Is God lying in these scriptures?
Numbers 23:19 says “God is not human, that he should lie”, Hebrews 6:18 says “it is impossible for God to lie” and Titus 1:2 says “God, who does not lie”. It seems pretty clear that God is not a liar. But there are some scriptures that seem to question this assumption. We’ll look at some examples of places where it may look like God is lying, but let’s examine them closer.
God is a fire - An example of eisegesis
Eisegesis (/ˌaɪsɪˈdʒiːsɪs/) is the process of interpreting text in such a way as to introduce one’s own presuppositions, agendas or biases. It is commonly referred to as “reading into the text”. The opposite of this is exegesis, which is to read and interpret a text based on its internal context, without our external biases.
The Epicurean problem of evil
The earliest statement of the problem of evil is attributed to the Greek philosopher Epicurus. It is frequently used as an argument against God as defined by the Bible. Epicurus’s version of the problem is commonly summarized as follows:
Did the Bible get the value of Pi wrong?
This is a popular issue some sceptics raise with the passages of 1 Kings 7:23-26 and 2 Chronicles 4:2-5 which describes the so called Copper Sea, a large water basin made out of copper for the Jerusalem temple. Specifically the math in 1 Kings 7:23 and 2 Chronicles 4:2 where it says that the Sea was circular in shape, with 10 cubits (ca 4.5 meters) from brim to brim, yet it took a measuring line of 30 cubits (ca 13.5 meters) to go around it. The arguments goes that if you have a circle with a diameter of 10 units, the circumference would be 10 x π or ca 31.415 units around. Hence, it would seem the Bible wrongly defines the value of π as 3, rather than approximately 3,14159…