The Bible as Science: Ancient Origin Myths

People love to say, “The Bible isn’t scientific,” but the deeper question is this: why does Scripture refuse to copy the so called scientific “wisdom” of the ages when it was written? Pastor James W. Knox continues a Bible study series on the Bible as science, arguing that the Word of God not only speaks in plain language, it also avoids the errors that dominated ancient thought. If you have ever been told faith is for the uneducated or that modern knowledge makes Genesis obsolete, this message aims straight at that assumption. 

We walk through vivid examples from ancient Egyptian, Chaldean, and Babylonian origin stories, the kind of material Moses and other biblical writers would have known if they were merely repeating culture. From winged eggs and worm-ancestors to chaotic monster legends, the episode contrasts those myths with the simple, forceful claim of Genesis: God created. We also talk about why repeated attempts to rewrite Scripture to fit academic trends keep aging poorly, while the Bible stays steady across centuries of scrutiny and archaeological discovery. 

Then we tackle the modern battlefield of origins. We argue that “origins” is philosophy more than laboratory science, and we lay out why special creation and organic evolution make opposing claims you cannot merge without losing clarity. Underneath the debate is a heart issue: if creation and the fall are true, sin and guilt are real, and the only rescue is the Lord Jesus Christ. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves science and big questions, and leave a review with your take: can faith and modern science agree without rewriting either one?

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Transcript

Welcome And Gospel Invitation

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Welcome to the Preaching the Cross Radio Podcast, featuring the radio ministry of Pastor James W. Knox of the Bible Baptist Church of Deland, Florida. Our prayer is that these half-hour Bible study programs will bring the lost to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and enable the saved to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Savior. Now here's your host, Pastor James W. Knox. All right, now I hope you don't mind. I'm Brother James, and this is the Preaching of the Cross Radio Broadcast. I greet you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. Hope you'll be able to stay with us for the next half hour as we do our very best to try and encourage you in the things of the Christian life. If you've never been saved, never been born again. The Bible says, Behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, today is the day of salvation. Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, and call upon him while he is near. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. The gospel is really quite simple. Man wants to go to heaven when he dies. Man can't get to heaven on his own. God Almighty sent his only begotten Son to this world to suffer and believe and die to pay for sin, the sin that's separated between man and God. And any man, woman, boy, or girl who will repent of their sin and receive the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal Savior will be given the gift of God, which is everlasting life in heaven.

Why Trust The Bible Over Science

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Now, we began some time ago, in fact, five broadcasts ago, this will be the sixth broadcast in a series, on the Bible as science. Undoubtedly, the greatest objection raised by infidels and unbelievers against the Word of God in this generation has been the fact that the Bible, according to them, the Bible, according to their bigoted prejudice, because they've never read it, the Bible, according to those who repeat what someone told them, the Bible is not accurate scientifically, and that the Bible and science contradict each other drastically and dramatically, and therefore the modern fool who has said in his heart there is no God has given science the benefit of the doubt and rejected the Word of God on the basis of science falsely so called. And what we are doing on these radio broadcasts is demonstrating to you that the Bible is not only accurate scientifically, but is more accurate than any science book on your shelf. If you don't believe that, pick up a science book from thirty years ago and ask yourself why don't we use this in the classroom anymore? That's quite simple because it's been proven false, and the material that had to be be revised and rewritten. Not so the Bible. Now, when we closed out the last broadcast, we were giving you a number of reasons why we hold to the Word of God rather than science. These reasons are they're not excuses, they are reasons. And we come to the second of these reasons on the program today. The second and even more important line of evidence in our discussion may be shown by the fact that the Bible does not contain the errors and fallacies of science common to the age of its production. Now, people have said the Bible's not scientific because it doesn't use scientific language. We're giving you four reasons why it does not do so. The first of these was that even though its facts are stated in non-scientific language, the Bible does contain scientific fact and uses language that people can understand rather than scientific mumbo jumbo. Now, as I just said, the second reason is that the Bible doesn't contain the errors and fallacies of science which were common in the

