20 Absurdities You'll Find in the Bible

Let them not be an excuse for unbelief

Any careful reader of the text we commonly call The Bible will note that this collection of letters, poems, prophecies, and other literary and historical manuscripts contains many absurdities. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, for the spiritual realm and the physical realm are often at odds, or seemingly so, and when they aren’t, our experience of reality can be so spectacular that it seems absurd.

Now, before you start calling me bad names, allow me to define “absurdity”.

What Is Absurdity?

There is a certain sense in which I am using the word absurd. To that end, I’m not using it the way the Cambridge Dictionary defines it. In a word, Cambridge thinks absurdity can be boiled down to anything “stupid or unreasonable,” humor optional. That isn’t what I mean by absurd.

Merriam-Webster has a fuller and more meaningful definition of “absurd”. Three of them.

In one sense, I’m referring to the incongruity often found in biblical texts and our experience of reality. For instance, when the Bible says, in Exodus 3:2, that God appeared to Moses in the form of a burning bush that was not consumed by the fire, this is incongruous with our own experience. After all, how many of us can say we’ve seen the same?

Another way Merriam-Webster touches on a truth about absurdity is by referring to it as meaningless concerning human life. This is a little further away from my meaning, but still not too far. This is similar to the expression of the preacher in Ecclesiastes.

Vanity of vanities … all is vanity.

Thus sayeth the preacher.

Merriam-Webster’s third definition regards absurdity as a condition of irrationality and associates this meaning with the literary movement called Theater of the Absurd.

The way I’m using the word in the context of biblical literature combines these three definitions. In one sense, several events purported to have happened in the biblical literature are incongruous with our modern, 21st-century experience of life. In another sense, we often struggle to find meaning amid this incongruity. Not only that, but when normal life events occur, we sometimes search for and fall short of finding meaning in those events. That doesn’t mean the meaning isn’t there; it simply means we do not see it.

Thirdly, irrationality is a state of being where emotion is often preferred over rationality or logical thinking. Plain and simple, some things in the Bible defy logic as we understand it in our post-Enlightenment age. As a result, taking these logic-defying texts, meant to give us insight into the spiritual realm, literally often leads to an emotion-centered faith that appears irrational from the outside.

With that understanding of absurdity, I present twenty absurdities from the Bible.

20 Absurdities You’ll Find In The Bible

This list is not exhaustive. Nor am I mentioning these to shatter anyone’s faith. We can still believe in the spiritual truth of the Bible while acknowledging its absurdities. In that regard, here are twenty biblical absurdities for your edification and, I hope, mental and spiritual cultivation.

1. In Genesis 7, we are told God sent a flood to destroy the earth and instructed Noah to build an ark, filling it with “seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate”, as well as a “a pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate”. Additionally, he was to take seven pairs of every kind of bird. This absurdity has been explained in several ways, including a worldwide devastation, a local-only deluge, and an event that covered one supercontinent called Pangea, leading to a cataclysmic restructuring of Earth’s land masses. I’ll let your imagination take it from here.

2. In Genesis 19, God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for their unparalleled wickedness. He destroyed these two cities by raining down fire and brimstone upon them. On her way out of town, Lot’s wife looked back—out of curiosity, no doubt—and transformed into a pillar of salt.

3. In Genesis 32, Jacob had a wrestling match with what appeared to be a man. As it turns out, the being was God in disguise. This is what theologians call a theophany, a visible manifestation of God. As a result of his encounter, Jacob’s wrestling partner renamed the Jewish patriarch Israel, which translates into “he struggles with God”.

4. In Numbers 16, Moses faces off with a group of rebellious Israelites. In true prophetic fashion, Moses warns the rest of the Israelites not to congregate with Korah and his ilk. “If the LORD brings about something unprecedented,” he said out loud, “and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them and all that belongs to them so that they go down alive into Sheol, then you will know that these men have treated the LORD with contempt.” Lo and behold, that’s precisely what happened! Immediately. And, of course, there was fire involved.

