captain" or "family, clan." There is evidence for this use of thl term in Nm 1:16; Jdg 6:15; 1 Sm 10:19; and Mc 5:2. But in the census lists of the book of Numbers the numbers of the tribes is calculated in terms of thousands, hundreds, and fifties. Gad, for example numbered 45,650 (Nm 1:25). And the total given to Israel's army (Nm 1:46) can only be arrived at if we calculate using eleph as meaning "thousand." Difficult to explain or not, the text is clear as to it intended meaning.
Numbers are also used in the Bible for rhetorical effect. They are used for contrast in poetic parallelism: "As they celebrated, the women sang: Saul has killed his thousands, but David his ten of thousands" (1 Sm 18:7). Perhaps the most common is to use the formula x... x + 1 to express progression, intensification, completion, or some sort of climax: "The LORD says: I will not relent from punishing Israel for three crimes, even four. .." (Am 2:6). Amos used the phrase in a string of condemnations of the sins of the surrounding lands. By using the same phrase for Israel and Judah he was saying "you are no better than they," and so had a stronger impact upon his audience. The x... x + 1 formula is also used in the NT (e.g., Mt 18:20). Perhaps the most popular interpretation c numbers in the Bible is their symbolic meaning. The numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 12, and 40 among others have been assigned various meanings such as "unity," "perfection," "completion," and "generation Where do these interpretations come from? The surprising fact is that only one number in the entire Bible is explicitly said to be symbolic: "Here is wisdom: The one who has understanding must calculate the number of the beast, because it is the number of a man. His number is 666" (Rv 13:18). Nowhere else are we told that numbers are used symbolically in any way. Any other symbolism for a number must be inferred from the biblical text itself by demonstrating a frequent association of a particular number with a particular concept. The only candidate for such an association is the number 7. And its usage is so diverse (seven days of creation; Jacob's seven years of service for Rachel; seven-fold curse of Cain; praising God seven times a day as in Ps 119:164) that it is hard to pin down a consistent meaning, but "completeness" or "perfection" appear to be the intended symbolism most of the time.
Where do all the other traditionally associated meanings and instances of symbolism come from? Modern lists of symbolic meanings of the biblical use of numbers most closely follow the system of meanings proposed by the sixth century B.C. Greek mathematician and philosopher, Pythagoras. Famous for his "Pythagorean Theorem," he also founded a religious cult with the belief that the "real" world was the realm of numbers and that those numbers explain why the physical world is the way it is. He speculated on the mystic and symbolic properties of numbers, which are the early origins of number theory. His ideas were picked up by the Gnostics in the apostolic and post-apostolic eras. Even the early church fathers were influenced by this approach to biblical interpretation, although not universally. Irenaeus (c. A.D. 140-200) classified it with other heresies: "Nor should they seek to prosecute inquiries respecting God by means of numbers, syllables, and letters.... For system does not spring out of numbers, but numbers from a system; nor does God derive His being from things made, but things made from God. For all things originate from one and the same God" (Against Heresies, Bk 11:25:1). This is a direct refutation of Pythagorean metaphysics.
It is a small step from looking for symbolic meaning in numbers to seeking hidden meaning in numbers. After Alexander the Great conquered Palestine, Greek philosophies influenced Jewish thinking. From Pythagorean influence sprang Jewish Gematria, the system of interpretation that says there is hidden, intended meaning in the numeric values of a word. Since the Greeks had no separate writing system to express numerals, the ancients used Greek letters instead. Words could be broken up into letters, and mathematical operations could be done on the numeric values of those letters. Those numeric values were given mystical meanings loosely based upon Pythagorean numeric metaphysics described above. The Jews applied these procedures to the words of the Hebrew . Bible using the letters of the Hebrew alphabet for numbers and claimed to discover hidden meaning and messages from God intended for the faithful. The church fathers were attracted to this form of interpretation of the Bible because of its apparent value in proving the inspiration and truth of the scriptures. In this way, Gematria passed into Christian circles and is still practiced today by many.
There is no historical or archaeological evidence of any culture using letters for numerals before the Greeks. The human authors of the Old Testament would have had no cultural model or literary form to suggest to them that they write a message in code. There is no hint in the Bible that there is any message encoded in the letters of the text. There is no procedure or mathematical operation common to the time of the writers of the Bible that the writers could conceivably expect a reader to know to use to discover the encoded meaning. We must conclude that the only way intelligible results can be obtained this way is by starting with the message one wishes to find! Then, using mathematical deduction, one proceeds to create the steps needed to get to that message from the numeric values of the biblical text, just like one would attempt to prove a theorem in number theory.
God's message of salvation for mankind was intended to be intelligible to everyone, of all ages and from all cultures. Certainly numbers in the Bible are sometimes difficult to understand, and there are "mysteries" about the future that are deliberately couched in ambiguous or symbolic wording. But at no time-with the one exception in Revelation noted above-is the reader exhorted to resort to mathematics. God does not speak to us in "code."
