Wilhelm Schmitt has described the debate over the 430-year sojourn of the Israelites as a "tempest in a teapot," which, in the words of William Shakespeare, has been "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." After reading his defense of inerrancy in the matter of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt, I took a cue from Shakespeare too and decided that a better title for Schmitt's article would have been "As You Like It," because he has argued not for a conclusion the evidence will support but for one that he would like to be true. As I will show, all of Mr. Schmitt's arguments were predicated on the assumption that the Bible contains no mistakes, so he has made the mistake that most inerrantists make, i. e., trying to prove inerrancy by assuming inerrancy.
Before I address this matter, however, let's first look at another fundamental error in his reasoning. He argued that "[o]ne of the foremost canons of interpretation of the Bible... is that a clear statement in one part of the Bible is to be adhered to against others not so clear in other parts," but this is a popular rule of hermeneutics that cannot be logically defended for the simple reason that the Bible is not just one book written by a single writer. It is a collection of 66 different books written by an estimated 40 different writers over a period of several centuries, so Mr. Schmitt is arguing that if writer "A" made an obscure statement in, say, 500 B.C., and writer "B" over 500 years later made a clearer statement on the same subject, we must allow the clear statement to explain or clarify the obscure one. In so arguing, he is assuming that the Bible is inerrant in everything that it says, and so it would not be possible for the obscure statement of writer "A" to contradict the clearer statement of Writer "B." This, however, is a premise that he needs to support with reasonable evidence, and evidence to support this premise was conspicuously absent in Mr. Schmitt's article.
To illustrate the fallacy in the reasoning of inerrantists who argue as Mr. Schmitt has, let's suppose that we should find a statement in volume two of *Encyclopedia Americana* that contradicts a statement on the same subject in volume ten. If the statement in volume ten is worded more clearly than the one in volume two, would Mr. Schmitt argue that the clear statement must be allowed to explain or clarify the obscure one in order to remove contradiction from the encyclopedia? Wouldn't he more likely recognize that since the statements were written by different authors, they simply disagreed with each other on this particular subject? If Schmitt wishes to talk about Occam's razor, here is an appropriate situation to use the principle.
To apply what I am saying to the issue at hand, I have only to point out that the book of Exodus was not written by the apostle Paul, so it is entirely possible that Paul and the writer of Exodus, who were separated by several centuries, disagreed on the length of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt. The reason why Paul thought it was much shorter than 430 years is known to biblical scholars, but I will have to address that matter later. Here I simply want to notice that Mr. Schmitt's primary "canon" that he expects us to apply to biblical hermeneutics is a familiar attempt to give a privileged status to the Bible that even he would not be willing to give to any other source of information. I'm sure, for example, that if inconsistent statements were found in the Koran or the Book of Mormon, Schmitt would not argue that "the light from the clear is to be thrown on the obscure." Why then should he argue such a principle as this for the Bible except for the obvious fact that he expects the Bible to enjoy privileged status among the books of the world? This is a concession we cannot allow him. He must first prove that the Bible is indeed the inspired, inerrant "word of God," and then we will be willing to consider the validity of this "foremost canon of interpretation" on which he has based his defense of biblical inerrancy.
Numerous examples can be cited of biblical writers who, writing at different times, expressed contradictory opinions. One such case involved Jehu's massacre of the Israelite royal family at Jezreel, which is recorded in 2 Kings 9-10. After Jehu had killed Joram, his family, government officials, and even Ahaziah, the Judean king visiting Joram at the time, the writer of 2 Kings stated his approval of the massacre:
Chapters 13-15 record the reigns of four generations of Jehu's descendants. Each is described as "doing evil in the sight of Yahweh," yet these four generations were allowed to reign until the assassination of Zechariah, the fourth generation, at which time, the writer of 2 Kings said, "This was the word of Yahweh which He spoke to Jehu, saying, `Your sons shall sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation.' And so it was" (15:12).
The writer of 2 kings said that Yahweh was so pleased with Jehu's role in the Jezreel massacre that he promised to let four generations of Jehu's descendants sit on the throne of Israel, and then subsequently allowed these descendants to reign even though they "did that which was evil in the sight of Yahweh." In the face of such evidence, can anyone deny that the writer of 2 Kings approved the massacre?
About a hundred years later, in the time of King Zechariah, the fourth and last of Jehu's descendants to reign over Israel, the prophet Hosea expressed an entirely different opinion of the Jezreel massacre. Hosea alleged that the word of Yahweh came to him and pronounced judgment on the house of Jehu for the "blood of Jezreel":
So much did the prophet Hosea disagree with the writer of 2 Kings in the matter of Jehu's massacre that he predicted Yahweh would destroy the Kingdom of Israel in order to extract vengeance for the blood of Jezreel.
