The Uses of Discrepancies
We now approach one final question;
Do these so called Discrcpajicies serve any Providential purpose?
We cannot believe that they are wholly accidental; and a careful and reflective study will show us that they do answer certain very important ends. A few of these it may be well to mention.
I. These apparent discrepancies serve first of all to show us that the Author of the Bible h?i guarded even its text from essential corruptions.
How little all these discrepancies amount to in the aggregate, is amazing. With all these extant manuscripts and all the various sources whence they emanate, the text of the scriptures is in all vital matters essentially unimpaired.
The variations arc numerous but unimportant. They consist of differences in orthography, in the selection and collocation of
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words, and other minor matters. In the Hebrew manuscripts over three quarters of a million of various readings may be counted, as to cojisonants alone, and so we may say, in proportion, of the New Testament. But they are of little or no account in the main, and do not affect the sense any more than the different spellings of such words as ’ fulfil,” plough,’ etc.
The Masorites, superstitiously punctilious as they were, became, in the Providence of God, guardians of the text of sacred scripture. They counted, classified and recorded, verses, words, and even letters, so that the Bible has come down to us with a text purer and more certain than that of any other ancient book. In the manuscripts of Terence, and within a much less space than our New Testament, Dr. Bentley found 20,000 various lections, and affirmed his belief that upon further search he would more than double the number of such discoveries.
In the manuscripts, collated for Griesbach’s Testament, 150,000 various readings occur. Yet it is remarkable that, notwithstanding these hundreds of thousands of variations, the substance of scripture is not, by any of them, or by all of them together, materially affected; not one article of faith, not one moral duty, not one theological doctrine, not one essential truth, is in the slightest modified. The variations are mostly trivial, relating mainly to the names, numbers, dates, or to the letters of words. And the grand result is that, with the exception of perhaps from a dozen to twenty verses, the text of every chapter, paragraph and even sentence of scripture, is now so firmly settled that only the meaning is open to doubt or dispute. Compare this result with the results of the study of Shakesperian manuscripts. See Haley, p. 47.
II. These discrepancies serve to awaken and stimitlate intellecHcal inquiry and investigation. It is the study which these apparent disagreements have made necessary, by which we have been led to the discovery of the purest text.
As variations were found, they naturally compelled a searching and scholarly comparison of all extant manuscripts. To ascertain the exact date and source of each manuscript, to investigate into the period of its origin and the claims which it possessed to recognition, caused a vast expenditure of learning, time and pains. And the consequence is that, as families have traced their lineage for ages, into a remote past, so we have developed a new and distinct science, that may be called the Genea logy of the Manuscripts Compare Westcott and Hort’s Introduction to the New Testament.
III. These discrepancies furthermore teach us that, valuable as is the letter of scripture, the t7’7tth which it conveys is of vastly higher importance.
God permitted slight variations to find their way into the text, while He preserved the testimony of all the manuscripts essentially uniform, unvarying and consistent; and thus we are led to look supremely, not at the divergence, but at the convergence of their testimony in one burning focal point of harmonious truth.
IV. These discrepancies have established the Independence aad Integrity of the sacred writers.
There may be too close a correspondence in the testimony of witnesses; what was intended to confirm may thus tend to condemn. The entire absence of seeming collision, even in trifling details or minutise, argues intentional collusion, or conspiracy to deceive.
In courts of law, evidence, given by different
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parties, which exactly vau minutely- airees, is presumptive proof of a previous arrangement. For instance, in New Bedford, the famous “Rowland will” case involved $2,000,000, and $150,000 were spent in costs of a trial extending over two years. The whole issue turned upon the resemblance between two signatures both of which were claimed as Miss Rowland’s. So precisely, however, did the second match the first, that it was held to be a forged imitation.
Those who cavil at slight variations in the gospel narratives, forget that the test of truthful testimony on the part of witnesses, is substantial agreement with circumstantial variations.
V. These discrepancies have rather proven the real vahie of the Word of God.
For more than fifteen centuries the complete Bible has been the target of malignant, bitter hostility and assault. Every expedient of learning as well as ridicule has been exhausted to overthrow it. It has been subjected to microscopic scrutiny, and yet these insignificant * defects,’ as they are assumed to be by the enemies of the truth and by some so-called friends, are all that can be found to justify the opposition to the Bible as the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God!
Rev. J. H. Brookes, D. D., of St. Louis, once offered $500.00 reward to any one who would point out a single irreconcilable contradiction in the Word of God. After four weeks’ study a sceptic claimed the reward: he had made the great discovery, and here it is:
“Matthew xii. 30. He that is not with me is against me.”
“Luke ix. 50. He that is not against us is for us (!!).”
VL These discrepancies are used of
God to instruct the docile believer.