Writing History – Then and Now by Kirk Lowery
Is the Bible "history"? Did the ancient biblical authors write "history" as we moderns understand it? These questions are essential elements of the debate about the trustworthiness and authority of the Bible. In recent years, the usefulness of the Bible for writing the history of the ancient Near East has come under attack as it has not been since the nineteenth century. And this attack is rooted in the intellectual winds of our time. Since the 1970s, people have been questioning whether science or history can tell us anything more than the ideology, politics, and biases of the scientist or historian, either individually or collectively. It is part of the so-called "postmodern" debate about the nature of "knowledge." Many postmodernists assert that the meaning of any particular biblical text (or any other literary text, for that matter) cannot be separated from the worldview and ideology of the reader. They deny that the original intention of the author can be recovered.
In order to evaluate the usefulness of the Bible for history and its trustworthiness as a source of both information and judgment on people and events, we must remember that there are two separate points of view-the ancient and the modern. Are we talking about modern ideas of history or ancient ones? Were the biblical writers attempting to write history as we understand it? If they were not attempting to write a modern history, just what were they trying to do?
The word history is normally understood in two senses: (1) what actually happened in the past, or (2) the telling (or writing) about what happened in the past. The first sense is objective (although some deny even this); the second necessarily filters those events through the personality of the historian. While the modern historian begins with a chronology and facts, the historian's evaluation hardly stops there. He reconstructs facts and events, fitting them together into a tapestry of telling a story. He evaluates his sources for their value and validity, much as a lawyer probes the credibility of a witness. Indeed, the historian is more like a prosecutor than a scientist in his method of work. After that examination, he makes conclusions about people and events, much like a judge or jury. The basic concern is that the Bible asserts certain facts or that certain events happened. Did they happen and in the way the Bible presents them? The Bible also makes judgments on people's actions, attitudes and deeds. Can we trust its judgment on events we cannot access?
Where did all this radical skepticism come from? There has always been skepticism about the Bible. Marcion (c. A.D. 85-160), for example, rejected just about all the New Testament except for Paul's writings and a highly edited Gospel of Luke. But modern (and postmodern) views of the Bible are rooted in the period known as the Enlightenment in the seventeenth century. This was a time when thoughtful persons began to distinguish between knowledge and superstition by using empirical methods. They struggled against state church authorities in their pursuit of truth. They pursued the original texts of not only the Bible but of the classics of Greek and Roman philosophy and literature. Their struggle polarized them from not just the contemporary church authorities, but galvanized them to regard any religious text as suspect. The seventeenth century was a time dedicated to the discovery of what was true and of what was superstition or chicanery. In that respect, the skepticism was healthy. Because many chose the cloak of religious authority to pander their intellectual wares, skepticism was a very powerful defense against this abuse. And a healthy skepticism is still useful. for superstition (in pursuit of money or adherents) is still used today against the unwary-that is, against those who uncritically trust whatever they are told. And it is important to remember that not everyone at that time embraced the "scientific" method accompanied by radical unbelief. Many of these early "scientists" were trained clergy, most notably Isaac Newton.
The modernist approach to writing history includes establishing events and a chronology, distinguishing between primary (original witness to the events) and secondary (dependent upon another) sources, and arranging those facts in some sort of a narrative. The modernist historian believes there is an objective reality in the past that can be accessed and known today. Critical scholars of the nineteenth century focused upon supposed "contradictions" and "errors" of fact to be found in the Bible. During the first half of the twentieth century, archaeological discoveries supported the presentation of fact found in many places of the Bible that previously had been challenged. At the end of World War II, scholars held the Bible to be much more trustworthy than they had believed at the beginning of the century.
In the past 50 years, the focus has changed. Once preoccupied with "contradictions" in the Bible, and "errors" of fact, now the emphasis is upon how the reader responds to the message of the text. One's understanding of the text is inevitably filtered through the previously existing biases of the reader. The original meaning of the text intended by the author is not accessible to the modern reader; indeed, "Truth" is not knowable. This brings us to the late 1980s and early 1990s when a new movement of historians arose to challenge the conclusions of their older colleagues; they have come to be known as the "Minimalists."
The controversy is all about historiography, the art of writing history. It is an art, not a science. One cannot repeat the "facts" of history in the same way that a scientist can reproduce the same events again and again in an experiment. But writing history is not simply telling a story. It is about the trustworthiness of the sources which one uses for telling that story. Are the sources that the historian uses to "prove" his point credible? The historian is much like the lawyer who constructs a tale about a crime (or lack of a crime), and uses witnesses and evidence to support his point of view and conclusion. And then it is the framework (often a story, but it could be a table of demographic facts) that relates all the events to one another. This involves selecting which facts will be included and which will be set aside as not relevant to the point being made.
