Watchtower ONLINE LIBRARY

The Bible—Inspired by God?

Will There Ever Be a World Without War?
- to a writer’s intention in recording an event, he highlighted, minimized, included, or omitted details that another Bible writer expressed differently in recording the same event. Such are not contradictions but, rather, are differing accounts reflecting the writers’ point of view and intended audience.b
  
  ¹¹ Often, apparent inconsistencies can be resolved if we just look at the context. For example, “Where did Cain get his wife?” is a question often heard, highlighting the belief that this exposes a discrepancy in the Biblical account. The supposition is that Adam and Eve had only two sons, Cain and Abel. The difficulty is easily resolved if one reads on. Genesis 5:4 says: “After the birth of Seth, Adam lived 800 years and begot sons and daughters.” So Cain married one of his sisters or perhaps a niece, which would have been in full harmony with God’s original intention for the expansion of the human race.—Genesis 1:28.
  
  ¹² There are obviously many details of human history not recorded as part of the Divine Record. But every necessary detail, both for those who first read it and for us today, has been included without making it cumbersome and impossible to read.
  
  To Be Understood Only by Scholars?
  
  13-15. (a) Why do some believe the Bible is too difficult for us to understand? (b) How do we know that God intended that his Word be understood?
  
  ¹³ Have you ever asked: “Why are there so many conflicting interpretations of the Bible?” After hearing religious authorities contradict one another, some sincere people become confused and discouraged. The conclusion that many reach is that the Bible is unclear and contradictory. As a result, many reject the Bible outright, believing that it is too difficult to read and understand. Others, when confronted with this vast array of religious interpretation, are reluctant to make a serious investigation of the Scriptures. Some say: “Learned men have studied for years in religious seminaries. How could I have any basis for questioning what they teach?” But is this how God views matters?
  
  ¹⁴ When God gave the Law to the nation of Israel, he did not indicate that he was giving them a system of worship that they could not understand, one that would have to be left in the hands of theological sages or “scholars.” Through Moses at Deuteronomy 30:11, 14, God declared: “Surely, this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.” All the nation, not just the leaders, were told: “Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day. Impress them upon your children. Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up.” (Deuteronomy 6:6, 7) God’s commandments, all committed to writing, were clear enough for the entire nation, both parents and children, to follow.c
  
  ¹⁵ As far back as Isaiah’s day, religious leaders incurred God’s condemnation by taking it upon themselves to add to and interpret God’s laws. The prophet Isaiah wrote: “That people has approached Me with its mouth and honored Me with its lips, but has kept its heart far from Me, and its worship of Me has been a commandment of men, learned by rote.” (Isaiah 29:13) Their worship had become a commandment of men, not of God. (Deuteronomy 4:2) It was these ‘commandments of men,’ their own interpretations and explanations, that were contradictory. God’s words were not. The same is true today.
  
  Any Biblical Basis for the Oral Torah?
  
  16, 17. (a) What do some believe regarding an oral law? (b) What does the Bible indicate regarding an oral law?
  
  ¹⁶ Some believe that Moses received an “Oral Torah” in addition to the “Written Torah.” According to this belief, God directed that certain commands not be written down but rather be passed on by word of mouth from generation to generation, thus being preserved only by oral tradition. (See the box “Does the Torah Have ‘Seventy Faces’?”) However, the Bible account clearly shows that Moses was never commanded to transmit an oral law. Exodus 24:3, 4 tells us: “Moses went and repeated to the people all the commands of the LORD and all the rules; and all the people answered with one voice, saying, ‘All the things that the LORD has commanded we will do!’” Moses then “wrote down all the commands of the LORD.” Further, at Exodus 34:27 we are told: “And the LORD said to Moses: Write down these commandments, for in accordance with these commandments I make a covenant with you and with Israel.” An unwritten oral law had no place in the covenant that God made with Israel. (See the box “Where Was the Oral Law . . .”) Nowhere in the Bible is there any mention of the existence of an oral law.d More important, its teachings contradict the Scriptures, adding to the misimpression that the Bible is self-contradictory. (See the box “Death and the Soul—What Are They?”) But it is man, and not God, who is responsible for this confusion.—Isaiah 29:13. (See the box “Showing Honor to the Divine Name.”)
  
