I omitted a few rebuttal points from Van Eck's reply to Hutchinson, because they concerned the incredible audacity of Hutchinson that runs through almost all of his paragraphs, and I thought that they warranted blunter replies than Van Eck's. I have given Hutchinson publishing space that has cost Skepticism, Inc., hundreds of dollars, and we have reached a point in the discussions with him where he needs to be held accountable for his audacious hypocrisy (which has almost become a theme song in his articles) in constantly accusing skeptics of having "an agenda to pursue" that causes us to "slant [our] investigations to achieve the conclusions [we] seek" (January/February 2000, p. 8). "Van Eck, of course, does not do this [maintain the integrity of the biblical text]," Hutchinson said, "because he wants a certain outcome, and proper Biblical exegesis is not a method that would allow him to get the results he wants" (same issue, p. 8). "Van Eck's argument that Genesis 36 must refer to the later kings of Israel is without support, but he advances it so that he can justify his prearranged conclusion" (p. 8).
This same charge was repeated in both of his articles in this issue. "He [Till] has manipulated the verse to get the conclusion he seeks" (p. 3). "Van Eck's conclusion, of course, is based on his bias that the Bible is not a reliable historical account in the first place" (p. 7). Right before I began writing this article, Hutchinson sent a letter, which came too late to be published in the Mailbag column of this issue, but it will be in the July/August edition. He sent it in response to Dave Matson's suggestion that Hutchinson could see what the word king in reference to the children of Israel meant in Genesis 36:31 by just checking to see how various translations rendered the verse ("From the Mailbag," March/ April 2000, p. 15). The essence of Hutchinson's letter was that Matson was seeking to prove his position by looking for translations that favored it. The letter then concluded with the charge that "Matson, like Van Eck, seems to be pursuing an agenda rather than seeking to help people to understand the context of the verse."
Any reasonable person who has followed Hutchinson's articles, which I have been publishing in The Skeptical Review since 1995, knows that he has an obvious biblical inerrancy agenda that he "pursues" in all of his articles. Readers will find in these articles one far-fetched speculation after another that he has resorted to in order to "explain" each of the discrepancies that these articles addressed. Not once did he ever concede even the possibility that any of these "alleged discrepancies" represented real mistakes that the biblical writers made. He always had some imaginative "solution" to propose, and if that is not having an agenda to pursue, which led him to "slant his investigation to the conclusion he was seeking," I'd like to know how his attitude toward the Bible could be more fittingly described. Anyone who reads through all of Hutchinson's TSR articles would have to be hopelessly naive to think that his "agenda" was just to examine alleged Bible discrepancies objectively to try to find out if there was any merit to the errancy claims.
It is one thing to have a bias or a preconceived notion that leads one to force information toward a desired conclusion, but it is another to accuse, over and over, one's adversaries of doing the very thing that the accuser has to know he is doing. Such audacious hypocrisy as this deserves a sharp reprimand, and so that is why I saved a few of Hutchinson's replies to Van Eck's article for me to answer. It's time to strip Hutchinson naked and expose his colossal hypocrisy.
Jeremiah and burnt offerings: There is no better place to begin than with his attempt to explain away the problem in Jeremiah's condemnation of burnt offerings. Why, Jeremiah really didn't mean that God didn't speak to the Israelites about burnt offerings and sacrifices when he brought them out of Egypt, Hutchinson explained to us; he meant that God had not spoken to the Israelites just about burnt offerings but had also told them to obey him and that God was a lot more interested in their obedience than their burnt offerings and sacrifices. Has anyone else noticed that Hutchinson seems to have an uncanny ability to know exactly what any disputed biblical passage really meant? One has to wonder why Yahweh couldn't have found someone to inspire in biblical times who had an ability comparable to Hutchinson's so that at least some of the ambiguity and confusion in the Bible could have been eliminated by just writing exactly what was meant. I agree wholeheartedly with Van Eck when he said that if there are verses in the Bible difficult to understand, as Hutchinson has admitted (p. 7), he should explain why "the God who created the entire universe, in its immensity and magnificence, can't write more clearly." In the next article that Hutchinson submits, maybe he will answer that question and also tell us just why he has the ability to explain what divinely inspired writers seemed unable to express in language clear enough to understand.
Hutchinson didn't leave us without "evidence" to support his explanation of what Jeremiah really meant. "Many regard the New International Version of the Bible as a better translation for the modern reader," said Hutchinson, who for some reason has always shown a decided preference for the KJV, but maybe we will see him quoting the NIV now that he knows that it is a "better translation for the modern reader." Why do you suppose that Hutchinson has suddenly become an admirer of the NIV? Well, just look at how it rendered Jeremiah 7:22-23, "For when I [Yahweh] brought your forefathers out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, but I gave them this command: Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people." In Van Eck's reply to this part of Hutchinson's article, he demanded something of Hutchinson that I'm going to ask him too. What word in the Hebrew text justified putting the English word just into the translation of this verse? I'll even answer that question. There is no word in the Hebrew text that justifies this English translation. I have checked the Hebrew text and Hendrickson's literal translation; I have checked Young's Literal version; I have checked over 20 English translations; I have checked Brenton's English translation of the Septuagint; I have checked Segond's French translation; and I have found no support for the NIV rendition of this verse. I wish space permitted me to publish all of the different translations I consulted when checking into this, but I'll have to settle for just three. First is the translation of the Jewish Publication Society: "For when I freed your fathers from the land of Egypt, I did not speak with them or command them concerning burnt offerings or sacrifice. But this is what I commanded them: Do my bidding, that I may be your God and you may be my people." Hmmm, the poor Jewish scholars who worked on this translation didn't know enough about Hebrew to put in the word just. They should have consulted Roger Hutchinson.
