Answering Biblical Objections

[Clarence] Darrow tried to floor [William Jennings] Bryan in the Dayton Court [during the State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes trial of 1925] with some difficult questions about the Bible.

Was the world made in six days?
Did a whale swallow Jonah?
Where did Cain get his wife?
Did the sun stand still for Joshua?
How old is man?

And many other questions about incidents that have often puzzled Scripture students.

Bryan gave brief replies to the lawyer’s questions.

Now, Dr. R.A. Torrey, famous Bible scholar, and former New Englander, explains in detail why Fundamentalists like Bryan readily believe the so-called “controversial biblical passages.”

His explanations appear in “Difficulties in the Bible,” published by Fleming H. Revell Company from which these extracts are taken.

The objector is fond of telling us that “the first chapter of Genesis says that the world was created in six days of twenty-four hours each, when everyone who is familiar with modern science knows that the world as it now stands was millions of years in the making.”

This objection sounds well, but the one who makes it displays a hopeless ignorance of the Bible. Anyone who is at all familiar with the Bible and the Bible usage of words knows that the word “day” is not limited to periods of twenty-four hours.

It is frequently used of a period of time of an entirely undefined length. For example, in Joel 3:18–20, the millennial period is spoken of as a “day.” In Zechariah 2:10–13 the millennial period is again spoken of as a “day,” and again in Zechariah 13:1–2 and 14:9. Even in the second chapter of Genesis the whole period covered by the six days of the first account is spoken of as a “day” (Genesis 2:4–5). There is no necessity whatever for interpreting the days of Genesis 1 as solar days of 24 hours each. They have vast periods of undefined length.

But someone may say: “This is twisting the Scriptures to make them fit the conclusions of modern science.”

The one who says so simply displays his ignorance of the history of biblical interpretation. St. Augustine, as far back as the fourth century, centuries before modern science and its conclusions were dreamed of, interpreted the days of Genesis 1 as periods of time, just what the words mean in many places elsewhere in the Bible.

Another point urged against the truth and accuracy of the account of creation in Genesis 1 is that it speaks of “there being light before the sun existed, and it is absurd to think of light before the sun, the source of light.”

The one who says this displays his ignorance of modern science. Anyone who is familiar with the nebular hypothesis, commonly accepted among the scientific men today, knows that there was cosmic light ages before the sun became differentiated from the general luminous nebulous as a separate body.

How Old Is Man?

One of the questions that is greatly puzzling many Bible scholars today is how to reconcile the chronology of the Bible with discoveries that are being made as to the antiquity of man. It is said that the Bible chronology only allows about 4,000 years from Adam to Christ, but the Egyptian and Babylonian civilizations were highly developed before 4,000 years before Christ. If there were but 4,000 years from Adam to Christ, there would be only 5,907 years for the whole age of the whole human race, and historians and scientists are thought to have traced the history of the race back 10,000 or more years. How are we to reconcile these apparent discrepancies?

In the first place, let it be said that the dates commonly accepted by many historians are not at all certain. On the other hand it is not at all sure that there were only about 4,000 years from Adam to Christ.

Biship Ussher’s chronology, which is found in the margin of most reference Bibles, is not a part of the Bible itself, and its accuracy is altogether doubtful. It is founded upon the supposition that the genealogies of the Scripture are intended to be complete, but a careful study of these genealogies clearly shows they are not intended to be complete, that they oftentimes contain only some outstanding names.

Whence Came Cain’s Wife?

“Where did Cain get his wife?” This seems to be a favorite question with unbelievers of a certain class. In Genesis 5:3–4, we learn that Adam in his long life of 930 years begat many sons and daughters. There can be but little doubt that Cain married one of those numerous daughters. But someone will say: “In that case, Cain married his own sister.”

Yes, that was a necessity. If the whole Adamic race was to descend from a single pair, the sons and daughters must intermarry. But as the race increased, it remained no longer necessary for men to marry their own sisters, and the practice, if continued, would result in great mischief to the race.

If we were to throw the Bible account overboard and adopt the evolutionary hypothesis as to the origin of the human race we would not relieve matters at all, for in that case out early ancestors would have been beasts, and the father and mother of the human race would be descendants of the same pair of beasts, brother and sister beasts.