  DOES THE TORAH HAVE “SEVENTY FACES”?
  
  IN Israel today it is not uncommon to hear people quote a well-known Jewish expression—“There are seventy faces to the Torah”—indicating that they believe that the Scriptures can be interpreted in many different, even contradictory, ways. This is viewed as true both of the written Law and of the so-called oral law. The Encyclopedia of Judaism comments: “The Oral Law is not a definitive code; it includes many diverse and even conflicting opinions. Concerning these the sages said, ‘All of them are the words of the living God.’” (Page 532) However, is it reasonable to believe that God would inspire conflicting and divisive opinions? How did the acceptance of such contradictions come about?
  
  Throughout the period when the Hebrew Scriptures were committed to writing (c. 1513–c. 443 B.C.E.), God’s appointed representatives clarified matters of dispute, very often with God himself backing them up by a display of divine power or by fulfilling prophecies that he had given them to utter. (Exodus 28:30; Numbers 16:1–17:15 [16:1-50, NW]; 27:18-21; Deuteronomy 18:20-22) At that time if someone taught contradictory explanations and interpretations, he was viewed, not as a scholar, but as an apostate. God warned the entire nation: “Be careful to observe only that which I enjoin upon you: neither add to it nor take away from it.”—Deuteronomy 13:1 (12:32, NW).
  
  However, in time a fundamental change occurred in the thinking of the nation of Israel. The Pharisees, who became prominent in Judaism during the first century C.E., espoused the teaching of the “Oral Torah,” which they had developed two centuries previously. They taught that in addition to giving the nation of Israel a written Law at Mount Sinai, God also transmitted to them at the same time an oral law. According to such belief, this inspired oral law interpreted and clarified details of the written Law, details that God had deliberately told Moses not to record. The oral law was not to be written down but was to be transmitted only by word of mouth, from master to disciple, from generation to generation. It therefore gave special authority to the Pharisees, who viewed themselves as guardians of this oral tradition.g
  
  After the destruction of the second temple in 70 C.E., the Pharisaic view won out, and Judaism became a rabbi-dominated form of religion, something it had not been previously.h With new prominence given to rabbis rather than to priests or prophets, the oral law became the new centerpiece of Judaism. As The Encyclopedia of Judaism states: “The Oral Torah came to be regarded as more important than the Written Torah inasmuch as the explanation and understanding of the latter depended upon the former.”—1989, page 710.
  
  As rabbis gained prestige and as traditions multiplied, the ban on writing down this oral law was lifted. In the late second and early third centuries C.E., Judah Ha-Nasi (135-219 C.E.) systematically recorded these rabbinic oral traditions in a work called the Mishnah. Additions made later were called the Tosefta. The rabbis in turn saw the need to give commentary on the Mishnah, and these interpretations of oral tradition became the foundation of a voluminous collection of books called the Gemara (compiled from the third to the fifth century C.E.). Together these works came to be known as the Talmud. Commentary on all these rabbinic opinions continues to our day. Since it is impossible to harmonize all these greatly differing views, is it any wonder that many prefer to see “seventy faces to the Torah”?
  
  g This teaching, initially promoted by the Pharisees, was rejected by many of their contemporaries within the Jewish nation. The Sadducees, many of whom were priests, as well as the first-century Essenes, rejected this Pharisaic concept. Today, the Karaites (since the eighth century C.E.), as well as the Reform and Conservative movements of Judaism, do not view such an oral law as divinely inspired. However, Orthodox Judaism today considers these traditions both inspired and obligatory.
  
  h The Encyclopaedia Judaica states: “The title rabbi is derived from the noun rav, which in Biblical Hebrew means ‘great’ and does not occur in the [Hebrew] Bible.”
  
  WHERE WAS THE ORAL LAW . . .
  
  . . . when Moses repeated all of God’s commands to the entire nation of Israel? The nation then agreed to carry out what he had repeated, and then Moses “wrote down all the commands of the LORD.”—Exodus 24:3, 4, Italics ours.
  