Christ told his disciples that he used Parables so that truth might at once be veiled from the unteachable and yet revealed to the obedient and docile. For the same reason God uses contradictions. Paradoxes are parables; by the very contrariety which they exhibit they stimulate thought, and arouse curiosity; by the effort to reconcile them we are sometimes more profited than by any mere comparison of similar statements. Compare John XV. 15, and xvi. 12.
Prophetic paradoxes serve also another use: they are designed as Enigmas, presenting a mystery to be afterwards solved by the event. Thus the mystery which they suggest becomes a lock, to which history becomes the key; and the perfect fitting of key and lock proves a divine hand in both the prophecy and the history. Compare Ezek. xii. 13, with Jer. xxxix.
Proverbial paradoxes compel reflection by their apparent divergence, just as views in a stereoscope often make necessary a fixed and patient gaze, in order to bring the two pictures into harmony and unity. We find after careful study that the two members of a paradox are evidently meant to balance each other, each helping to limit, extend, qualify or modify its complementary member. They present extremes between which we are to find the golden mean of truth, as the mariner finds it his safe course to steer midway between two headlands, or as the mechanician produces a resultant by using two forces which act at right angles to each other. (See Haley.)
VII. These discrepancies also become a test of the candor and gemznefiess of the Bible reader or student.
The great Teacher presented truth in forms suited to attract the truth lover, but to repel the hypocritical and insincere. His teaching thus became a sifting process, separating the real from the nominal followers. See John vi. 35-69. In this case those who heard Christ’s words “murmured at him,” “strove among themselves,” called them “hard sayings,” were “offended,” and some “went back and walked no more with him.” Yet it will be seen that, with every increase of their opposition, Christ, instead of modifying and mollifying his teaching, rather increased its apparent severity. He knew that each concession to unbelief and an unteachable spirit, would only embolden the demand for new concessions. When the disobedient stumbled at his saying, instead of retracting or qualifying his statement, he at least repeated it, in even in its obnoxious form. Compare John iii. 3-7.
Our Lord seemed to give, to such as sought it, an occasion of stumbling. When modern teachers find any statement of truth, such as the sovereignty of God, an occasion of offence to a hearer, they make haste to soften and qualify it. Just now the church universal is busy revising creeds, as though to adapt them to the demands of a worldly type of christian character, and a rationalistic spirit. Let us remember that by every concession we make reason bolder in its demand that everything shall be squared to its measure. Christ in pursuing just the contrary course taught his
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hearers to bow implicitly and submit with docility to the truth — or else he left them to stumble over it and fall and be broken.
VIII. Thus these discrepancies also discipline the triLc believer to yield an unquestio7iing obedience to the tridh.
Reason has its province: (a) to determine upon rational grounds of evidence whether or not the Bible be the word of God; (b) then to determine what that word teaches; and (c) what are the relations or bearings of its teaching upon one’s self and one’s duty. Beyond this the province of reason ceases, and the province of faith and obedience begins. For instance prophecy is of great significance and consequence, as it is 07i€^ if not the main one, of those “seven seals” set by God as His sanction upon His Word. Other evidences may appeal to believers as more satisfactory, but these evidences demand faith for their recognition, reception and appreciation. When an inquirer comes, in doubt and darkness, to the Bible, to find proofs that it is the Word of God, and therefore has a claim on his faith, predictive prophecy is God’s grand appeal to his reason. “We have also a more sure word of prophecy, whereunto ye do well that ye take heed as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts.”
In fact our perception of truth largely depends upon our spiritual attaiiiuient. Hence paradoxes are often reconciled by simple obedience. Jno. vii. 17. By doing His will we come to know the doctrine. There is a hidden harmony — a higher harmony that is hidden from us — until we yield up our whole soul and self to God for service, and yield up our whole heart and mind to truth in reverence.
Many so called discrepancies are due to the disposition and determination of unfair and uncandid critics;” aiit inveniam discrepoitiam aut faciam What Whately says about wise men and fools may be said about objectors: It is easier to ask, than to answer, a question, and many a man can present a difficulty who could not remove it.
In Voltaire’s library a Swedish traveler found Calmet’s Commentary, with slips of paper inserted, on which all the difficulties Calmet had treated were carefully noted, but not one of the answers and solutiotis whereby he met and refuted them.
Prof. Henry Rogers says, that Strauss’ “Life of Jesus” should be called, “a collection of all the difficulties and discrepancies which honest criticism has discovered, or perverted ingenuity imagined, in the four evangelists.” Haley 27, 28.
Thus what veils truth from carnal minds may reveal it to the spiritual: and the same doctrine that is a stiiDihling stone to the unbeliever is a stepping stone to the believer, i Pet. ii. 8.