The Minimalists assert that the Israel as depicted in the Hebrew Bible never existed, except in the minds of the Persian and Hellenistic writers who created the patriarchal narratives and the stories of the monarchy out of whole cloth. They were novelists in the modern sense who wrote fiction. Unless there is independent verification by "extra-biblical sources," they reject the Hebrew Bible's usefulness as a witness to the events written about. The biblical text is held to a higher standard of verification than are "extra-biblical" sources.
They believe that "unwritten" archaeological remains are more reliable than written documents, because they are "real," whereas the message contained in documents is created by humans with ideologies, misperceptions, incomplete information, etc. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), an Enlightenment philosopher, said that reality-the thing in itself-cannot be truly known. The Minimalists explicitly cite Kant as one reason they rate the biblical text so low for knowledge of the past. However, while archaeological remains tell us what the material world was like and the context and constraints under which the people of the past lived, they cannot tell us what decisions people made or explain why people made the choices they did.
They insist that any assertion by an ancient text must be verified by an independent source. But insistence on a strict verification principle would leave us in the dark about almost everything. In point of fact, no one lives this way. We constantly make decisions based upon insufficient verification and make the "likely" choice. Better is the principle of "innocent until proven guilty," that a text is given the benefit of the doubt until and unless grounds for suspecting it are discovered.
How does one answer the Minimalist? Let's take the problem of the conquest of Canaan. Archaeological evidence is lacking for the Israelite conquest and occupation in the Iron Age. The Minimalists conclude it never happened, and certainly not as presented in the book of Joshua. Kenneth Kitchen, well-known and respected Egyptologist, is famous for his dictum: "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence." Also, the biblical text helps explain it: Joshua 24:13 says, "I [the Lord] gave you a land you did not labor for, and cities you did not build, though you live in them; you are eating from vineyards and olive groves you did not plant." In other words, the Canaanite material culture-cities, farms, vineyards, and orchards-was not universally destroyed by the Israelites. Apparently, total destruction was the exception rather than the rule.
How should we evaluate these ancient texts? We should allow the ancient writers to speak in the manner that they wish. We should try to understand the ancient writers before posing questions of them that is outside of both their intention and their worldview. We should "translate" the message of the ancients from the ancient context to the modern. Finally, we must embrace humility: We do not have all the data; we do not have complete or even certain understanding to answer all our questions. Let us make a virtue of necessity and take what the ancient writers give and be content with that.
So what were the biblical writers doing, what did they expect to accomplish, and how ought the modern reader attempt to understand their literary output? The books of Kings and Chronicles, along with the other "historical" books of the Hebrew Bible, are not books written by modern historians for modern readers. Their literary nature is much, different. For one thing, their purpose is didactic or polemic; that is, the authors are attempting to convince their readers about moral and spiritual principles. Their stories are intended to support this purpose and their various propositions. Second, their commitment to truth does not aspire to modern standards of reporting. What they valued as important and unimportant-does not translate easily to third millennium A.D. values. For example, the recording of genealogies strikes many modern readers as irrelevant to the story. But it was critical to how these ancient peoples conceived of their identity. Genealogies may have had the function of establishing chronology or the framework for the story being told. It establishes precedence, relationship, and identity.
Allowance must be made for paraphrase, abbreviation, explanation, omission, rearrangement, and other techniques used by the ancient author that might offend modern principles of historiography. This is not to say that the ancients did not write history. To the contrary, they often show sensitivity to the events and corroborating witnesses to those events. But they also did not make a distinction between the writer's judgment or evaluation of events and the events themselves. They did not have precision-or, at least, modern notions of precision-in mind when they wrote. That does not mean the authors were not trying to tell a story that corresponds to real events! In order to understand the ancient texts, one must mentally and emotionally become an ancient and enter into their world. The process is very similar to watching a film where one must grant the filmmaker the premise of the film and even suspend belief in how the world should work before the message of the filmmaker can be perceived. The difference with the ancient writers is that we have much more work to do before we can enter into their world. Only then have we earned the right to form an opinion.
The ancient writer made choices: subject matter (events needing telling), point of view (theological purpose), and aesthetics (creative choices). These writers selected their material, glossed over less relevant events, simplified the story to meet space constraints and only included detail that illuminated the significance of the events as the writer understood them. This is true of modern professional historians as much as of ancient story tellers.
How, then, should we understand the intentions of the biblical writers? The first historians (that we have evidence of) were the Sumerians, for whom history was a matter of personal experience, not the analysis of sources or principles of interpretation. Later, Mesopotamian rulers desired to interpret the present or future in light of the past. Events on earth are controlled by the gods; hence, their decrees have a prominent place in their myths and legends. Indeed, that may have been the cultural function of the myths and legends. The earliest
historiographers in the modern sense of the word were Manetho (third century B.C., Egypt) and Herodotus (Histories, c. 440 B.C.) and later, Aristotle (384-322 B.C., Natural History of Animals). The biblical writers were something in between: The view of these ancient Hebrew writers is that history has a planned goal. History is not the result of forces or great men, but moves forward to an end planned by God. Their purpose in writing history was didactic: to teach the reader about how God acts in human affairs, what are His purposes and the consequences of obedience and disobedience to that purpose.
