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Bad Science, Bad Theology, and Grasshoppers

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Unbelievers often look for any excuse to mock the Bible, thinking that if they can find a meaningful error, the entire Bible is wrong. (That is the fallacy of composition.) One of these alleged errors is when Moses wrote that grasshoppers were four-legged insects. Waitaminnit!

Scoffers claim the Bible has errors, often misquoting verses or taking them out of context. One claim is that Moses said grasshoppers have four legs.
Credit: Unsplash / Natália Dudás
Scoffers as well as honest enquirers find something that seems wrong at first glance, but resourceful people tend to dig deeper instead of using superficial readings to "settle" the matter. (Skeptics try to find alleged contradictions, but those are easily dispatched.) Sometimes it's a matter of the scoffer misquoting a verse.

We have frequently considered context here, and there are several ways consider that:
  • The immediate context of the verses above and below the one in questions
  • Larger context, including chapters
  • Context including other books of the Bible
  • Historical and cultural contexts
  • Linguistic context
  • Science (some owlhoots have complained about the Bible not using scientific classifications that would not be invented for centuries)
Most people should be able to take care of things by checking if a verse is quoted accurately (including the wording of the King James compared to modern translations). Commentaries and online searches from reliable Bible-believing sites can help a great deal.

In the matter of Moses allegedly writing in Leviticus 11:20-23 that a grasshopper has four legs, well, no. A closer reading, plus a basic knowledge of science, is helpful. Grasshoppers have six legs, but the condition is based on how they use their main four legs.
The secular world blasts and bombards students everywhere—as it does all of us—with the false claim that science (an all-too-often-misrepresented term) somehow proves the holy Bible is unreliable on scientific topics. Trumpeting such disparagements, secular platforms taunt Bible believers. No surprise there—this is what Peter and Paul predicted: “scoffing” by ungodly unbelievers (2 Peter 3:3) and “science falsely so called” (1 Timothy 6:20, KJV).

But how do you face and fend off pseudo-intellectual bluff-and-bluster bullying? By carefully studying what God actually said in Scripture (Acts 17:11). So-called clashes between Scripture and science routinely reduce to sloppy science, sloppy theology, or both.

You can read the full article after the jump (heh!) at "Grasshopper Apologetics: No Need to Get Jumpy".