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Scripture Twisting: How Cults and False Teachers Misread the Bible
Our friend, the late Dr. James Sire, wrote a very helpful book, released on October 1, 1980, titled Scripture Twisting: 20 Ways the Cults Misread the Bible. This book has been a great help to many trying to understand the various ways the Bible can be misread. People often misread the Bible quite unintentionally, simply because they do not understand the context of a particular passage. However, when it comes to cults and false teachers, the “misread” is more likely intentional. For example, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (Jehovah’s Witnesses) deny the deity of Christ and claims He was merely a created being. One of the ways they attempt to defend their teaching with Scripture is to tie a portion of 1 Corinthians 1:24, “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God,” to Proverbs 8:22-23 where Wisdom is quoted saying:
The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up
Simply because the same words appear in the text does not mean that read in context, they have the same meaning. Bible Hub gives a helpful description of understanding context:
Topical Encyclopedia
Understanding context is a crucial aspect of biblical interpretation and study. It involves examining the historical, cultural, literary, and theological settings in which the biblical texts were written. This approach ensures that the Scriptures are interpreted accurately and applied appropriately in the life of the believer.
For example, in 1 Corinthians, the Apostle is contrasting the death, burial and resurrection of Christ against the thinking of both Jews and Greeks:
the power of God in Jesus’ death on the cross reveals God’s power to save people from sin and death and thus shows His power to redeem seemingly irredeemable situations (like the problems at Corinth). The description of Christ as the power of God also challenges the Roman Empire’s use of crucifixion as a symbol of its own power. Resurrection hinges on God’s ability (see 1 Cor 15:17, 53–57; compare Isa 53:12).
the wisdom of God Christ can be described as the wisdom of God because His death and resurrection uniquely express God’s mysterious plan of salvation (1 Cor 2:7; 4:1). Christ demonstrates the paradoxical nature of God’s plan to save people from sin: it requires a death to save people from death (compare Isa 53:1).1
Proverbs, on the other hand, is Wisdom literature which personifies Wisdom. To make our point in a discussion with JWs, we often have to go back a few verses in Proverbs and read:
I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, (Proverbs 8:12)
We ask the JW who prudence is? Is that Christ’s roommate? We also read in Proverbs 9 that Wisdom is a female who built a house. Is this perhaps where Wisdom and Prudence dwell together? Wisdom literature, poetry like Psalms, and historical narrative such as the Gospel and Acts, should be understood in their differing literary contexts.
When we look at the late Dr. Michael Heiser’s The Unseen Realm, we find similar issues. As we pointed out in our “How Many True Gods Are There?” and “Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should,” Heiser believed he had discovered something that was life-changing in the area of theology:
The God of the Old Testament was part of an assembly—a pantheon—of other gods.2
Heiser moved from Psalm 82, carrying what he believed was a newly recovered “Deuteronomy 32 worldview,3 into other passages. His next stop was Deuteronomy 32. A great deal of Heiser’s new understanding seems to hinge on Deuteronomy 32:8-9, where The KJV reads:
When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the Lord’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.
The ESV reads:
When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.
The difference between these translations stems from the question of whether to follow the Masoretic Text, favored by Jewish scholars. the KJV, NASB and many other translations, or the Septuagint, favored by the ESV and others. A brief explanation of each may help:
What’s the Difference?
The Masoretic Text and Septuagint are two important ancient texts that serve as the basis for the Hebrew Bible. The Masoretic Text is a Hebrew text that was meticulously preserved and standardized by Jewish scholars known as the Masoretes in the Middle Ages. It is considered the authoritative text of the Hebrew Bible in Judaism. On the other hand, the Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that was created in the 3rd century BCE in Alexandria, Egypt. It includes additional books not found in the Masoretic Text, known as the deuterocanonical books. Despite their differences, both texts are valuable sources for understanding the history and development of the Hebrew Bible.
