The Bible Doesn't Say That: 40 Biblical Mistranslations, Misconceptions, and Other Misunderstandings

by Joel M. Hoffman

So based on the preponderance of evidence, and in accord with most accepted translations, we conclude that Exodus 21:22 is about inadvertently causing someone’s miscarriage. And we learn that a fetus is not treated like a human.

Exodus 21:22 is about inadvertently causing someone else’s miscarriage, not purposely performing an abortion.

But if so, the Bible certainly has no position on abortion.

So far, our only clue about the biblical status of a fetus is that destroying one by accident is punished, but not in the same way that killing a human by accident is, so our only solid conclusion is that a fetus is valuable, but not the same as a human in the Bible. And we have only one verse to back that up.

So, some people argue, life begins when people can breathe on their own. If so, accordingly to some, a fetus, which doesn’t breathe on its own, wouldn’t be alive at all.

The connection between breathing and life is not a definition of life.

(If it did, Exodus 23:26 might put abortion in the same category as choosing not to get pregnant.)

In this sense, the issue of abortion highlights the way the Bible focuses our attention on what matters.

Or to look at things differently, the reason most people care so much about abortion is that the Bible tells them to, just as it mandates careful attention to matters of human life and death, quality of life, justice, equity, the limited role of violence, and, more generally, the human condition.

We began with five ways the ancient text of the Bible is commonly misunderstand today: through mistranslations, ignorance, accident, misrepresentation, and culture gaps. And running through those five, we identified two common elements: mixing up tradition with the original text, and taking the text out of context.

In addition to ignorance, more devious motives sometimes prompt people to misrepresent the Bible: they have an agenda they want to promote, so they superimpose their ideas onto the Bible.

Frequently in these cases of misrepresentation, the strategy is to lop off the relevant context. This was precisely how a greeting from one person to another was turned into a biblical message that God wants humanity to be rich, as we saw in chapter 34.

One sweeping gap we saw was the disconnect between our scientifically driven society and the pre-science days of the Bible. We as modern readers are like children enchanted with a shiny new toy. Our toy is science, and we can’t stop playing with it, shoving it in where it doesn’t belong, particularly into the prescientific Bible. In this sense, dividing the Bible into “scientific” and “unscientific” makes as little sense as doing so for art.

itself. The value of Genesis is hidden from many readers who analyze only its scientific accuracy, just as the two lineages of Jesus (in chapter 6) stand side by side, in spite of their contradictions, to offer a unified message.

There are no miracles in the Bible. That’s because miracles are by definition extra-scientific. The only way to have miracles is to divide the world into two categories: things that science allows, and things that science does not. A miracle has to fall into the second category. Because they didn’t even have those categories in the Bible, they certainly didn’t have miracles. What they had instead were wonders.

In exploring these themes, we have stripped away the accidental and purposeful grime that discolors the Bible’s original message. In so doing, we now see, we are forced to give up miracles. But what we gain is a renewed sense of wonder.