Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you also be like him. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. - Proverbs 24:4-5
One of the great proverbs of the Old Testament seems contradictory at times. Are we to answer a fool according to his folly or are we not? On the surface it wouldn’t seem that we can have it both ways. I for one am of the school that agrees with the first statement: don’t answer the fool; however, there is great wisdom in the second statement.
There was a recent article in the NY Times, submitting that the Book of Leviticus and the Bible in its entirety is a “human book.” The entire article, written by alleged
“Biblical scholar,” Idan Dershowitz, suggests that the Book of Leviticus as we know it was written not by Moses but by several authors over a number of years and that, you probably want to sit down for this one: the “original” intent of Leviticus 18:22 was not a prohibition against sex between two men but a permission slip if you will that allowed this grisly and abhorrent practice. He suggests that this: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.” - Leviticus 18:22 was the replacement for an original redacted version which actually allowed for such disgusting behavior. The sheer gravitas of such Biblical revisionism matches the glowering revisionism of the Holocaust which suggests no such genocidal madness took place! “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.” - 2 Timothy 4:3-4.
In addition to this sacrilegious garbage parading as Biblical scholarship Dershowitz and his father, Nachum, were among a group of scholars who were trying to apply “artificial intelligence (A.I.) “to reveal hidden patterns of authorship and editing of Biblical texts,” according to an article by Dr. Albert Mohler, of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Mohler further went on to say, and correctly, “Dershowitz’s entire article is imagination disguised as scholarship.”
And let’s not stop there. For the sake of argument: if Dershowitz and his ilk are even remotely correct in their assumptions. If as they suggest, the Bible has been edited, redacted, re-written, mistranslated, misinterpreted, and misunderstood over the eons of time, then what book of Holy Scripture can we point to with any degree of certainty and state emphatically, “This word is true?” If we can’t believe the Scriptural account of Creation then how can we argue that any of the Bible is true and accurate? If we can’t believe one book of the Bible what would make us think we could believe any other? And this is the goal and the aim of the Bible Revisionists; to cast doubt that Scripture is indeed the very word of God. How else can one redefine morality if he or she can’t say, “That’s not what it means?”
Clearly, the very act of trying to reinterpret Biblical truth according to some trendy A.I or any revisionist’s criteria goes against two of the most profound warnings in the Bible: Deuteronomy 4:2 and Revelation 22:18, both of which forbid the adding to or subtracting of the original texts and revelations.
My original position was to simply ignore the comments and suggestions of anyone who perverts the accepted intent of Scripture as written by its authors on the grounds that merely acknowledging such tripe is enough to lend credibility to their inane rambling. But after reading Dr. Mohler’s article rejecting Dershowitz’s argument I came to conclude that Mohler’s was an articulate and surgical strike at the heart of such utter nonsense and well represented the point of Proverbs 26:5.
Perhaps the greatest lesson we can come away with from this counter-argument by Dr. Mohler is to be found in 2 Timothy 2:23-25 - “But refuse foolish and ignorant speculations, knowing that they produce quarrels. The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth . . . .”
May we always find a way to stalwartly yet gently correct those who have turned aside from the truth that lives and reigns in Jesus Christ.
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