Moses Rejects Egyptian Science Myths

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age of its production. We are all more or less familiar with the now refuted argument of the modernist that the Bible is simply the result of varying types of culture. Many people are told that certain writers of the scripture lived in successive stages of culture. Moses, for instance, lived under an Egyptian culture. Some of the later prophets lived under a Persian culture, some under a Babylonian culture, some under a Chaldean culture. The argument of modernism has been that these various writers incorporated into their section of the Scripture the accepted wisdom of the age in which they lived, because the things they wrote happened to be true, their books have survived down through the ages. Now this is an amazing theory. It has two glaring errors. First of all, it's a lie. And secondly, there is no semblance of reality in the entire theory. Surely there were men who lived under varying cultures. But they did not write the wisdom of their day in the books that bear their name. Moses, for instance, according to the word of God, was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. This man Moses was reared as the crown prince of Egypt. Being adopted by the daughter of Pharaoh, he became the heir apparent to the throne. The finest education that Egyptian wisdom could provide was his. Being endowed by God with an unusually brilliant mentality, reinforced by a strong personality, he became one of the great leaders of all time. But commentators seem to have lost sight of the fact that when Moses answered the call of God and offered himself as the emancipator of his enslaved brethren, he surrendered the scepter of a kingdom that was practically a universal dominion, counting it better to suffer for a time with the people of God and to reign with them in an eternal kingdom forever, than to be a Pharaoh in Egypt. So, Moses, educated in the finest schools of Egypt, was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. However, in this generation we can boast of that same wisdom and learning which Moses possessed. Through the marvelous discoveries of the science of archaeology, we can read those same texts that Moses and the men of his generation studied in the schools of Egypt in that day. Their wisdom was weird, to say the least, utterly unbased on fact, and consisted of some of the wildest, most impossible imaginings that the earth has ever known. The ancient Egyptians, for instance, believed that the earth had hatched from a winged egg, which flew around in space until the process of mitosis was completed, and the earth emerged from that flying ovoid. Now remember, Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. This constituted their science of geology, a winged egg that hatched into the earth. The very opening chapter of the Mosaic sections of the Old Testament begin with a statement of geology and the systematic cosmology that accompanies his presentation of science. The modernistic theory has been that Moses wrote what he learned in the schools of Egypt. You've got to be kidding. What a joke! When you remember that just a few years ago, the modernists were asserting with dogmatic assurance that writing was not invented until 500 years after the age of Moses, which was disproved by archaeology. Now calmly and with equal assurance they reverse themselves and say that he wrote, but he wrote just what he learned in the schools of that day. So, when we turn to the book of Genesis, naturally we're going to wing read about this egg with wings. Right? Now, amazingly enough, in spite of all the theories of the critics of the Bible, we find that a winged egg is never mentioned from the beginning of Moses' writings to the end. In place of this amazing claptrap of ancient ignorance, we find the ten most comprehensive words that were ever put together in human speech. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. With that dictum of Moses, which utterly repudiated the wisdom accepted in his generation, modern science has not been able to prove or demonstrate one point of difference. The Egyptians also had a science of anthropology. This is the science of man, and the Egyptians were naive evolutionists. They taught that men originally hatched from a certain white worm that was found in the slime of the Nile River after the annual deluge. Now I suppose they had witnessed the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into the moth or the butterfly and predicated their evolutionary hypothesis upon that observed phenomenon. Charlie Darwin was several thousand years too late. This fairy tale had been written many, many years before his time. This, of course, is the technique of the modern evolutionary school. It observes one scientific fact which is conceded by all schools of thought, and upon that single grain of sand it erects a mountain range of supposition. If the theory of evolution were true, then we'd prefer the Egyptian idea. Far better to have nice clean fish bait for an ancestor than a flea bitten ape in an African jungle. Be that as it may, our point still remains that Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. So, when he picked up his pen to write of the origin of man, we read in Genesis chapter 2 and 3 of metamorphosis from worms into human beings, right? Ah, you know I'm I'm not telling the truth. Moses, in majestic language, which has never been surpassed by human pen from that hour to this, wrote of an infinite God stooping to a finite sphere to form a body for man with his own hands. Into this body the omnipotent creator breathed the breath of life, and man became a living soul, and once more restate the conclusions of Mosaic anthropology have never been successfully refuted by any school of science in the last four thousand years. So, by referring to these two sciences by way of illustration, we could do with all the scientists uh the all the sciences taught in the schools of Egypt when Moses walked the earth. As far as astronomy is concerned, the Egyptian masters taught that the sun reflected the light of the earth. Moses, however, reversed their scholarly conclusions and brought his cosmogeny into absolute agreement with the demonstrated facts of science as they have been derived from our modern knowledge of the solar system. So what are we to say? That Moses simply wrote of the culture of his day and time? You could say that, but you couldn't say it to anyone who knows anything about Egypt ancient Egypt, and you couldn't say that to anybody who knows anything about the Bible. You'd have to tell that to a college student who thinks that you're smart because you profess yourself to be wise.

