A Cold Waste of Space

A Cold Waste of Space
by Dave E. Matson

Think of all the wonderful things that God might have written into the Bible. How many deep thoughts, inspiring poems, fantastic tips and wondrous chunks of knowledge had to be left on the "cutting-room floor" because of a lack of space? The competition for space in the Bible must have been incredibly fierce if God is its true author. No doubt, he had to consider many more possibilities than any human editor could have imagined--and only a tiny fraction of a fraction of that material would make it into the Bible. Consequently, we expect to see a very judicious use of space in the Bible--if it is the very word of God.

The worst possible waste of space is a senseless duplication, for there is no need to judge the duplicated material. The only possible defense is to claim that the material was so important that God sacrificed precious space to summarize or repeat it. That can scarcely apply to more than a few verses of obvious importance. A good example might be a concise summary of the steps to salvation, something that the actual Bible lacks.

What we find in the Bible is a shocker. 2 Kings 19:1-37 is almost a word for word copy of Isaiah 37:1-38. And, 2 Kings 20:1-19 is almost a carbon copy of Isaiah 38:1-8 + 39:1-8. Thus, whole chapters are essentially devoted to duplicating an account of King Hezekiah's reign. Whole pages have been wasted!

The history of King Hezekiah does make for interesting reading, but one can hardly imagine that he is so important as to rate a whole page or so of duplicated space in the Bible. That would be insane! Even Jesus doesn't get anything close to that in the way of pure, duplicated text. God could not be responsible for such a useless waste. Therefore, the working brain has no trouble rejecting the Bible as the inerrant word of God. At the very least, the Bible has suffered severe corruption.