Did The Sun Stand Still?

One of the greatest difficulties in the Bible to many a student is found in the story contained in Joshua 10:12–14.

“Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day. And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the Lord fought for Israel.”

It is said by the critics that this story cannot possibly be true; that if the sun were to stand still in the way here recorded it would upset the whole source of nature. But certainly the God who made the earth and the sun and the whole universe could maintain it even if the sun stood still or (to speak more accurately), if the earth stood still on its axis and the sun appeared to stand still.

But by a careful study of the Hebrew of the passage we find that the sun is not said to have stood still. The command of Joshua in verse 12 rendered in the Authorized and Revised Version: “Stand thou still.,” literally translated means, “Be silent” (see also R.V. margin), and the words rendered “stood still” in verse 3 literally translated means “was silent.” Nine times in the Bible it is translated, “keep silent”; five times at least, “be still”; in another passage, “hold his peace”; in another passage, “quite one’s self”; in another, “tarry”; in another “wait” and in another “rest.”

These renderings occur some 30 times but it is never rendered “stand still” except in this one passage. The word translated “stayed” in verse 13 is sometimes translated “stand still.” It means literally “to stand” or “stand up,” but it is used to “tarrying” or remaining in any place, state, or condition, as, for example, in 2 Kings 15:20 and Genesis 45:1.

What the sun and moon are staid to have don in the passage is to have tarried, tarried from disappearing, not that they stood absolutely still, but that their apparent motion (or their disappearance) was slowed up or delayed.

Furthermore, the Hebrew words translated “in the midst of heaven” meant literally “in the half of heaven.” What Joshua then bade the sun to do was to “linger in the half of the heavens,” and that is what the sun is recorded as doing. There are two halves to the heavens, the half that is visible to us and the other half visible on the other side of the globe.

So put these facts together, and what the story tells us is that the sun continued or tarried above the visible horizon “as a whole day.” Apparently this means that an event occurred on this day near Gibeon, in the valley of Ajalon, that occurs many days every year at the North Pole, namely, that the sun remained visible for the entire 24 hours.

The method by which this was accomplished we are told. It might be by a slight dip of the pole or possibly by a refraction of the rays of light, or in other ways that we cannot conjecture. It certainly would not necessitate such a crash in the physical universe as objectors have imagined.

It is a remarkable fact that we have a suggestion of the same thing in history outside the Bible.

Herodotus, the great Greek historian, tells us that the priests of Egypt showed him a record of a long day. The Chinese writings state that there was such a day in the reign of their emperor, Yeo, who is supposed to have been a contemporary of Joshua. The Mexicans also have a record that the sun stood still for one entire day in the year in which Joshua was warring in Palestine. There is nothing of real weight to prove that there was no such day.

Did Whale Eat Jonah?

First of all, let us notice the fact that the Bible nowhere says that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. In Jonah 1:17, we are told that Jehovah “prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.” There is no mention here whatever of this great fish being a "whale," with it peculiarly constructed mouth and throat. It may have been either a fish altogether prepared for the occasion, or a fish already existing providentially sent around for the purpose God had in view.

In Jesus’ reference to this historical event in Matthew 12:40, it is true that in the Authorized Version and in the text of the Revised Version, we read that He said that Jonah was three days and three nights in “the whale’s belly”; we read in the margin of the Revised Version that the Greek of the word rendered “whale” is “sea monster.”

In the Septuagint translation of the book of Jonah, “a great fish” is rendered by a Greek adjective meaning “great” and by the same word that is used in Matthew 12:40 and translated “whale.”

The word “whale” was in the mind of the translators and not in the word spoken by Jesus, so in neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament account is it said that Jonah was swallowed by a “whale,” but by a great fist or sea monster.

As to what the great fish was, we are not told, but it is a well-known fact that there is or have existed until recent times in the Mediterranean Sea, where the recorded event seems to have taken place, sea monsters—that is, dog sharks—large enough to swallow a man or horse whole. In fact, it is recorded that a man fell overboard in the Mediterranean and was swallowed by of these sea monsters, the monster was killed and the man rescued alive. A whole horse was taken out of the belly of another.

The historicity of this event is endorsed by Jesus Christ Himself (Matthew 12:40). “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”