Prophets Ignore Pagan Origin Legends

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Now it's also true there were prophets who lived under a Chaldean culture. It's equally true that they never in one single instance introduced that culture into their writings. The Chaldeans, at one stage of their culture, believed that the earth was a living creature. They taught that this live sleeping monster had covered himself with feathers and scales in the form of vegetation and rocks. They believed that men were but vermin which lived on the skin of the sleeping monster, as fleas live on the hide of a dog. Not a very exalted idea, but at least that's what they believe. They taught that if you dug deeply enough into the skin of this monster to hurt him, he would shake himself and the buildings would fall down. Man did dig into the earth in their search for precious metals, and earthquakes did occur, and buildings were shaken down, and this constituted to them satisfactory scientific proof of the accuracy of their theories. Now, there's no question about it, there were prophets who wrote under this Chaldean culture. But I want you to point me to the place in the Bible where this Chaldean nonsense was incorporated in the writings of these prophets. Now, if you can produce one such instance, I'll apologize, and we'll we'll never teach anything like this again. Now, there were also writers who lived under a Babylonian culture. Daniel, probably the most famous of them all. But Daniel did not learn from the wisdom of Babylon, what the wisest of Babylon learned from Daniel. Kings and conquerors hung upon his words and obeyed his slightest suggestion. One of the greatest books of the Bible came from the pen of this man Daniel, who is supposed, according to the critical theory, to have written only the wisdom common to his age. Now I don't know if you are familiar with the creation legends of Babylon, but one of them tells of a battle fought between the chaos monster Tiamat, T-I-A-M-A-T, and the great god Marduk. This battle ended when Marduk was victorious and slew Tiamat or Tayamat. Not wishing to waste the great body, Marduk rolled the carcass of Tiamat up, fastened it with its own tail, and stepped on it, squashing it out flat. We then learn how the god Marduk began spitting, and wherever he spat, men sprang into being, full grown and erect. The men in turn began spitting, and where they spat, women suddenly emerged from the sod, like the soldiers who came from the dragon's teeth, which were sowed by Jason in that fairy tale. When there were women enough for all the men, they ceased this unique method of creation, and the women began spitting. Where they spat, animals sprang into being, and thus the earth was created and populated. Now you know what that is? That's utter and ridiculous nonsense. And to think that this Babylonian science could find a place in the book that tells men of the existence of God and of his mercy and grace is impossible. If then a book was produced over a period of two thousand years, and every scientific theory of those two millennia was religiously excluded from its pages, you've got to see that a wisdom more than human is manifested in the Bible. Not only did the Spirit of God reveal that which was true to the writers, but it becomes increasingly apparent that he also ruled out everything that was untrue. By this forethought and wisdom of an omniscient author, the Bible was kept in harmony with the discoveries of our generation, that we might find it acceptable in the day when a truly modern science unfolded to us some of the secrets of the universe. You say, Brother James, there's some contradiction today between what science teaches and what the Bible teaches. Then you'll just have to ignore science and wait till it catches up. It'll be just as wrong a thousand years from now as the Egyptian, the Chaldean, and the Babylonian sciences have been proven to be over the course of time.

Why Rewriting Scripture Backfires

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Now, the third reason for saying that the Bible is in harmony with modern science is the remarkable fashion in which the Bible disagrees with modern error, exactly as it has contradicted ancient fallacy. This indeed is the source of the present controversy. There are certain men, wise above that which is written, who are enamored of their own super learning, and they never hesitate to state probabilities and theories in the dogmatic terms of certainties. Their conclusions, which may indeed be based upon fact, are to be received as infallible or else their dignity suffers. When men of this type come face to face with the teachings of the Bible, their mental attitude is away with such a book that dares to contradict us. Every student who's gone through a full college and university course has met this attitude repeatedly. If he attended a typical institution of higher learning, he was belittled and ridiculed, if he ever dared question the professor who professed himself wise and became a fool. The Bible is declared to be old fashioned, outmoded, fallible, unscientific, and teeming with error, merely because it does not agree with the theories and conclusions of sinful men. There have been men in other generations who have also thought that the Bible should have been rewritten to conform to their conclusions. But had the men of that generation tampered with the sacred word of God to bring it into harmony with what they fondly believe to be undisputed fact, the Bible today would be useless to our generation. In that same manner, men today are trying to rewrite the Bible to suit the learned professors in those same institutions, and in twenty-five years the world will be laughing at the Bible which they've rewritten. For example, who today brags about the revised Standard Version? It was the glory child of the late 1950s. Why, that marvelous scientific bit of work, which changed the weight of an egg to the slime of the perslane, has been laughed out of the bookstores. And now they're fawning over a new American standard. No, that was that was the the the 70s. Now they're fawning over the new international. No, that was the 80s and early 90s. Next it'll be the Galaxy or the Universe translation. I mean, we're we've gone from uh American to international, and the next thing is a UFO Bible. And you can rewrite the book all you want to bring it in line with science, but you'll just be embarrassed in the following generation.

