Front Page: winter 1991


   THE JANNES-JAMBRES SYNDROME

  Is there no limit to what bibliolaters will resort to in order to defend the 
inerrancy doctrine?  We thought we had heard just about every desperate 
grasping for straws possible on this subject until we received the October 
1990 issue of the Christian Courier.  On a front-page article entitled "The 
God of Infinite Knowledge," editor Wayne Jackson, who is also a staff writer 
for Apologetics Press of Montgomery, Alabama, made this incredible attempt to 
prove the inspiration of the Bible:

     How did Paul know the names of the magicians who opposed Moses 
   (2 Tim. 3:8)?  This information is nowhere found in the Old Testa-
   ment.  Obviously the God of history inspired the writing of this 
   epistle to Timothy.

The passage Mr. Jackson alluded to in this "argument" says in its entirety, 
"And even as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these (ungodly 
men) also withstand the truth; men corrupted in mind, reprobate concerning 
the truth."

   As invariably happens when a bibliolater formulates an inerrancy argu-
ment, Mr. Jackson assumes far more than his "evidence" warrants.  For 
example, Paul (or whoever wrote 2 Timothy) identified Jannes and Jambres 
only as opposers of Moses; he did not specify that they were the magicians 
who had opposed Moses.  Since Moses (if we are to believe the Bible) was 
often opposed during the wilderness trek by unnamed adversaries, one might 
as well, in the total absence of any historical record of who Jannes and 
Jambres were, identify them as the leaders of one of those many rebellions as 
to say that they were pharaoh's magicians who opposed Moses during the 
inflicting of the plagues.  If not, why not? We will gladly give Mr. Jackson 
space in our next issue to explain how he knows that Paul meant for us to 
understand that these men were pharaoh's magicians rather than some other 
adversaries of Moses.

   If he accepts the invitation, he should be able make a good case for his 
claim that Paul was referring to pharaoh's magicians, but in building that 
case, he would reduce his "argument" for inspiration to nothing.  As Mr. 
Jackson correctly said, the names Jannes and Jambres were "nowhere found 
in the Old Testament," but there was a widely circulated tradition in both 
secular and apocryphal writings that they were pharaoh's magicians. They 
were mentioned in The Gospel of Nicodemus, The Acts of Peter, and The Acts 
of Paul and were frequently referred to by early writers like Pliny, Apuleius, 
and Numenius.  In these writings, various claims were made about them.  One 
source (Yalkut Reubeni) said that they were proselytized and left Egypt in 
the Hebrew exodus; another (Tikkunim) claimed that they persuaded Aaron to 
make the golden calves while Moses was on Mt. Sinai.  In Old Testament 
Pseudepigrapha, James H. Charlesworth,  a leading authority on apocryphal 
literature, said this of Jannes and Jambres:

   The names of Jannes and Jambres appear with considerable frequen-
   cy in ancient and medieval sources, and traditions about their activ-
   ity and fate are extant in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic, Greek, 
   and Latin.  Christian, Jewish, and pagan writers found occasion to 
   refer to these two magicians at the Pharaonic court who plied the 
   art of magic in opposition to Moses....



     It is now beyond doubt that in antiquity there existed, on the 


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   one hand, traditions about Jannes and Jambres, and on the other, a 
   book that detailed  (see JANNES,  p. 12) some of their exploits. 
   Not yet entirely clear, however, is the precise relationship between 
   the loose traditions and the written composition (Vol. 2, p.  427).

Obviously, then, a widely known oral and written tradition that Jannes and 
Jambres were pharaoh's magicians existed before and during the time that 2 
Timothy was written.  To say that a simple reference to this tradition consti-
tutes wonderful proof that the Bible was inspired of God is typical of the 
superficial thinking that characterizes most arguments used to defend the 
inerrancy doctrine. Upon careful scrutiny, they are invariably found to be 
empty of substance.

     Even in the absence of the body of tradition that identified Jannes and 
Jambres as pharaoh's magicians, there would still be no proof of divine inspi-
ration in 2 Timothy 3:8.  As noted earlier, without tradition to aid in inter-
preting this passage, one could never know if the writer was referring to 
pharaoh's magicians or to two of the many other adversaries Moses had to 
confront as leader of the exodus.  Furthermore, without the tradition, the 
writer could have whimsically used just any names, and there would have 
been no criterion to use in evaluating the accuracy of the information.  If, 
for example, a writer should say that Jeeter and Joomer were the leaders of 
the rebellion against Moses at Meribah (Num. 20:2-13), would this prove 
(since the names of these leaders are "nowhere found in the Old Testament") 
that the writer was inspired of God in so saying or would it prove nothing 
more than maybe he had just made up the names? We'll just let Mr. Jackson 
and those who may have been impressed with his argument try to escape the 
cutting edge of Occam's razor on this point.

     The real tragedy in this matter, however, is not that bibliolaters like 
Mr. Jackson would have no more intellectual pride than to offer such superfi-
cial arguments as this one in support of the inerrancy doctrine but that so 
many of their readers will gullibly accept them without critical analysis.  It is 
a syndrome that enables Bible fundamentalism to survive in an era that should 
have laid the inerrancy doctrine to rest long ago.


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