5. In Numbers 22, Balak, king of the Moabites, summoned Balaam, an Israelite, to curse the Israelites. God told Balaam to go with the Moabites, but then got angry. When an angel of the Lord appeared (a theophany), Balaam’s donkey lay down. Frustrated, Balaam beat it. The donkey asked, “Why are you beating me?” Balaam got snarky, and the donkey returned the favor. Finally, Balaam saw the angel of the Lord and bowed to it, repenting of his sins.

6. In Joshua 10, Joshua prayed for the sun and moon to stand still. God allowed it, and the Israelites saw a military victory.

7. In Judges 15, Samson defeated 1,000 men with a jawbone. When he finished, he asked God for water and God made water come out of the jawbone.

8. In 1 Kings 18, the prophet Elijah outran a chariot, a distance of at least 17 miles but possibly as much as 30.

9. In 2 Kings 6, some Israelites were cutting down trees with an axe. One of the men dropped the axe head, made of iron, into the Jordan River. Elisha threw a stick in the river and caused the axe head to float so the man could retrieve it.

10. In Daniel 4, one of the most fascinating characters in biblical literature, King Nebuchadnezzar, was stricken with a divine-induced madness. He ate grass, grew his hair long, “like the feathers of eagles”, grew his nails “like the claws of birds”, and was “drenched with the dew of heaven”. These seven years are recorded in a single verse, which magnifies the absurdity.

11. In three different gospel accounts, Mary, the mother of Jesus, is said to be a virgin at the time of his birth.

12. In Matthew 17, after his resurrection, Jesus’ face shone like the sun, and his garment became like a bright light. Moses and Elijah, both long since gone (Elijah never died but was taken up to heaven in a supernatural way), appeared with Jesus and were recognized by Jesus’ disciples. After that, a bright cloud engulfed the three prophetic persons, and a voice spoke from the cloud.

13. In Mark 5, Jesus expelled a legion of demons from a man possessed by them. They left the man and entered a herd of two thousand pigs. The pigs went nuts, rushed into sea, and drowned.

14. At the Marriage of Cana, recorded in John 2, Jesus turned water into wine.

15. In Acts 2, when Jesus’ disciples were gathered together, they heard a “mighty rushing wind” and saw “tongues like flames of fire” that separated them and fell on them. They began to speak in tongues. The crowd, from a variety of surrounding regions, heard what was spoken in their own languages. This event was so spectacular that some among the multitudes accused the disciples of being drunk.

16. In Acts 8, an evangelist named Philip found an Ethiopian eunuch. He baptized the eunuch and was carried away by the Spirit of the Lord. He appeared later in Azotus, a distance of about 19 miles.

17. In Acts 9, a man named Saul was on his way to Damascus to persecute Christians. In a sudden manifestation of the risen Christ, he saw a light shining from heaven and was blinded for three days. Saul was baptized and began preaching that Jesus Christ is the son of God.

18. Acts 16 records an event involving the traveling ministry team of Paul and Silas. The two were in prison, singing hymns around midnight, when an earthquake shook the jail so hard the doors flew open and their chains fell off. The jailer awoke, saw the doors open, and was about to throw himself on his sword. Paul stopped him and converted him.

19. In Acts 20, while Paul was preaching, a man named Eutychus fell from a third-story window. Paul embraced the young man and presumably revived him.

20. In Acts 28, Paul was putting wood on a fire. A snake in the fire bit him. It must have been poisonous because the natives on Malta expected him to die, accusing him of being a murderer. When Paul didn’t even get sick, they worshiped him as a god.

There are many more absurdities in the Bible. This is a mere sampling.

Of course, I’ll remind you, an absurdity doesn’t necessarily mean it didn’t happen, nor does it mean there isn’t a rational explanation. But it does mean that we, in our age of intense rationalism, struggle with understanding these events and their spiritual significance. With God’s help, we can.

Allen Taylor is the author of I Am Not the King, a testimony of his journey of faith.

The image used is from Pexels.