For those who want to look at this in more depth, we would recommend OTTC DEUTERONOMY 32:8: Was it the “sons of Israel” or the “sons of God” or the “angels of God”? by Edward D. Andrews.4 We have no doubt that some of our readers may get lost in this issue. Is there actually an easier way to determine if Deuteronomy 32:8 is providing evidence that there is, as Heiser argues, a pantheon of Gods? This is more easily answered based on the type of literature we are reading in Deuteronomy 32. As Dr. Thomas Howe and Edward Andrews note and Dr. Wave Nunnelly concurs, it is Hebrew parallelism. In this case, it is Synonymous Parallelism. Nunnelly pointed out that this is something Jesus used often. For example, He uses it in Matthew 11:30:
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
“Yoke” is parallel to “burden.” “Easy” is parallel to “light.”
Nunnelly expounded on this:
This is an incredibly common type of parallelism. It is called “Synonymous Parallelism,” but its literary structure is of an even more particular (itself ALSO VERY common in the Hebrew Bible) called A-B-A1-B1 parallelism. In this structure the first and third lines are parallel (and synonymous), and the second and fourth lines are parallel (and synonymous). This is not even unique to the Hebrew Bible—listen to the radio enough and you’ll hear contemporary lyrics in English that have the same literary structure. Usually in our poetry/lyrics, however, the emphasis is on the last word in these lines RHYMING, whereas in Hebrew poetry, the emphasis (and what made it beautiful in the ear of the ancient Hebrew reader/hearer) is on their SYNONYMITY—being able to say the same thing multiple times, but using a different (but synonymous) vocabulary set each time.
Further, this poetry is THE most common literary form in the entire Hebrew Bible, even more common than Historical Narrative. This is because poetry is the dominant feature of the prophetic material AND the hymnic and wisdom literature. In addition, there are lots of poetic passages in the Torah and even the Historical Books. This literary form is SO dominant that it is seen throughout the Intertestamental Period in collections like the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Not surprisingly, then, it is a prominent literary form in the teachings of Jesus. Why? Because it was VERY familiar to Him AND to His audience. Further, it was a demonstration of His connectedness to the Jewish tradition and His intimate familiarity with the Hebrew Bible, and showed his wisdom and creative ability. It was also a powerful aid to the memory. Other contemporary rabbinic figures used this literary form to imprint their teachings on the minds of their disciples, and Jesus did the same. By the way, I cover all these points, with ample examples shown on the screen, in a number of videos that I have on my YouTube channel, such as “Did God Abandon Jesus on the Cross?” which is also in written form in my article “Did God Abandon Jesus on the Cross?,”5 and others in “The Genius of Jesus” series. I think I also discuss it in my three-part series on Psalm 23. It’s also discussed in “Judging Without Being Judgmental,”6 where here, as in the Torah, literary form (Synonymous Parallelism) becomes a crucial component of proper interpretation and application in this VERY important teaching of JESUS! You will find other examples of poetic parallelism in Acts, Paul, the General Epistles, and even the book of Revelation.
Howe demonstrates how this helps us understand what Deuteronomy 32 is saying. As it turns out, it doesn’t matter if the translation is “children of Israel” or “sons of God.” When reading it in the literary style in which it is written, Synonymous Parallelism, the meaning is clear:
even if the reading “sons of God” is accepted, it does not indicate that the sons of God are “other gods” or that it implies polytheism. Heiser et al. have completely missed the parallelism of verse 8:
The word ‘nations’ is parallel to the word ‘people’, and the words “sons of man” are parallel to the words “sons of God.” The parallelism indicates that the sons of God are in fact the sons of man. To interpret this as referring to “other gods” is reading into the text a prior assumption that disrupts the parallelism. It is another case of eisegesis.”7
Howe demonstrates the Hebrew to English correlation:
FIGURE 13: DEUT. 32:8 PARALLELISM8
In the genre of Hebrew Parallelism, as Howe points out,
The word ‘nations’ is parallel to the word ‘people’, and the words “sons of man” are parallel to the words “sons of God.”
The “sons of God” in this passage are “the sons of men.” The text in its literary context does not provide or demonstrate a pantheon of gods. As we pointed out in “How Many True Gods Are There?”:
If Yahweh is merely the most powerful among a pantheon of gods, that still leaves Heiser with far too many gods. Perhaps not as many as the Mormons, but like the JWs, even if there are as few as two, that is still one too many. And YHWH is pretty clear on this one.
This article first appeared at Midwest Christian Outreach and is posted here with Don’s permission.
