If the Bible is the truth, how come we don’t see scientific distinctions in nature with the naming of creatures and objects? For example, some people question how there have been no deaths before the fall if God allowed humans and animals to eat plants, aren’t plants alive? The first audience of the Bible didn’t have the same knowledge and understanding as we have today, so the text needed to be simple enough to be understood over time at different levels of human knowledge, as well as across cultures, regardless of the level of education. Jesus’ parables are primarily about agriculture because, no matter how much humans progress scientifically, we all still rely on the same process of sowing and reaping.

The Bible employs phenomenological language, which means it describes things as they are experienced by humans, rather than detailing the unseen molecular processes. For example, the word translated as “stars” is not defined as “Large Gaseous Bodies” that are millions of light-years away from the Earth. It is not that they do not exist in that form, but rather that the Bible does not describe them from that perspective, but rather from the perspective of humans looking on from Earth. Likewise, the Bible speaks of the sun “rising” and “setting” in the sky. It is not that the sun has actual astrophysical motion relative to the Earth, but rather that the Bible is not describing the motion of the sun from the perspective of those on the Earth’s surface.

Life, in the Bible, is not defined by anything with RNA/DNA, but rather applies only to animals and humans because they are living, breathing, animated creatures. Plants and microbes, such as body cells (eukaryotic) and bacteria (prokaryotic), are not considered “life” in the Bible, as they are based on more recent knowledge gained from new perspectives and modern technology. Therefore, they can be eaten or “die” pre-fall of man without it being a “contradiction” to death only being a result of the fall. Essentially, the Bible defines living beings as those that breathe the breath of life and have blood. Plants don’t use nostrils to “breathe” in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, nor do they have blood. They are not typically observed eating or having physical sexual intercourse as animals and humans do, so they would not have been described as life to any ancient person.

In addition, a similar argument is made when skeptics say things like “the largest sea animal is a whale and the Bible says Jonah was swallowed by a great ‘fish’, but whales aren’t fish, they are aquatic mammals”. They see the phrase “fish of the sea” and critique the Bible on scientific accuracy because it’s not just “fish” that live in the sea. However, the 1600s Elizabethan English of the KJV didn’t distinguish between sea creatures as cephalopods, arthropods, or cetaceans and porpoises (aquatic mammals); they simply referred to them as fish back then, so it’s accurate for the language of that time when the KJV was written. That word simply meant everything that lived in water, just like “foul of the air” applied to everything that flew in the air, even if it was not a “bird” with feathers.

Ancient cultures usually defined animals by their domain. The word for living beings is nephesh (נֶפֶשׁ) in Hebrew. This word is often translated as soul but that is not actually what it means. The Greeks were the first to develop a concept of a separate soul distinct from the body and spirit. The Hebrews used the word “nephesh” to refer to all living things. So a dead animal carcass would be a dead nephesh. Like many ancient cultures, the Israelites classified animals by domain (land, sea, and air), rather than the modern taxonomy system we use today, which categorizes animals into groups such as mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, and amphibians. The older English Bibles would refer to bats (flying mammals) as “fouls of the air,” even though they aren’t birds. Therefore, while whales aren’t fish by today’s definition, they and other aquatic mammals live in the ocean, so they are living creatures (nephesh) of the sea.

We must remember that when reading the Bible in any language other than Hebrew, we are reading a translation, which introduces a linguistic and cultural barrier to overcome. In addition, languages change over time, so old English writing does not precisely match modern English writing; therefore, we must also be aware of the historical linguistic context. I wrote an article tangential to this topic when talking about dinosaurs here.

Resources:
Bible Project Word Study on Nephesh