Obviously, then, biblical writers had their theological differences just as we can find today in any religious institution. In the matter of Jehu's massacre of the Israelite royal family, it isn't a matter of letting "the light from the clear [passage] to be thrown on the obscure [passage]," because both passages are quite clear in their meanings. The writer of 2 Kings approved Jehu's actions; the prophet Hosea denounced them.
This "foremost canon of interpretation" that Mr. Schmitt touts as a solution to the discrepancy under consideration might have some validity when inconsistent statements (one obscurely worded, the other clearly worded) appear in a single document that was written by one author. Then we could see some merit in arguing that a person would not likely contradict himself in a single document (even though experience tells us that this isn't necessarily true), and so we should allow the clear statement to "throw light" on the obscure one. However, when we have documents written by different individuals, who lived centuries apart, this "foremost canon" isn't nearly so likely as the assumption that people can easily have different opinions on a subject. We have mountains of empirical evidence that support the latter assumption, but the only thing that supports the former is an irrational desire for the Bible to be the inerrant "word of God."
That Mr. Schmitt was arguing from the assumption that the Bible is inerrant was apparent throughout his article. The age of Terah (Abraham's father) when Abraham was born was crucial to Schmitt's case, but the book of Genesis isn't too clear about this. The Genesis account says that Terah was 70 when he begot Abraham and his brothers Nahor and Haran (11:26) and that Terah lived to be 205 years old (11:32), but it also says that Abraham was 75 when he left Haran (12:4), so the chronological problem in this matter is rather apparent. If Terah was 70 when he begot Abraham and if Terah lived to be 205 and if Abraham didn't leave Haran until "after his father's death," as Stephen claimed (Acts 7:4), then Abraham had to be at least 135 when he left Haran. To resolve the problem, Schmitt appealed to the clarity of Stephen's claim that Abraham left Haran "after his father's death." To validate his chronological chart, however, Schmitt had to establish that this was a true statement, so he proved the truth of Stephen's statement by assuming the inerrancy of the scriptures. Let's notice the subtle way that Schmitt tried to sneak this assumption by us. After summarizing the above problems in the Genesis record, Schmitt concluded, "Therefore, according to Stephen, *who then was expressly said to have been `filled with the Holy Spirit,'* Terah was 205 less 75 when Abraham was born, or 130." Schmitt concluded that the "clear light of Stephen's statement" therefore clarifies the ambiguity in Genesis 11:26, so he is demanding that we accept the inerrancy of Stephen's statement on the grounds that it was "expressly said" that he was "filled with the Holy Spirit." In other words, Schmitt is arguing that if the Bible says X (in this case that Stephen was filled with the Holy Spirit), then X has to be true. But why should he be entitled to this assumption? I see no reason to allow him such an assumption anymore than I would allow a Moslem to assume the truth of what the Koran may say in a disputed matter, so I will insist that Schmitt prove to us the truth of Stephen's claim that Terah was dead when Abraham left Haran. Until he can produce that proof, he cannot establish that Abraham was born in the year 2008 A. M. (Anno Mundi) or 130 years after Terah's birth in 1878 A. M., and if he cannot establish that, his chronological chart collapses at its third level.
In fact, even if Mr. Schmitt could prove that Stephen's statement was correct and that Abraham did not leave Haran until *after his father's death,* this would not establish that Terah was 130 when Abraham was born. Schmitt has argued that Abraham was 75 when he left Haran (Gen. 12:4) and that he left Haran "after his father's death" (Acts 7:4), so since Terah lived 205 years (Gen. 11:32), we can determine Terah's age when Abraham was born by subtracting 75 from 205. Hence, Terah was 130 when Abraham was born. Let's notice, however, that Stephen said only that Abraham left Haran "after his father's death"; he did not say that Abraham left Haran *immediately* after his father's death. If Abraham had stayed in Haran 10 or 15 or, let's say, 20 years after his father's death and then left for Canaan, it would still have been true that Abraham left Haran *after his father's death.* Such a delay in Abraham's departure, however, would kick the props right out from under Mr. Schmitt's chronological chart. It would have made Haran 150, not 130, when Abraham was born, so from the third step in the chart (the date of Abraham's birth) all entries would have to be pushed forward 20 years.
Since both the dates when the covenant was given and the exodus occurred would also be pushed forward 20 years, this wouldn't significantly affect Schmitt's claim that 430 years separated these two events, but it would show the uncertainty involved in trying to establish exact biblical dates. I can illustrate this by beginning at an established time in the postexodus history of Israel and counting backwards to the exodus. By comparing the biblical dates given for the reigns of the kings of Israel and Judea with Babylonian records that establish the destruction of Jerusalem (which signaled the end of the Judean kingdom) at 586 B. C., we can establish that Solomon began his reign in 970 B. C. With that in mind, we can use 1 Kings 6:1 to fix the date of the exodus from the perspective of the author of 1 Kings. This verse states that construction began on the temple in the 480th year after the children of Israel came out of Egypt and that construction began during the 4th year of Solomon's reign, which would have been 966 B. C. So if we add 480 to 966, we get a date of 1446 B. C., which is 20 years after the date in Schmitt's chronological chart.
