There is a misunderstanding of historical context on the one hand and a specific term on the other. When the Lord referred to Isaac as Abraham’s “only son” in Genesis 22:2, this was after Abraham had sent away Hagar and the son she bore him, Ishmael. They were no longer living with Abraham and Sarah. So the “only son” there with Abraham was Isaac. The Hebrews 11:17 passage is misunderstood because of the Greek term monogenes, which can be literally translated “only begotten” but also has the meaning, “unique” (cf. e.g., translation of Wisdom 7:22). Isaac was unique to Abraham and Sarah because he was the son of the promise, the one through whom Abraham would become a blessing to all nations, a point emphasized in the broader context (Genesis 12:1-3; Galatians 4:23).
Principle: Wooden literalism leads to contradictions for any writing or communication. That is why wooden literalism is so often a device in comedy: it has silly results. One gets the sense that if you said “Good morning” to people proposing these Bible contradictions, they would grump back, “What’s good about it! Harumph!” They would fail to acknowledge the sentence as a greeting and a wish and instead force it to stand as a declarative sentence in an attempt to make you seem foolish rather than polite. Lord, have mercy.
In contrast, reading things in context and with your dictionary open leads to genuine understanding. And why else would one bother to spend so much time reading, if one did not wish to understand?
These are good points.
ReplyDeleteOf course, as an academic book editor you know all too well that many people -- and particularly "activist" scholars -- read not for understanding (which they believe they have not only independent of the text, but in opposition to the text), but instead to find proof texts (or simply juicy quotes) that can be used as ostensible evidence in their arguments.
Yes, I see just such a search for "proof texts" on their various sites. At first I thought they were lining up their list of "Bible Contradictions" by drawing them from nineteenth century books on that topic. However, it appears that they have actually also used commentaries on Bible difficulties to generate their lists, of course, without noting that the commentaries were resolving such issues.
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