It’s fine if you want to believe these things. Just stop saying they’re in an easily-checkable text, and stop taking other people’s word for it that they are.
It’s one thing when really out-there fundamentalist wackos say that something or other is “the literal word of God”. They’re wackos, I don’t expect their statements to map to reality. It bothers me a lot more when I see media outlets cheerfully repeating these claims of literalism as though they’re true. “So-and-so believes in a literal interpretation of Biblical prophecies about the Rapture” or some such nonsense.
There is a very, very big difference between making claims about the ineffable and unknowable, about the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, and making claims about the actual text of a very popular and well-known book. The existence of an afterlife is not, at present, directly checkable. The existence of the word “Rapture” in the Bible is ten freakin’ seconds in Google. There are things that people of various faiths or no faith can disagree on, but guys, seriously, the text is right there.
So, in the forlorn hope of clearing up a few of these simple, checkable errors, here are six things that are widely claimed to be literally in the Bible, and simply aren’t.
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1. The Rapture
You all know this one. The End of Days, Armageddon, the Second Coming, with the plagues and the dead rising from the grave and the four horsemen and all that awesome stuff that reads like a Jack Kirby comic book as reimagined by Guillermo Del Toro. Among enthusiasts of this belief, there’s a serious split between those who believe in a premillennial Rapture and those who believe in a postmillennial Rapture; they have arguments over whose theory is better supported by the Bible. Since neither theory is actually anywhere in the Bible, they have equally strong cases.
The entire modern concept of the Rapture was not only made up, we know who made it up because they signed their names on it and charged money for it. John Darby did the initial creative work, coming up with the basic idea of assembling an awesome Rapture story out of various half-sentences from different books of the Bible. Sure, his resultant chronology jumped around from Revelation to Daniel to Romans within a single paragraph, but it had a good beat and you could dance to it. Even the Beatles need their Brian Epstein, though, and for Darby’s theory, that was Cyrus Scofield, author and publisher of the Scofield Reference Bible. Scofield’s edition combined the King James Version of the text with a great deal of extra material, charts and timelines and so on, explaining the hidden, secret, literal meaning of the text, because apparently that’s what “literal” means now.
Essentially, Darby and Scofield created a brand-new narrative by taking a Biblical text and cutting bits and pieces out, reshuffling them into a whole different order, and adding a bunch of commentary to make it fit a new story that hadn’t existed before. You know who else did that exact same thing? This guy:
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2. The Creation of the World in 4004 BCE
People get really into this one. A lot of my atheist friends like to sneer “who cares about a book that says the world was created in 4004 BCE?” A lot of fundamentalists have decided that’s the number they’re going to believe in, and will fight for it come hell or high water. And once again, we know exactly who invented it.
Archbishop James Ussher was one of a number of theologians and math nerds of the 17th century who tried to reverse-engineer the date of God’s creation of the earth by starting from Jesus and working backward. He came up with October 23, 4004. Other nerds came up with totally different numbers, of course, but Ussher’s is the one everyone knows. Why, you ask? Because it’s cited in the Scofield Reference Bible, of course.
Lest I be accused of nitpicking, let me point out that being in the Scofield Reference Bible does not count as being literally in the Bible, any more than a complicated rant about the bimetallic question is literally in The Wizard of Oz.
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3. The Antichrist
You knew this one was coming. All those cool stories about the son of Satan, the messiah of evil who will usher in the end of the world? Made up. Completely. Biblical basis: zero.
Don’t get me wrong; unlike the Rapture, the word “antichrist” does occur in the Bible. Well, in John. A couple times. It doesn’t bode well for those plots about the desperate attempt to discover the Antichrist’s identity in time, though, because he tells us quite literally and specifically who it is.
2 John 1:7 — I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.
So… that’d be me, then. And all the other atheists. And the Hindus. And the Buddhists. Most of the world’s population, really. We’re all antichrists.
This is going to be the worst remake of The Omen ever.
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4. The Seven Deadly Sins
I’m sorry, now I’m just ruining cool horror movies for no reason. Sadly, though, this is one of those timeless moral principles that has a specific timestamp, in this case 1274, when Thomas Aquinas finally stopped writing his extraordinary Summa Theologica on account of being dead. While he didn’t originate the concept of the Seven Deadly Sins, his work was so influential that if he said they and the Seven Cardinal Virtues were a thing, all of medieval Europe was more than willing to take his word for it. (Not kidding about his influence. To this day, talking smack on Aquinas is a good way to get punched in the face by a Jesuit.)
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5. The Ten Commandments
I know you’re offended, but bear with me. The Ten Commandments are not literally in the Bible. They are strictly a matter of interpretation.
First off, there aren’t ten. There are six hundred and thirteen commandments laid down in the book of Exodus, which together comprise God’s covenant with the Jewish people. Okay, I’m cheating a bit, it’s fair to say that the text sets the first seventeen verses slightly apart from the rest, and then repeats versions of them later in Exodus, and again in Deuteronomy, so those ones probably are of particular note. We just need to decide which ten we’re going to believe.
Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant doctrines all offer different versions of the ten rules derived from those three versions of seventeen verses. Is the second commandment about graven images, or taking the Lord’s name in vain? Is that whole section about coveting one commandment or two? And does it say “Thou shalt not kill” or “Thou shalt not commit murder”? Unsurprisingly, each religion edited a Ten Commandments that best suited their religious practices.
Now, you might say that none of this changes the text, that the rules are there, it’s just a question of how people choose to interpret, emphasize, and organize them. Which is true. But it’s also what people who talk about “the literal word of God” always say they’re not doing. So going by the definition of literal that they want to use, the Ten Commandments simply don’t make the cut.
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6. Hell
Not kidding about this one either. All those demons with their pitchforks, all those great Hieronymus Bosch paintings, Dante’s Inferno, all those jokes involving three lawyers who die and go there… not in the text.
Belief in the doctrine of eternal torment has been part of Christian belief probably since the beginning, and there are apocrypha (For the uninitiated, that’s books of the Bible that aren’t considered canon. Like the Star Trek animated series.) such as the Apocalypse of Peter that get into Jack Chick levels of glee about hell, but we’re talking about the actual literal-word-of-God Bible, aren’t we? And in those 66 books (81 if you’re Ethiopian Orthodox, but let’s stay focused) there are three references to anything resembling hell.
The first is in Luke 19, within a parable Jesus is telling. Not a factual account, but a story used to illustrate a moral point. I think when something is explicitly presented as a parable, it reflects poorly on us to consider it literal, no? (Spoiler alert: the Good Samaritan wasn’t literal either.)
The second and third, in Matthew 25 and Revelation 20, are both extremely vague and metaphorical representations of a final judgment. Matthew refers (after some rambling about bridesmaids and talents) to “eternal punishment” for those who failed to show charity and kindness while alive, and Revelation talks about a “lake of fire” into which those with bad works are thrown. Neither of these makes any reference to such punishment being visited prior to the Second Coming, implying instead that this will be part of the final moral accounting of the universe at the end of the world.
So even if we take these thin and scattered references as sufficient to prove a core moral doctrine like the existence of hell, there’s simply nothing suggesting that people go there when they die. Maybe after the end of the world, hell will be a thing, but there’s no suggestion in the text that it’s a thing now.
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I don’t make these points to try to demolish anyone’s doctrine or beliefs. There are sources of faith other than the literal text of the Bible, always have been, and everyone has a right to their own beliefs. However, they do not have a right to their own facts, and if they are going to claim that things are literally in a text, that is a claim of fact that can be easily checked.
As I said above, I’m an atheist, so I honestly have no dog in the fight when it comes to doctrine. I am also an editor, though, and as such I cannot in good conscience stand idly by and watch the word “literally” suffer such egregious and intemperate abuse.
This is so your property can be clear and that you will not have to worry
about getting out of your property with a difficult shoveling process.
For all intents and purposes, the terms snow blower and snow
thrower are interchangeable. You shouldn’t have to remove the pulley but you should remove the center screw so the lube gets down into the pivot area.
I like the commandments in Exodus 23, particularly verse 19. Hate boiled kid in milk…
To be truly precise about what is or is not in “The Bible,” one would need to specify which version you are using. There is some broad consensus in the present day about what goes in the text, but that is far from universal. There are multiple versions out there that do not necessarily say the same thing. The King James Bible I have on my shelf has footnotes showing multiple translations of various words and phrases. Even the KJV is different today than it was 300 years ago. The tricky part is that there is nothing in the text… Read more »
And, in addition to these points, it is important to recognize that what we think of as the ‘Bible’ – a mass-produced, privately owned, publicly sold book, with 66 (in most cases) books in a set order, with chapters and verses, navigational and textual tools, cross-references, etc., and generally encountered primarily in the act of private and silent reading – is a relatively novel development. For most of history, most Christians have engaged with the Scriptures in a rather different way – for instance, as one trained reader would read aloud a communally owned and hand-crafted text publicly in the… Read more »
Thank you, Alistair, for bringing calmness and knowledge into what could be a heated discussion. I applaud your views and the basis you have for them. Wouldn’t it be easier for all of us if this were all black and white, not subject to interpretation. It ain’t so. But it’s nice to have these discussions to learn, to understand, rather than insult and foster hatred.
I think you forgot to discuss the concept of marriage which is not referenced in the bible. I don’t know where the whole concept of getting the fathers blessing and a big wedding ceremony actually came from.
