QUESTION:

First of all I would just like to say how much I appreciate you answering my previous queries.  It was really kind of you to do so. I recently stumbled across a short webpage which questions the Bible’s scientific credibility. The author of the webpage claims that the Bible refers to mountains as the “pillars of the earth” that prevent the earth from experiencing any sort of earthquakes, this of course being scientifically inaccurate.  See the full article here for a more clear understanding to my  question:http://www.bibleandscience.com/bible/books/genesis/genesis1_pillarsearth.htm.             I was wondering if you could help with this. any help would again be appreciated.

Answer:

I went to this web site.  I feel that this site deals with the question in a reasonable and not-particularly-biased way.  We should remember that the Book of Job is poetry which is using colorful language to describe, not the physical world, but the nature and power of God.  The poet uses the idioms and phraseology available to him/her.  This is normal.  David says “Against you and you only have I sinned.” in Psalm 51.  This is obviously not literally true.  David is poetically and hyperbolically crying out that he feels bad for sinning against God.  It is possible that the writer of Job believed that the earth has “pillars.”  I am not sure about that.  But this is poetry in which the writer is waxing eloquent about God’s greatness in creating the world.  It is not a positive statement that the earth has pillars.  There are phrases in Job which can be used to “prove” that the Bible is scientifically accurate (such as Job 26:8 which says the earth is suspended on nothing, which is more of a positive statement than Job 9:6, but which I still hesitate to use as proof)  and there are phrases in Job which can be used to “prove” that the Bible is not scientifically accurate (such as Job 9:6).   I believe that the wise person will use the poetry in Job for neither purpose.  Here is the fact:  Neither Job nor any other Bible writer makes a clear and positive statement about the physical world which is not true.  I believe that Job 9:6, as poetry, talking about God, not the physical world, is not an exception to this claim.

John Oakes