IX. The obscurity of scripture is probably made to serve to godless reader’s a judicial end.
The captious, cavilling critic is punished by finding the very snares which he seeks, and falling into them. Perhaps he tries to make faith impossible in others, and ends by making his own mind simply a nest of objections, a perch for the unclean birds of doubt and denial of truth, so that faith can find no resting place in himself. He tries in a dishonest spirit to prove the Word of God a human fraud and falsehood, and is himself given over by God to believe what at the beginning he knew was a lie. He, who did not like to retain God in his knowledge, and who held down the truth in unrighteousness, and sought to turn the truth of God into a lie, is given over to a reprobate mind. The Judge of all abandons him to strong delusion.
X. Where all attempts at explanation or reconciliation fail, the believer must learn patiaitly to wait for the further light which dissolves all doubt.
This introduces another department of the subject, which the author has extensively treated in another work entitled “Many Infallible Proofs.”
The investigation into discrepancies has served to reveal hundreds and thousands of agreements which would not otherwise have been disclosed, and which are truly wonderful as the evidences of the divine authorship of the Bible, as well as of the integrity of the human agents which the Spirit of God employed in its production.
The Bible has been decried and derided as in hopeless opposition to science and irreconcilable conflict with modern discovery. But the further the investigation is carried the more marvelous proves the agreement between the word of God and the most advanced certainties attained by science.
The substantial agreement between the story of the creation and the discoveries of geology; the word ‘* firmament “or expajisc, as applied to the space between the heavens and the earth; the order of creation, from the lowest types to the highest — fish, reptile, bird, maiiiinal, man; the countless number of the stars (Jer. xxxiii. 22), the four supports of life — brain, lungs, heart, nervous system, with the circulation of the blood (Eccles. xii. 6, 7); the nature of light, as called forth, not “made” (Gen. i,); and as a mode of motion or vibration akin to sound or music (Job xxxviii. 7, Ps. lxv. 8, — Hebrew, to give forth bvirations — Ps. xix. etc.); these are a very few of the startling agreements between the Bible and scientific facts not known by man until long after the Bible was complete!
Modern believing scientists may well ask, how the infidel can account for such anticipations of modern discovery. Compare Ps. cxix. 32, with the fact that the staghound, fleetest in chase, has the largest heart, in comparison to his size, of any animal. The ant’s brain is entirely composed of the gray matter, whose preponderance in the brain is the measure of intelligence. Compare Prov. vi. 6. The agricidttiral ant does prepare a harvest — as recent investigation shows — and Solomon did not blunder in taking for grai?t the ant eggs or pup?e. Compare Prov. xxx. 25. Man was made of the dust of the ground — and the most recent analysis shows his identity in material substance with the ground on which he treads, etc., etc. Compare Gen. i. and ii.
To those who wish to examine the wonderful agreement of the Bible with the facts of history — one of the foremost of sciences — we commend the careful study of prophecy, even to its nihmte details, for the uiimite details of prophecy are vital to the prophetic proofs; it is these minutiae that remove a prediction from the realm of sagacious human forecast into that of divinely inspired foresight. It is these also that make the difference between the law of “simple” and of “compound probability.” Every single prediction has but a Jialf chanee of fulfillment; and hence every additional detail halves again the possibility of a mere accidental accomplishment. In the Old Testament the predictions concerning Messiah, which are most indisputable as predictions, because most undeniably remote from the events which they foretell, are also the most astonishingly minute in their details. The late Canon Liddon, in his famous Bampton lectures, gives three hundred and thirty-three particulars, prophesied about Messiah, and all meeting in him alone. By the law of compound probability we must raise one-half to its three hundred and thirty-second power to get the insignificant fraction which represents the possibility of a chance fulfillment; that fraction will have, as its numerator, a unit, and its denominator will reach ninety-four places I
Who audaciously dares to say that the slightest particular is of no consequence? The ancestral line, the exact place, time, and circumstances of Christ’s birth, with hundreds of most curiously minute marks, go to make up and complete that Old Testament portraiture of the “Coming One; “and, even when Christ hung upon the cross, he could not say,” It is finished I “and expire, until the last and least Scripture should” be fulfilled; “and so He said, ‘* I thirst!” And yet that forecast of his dying agony was not in a formal prediction, but in a Psalm, a poem whose true meaning is read only when in its jewelled cavern the Light of the World is set!
In a portrait, the entire fidelity of the resemblance may depend upon one line which changes or determines that subtle thing called ‘■^ expressio7i!” One delicate touch on the eyebrow, the turn or curve of an almost invisible line about the mouth, a tinge or a shade of color on the cheek, a vein in the forehead, one dainty stroke in that concave of the upper lip — these make the difference between the work of the master artist and his amateur pupils. And the Holy Ghost proves himself the Divine Artist, more if possible by his most minute and delicate strokes and touches than by his bolder and more conspicuous outlines. What was, at first, a drawing without color, at last becomes a complete, recognizable portrait.