This is a surprising thing to say. The concept of marriage is mentioned on numerous occasions in the Bible. Of course, marriage takes strikingly different cultural forms in various of the biblical cultures mentioned, but it is most certainly referenced. The idea of getting the father’s blessing and having a big wedding ceremony are not integral to the meaning of marriage. Even so, we find both in the Bible. In fact, the very climax of the entire biblical text is the ‘marriage supper of the Lamb’. We see Jesus at the marriage in Cana. Also the father’s approval is sought… Read more »
It is so random that I’ve come across this article today that is 11 months old, but am compelled to reply nevertheless: Marriage, as a concept, is probably one of the largest subjects in the Bible. It is quite unfortunate that it is probably one of the most misunderstood subjects from the Biblical text as well. One could say that the concept of marriage was the whole purpose of Jesus descending down from Heaven and will be the reason that He returns again. It was the foundation of civilization given to mankind in the garden and is responsible for God… Read more »
I completely agree with the concept behind this post – it infuriates me when people try to convince me the bible is junk and their argument is based on things which aren’t actually in the bible. There are so many disturbing and screwed up things already in the bible, there’s no need to invent ones which aren’t there. I just want to comment on one subtle point in the section about the ten commandments. You said that people who practice religion claim they are not interpreting the bible’s verses to suit their practices. In modern-orthodox Judaism that’s absolutely not true.… Read more »
“We don’t claim to understand everything in the bible, and we have entire libraries of books interpreting the old testament.” This is an excellent point about the way different religious groups view many of the same passages. Before the modern era, it was not uncommon for Christians to believe in the concept of “Mystery,” the idea that a human being can never fully comprehend the mind of God, and may not even be able to fully understand the Bible itself. From that point of view, the fact that God or the Bible didn’t seem to make sense was seen as… Read more »
as much as I know I’m gonna get hate for pointing this out… What Noah’s saying here isn’t that he thinks the Bible is junk, or that people who believe in it (I do, but that’s irrelevant here) are stupid. He just wants people to actually know the text before they talk about what is in it and claim that there are things in there that actually aren’t. I could write a similar article about, I dunno… misinterpretations of Moby Dick, let’s say, and I have a hard time believing it would generate the same kind of angry responses. Just… Read more »
Who’s angry?
just because “fundamentalist wackos” have some erroneous beliefs about the bible does not mean that it is not – in theological parlance – divinely inspired sacred writ etc… these are straw man arguments presented by someone who, while possesses some good knowledge of the bible and its history, does not love the book for what it is… it is one thing to possess knowledge it is another to have the affections of one’s heart changed… and that is THE point of the book in question. the author here would have us believe that he “doesn’t have a dog in this… Read more »
I am 73 and rejected some of the Bibles claims when seven and continued to write things in a notebook that I thought did not makes sense or could be believed. After sophomore year , during the summer I bought a large notebook and went systematically through the Bible taking notes and had discussion with my mother , who had taught school for a few years and taught Methodist Sunday school class. I knew by then that she did not read it the way I did with a critical approach using common sense and encountering hundreds of contradictions. I was… Read more »
“There is no God. And I hate him.”
Arguably #7 is the Trinity.
Out of curiosity, what was the purpose of writing this article? I’d had originally wrote out this long drawn out response but I need to discern when and where it’s appropriate to discuss such topics. I discerned that this is not one of them. But thank you for writing this, it allowed me to search my faith a little more, and that’s good thing.
And as I’ve said before, this is not a welcoming site for people of faith.
Since the bible is junk, I’m guessing your phd in Theology is not worth the paper it’s printed on. Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate the years of effort and thought and hard work that has gone into your phd, but a phd in theology is about as useful as a phd in Harry Potter.
Rob, While I believe in the Bible, let us presume for a moment that the Bible is actually junk, as you argue. Even if that were the case, knowledge of Theology would be of considerably more use than many doctorates out there. The Bible is one of the most – if not the most – seminal text for much of Western religion, culture, literature, art, ethics, politics, history, philosophy, etc. The person who is largely ignorant of the Bible and Theology is a cultural orphan, cut off from many of the riches of the Western tradition, alienated from one of… Read more »
Some thoughts: 1. The Rapture does claim basis in the literal text. For instance, the reference to some being taken and others left in Matthew 24:40-41 or the reference to people being caught up in the clouds in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17. While I believe the Rapture to be a very misguided belief, based upon an extremely problematic interpretation of the texts in question, it isn’t just snatched out of someone’s imagination. 2. Once again, this interpretation – which, again, I don’t share – is based upon a fairly close literal reading of the text, in particular the genealogies of Genesis,… Read more »
I’d have to agree with what you’ve said here Alastair. Put a religious person who actually studies his text on this and he’d rip this up. I guess it’s easy for me to see room for improvement because I was once religious.
One example that could’ve been used is that Christians believe that there was a war in heaven and Satan got cast out. This isn’t in the bible, but a specific passage in Isaiah was reimagined by John Milton which later became “Paradise Lost” and the story also explains why Satan is (erroneously) called Lucifer.
Revelation 12: 7 – 9. And there was war in heaven…and Satan … was thrown down to earth. That is the passage that supports the war in Heaven idea. I liked the article although it wasn’t fully accurate. I like it though because too many people believe things are in the Bible without checking them. This can be ok, not every Christian needs to be a theologian but it would help if they could be convinced they are at a grade school level and may not have all the answers. Actually find it hard to believe someone with a love… Read more »
Good (and useful) reference, Noah. Thanks.