Posted by Gunnar on August 28, 1999 at 03:18:00:
In Reply to: The "scientific" bible posted by Robert on August 25, 1999 at 11:51:51:
Robert, as is obviously the case with you, the more I learn about the Bible, science and history, the more apparent it becomes to me that the Bible contains both history and mythology, both truth and fiction, both sense and nonsense, and that it is every bit as unreasonable to insist that every word in the Bible is absolutely true as it is to deny that any of it is true. Nevertheless, it is also apparent to me that some of the criticism of the Bible is undeserved, and based on misunderstanding of what the original text said or meant.
Though it is certainly true that the Bible is not a science textbook and was not intended as such by its original writers, it did, to an extent, reflect the scientific knowledge and definitions prevailing at the time it was written. It is unjust to criticize the Bible for stating that bats are birds, for example, or considering whales to be fish, because it is only within the last couple of centuries at most that those words were redefined to exclude flying mammals or marine mammals. By the accepted definitions of those words at the time the Biblical books were written, they got it right.
Criticizing the Bible for accepting the existence of "mythological" beasts is not necessarily fair either, at least in the case of unicorns. According to 'Asimov's Guide to the Bible' and several good Bible dictionaries, the original Hebrew word rendered as "unicorn" in the KJV was r'eem (or something like that. Don't ask me how it was pronounced). We now know that it was the Hebrew name for a species of wild ox, with two horns, once common in the middle east, and the probable ancestor of modern day domesticated cattle. It was hunted to extinction by the Assyrian nobility, who considered it great sport to hunt them. They were already extinct by the time the Bible was first translated into a language other than Hebrew, namely Greek, in the translation known as the "Septuagent." The Greeks had no word in their language for this animal, so they made up the name "monokeros," meaning "one horn," possibly because they knew of it only through the Assyrian bas-reliefs depicting the popular pastime of hunting them, which always showed everything (including these animals) in profile so that only one horn showed (though I'm sure even the Greeks probably realized that they had two horns). The Latin Vulgate was translated from the Greek Septuagent, rather than from the original Hebrew, so when its translators encountered the word "monokeros," they simply substituted the Latin equivalent, "unicorn." The scholars who translated the KJV tried their best to translate from the original Hebrew, but having no idea what was meant by the Hebrew word, they obviously had no English equivalent, and simply borrowed "unicorn" from the Latin Vulgate. Since the KJV was first translated, archaeologists and other scientists have figured out what the original word meant.
As for the other "mythological beasts" in the Bible, some of them may have actually been mere myth, but it is also possible that we simply don't know what the original words referred to. The Israelites didn't make it any easier for us by not giving any detailed description of them, and by being prohibited by the Law of Moses from drawing any pictures or making any graven images of any man or beast.
While I agree that the Bible is far from infallible, I think there is a tendency for some to be so eager to discredit the Bible that they perceive some flaws that are non-existant.
Gunnar