Does "The Bible Project" Promote True Biblical Doctrine?

 I’ve watched many hours of Tim Mackie’s “The Bible Project” classes, starting with “Introduction to the Hebrew Bible” and then going on to ones about the beginning books of Genesis. It is clear that Mackie has done a lot study in preparation for these classes and he has a lot insights that you might not get by studying the Bible on your own. But I’ve gotten to the point that I can’t continue with the classes because it makes me too sad to see his “students” in the videos being misled.

The straw that broke the camel’s back for me is that he does not believe that Genesis 2 teaches that God actually formed Adam out of the dust of the ground. He starts out by saying that it is not an issue as to whether to take it literally or symbolically, but that the Hebrew word for “formed” means something different than the English word “formed”. He quotes several verses in which this Hebrew word can’t mean the same thing (or so it would seem). But if you pay close attention, you can see that the English meaning of the word could actually be applied to the those verses and it makes perfect sense if you broaden your thinking just a little. Furthermore, those examples do not have qualifiers like Genesis 2:7 does, namely “of dust” and “from the ground”, which indicate what is being formed into something else. Furthermore, there are many, many other examples in which Hebrew word for “formed” clearly means the same thing as in English, such as a potter forming of vessel out of clay.

Mackie then quotes some verses that speak of Job and others as being “formed of clay” to prove that the expression can’t be taken literally and that, therefore, Adam could have been born of woman just like everybody else. But these are clearly instances where it is used as an idiom to express the idea that they are like Adam with respect to being fragile, mortal and things of that nature. The fact that an account of an event has a symbolic significance does not imply that the event didn’t literally occur. For example, the lamb’s blood on the doorpost at Passover clearly symbolizes the blood of Jesus and all that it means to us. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t know with certainty that all of the events contained in story of the 10^th plague of Egypt did literally occur. The word “lamb” means Jesus in several instances in the Bible, but that doesn’t mean that it has that meaning in every instance or that we can conclude that Bible has nothing to say about actual lambs.

Understanding the original intent of the biblical authors is important, but Mackie overemphasizes this. For example, David could write in Psalms about a time of distress in his life with no intention of prophesying of the Messiah. But yet we know that these are about Jesus and that this is the more significant message of the passage. The original intent of the authors is always secondary to God’s intents.

Throughout the Scriptures, God is constantly correcting the misunderstandings of the typical people. Therefore, is it not reasonable to base an interpretation on the fact that typical people “wouldn’t have believed” this or that “back then”.“Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts,” says II Co 3:15. The authors may have never thought about the theory evolution (or even heard of it) and disproving it may not be the main idea being expressed in passages like Genesis 1-2. But that doesn’t mean that we can conclude that it doesn’t contradict the theory of evolution. The biblical authors presumably knew nothing about Islam, and the main point of the story of Abraham and Isaac on the mountain was probably not to disprove Islam, but nevertheless it does prove that it is a false religion if you believe that the Bible is God’s Word.

Let me qualify this. Mackie does not say that he believes in Darwinism. But he sees the creation/evolution debate as being unworthy of discussion and beyond the scope of the Scriptures. He is right that some people do overemphasize this issue and certain nuances of it.  It is possible for people to become so engrossed in the creation/evolution debate that they miss other important biblical concepts. But Mackie marginalizes creation truth way, way too much. He relies too heavily on commentators and is awed by so-called “experts” with many degrees, some of whom are not even Christians. The theory of evolution undermines some of the very things that Mackie is trying to get across, but he so blinded by these “experts” that he can’t see it.