I have been griping about it for years, and it used to be that several of my brothers and sisters did the same. Nowadays, most people don't even see the problem.
All those pictures we give our children to color in Bible classes to finish out the last five minutes or start the first five while we wait for latecomers to make it are usually inaccurate. Why does it matter, you ask? Because those pictures stay in your head and color everything about the Biblical narratives you read for the rest of your life, and that causes you to miss many others things as well. Then there is the simple matter of being careless with the Bible. How can you expect your friends and neighbors to trust you if they catch you in an obvious mistake? It isn't "just being picky" if Jesus used the tense of a verb (Matt 22:31,32) to prove a Biblical point and the apostle Paul used the number of a noun (Gal 3:16) to do it as well.
So which picture am I talking about, you ask. Oh, if only it were one. Let's start with the stable where Jesus was born. Recent discoveries have shown that our Western idea of a stable was probably not at all what the Oriental writers had in mind. And please—Jesus was not born in a manger, he was laid in one after his birth. Can any of you women imagine giving birth in a box smaller than even a twin bed? But besides that, when you see the wise men show up on Jesus' night of birth, along with the shepherds, you know someone has not read Matthew 2 often enough. The wise men went to "a house," and Jesus had been born long enough, based on their first sighting of the star, that Herod ordered all babies two years old and younger to be killed. I am sure he stretched things so he would not miss the one he wanted, but that still means that Jesus could have been 12-18 months old, I think, not a newborn. Those wise men simply do not belong in the usual nativity scenes. If we fail to make connections in something as simple as that, what else, perhaps more important, have we missed?
Let's head to the Old Testament now, where probably the majority of these errors occur. Every picture you see of Hagar and Ishmael being sent away depicts Hagar with a sweet little boy no more than 8 or 9. Read Genesis. Ishmael was 14 when Isaac was born. He and his mother were not sent away until after Isaac's weaning celebration, which would not have been until he was between 3 and 5, all my cultural sources tell me. Add that to 14 and Ishmael would have been a strapping young man between 17 and 19 at the least! Yes, the verses afterward picture him as weak and helpless. Now you have the task of figuring out why that was. Did he gallantly give his mother all the water while he did without? You can probably come up with other scenarios. We simply do not know, but don't paint an obvious lie by using a picture that is inaccurate.
Now let's look at Isaac himself. Again, every picture shows a young Isaac, perhaps 8 to 10, carrying a few sticks of wood up Mt Moriah with his father. As someone who has heated their home with wood for four decades now, let me tell you that wood is heavy. My boys could not have carried enough wood to burn that wet a sacrifice, much less carry it up hill, until they were older teenagers, say 18 at least. And that adds to our understanding that this was also a test of Isaac. At some point, he surely must have figured out what was going on, yet he did not run. He did not overpower his aged father and leave. He trusted him, just as Abraham trusted God. Do your children trust you that much? And has your example taught them to trust God that much? Do you see the lessons we miss when we are not accurate about even the tiniest things?
How about the ark? You know, that ubiquitous travesty of a picture with the giraffe's head sticking out the top of it. You certainly don't grasp the size of the thing and the incredible task Noah and his three sons had before them when they built it when you see that. In the first place, an "ark" was a box, not a boat. In fact, in Latin "arca" means "chest." Think the Ark of the Covenant. Noah probably built a giant box, and that is exactly what it should look like. And none of the animals was as tall as it was, not even a giraffe! No wonder everyone {probably} thought Noah was nuts. Not only was that ark monumental, so was the strength of his faith to build it!
I could go on and on, but here is one that knocks people's socks off. When Jacob first met Rachel, we automatically think of a hormone-influenced young man falling madly in love at first sight. Actually, Jacob should have known better by then because, you see, he was 77 years old! And how do I know that? You have to start from his age when he goes to Egypt. Then you carefully back up, subtracting years, and trust me, if you read those last 20 chapters of Genesis, you will reach the same conclusion. If I get enough requests for it, I will tell you the passages, but I still want you to do the work. It will be good for you, and maybe, just maybe, you will get the point.
Don't be careless with the Word of God--especially when you are teaching our children! No, not knowing Ishmael's age at Isaac's birth or his weaning probably won't cost you your soul, but an attitude that simply thinks it too trivial to care just might. If God made it possible to figure it out, just maybe that is exactly what He wants us to care enough to do.
Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O LORD, God of hosts (Jer 15:16).
Dene Ward
All those pictures we give our children to color in Bible classes to finish out the last five minutes or start the first five while we wait for latecomers to make it are usually inaccurate. Why does it matter, you ask? Because those pictures stay in your head and color everything about the Biblical narratives you read for the rest of your life, and that causes you to miss many others things as well. Then there is the simple matter of being careless with the Bible. How can you expect your friends and neighbors to trust you if they catch you in an obvious mistake? It isn't "just being picky" if Jesus used the tense of a verb (Matt 22:31,32) to prove a Biblical point and the apostle Paul used the number of a noun (Gal 3:16) to do it as well.
So which picture am I talking about, you ask. Oh, if only it were one. Let's start with the stable where Jesus was born. Recent discoveries have shown that our Western idea of a stable was probably not at all what the Oriental writers had in mind. And please—Jesus was not born in a manger, he was laid in one after his birth. Can any of you women imagine giving birth in a box smaller than even a twin bed? But besides that, when you see the wise men show up on Jesus' night of birth, along with the shepherds, you know someone has not read Matthew 2 often enough. The wise men went to "a house," and Jesus had been born long enough, based on their first sighting of the star, that Herod ordered all babies two years old and younger to be killed. I am sure he stretched things so he would not miss the one he wanted, but that still means that Jesus could have been 12-18 months old, I think, not a newborn. Those wise men simply do not belong in the usual nativity scenes. If we fail to make connections in something as simple as that, what else, perhaps more important, have we missed?
Let's head to the Old Testament now, where probably the majority of these errors occur. Every picture you see of Hagar and Ishmael being sent away depicts Hagar with a sweet little boy no more than 8 or 9. Read Genesis. Ishmael was 14 when Isaac was born. He and his mother were not sent away until after Isaac's weaning celebration, which would not have been until he was between 3 and 5, all my cultural sources tell me. Add that to 14 and Ishmael would have been a strapping young man between 17 and 19 at the least! Yes, the verses afterward picture him as weak and helpless. Now you have the task of figuring out why that was. Did he gallantly give his mother all the water while he did without? You can probably come up with other scenarios. We simply do not know, but don't paint an obvious lie by using a picture that is inaccurate.
Now let's look at Isaac himself. Again, every picture shows a young Isaac, perhaps 8 to 10, carrying a few sticks of wood up Mt Moriah with his father. As someone who has heated their home with wood for four decades now, let me tell you that wood is heavy. My boys could not have carried enough wood to burn that wet a sacrifice, much less carry it up hill, until they were older teenagers, say 18 at least. And that adds to our understanding that this was also a test of Isaac. At some point, he surely must have figured out what was going on, yet he did not run. He did not overpower his aged father and leave. He trusted him, just as Abraham trusted God. Do your children trust you that much? And has your example taught them to trust God that much? Do you see the lessons we miss when we are not accurate about even the tiniest things?
How about the ark? You know, that ubiquitous travesty of a picture with the giraffe's head sticking out the top of it. You certainly don't grasp the size of the thing and the incredible task Noah and his three sons had before them when they built it when you see that. In the first place, an "ark" was a box, not a boat. In fact, in Latin "arca" means "chest." Think the Ark of the Covenant. Noah probably built a giant box, and that is exactly what it should look like. And none of the animals was as tall as it was, not even a giraffe! No wonder everyone {probably} thought Noah was nuts. Not only was that ark monumental, so was the strength of his faith to build it!
I could go on and on, but here is one that knocks people's socks off. When Jacob first met Rachel, we automatically think of a hormone-influenced young man falling madly in love at first sight. Actually, Jacob should have known better by then because, you see, he was 77 years old! And how do I know that? You have to start from his age when he goes to Egypt. Then you carefully back up, subtracting years, and trust me, if you read those last 20 chapters of Genesis, you will reach the same conclusion. If I get enough requests for it, I will tell you the passages, but I still want you to do the work. It will be good for you, and maybe, just maybe, you will get the point.
Don't be careless with the Word of God--especially when you are teaching our children! No, not knowing Ishmael's age at Isaac's birth or his weaning probably won't cost you your soul, but an attitude that simply thinks it too trivial to care just might. If God made it possible to figure it out, just maybe that is exactly what He wants us to care enough to do.
Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O LORD, God of hosts (Jer 15:16).
Dene Ward