But the situation gets even worse. If we use the chronology of the apostle Paul, we get a much greater discrepancy. To see this, let's notice what Paul said in a speech at Antioch of Pisidia:
Just look at the chronological mess that Paul left us with here. He didn't say how long that David reigned, but 1 Kings 2:11 states that David reigned for 40 years, which always seemed like a good round number for biblical writers to use. So if we take the 40 years of David's reign and add it to the 40 years that his predecessor Saul reigned and then add the 450 years that Paul said the judges ruled and finally add on the 40 years of the wilderness wanderings, we have a total of 570 years from the exodus to the end of David's reign, *without even considering the time that it took Joshua to conquer Canaan and distribute the land to the various Israelite tribes* (v:19). Since construction on the temple began in the fourth year of Solomon's reign (1 Kings 6:1), if we now add 574 years to 966 B. C. (the fourth year of Solomon's reign), we arrive at 1540 B. C. as the date of the exodus. This would be 74 years before the date in Mr. Schmitt's chart, the chronology of which he assures us he can provide proof for if it is demanded.
My purpose in developing this point has been to show the futility of trying to fix precise biblical dates solely on the basis of what the Bible says. The end result of such efforts is going to be inconsistencies like the ones just presented, so if Mr. Schmitt wants to talk about "semantic gyrations," I suggest that he direct all discussions of this subject to the semantic gyrations that inerrantists must resort to in order to give a semblance of harmony to the biblical text. As we shall soon see, Exodus 12:40 very clearly states that the Israelites spent 430 years in Egypt, and the only way Schmitt can get around this fact is through his own far-fetched semantic gyrations.
Mr. Schmitt wants us to allow him the right to let "clear" statements in the Bible "throw light" on obscure ones, but there is a logical inconsistency in this principle that he calls "the foremost canon" of biblical interpretation. When we consider the inerrantist claim that the Bible was written through a process of *verbal* inspiration by which an omniscient, omnipotent deity guided the writers in what words to use in conveying his eternal truths, we have to wonder how that obscurity in the Bible would even be possible. Let's take as examples the statement in Exodus 12:40 and Paul's statement in Galatians 3:17, which Schmitt insists is a "clear" statement that we should allow to clarify the obscure statement in Exodus 12:40. The doctrine of verbal inspiration claims that the same omniscient, omnipotent deity guided both Moses (the alleged writer of Exodus) and the apostle Paul in everything that they wrote, so why should a statement by Paul on the subject of the Israelite sojourn be any clearer than one that Moses wrote, because in the final analysis (according to the doctrine of verbal inspiration) the same omniscient, omnipotent deity made both statements? This is a problem that Mr. Schmitt sorely needs to address before he can expect us to give any credence to his "foremost canon of interpretation" that says clear biblical statements should be allowed to thrown light on obscure ones. Verbal inspiration by an omniscient, omnipotent deity should exclude the very possibility of obscurity.
As far as obscurity is concerned in Exodus 12:40, I would like for Mr. Schmitt to point out where the obscurity is. He has resorted to a strained interpretation of the verse that he bases on a translation similar to the KJV:
Mr. Schmitt is claiming that this verse is not saying that the Israelites sojourned IN EGYPT 430 years but merely that they sojourned 430 years. The dependent clause "who dwelt in Egypt" is merely appositional, according to Schmitt, so its intention is to point out that the Israelites who sojourned for 430 years did at one time dwell in Egypt but not necessarily for 430 years. The 430 years actually referred to the time that the Israelites sojourned both in Canaan and Egypt, from the time that Yahweh made a covenant with Abraham until the time that they left Egypt, so Schmitt says.
As I said, this is a strained interpretation, and it is fraught with more problems than Mr. Schmitt could ever hope to resolve. First, it makes the Exodus author rather simplistic in his writing style, because the first 11 chapters of Exodus tell all about the troubles that the children of Israel had during their stay in Egypt, so it was rather obvious by the 12th chapter that they had "dwelt in Egypt." If, then, Exodus 12:40 was intended to mean that the length of the Israelite sojourn, altogether from the time of Abraham to the exodus, had been a period of 430 years, why would the writer bother to add parenthetically the obvious fact that they had dwelt in Egypt part of that time? Anyone who wouldn't know this by the 12th chapter would be a very careless reader.