Extracted from the Apologetics Study Bible.
In order to evaluate the usefulness of the Bible for history and its trustworthiness as a source of both information and judgment on people and events, we must remember that there are two separate points of view-the ancient and the modern. Are we talking about modern ideas of history or ancient ones? Were the biblical writers attempting to write history as we understand it? If they were not attempting to write a modern history, just what were they trying to do?
The word history is normally understood in two senses: (1) what actually happened in the past, or (2) the telling (or writing) about what happened in the past. The first sense is objective (although some deny even this); the second necessarily filters those events through the personality of the historian. While the modern historian begins with a chronology and facts, the historian's evaluation hardly stops there. He reconstructs facts and events, fitting them together into a tapestry of telling a story. He evaluates his sources for their value and validity, much as a lawyer probes the credibility of a witness. Indeed, the historian is more like a prosecutor than a scientist in his method of work. After that examination, he makes conclusions about people and events, much like a judge or jury. The basic concern is that the Bible asserts certain facts or that certain events happened. Did they happen and in the way the Bible presents them? The Bible also makes judgments on people's actions, attitudes and deeds. Can we trust its judgment on events we cannot access?
Where did all this radical skepticism come from? There has always been skepticism about the Bible. Marcion (c. A.D. 85-160), for example, rejected just about all the New Testament except for Paul's writings and a highly edited Gospel of Luke. But modern (and postmodern) views of the Bible are rooted in the period known as the Enlightenment in the seventeenth century. This was a time when thoughtful persons began to distinguish between knowledge and superstition by using empirical methods. They struggled against state church authorities in their pursuit of truth. They pursued the original texts of not only the Bible but of the classics of Greek and Roman philosophy and literature. Their struggle polarized them from not just the contemporary church authorities, but galvanized them to regard any religious text as suspect. The seventeenth century was a time dedicated to the discovery of what was true and of what was superstition or chicanery. In that respect, the skepticism was healthy. Because many chose the cloak of religious authority to pander their intellectual wares, skepticism was a very powerful defense against this abuse. And a healthy skepticism is still useful. for superstition (in pursuit of money or adherents) is still used today against the unwary-that is, against those who uncritically trust whatever they are told. And it is important to remember that not everyone at that time embraced the "scientific" method accompanied by radical unbelief. Many of these early "scientists" were trained clergy, most notably Isaac Newton.
The modernist approach to writing history includes establishing events and a chronology, distinguishing between primary (original witness to the events) and secondary (dependent upon another) sources, and arranging those facts in some sort of a narrative. The modernist historian believes there is an objective reality in the past that can be accessed and known today. Critical scholars of the nineteenth century focused upon supposed "contradictions" and "errors" of fact to be found in the Bible. During the first half of the twentieth century, archaeological discoveries supported the presentation of fact found in many places of the Bible that previously had been challenged. At the end of World War II, scholars held the Bible to be much more trustworthy than they had believed at the beginning of the century.
In the past 50 years, the focus has changed. Once preoccupied with "contradictions" in the Bible, and "errors" of fact, now the emphasis is upon how the reader responds to the message of the text. One's understanding of the text is inevitably filtered through the previously existing biases of the reader. The original meaning of the text intended by the author is not accessible to the modern reader; indeed, "Truth" is not knowable. This brings us to the late 1980s and early 1990s when a new movement of historians arose to challenge the conclusions of their older colleagues; they have come to be known as the "Minimalists."
The controversy is all about historiography, the art of writing history. It is an art, not a science. One cannot repeat the "facts" of history in the same way that a scientist can reproduce the same events again and again in an experiment. But writing history is not simply telling a story. It is about the trustworthiness of the sources which one uses for telling that story. Are the sources that the historian uses to "prove" his point credible? The historian is much like the lawyer who constructs a tale about a crime (or lack of a crime), and uses witnesses and evidence to support his point of view and conclusion. And then it is the framework (often a story, but it could be a table of demographic facts) that relates all the events to one another. This involves selecting which facts will be included and which will be set aside as not relevant to the point being made.
The Minimalists assert that the Israel as depicted in the Hebrew Bible never existed, except in the minds of the Persian and Hellenistic writers who created the patriarchal narratives and the stories of the monarchy out of whole cloth. They were novelists in the modern sense who wrote fiction. Unless there is independent verification by "extra-biblical sources," they reject the Hebrew Bible's usefulness as a witness to the events written about. The biblical text is held to a higher standard of verification than are "extra-biblical" sources.
They believe that "unwritten" archaeological remains are more reliable than written documents, because they are "real," whereas the message contained in documents is created by humans with ideologies, misperceptions, incomplete information, etc. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), an Enlightenment philosopher, said that reality-the thing in itself-cannot be truly known. The Minimalists explicitly cite Kant as one reason they rate the biblical text so low for knowledge of the past. However, while archaeological remains tell us what the material world was like and the context and constraints under which the people of the past lived, they cannot tell us what decisions people made or explain why people made the choices they did.