Creation Versus Evolution And Human Pride

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Most of the controversy has come from the single field that deals with the problems of origin. We may as well state at the very outset that this is crass nonsense to talk about a science of origin. In science, you don't deal with origin. That's the sphere of philosophy. Philosophy, in turn, depends entirely upon human conclusions. Now, unless you're prepared to make the assertion that our generation has reached absolute perfection, you can't claim that our philosophies will not need to be revised by a coming generation. Let me illustrate this. I'm going to ask you a practical question. I'm going to suggest the utter incompatibility between the two present theories and the origin of man. The first of these is what Moses stated about a specific creation. To this is opposed the philosophical theory called organic evolution. Now between these two theories, you've got to make a choice. You can't be a theistic evolutionist or an evolutionary theist. It can't be. I know there are those that say they can believe in both, like Dobson and some of his neo evangelical crowd, but you can't believe in evolution and creation. The fact of the matter is that these two theories are in such unquestioned opposition that you can't believe the Bible to be the infallible word of God and hold to any theory of organic evolution. I've seen men try and ride two horses at the same time. It's a common spectacle in the circus. You can still see it now and then in a western rodeo when the cowboys are at play. When the cavalry of an army are putting on their field days, this is one of the most thrilling spectacles. But when a man rides two horses at the same time, he's careful to keep them close together and both going in the same direction. You've never in your life seen a rider so skillful he could ride two horses at the same time when they're headed in opposite directions. This is why you can't be a theistic evolutionist. The Bible gives a plain, simple account of the creation of man in terms a child can understand. By a fiat act, possible only to omnipotence, almighty God created man by miraculous process. That's the narrow road that leads to heaven. The word for this creation that is used in the text of the Hebrew Old Testament is bara, B-A-R-A, and every commentary and lexicon that deals with the text of the Old Testament is careful to note that this word means to form something out of nothing, to call into existence that which had no previous form or substance. That's what creation is. When you make something, you take what already exists and form and fashion it. But when you create, you're bringing something out of nothing. The Mosaic account of creation states that man was made perfect in the image and likeness of God, and from this high position as God's fellow, man fell to a depth of sin and degradation lower than the moral condition of the beasts of the field. From that low position, he never climbed by his own power, intellect, wisdom, or spirit. Indeed, to that fallen estate he would have been condemned forever had it not been that the Lord Jesus Christ came and lifted him. In a word, the theory of creation starts man as high as he can possibly be, and portrays his fall to the lowest depths. Opposed to all this is the theory of organic evolution. According to this school of philosophy, man began as an infinitely small microscopic mass of protoplasmic substance, too low and humble and small, even to be visible to the unaided powers of the human eye. From this lowly estate, by an infinite number of gradual changes, man has climbed, unaided by any external force, until he is today the highest living thing in the realm of biology. These are two opposing theories. You can't hold to both. One says man was created perfect and fell. The other says that man happened to start, and if he ever fell, he fell up in his age-long climb. Now I know why certain educators and certain religious men of our day who call themselves Christians, who are filled with the pride of the flesh, would reject the Genesis account of creation. It's got to be clear to you if you think this through that if the story of creation is true, the story of a fall into sin is also true. If you accept the fact of a fall into sin, you've got to accept the certainty of your own guilt and iniquity. If this is accepted, in turn, there remains no possibility of escape save that which is offered in the Bible. And that's why the world hates the theory of creation, the teaching of creation, the fact of creation, and cleaves to the theory not the teaching and not the fact, the theory of evolution. And that's why these Christian shrinks, like Dobson and his crowd, who tell you that you are wonderful and you are okay, and self-esteem is a Bible principle, also reject the biblical account of creation because of that terrible, nasty fall into sin and its consequences that only Jesus Christ can remedy. My friend, the Bible is the only truly accurate scientific textbook on the face of this earth.

Where To Find More Teaching

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Thanks for tuning in today. Join us every weekday for another episode of the Preaching of the Cross Radio Podcast. For hundreds of hours of in-depth expository Bible teaching, please visit our YouTube channel, James W. Knox Sermons, our sermon audio page, Bible Baptistland, or our website, Bible Baptistland.com. Until next time and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.