Now here is the New English Translation of the passage: "For when I brought your forefathers out of Egypt, I gave them NO instructions or commands about whole-offering or sacrifices. What I did command them was this: Obey me, and I shall be your God and you will be my people." Whereas the NIV had Yahweh saying that he had not given the Israelites commands just about burnt-offerings and sacrifices, the NEB has Yahweh saying that he had given the Israelites NO instructions or commands about sacrifices. I can imagine Hutchinson's reaction if I should say that "many regard the New English Bible as a better translation for the modern reader." He would scream that I had just looked for a translation that supported the meaning that I wanted, but the fact is that most translations give the passage the same sense as the NEB: Yahweh had given the Israelites NO instructions OR commands about burnt-offerings or sacrifices. If Hutchinson doubts this, he should read a few other translations himself, such as the Jerusalem Bible, which says, "For when I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I said nothing to them, gave them no orders, about holocaust and sacrifice."
So much for Hutchinson's claim that "many" regard the NIV "as a better translation for the modern reader." The truth is that the NIV has a notorious reputation for trying to translate away biblical discrepancies, and the passage in Jeremiah is just one example of many that I could cite. If Hutchinson thinks that I can't, I defy him to submit an article that challenges me on this point.
This brings us back to the matter of Hutchinson's audacious hypocrisy. In his reply to Dave Matson's letter (mentioned earlier), Hutchinson sharply criticized Matson for quoting other English translations to try to show the meaning of Genesis 36:31. The whole letter will be in the mailbag column of the next issue, but here are some parts of it that show just how audaciously hypocritical Hutchinson can be.
Dave Matson ("Mailbag," March/April 2000) says that one should look at many translations of the Bible, and if he can find some that say what he wants, then he will have the correct understanding of a verse. This illustrates how naive skeptics can be when it comes to translations of the Bible and probably reflects some ignorance about the art of translation by Matson.
Translating from one language to another can be difficult for any number of reasons. As a result, translators will often provide what they think the author meant to say....
In the translations cited by Matson, the translators have actually inserted their understanding of the verse in lieu of providing the reader with a straight word for word translation. In effect, their translations have become commentaries on the verse. Skeptics, like Matson, can fail to grasp the difference between what a verse actually states and what the translator wants the reader to think it says.
In the case of Genesis 36:31, the word for word translation is easy enough to obtain even if the result is difficult to understand. Some translators then feel obligated to make the verse less difficult to understand....
When Hutchinson wrote this, he knew that he had gone translation shopping in his reply to Van Eck to find a version that supported the spin he wants to put on Jeremiah's statement about burnt offerings. It is beyond mere hypocrisy for Hutchinson to say what is in his letter to Matson after he had written a reply to Van Eck in which he had looked around for an English translation that would give him an excuse to argue that Jeremiah really didn't mean what he said.
Will Hutchinson argue that the NIV translators did not insert their "understanding" into Jeremiah 7:22-23? Certainly, they did not give a "straight word-for-word translation" of this passage, so why would their translation not be "in effect" a "commentary on the verses"? Aside from Hutchinson's desire for the Jeremiah passage to read that way, what exactly is the linguistic justification for putting "just" in a text that had no equivalent in the original Hebrew? Maybe Hutchinson would like to address these questions and tell us why he has resorted to the very thing that he accused Matson of doing.
The book of the law: In the matter of whether the book of the law was in or beside the ark of the covenant, I'm going to concede that Hutchinson had a stronger point here than in his attempt to rewrite the passage in Jeremiah, because there is some linguistic support for his view. Some translations have Moses telling the Levites "who carried the ark" to put the book "in" the ark, some say "in the side" of the ark, and some say "beside" the ark or the equivalent. The meaning is controversial enough that I personally wouldn't use this as an argument against the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, especially since there are plenty of other reasons to doubt it.
There are, however, some loopholes in Hutchinson's contention that the book was put beside the ark and not in it: (1) This order was given to those who "carry the ark," but putting the book beside the ark during its transportation would have been problematic. The ark was carried by the Kohathite Levites (Num. 3:31), who bore it on "staves" that were slipped through golden rings on each side of it (Ex. 25:12-15), so how could the Levites who carried the ark in this way have put the book of the law beside the ark. What would it have rested on while the ark was being transported this way? (2) The Kohathite Levites were strictly forbidden to enter the sanctuary and touch any of the sacred objects, lest they die (Num. 4:15). When the tabernacle was being moved, the Kohathite Levites had to wait outside while the priests wrapped all of the furnishings in sealskins, and only after this was done could the "sons of Kohath come to bear it" (v:15). This would indicate that the Levites "who carried the ark" couldn't have entered the sanctuary to put the book "beside" the ark while it was resting on the table built especially for it (Ex. 25:23ff. To do so would have risked death. (3) When instructions were given for making the ark, Yahweh said to Moses, "You shall put into the ark the testimony that I shall give you" (Ex. 25:16). How could this have been done unless the book of the law had been put into the ark? What other "testimony" would there have been for Moses to put into the ark?
I could say much more to show that Hutchinson's position in
this matter is by no means certain, but I must go quickly to the reason
I reserved this point for my reply to Hutchinson. His position on the
location of the book of the law required him to abandon the KJV to go
translation shopping for versions that would support the conclusion he
wanted to reach. How, then, could he have had the gall to write a
letter accusing Matson of doing the very thing he knew that he had done
in his reply to Van Eck?