They insist that any assertion by an ancient text must be verified by an independent source. But insistence on a strict verification principle would leave us in the dark about almost everything. In point of fact, no one lives this way. We constantly make decisions based upon insufficient verification and make the "likely" choice. Better is the principle of "innocent until proven guilty," that a text is given the benefit of the doubt until and unless grounds for suspecting it are discovered.
How does one answer the Minimalist? Let's take the problem of the conquest of Canaan. Archaeological evidence is lacking for the Israelite conquest and occupation in the Iron Age. The Minimalists conclude it never happened, and certainly not as presented in the book of Joshua. Kenneth Kitchen, well-known and respected Egyptologist, is famous for his dictum: "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence." Also, the biblical text helps explain it: Joshua 24:13 says, "I [the Lord] gave you a land you did not labor for, and cities you did not build, though you live in them; you are eating from vineyards and olive groves you did not plant." In other words, the Canaanite material culture-cities, farms, vineyards, and orchards-was not universally destroyed by the Israelites. Apparently, total destruction was the exception rather than the rule.
How should we evaluate these ancient texts? We should allow the ancient writers to speak in the manner that they wish. We should try to understand the ancient writers before posing questions of them that is outside of both their intention and their worldview. We should "translate" the message of the ancients from the ancient context to the modern. Finally, we must embrace humility: We do not have all the data; we do not have complete or even certain understanding to answer all our questions. Let us make a virtue of necessity and take what the ancient writers give and be content with that.
So what were the biblical writers doing, what did they expect to accomplish, and how ought the modern reader attempt to understand their literary output? The books of Kings and Chronicles, along with the other "historical" books of the Hebrew Bible, are not books written by modern historians for modern readers. Their literary nature is much, different. For one thing, their purpose is didactic or polemic; that is, the authors are attempting to convince their readers about moral and spiritual principles. Their stories are intended to support this purpose and their various propositions. Second, their commitment to truth does not aspire to modern standards of reporting. What they valued as important and unimportant-does not translate easily to third millennium A.D. values. For example, the recording of genealogies strikes many modern readers as irrelevant to the story. But it was critical to how these ancient peoples conceived of their identity. Genealogies may have had the function of establishing chronology or the framework for the story being told. It establishes precedence, relationship, and identity.
Allowance must be made for paraphrase, abbreviation, explanation, omission, rearrangement, and other techniques used by the ancient author that might offend modern principles of historiography. This is not to say that the ancients did not write history. To the contrary, they often show sensitivity to the events and corroborating witnesses to those events. But they also did not make a distinction between the writer's judgment or evaluation of events and the events themselves. They did not have precision-or, at least, modern notions of precision-in mind when they wrote. That does not mean the authors were not trying to tell a story that corresponds to real events! In order to understand the ancient texts, one must mentally and emotionally become an ancient and enter into their world. The process is very similar to watching a film where one must grant the filmmaker the premise of the film and even suspend belief in how the world should work before the message of the filmmaker can be perceived. The difference with the ancient writers is that we have much more work to do before we can enter into their world. Only then have we earned the right to form an opinion.
The ancient writer made choices: subject matter (events needing telling), point of view (theological purpose), and aesthetics (creative choices). These writers selected their material, glossed over less relevant events, simplified the story to meet space constraints and only included detail that illuminated the significance of the events as the writer understood them. This is true of modern professional historians as much as of ancient story tellers.
How, then, should we understand the intentions of the biblical writers? The first historians (that we have evidence of) were the Sumerians, for whom history was a matter of personal experience, not the analysis of sources or principles of interpretation. Later, Mesopotamian rulers desired to interpret the present or future in light of the past. Events on earth are controlled by the gods; hence, their decrees have a prominent place in their myths and legends. Indeed, that may have been the cultural function of the myths and legends. The earliest
historiographers in the modern sense of the word were Manetho (third century B.C., Egypt) and Herodotus (Histories, c. 440 B.C.) and later, Aristotle (384-322 B.C., Natural History of Animals). The biblical writers were something in between: The view of these ancient Hebrew writers is that history has a planned goal. History is not the result of forces or great men, but moves forward to an end planned by God. Their purpose in writing history was didactic: to teach the reader about how God acts in human affairs, what are His purposes and the consequences of obedience and disobedience to that purpose.
Extracted from the Apologetics Study Bible.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
How Apologetics Changed My Life! by Lee Strobel
Author, The Case for Christ and The Case for the Real
Skepticism is part of my DNA. That's probably why I ended up combining the study of law and journalism to become the legal editor of The Chicago Tribune-a career in which I relentlessly pursued hard facts in my investigations. And that's undoubtedly why I was later attracted to a thorough examination of the evidence-whether it proved to be positive or negative-as a way to probe the legitimacy of the Christian faith.
