“Some of the Scriptures are True and Some False” ~ The Vegan Christ. By Dr. Chapman Chen

The prophet Jeremiah warns us to beware of the “lying pen of the scribes” (Jeremiah 8:8). This is confirmed by Jesus, who—according to Peter—said, “Some of the Scriptures are true while some are false… Be ye good money-changers” (Clementine Homilies, trans. Thomas Smith, Homily II, Ch. 51). As Smith explains in his 1886 footnote, “as it is the part of a money-changer to distinguish spurious coins from genuine, so it is the part of a Christian to distinguish false statements from true.”

Prof. James Tabor (2024) teaches us how to determine, using a textual and historical approach, whether a certain biblical verse is an interpolation. For example, Psalm 51:16–17 (NIV) explicitly states: “You do not delight in sacrifice… you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart.” But then Psalm 51:19 suddenly asserts: “Then you will delight in the sacrifices… in burnt offerings offered whole; then bulls will be offered on your altar.”

Tabor's method is to “try to understand what the intent of the uninterpolated text might have been, who would have objected to that, and—usually—it’s a passage where something is really strong, like Psalm 51[:16–17], and the interpolators worried about this: ‘I can't let that [Psalm 51:19] stand, because people would begin to say we don't even need the temple’” (Tabor 2024).

In my view, veganism is the ultimate litmus test of whether a biblical verse is genuinely inspired. For God is love (1 John 4:8, NIV); God loves the world (John 3:16)—including all His creation (Psalm 145:9); and Christ is compassion (Matthew 9:13; 12:7). This is the heart of the Christian faith.

By contrast, verses that depict God commanding His people to massacre women and infants (1 Samuel 15:3; Deuteronomy 20:16–17), or God coveting the aroma of burnt animal sacrifices (Genesis 8:20–21; Leviticus 1:9; 2:2; 3:5; 4:31; Numbers 28:2), or Jesus eating fish (Luke 24:42–43), distributing fish (Mark 6:41; Matthew 14:19; Luke 9:16; John 6:11), and helping His disciples catch fish (Luke 5:4–6; John 21:6)—these are, I believe, interpolations inserted by anti-vegan priests or mistranslations introduced by biased translators with ulterior motives.

In light of these considerations, it becomes evident that not all biblical verses carry the same moral weight or divine origin. As followers of the vegan Christ, we are called to discern truth from error—not blindly, but with the heart of love, the mind of reason, and the lens of compassion. Veganism, as a consistent ethic of love for all God's creatures, provides a radical and necessary hermeneutic for separating the voice of God from the noise of human violence or avarice.

Full Text: https://www.vegantheology.net/post/some-of-the-scriptures-are-true-and-some-false-~-the-vegan-christ-by-dr-chapman-chen