More serious than this problem is the fact that both the Hebrew text and various English translations of that text do not support Mr. Schmitt's strained interpretation of Exodus 12:40. The best way to show this is by quoting various translations:
I have 27 translations of the Bible in my personal library. I have consulted them all, and none of them support Mr. Schmitt's strained interpretation of Exodus 12:40. Only two of them, the KJV and Lamsa's translation from the Peshitta, put "who dwelt in Egypt" in apposition to "the children of Israel," but that alone does not support Schmitt's interpretation, because even with this translation, it is possible for the verse to mean what the above translations clearly indicate that the statement meant: the Israelites dwelled or sojourned in Egypt for 430 years.
Young's Literal Translation of the Holy Bible renders the verse like this: "And the dwelling of the sons of Israel which they have dwelt in Egypt IS four hundred and thirty years." Hendrickson's Interlinear Bible gives this literal translation of the verse: "And the living-time sons Israel's which lived in Egypt [was] thirty years and four hundred years." The marginal translation, which attempts to express the meaning in idiomatic English that captures the intention of the original, renders the verse like this: "And the time of the dwelling of the sons of Israel, which they dwelt in Egypt, WAS four hundred and thirty years."
There just is no support in the original text or the various English translations for Mr. Schmitt's very unlikely explanation of what Exodus 12:40 really meant. When we read the above translations, we encounter no ambiguity at all, so we must reject Schmitt's premise that Paul's statement in Galatians 3:17 is clearer than Exodus 12:40. They are both quite clear. The Exodus writer said that the Israelites sojourned in Egypt 430 years, and Paul said that 430 years passed between the promise made to Abraham and the giving of the law of Moses. Both statements can't be right, so that spells a peck of trouble for Mr. Schmitt's "conviction that God is the author of the Bible." I suggest that he reexamine his basis for that conviction.
What could possibly explain such a glaring discrepancy as this? Why would Paul think that 430 years passed between the covenant made with Abraham and the giving of the law, whereas the Exodus writer thought that the Israelites had spent 430 years in Egypt? A possible answer to this question may be in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament:
The Septuagint version, then, says exactly what Mr. Schmitt wishes that the various English translations (derived from the Masoretic text) had said. The New Testament writers most often quoted the Septuagint translation when they referred to Old Testament scriptures, so this would explain why Paul believed that there had been 430 years between the land promise made to Abraham and the giving of the law. He was merely saying what he believed was true from his familiarity with the Septuagint. This may also explain why Stephen said that 75 souls had come into Egypt with Jacob (Acts 7:14), when all English versions derived from the Masoretic text put this number at 70 in Genesis 46:27. However, this verse in the Septuagint says that 75 souls went into Egypt with Jacob, a tally that was derived from a variation in verse 20, where five grandchildren of Joseph (two born to Manasseh and three to Ephraim) were listed, who are not listed in the Masoretic text. Stephen--or Luke, who could very well have put the words into Stephen's mouth--was probably stating what he knew the Septuagint version had said on this subject.
So does this mean that no discrepancy exists between Exodus 12:40 and Paul's statement in Galatians 3:17, that the misunderstanding has simply resulted from Paul's reliance on a version of the Old Testament that read differently from the Masoretic version of Exodus 12:40? Well, Mr. Schmitt may choose to see it this way if he wishes, but doing so will create more problems than it will solve. If Paul were inspired by the Holy Spirit when he wrote Galatians 3:17, then we must conclude that the Septuagint version of Exodus 12:40 is correct and the Masoretic incorrect. Likewise, if Stephen was indeed "filled with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 6:10; 7:55), then his reliance on the Septuagint concerning the number of souls that went with Jacob into Egypt would amount to the Holy Spirit's stamp of approval on that version of Genesis 46:20-27. This would be compelling reason for Mr. Schmitt to believe that he too should accept the Septuagint text over the Masoretic where differences in meaning exist.
I seriously doubt if Mr. Schmitt would want to do that. The differences in the Masoretic and the Septuagint versions are too numerous to discuss here, but any inerrantist who bothers to research this subject will discover information that is hard to reconcile with his belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. He will find a longer version of the book of Esther, a much shorter version of the book of Jeremiah, apocryphal books that aren't in the Masoretic canon, and numerous other variations. So the fact that their reliance on the Septuagint text led Paul and Stephen to make statements that are inconsistent with the Masoretic is hardly a boon for the inerrancy doctrine. It leaves rational people wondering (1) why the version of the Old Testament that we have today is so different from the one that the omniscient, omnipotent Holy Spirit inspired New Testament writers to quote, and (2) why God would verbally inspire a book and then allow it to be so flagrantly tampered with.
Mr. Schmitt charged that the debate over the 430-year sojourn
has been characterized by semantic gyrations "full of sound and fury,
signifying
nothing," but
after reading his attempt to resolve this biblical discrepancy, we find
that it is just more inerrantist flapdoodle, which in the words of
Shakespeare could be aptly
described as "much ado about nothing." The inerrancy of the Bible still
stands very
much in doubt.