A spiritual cynic, I became an atheist in high school. To me the mere concept of an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the universe was so absurd on the surface that it didn't even warrant serious consideration. I believed that God didn't create people, but that people created God out of their fear of death and their desire to live forever in a utopia they called heaven.
I married an agnostic named Leslie. Several years later she came to me with the worst news I thought I could ever get: She had decided to become a follower of Jesus. My initial thought was that she was going to turn into an irrational holy roller who would waste all of her time serving the poor in a soup kitchen somewhere. Divorce, I figured, was inevitable.
Then something amazing occurred. During the ensuing months, I began to see positive changes in her character, her values, and the way she related to me and to the children. The transformation was winsome and attractive. So one day when she invited me to go to church with her, I decided to comply.
The pastor gave a talk called "Basic Christianity" in which he clearly spelled out the essentials of the faith. Did he shake me out of my atheism that day? No, not by a long shot. Still, I concluded that if what he was saying was true, it would have huge implications for my life.
That's when I decided to apply my experience as a journalist to investigating whether there is any credibility to Christianity or any other faith system. I resolved to keep an open mind and follow the evidence wherever it pointed-even if it took me to some uncomfortable conclusions. In a sense, I was checking out the biggest story of my career.
At first, I thought my investigation would be short-lived. In my opinion, having "faith" meant you believed something even though you knew in your heart that it couldn't be true. I anticipated that I would very quickly uncover facts that would devastate Christianity. Yet as I devoured books by atheists and Christians, interviewed scientists and theologians, and studied archaeology, ancient history, and world religions, I was stunned to find that Christianity's factual foundation was a lot firmer than I had once believed.
Much of my investigation focused on science, where more recent discoveries have only further cemented the conclusions that I drew in those studies. For instance, cosmologists now agree that the universe and time itself came into existence at some point in the finite past. The logic is inexorable: Whatever begins to exist has a cause, the universe began to exist, and therefore the universe has a cause. It makes sense that this cause must be immaterial, timeless, powerful, and intelligent.
What's more, physicists have discovered over the last 50 years that many of the laws and constants of the universe-such as the force of gravity and the cosmological constant-are finely tuned to an incomprehensible precision in order for life to exist. This exactitude is so incredible that it defies the explanation of mere chance.
The existence of biological information in DNA also points toward a Creator. Each of our cells contains the precise assembly instructions for every protein out of which our bodies are made, all spelled out in a four-letter chemical alphabet. Nature can produce patterns, but whenever we see information-whether it's in a book or a computer program-we know there's intelligence behind it. Furthermore, scientists are finding complex biological machines on the cellular level that defy a Darwinian explanation and instead are better explained as the work of an Intelligent Designer.
To my great astonishment, I became convinced by the evidence that science supports the belief in a Creator who looks suspiciously like the God of the Bible. Spurred on by my discoveries, I then turned my attention to history.
I found that Jesus, and Jesus alone, fulfilled ancient messianic prophecies against all mathematical odds. I concluded that the New Testament is rooted in eyewitness testimony and that it passes the tests that historians routinely use to determine reliability. I learned that the Bible has been passed down through the ages with remarkable fidelity.
However, the pivotal issue for me was the resurrection of Jesus. Anyone can claim to be the Son of God, as Jesus clearly did. The question was whether Jesus could back up that assertion by miraculously returning from the dead.
One by one, the facts built a convincing and compelling case. Jesus' death by crucifixion is as certain as anything in the ancient world. The accounts of His resurrection are too early to be the product of legendary development. Even the enemies of Jesus conceded that His tomb was empty on Easter morning. And the eyewitness encounters with the risen Jesus cannot be explained away as mere hallucinations or wishful thinking.
All of this just scratches the surface of what I uncovered in my nearly two-year investigation. Frankly, I was completely surprised by the depth and breadth of the case for Christianity. And as someone trained in journalism and law, I felt I had no choice but to respond to the facts.
So on November 8, 1981, I took a step of faith in the same direction that the evidence was pointing-which is utterly rational to do-and became a follower of Jesus. And just like the experience of my wife, over time my character, values, and priorities began to change-for the good.
For me, apologetics proved to be the running point of my life and eternity. I'm thankful for the scholars who so passionately and effectively defend the truth of Christianity-and today my life's goal is to do my part in helping others get answers to the questions that are blocking them in their spiritual journey toward Christ.
Extracted from the Apologetics Study Bible.
Skepticism is part of my DNA. That's probably why I ended up combining the study of law and journalism to become the legal editor of The Chicago Tribune-a career in which I relentlessly pursued hard facts in my investigations. And that's undoubtedly why I was later attracted to a thorough examination of the evidence-whether it proved to be positive or negative-as a way to probe the legitimacy of the Christian faith.
A spiritual cynic, I became an atheist in high school. To me the mere concept of an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the universe was so absurd on the surface that it didn't even warrant serious consideration. I believed that God didn't create people, but that people created God out of their fear of death and their desire to live forever in a utopia they called heaven.