  . . . when Joshua gathered the nation of Israel after entering the Promised Land and read to them once again all the words that they had agreed to carry out? “There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded that Joshua failed to read in the presence of the entire assembly of Israel.”—Joshua 8:35, Italics ours.
  
  . . . when in the days of King Josiah the misplaced ‘book of the Law of Moses’ was found while the temple was being renovated? Upon hearing the contents read to him, Josiah rent his garments in grief, realizing that for generations the Law had not been carried out according to what was written. He then made arrangements to celebrate the Passover festival, which had not always been properly celebrated during the entire period of the kings and of the judges before them. Where was the ‘faithfully transmitted’ oral law during those hundreds of years? Had it existed, this information would never have been forgotten. Only an accurately preserved written record enabled the nation to return to doing God’s will properly.—2 Kings 22:8–23:25.
  
  . . . when the prophet Jeremiah declared: “From the smallest to the greatest, they are all greedy for gain; priest and prophet alike, they all act falsely”? (Jeremiah 6:13) Throughout much of the nation of Israel’s history, this was the spiritual condition of the nation’s leaders, especially the priests, who were responsible to teach the Law. (Malachi 2:7, 8) Written records speak for themselves, but could men who were so unfaithful be depended on to preserve faithfully an oral tradition?
  
  . . . during the more than a thousand years of recording the Hebrew Scriptures? From Moses to Malachi, there is no mention of the existence of such an oral law. Only hundreds of years later, during the period of the rabbis, when conflicting religious sects struggled for control and authority over the Jewish nation, do we find this concept mentioned. Do not those hundreds of years of silence on the subject and the testimony of inspired Scripture negate the claim that there ever was such an inspired oral law?
  
  ¹⁷ In contrast with the contradictory interpretations of men, the Bible itself is clear and trustworthy. God has provided us with ample proof within his Word that the peaceful world envisioned at Isaiah 2:2-4 is not just a dream but an impending reality. None other than God himself, the God of prophecy, the God of the Bible, will bring it about.
  
  DEAD SEA SCROLLS
  
  Dated to before the Common Era, reveal the accuracy of the transmission of the Bible text through the centuries. They also confirm that prophecies were recorded before their fulfillment

What Is God’s Purpose for Mankind?

Will There Ever Be a World Without War?
- What Is God’s Purpose for Mankind?
  
  1-4. (a) What was God’s original purpose for mankind? (b) Why did man prove to be disobedient? (See the box “Who Is Satan?”)
  
  THE promise of a world without war as revealed at Isaiah 2:2-4 and Micah 4:1-4 not only provides us with a well-founded hope for the near future but also tells us something very important about our Creator. He is a God of purpose. The prophecy at Isaiah chapter 2 is actually part of a long series of prophecies that runs from the first pages of the Bible right through to the last, making clear to us how God will bring his original purpose to fruition.
  
  ² When God created the first human couple, he told them clearly what his purpose was for them. At Genesis chapter 1, verse 28, we read: “God blessed them and God said to them, ‘Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth.’” When we relate that command to what is stated in the next chapter of Genesis—“The LORD God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden, to till it and tend it”—it becomes clear that God intended for the original couple, together with their offspring, to extend Paradise beyond the limits of the garden of Eden, eventually to encompass the entire earthly globe.a—Genesis 2:15.
  
  ³ How long would they enjoy their paradisaic home? The Scriptures imply that man was created to live forever on earth. Death for mankind would come about only if they disobeyed their Creator, as stated at Genesis chapter 2, verses 16 and 17: “The LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden you are free to eat; but as for the tree of knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat of it; for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die.’” Reasonably, therefore, continued obedience would have resulted in continued life, everlasting life, in these paradisaic conditions.—Psalm 37:29; Proverbs 2:21, 22.
  
  ⁴ However, an angel, later referred to as Satan (meaning “Adversary”), influenced that first couple to misuse their free will in choosing to disobey God. (Job 1:6-12; compare

To Be Understood Only by Scholars?

Any Biblical Basis for the Oral Torah?