I married an agnostic named Leslie. Several years later she came to me with the worst news I thought I could ever get: She had decided to become a follower of Jesus. My initial thought was that she was going to turn into an irrational holy roller who would waste all of her time serving the poor in a soup kitchen somewhere. Divorce, I figured, was inevitable.
Then something amazing occurred. During the ensuing months, I began to see positive changes in her character, her values, and the way she related to me and to the children. The transformation was winsome and attractive. So one day when she invited me to go to church with her, I decided to comply.
The pastor gave a talk called "Basic Christianity" in which he clearly spelled out the essentials of the faith. Did he shake me out of my atheism that day? No, not by a long shot. Still, I concluded that if what he was saying was true, it would have huge implications for my life.
That's when I decided to apply my experience as a journalist to investigating whether there is any credibility to Christianity or any other faith system. I resolved to keep an open mind and follow the evidence wherever it pointed-even if it took me to some uncomfortable conclusions. In a sense, I was checking out the biggest story of my career.
At first, I thought my investigation would be short-lived. In my opinion, having "faith" meant you believed something even though you knew in your heart that it couldn't be true. I anticipated that I would very quickly uncover facts that would devastate Christianity. Yet as I devoured books by atheists and Christians, interviewed scientists and theologians, and studied archaeology, ancient history, and world religions, I was stunned to find that Christianity's factual foundation was a lot firmer than I had once believed.
Much of my investigation focused on science, where more recent discoveries have only further cemented the conclusions that I drew in those studies. For instance, cosmologists now agree that the universe and time itself came into existence at some point in the finite past. The logic is inexorable: Whatever begins to exist has a cause, the universe began to exist, and therefore the universe has a cause. It makes sense that this cause must be immaterial, timeless, powerful, and intelligent.
What's more, physicists have discovered over the last 50 years that many of the laws and constants of the universe-such as the force of gravity and the cosmological constant-are finely tuned to an incomprehensible precision in order for life to exist. This exactitude is so incredible that it defies the explanation of mere chance.
The existence of biological information in DNA also points toward a Creator. Each of our cells contains the precise assembly instructions for every protein out of which our bodies are made, all spelled out in a four-letter chemical alphabet. Nature can produce patterns, but whenever we see information-whether it's in a book or a computer program-we know there's intelligence behind it. Furthermore, scientists are finding complex biological machines on the cellular level that defy a Darwinian explanation and instead are better explained as the work of an Intelligent Designer.
To my great astonishment, I became convinced by the evidence that science supports the belief in a Creator who looks suspiciously like the God of the Bible. Spurred on by my discoveries, I then turned my attention to history.
I found that Jesus, and Jesus alone, fulfilled ancient messianic prophecies against all mathematical odds. I concluded that the New Testament is rooted in eyewitness testimony and that it passes the tests that historians routinely use to determine reliability. I learned that the Bible has been passed down through the ages with remarkable fidelity.
However, the pivotal issue for me was the resurrection of Jesus. Anyone can claim to be the Son of God, as Jesus clearly did. The question was whether Jesus could back up that assertion by miraculously returning from the dead.
One by one, the facts built a convincing and compelling case. Jesus' death by crucifixion is as certain as anything in the ancient world. The accounts of His resurrection are too early to be the product of legendary development. Even the enemies of Jesus conceded that His tomb was empty on Easter morning. And the eyewitness encounters with the risen Jesus cannot be explained away as mere hallucinations or wishful thinking.
All of this just scratches the surface of what I uncovered in my nearly two-year investigation. Frankly, I was completely surprised by the depth and breadth of the case for Christianity. And as someone trained in journalism and law, I felt I had no choice but to respond to the facts.
So on November 8, 1981, I took a step of faith in the same direction that the evidence was pointing-which is utterly rational to do-and became a follower of Jesus. And just like the experience of my wife, over time my character, values, and priorities began to change-for the good.
For me, apologetics proved to be the running point of my life and eternity. I'm thankful for the scholars who so passionately and effectively defend the truth of Christianity-and today my life's goal is to do my part in helping others get answers to the questions that are blocking them in their spiritual journey toward Christ.
Extracted from the Apologetics Study Bible.
What Is Apologetics? by Kenneth D. Boa
Apologetics may be simply defined as the defense of the Christian faith. The simplicity of this definition, however, masks the complexity of the problem of defining apologetics. It turns out that a diversity of approaches has been taken in defining the meaning, scope, and purpose of apologetics.
The word "apologetics" derives from the Greek word apologia, which was originally used as a speech of defense. In ancient Athens it referred to a defense made in the courtroom as part of the normal judicial procedure. After the accusation, the defendant was allowed to refute the charges with a defense (apologia). The classic example of an apologia was Socrates's defense against the charge of preaching strange gods, a defense retold by his most famous pupil, Plato, in a dialogue called The Apology.
The word apologia appears 17 times in noun or verb form in the NT, and can be translated "defense" or "vindication" in every case. The idea of offering a reasoned defense of the faith is evident in Php 1:7,16; and especially 1 Pt 3:15, but no specific theory of apologetics is outlined in the NT.
In the second century this general word for "defense" began taking on a narrower sense to refer to a group of writers who defended the beliefs and practices of Christianity against various attacks. These men were known the apologists because of the titles of some of their treatises, but apparently not until 1794 was apologetics used to designate a specific theological discipline.
It has become customary to use the term apology to refer to a specific effort or work in defense of the faith. An apology might be a written document, a speech, or even a film. Apologists develop their defenses of the Christian faith in relation to scientific, historical, philosophical, ethical, religious, theological, or cultural issues.
We may distinguish four functions of apologetics, though not everyone agrees that apologetics involves all four. Such opinions notwithstanding, all four functions have historically been important in apologetics, and each has been championed by great Christian apologists throughout church history.
The first function may be called vindication or proof, and involves marshaling philosophical arguments as well as scientific and historical evidences for the Christian faith. The goal of this function is to develop a positive case for Christianity as a belief system that should be accepted. Philosophically, this means drawing out the logical implications of the Christian worldview so that they can be clearly seen and contrasted with alternate worldviews.
The second function is defense. This function is closest to the NT and early Christian use of the word apologia, defending Christianity against the plethora of attacks made against it in every generation by critics of varying belief systems. This function involves clarifying the Christian position in light of misunderstandings and misrepresentations; answering objections, criticisms, or questions from non-Christians; and in general clearing away any intellectual difficulties that nonbelievers claim stand in the way of their coming to faith.
The third function is refutation of opposing beliefs. This function focuses on answering the arguments non-Christians give in support of their own beliefs. Most apologists agree that refutation cannot stand alone, since proving a non-Christian religion or philosophy to be false does not prove that Christianity is true. Nevertheless, it is an essential function of apologetics.
The fourth function is persuasion. By this we do not mean merely convincing people that Christianity is true, but persuading them to apply its truth to their life. This function focuses on bringing non-Christians to the point of commitment. The apologist's intent is not merely to win an intellectual argument, but to persuade people to commit their lives and eternal futures into the trust of the Son of God who died for them.
Extracted from the Apologetics Study Bible.
The word "apologetics" derives from the Greek word apologia, which was originally used as a speech of defense. In ancient Athens it referred to a defense made in the courtroom as part of the normal judicial procedure. After the accusation, the defendant was allowed to refute the charges with a defense (apologia). The classic example of an apologia was Socrates's defense against the charge of preaching strange gods, a defense retold by his most famous pupil, Plato, in a dialogue called The Apology.
The word apologia appears 17 times in noun or verb form in the NT, and can be translated "defense" or "vindication" in every case. The idea of offering a reasoned defense of the faith is evident in Php 1:7,16; and especially 1 Pt 3:15, but no specific theory of apologetics is outlined in the NT.
In the second century this general word for "defense" began taking on a narrower sense to refer to a group of writers who defended the beliefs and practices of Christianity against various attacks. These men were known the apologists because of the titles of some of their treatises, but apparently not until 1794 was apologetics used to designate a specific theological discipline.
It has become customary to use the term apology to refer to a specific effort or work in defense of the faith. An apology might be a written document, a speech, or even a film. Apologists develop their defenses of the Christian faith in relation to scientific, historical, philosophical, ethical, religious, theological, or cultural issues.
We may distinguish four functions of apologetics, though not everyone agrees that apologetics involves all four. Such opinions notwithstanding, all four functions have historically been important in apologetics, and each has been championed by great Christian apologists throughout church history.
The first function may be called vindication or proof, and involves marshaling philosophical arguments as well as scientific and historical evidences for the Christian faith. The goal of this function is to develop a positive case for Christianity as a belief system that should be accepted. Philosophically, this means drawing out the logical implications of the Christian worldview so that they can be clearly seen and contrasted with alternate worldviews.
The second function is defense. This function is closest to the NT and early Christian use of the word apologia, defending Christianity against the plethora of attacks made against it in every generation by critics of varying belief systems. This function involves clarifying the Christian position in light of misunderstandings and misrepresentations; answering objections, criticisms, or questions from non-Christians; and in general clearing away any intellectual difficulties that nonbelievers claim stand in the way of their coming to faith.
The third function is refutation of opposing beliefs. This function focuses on answering the arguments non-Christians give in support of their own beliefs. Most apologists agree that refutation cannot stand alone, since proving a non-Christian religion or philosophy to be false does not prove that Christianity is true. Nevertheless, it is an essential function of apologetics.
The fourth function is persuasion. By this we do not mean merely convincing people that Christianity is true, but persuading them to apply its truth to their life. This function focuses on bringing non-Christians to the point of commitment. The apologist's intent is not merely to win an intellectual argument, but to persuade people to commit their lives and eternal futures into the trust of the Son of God who died for them.
Extracted from the Apologetics Study Bible.
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