I try to be clear about when I'm critiquing the text versus the Midrash, and I agree that it can be confusing if I'm discussing the text in one sentence and the Midrash in the next. I'll keep that in mind for future essays.
What I meant is that there is a fundamental difference between critiques of the text itself and critiques of the Midrash.
EVERYONE must deal with the actual text, and therefore contradictions and problems are real issues. The Midrash, however, is not accepted as binding by many authorities and one need not accept the opinion of the Midrash and Aggadic Talmud.
Therefore, even if we were to thoroughly refute of the content in the Midrash, we can still believe in the divinity of the Bible. Not so with the text obviously.
The Abarbanel, for example, regularly, dismisses the commentary of the Midrash in his quest for actual "pshat".
I agree with all of that. I like to critique the Midrash because it's just a lot of fun to discuss, and I know lots of people who accept the Midrash as well, but I think your point that criticisms of the two are completely separable. One can be an Orthodox Jew and reject most Midrashim.
This was a very entertaining and interesting post!
I actually have a series coming out addressing most of those concerns. As a comment on some of the items mentioned - Rabbi Dovid Tzvi Hoffman thinks it plausible that the Flood story is hyperbolic. I believe Saadya Gaon and Maimonides would both make room for the hyperbolics of the story of the Ark. Regarding the ages of people in Tanakh - those are all representative figures. I have to find the source where I heard / read that but there is no trouble from an Orthodox Jewish perspective to view ages in Tanakh that way. Additionally, given the observation of Ur of the Chaldeans, it is entirely possible this is one of those esoteric "33 verses" that the Ibn Ezra says were not written by Moshe. Even if they were, I dont think it a blow to what we mean when we say the Torah is Divine. See the Guide for the Perplexed Chelek Alef Perek Alef. Final note - Rabbi Dr. Raphael Zarum's book has some interesting perspectives on these topics.
Thanks; I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I'm excited to read your series!
I agree with Bpsb's objections to your objections. Specifically on Moshe's authorship, I think the evidence in favor of his authorship is that it's always been the Rabbinical tradition, but the evidence against is that there are many verses in the Torah which would be anarchonistic if Moshe had written them. So to me it seems more parsimonious to just say he didn't write it than to say he later wrote it and that all the verses that seem to imply he didn't are later additions.
It's like if someone claims William the Conqueror (who lived around 1000 CE) wrote Hamlet (~1600), except for all of the parts of Hamlet which reference things which happened later in English history. It just makes more sense that he didn't write it.
I remember seeing in Rabbi Hoffman’s commentary that the flood was a local regional flood and not a global one. This is a weak apologetic pshat, as the simple reading and context of the story is that “mankind” was destroyed.
Additionally, throughout Jewish history, the story of the flood was understood literally and not as an allegory or regional flood. The only reason Rabbi Hoffman said what he said was because of findings outside of Judaism. This shows that traditional Judaism had no knowledge of any issues with the flood, which casts much doubt on whether these apologetics can be used to justify the Bible, even if they are logically coherent as solutions, since they don’t originate from Judaism and Judaism was not even aware of them.
Your point regarding Ibn Ezra is correct, but it is not at all accepted by most Orthodox Jews. I even think it is against the Halacha.
The Talmud in Tractate Megillah 22a states that it is forbidden to read only part of a verse during public Torah readings. The reasoning behind this is to maintain the integrity and sanctity of the Torah text as it was given. The verse must be read in its entirety as it was "originally written and transmitted by Moses". This implies that every verse was written by Moses as there are no exceptions to the above rule.
I understand the resistance to apologetics - but I am also not completely convinced that an ironclad eternal case need be entertained for a particular text to be Divine. A few points:
1. the flood was traditionally understood historically because there was no reason to assume otherwise. Now that we have the field of archeology we can use Saadya Gaons principle of rereading biblical verses when they go against reason at face value.
2. I'm not sure what you mean by justifying the Bible - this isn't really a tact that rationalists employ to prove the veracity of the Bible. More often than not, the overarching ethical teaching is what's most important. The Midrash often completely reframes biblical stories such that they are unrecognizable.
3. Reading the Torah - that is in a synagogue reading correct? If so - not sure I understand the relevance. If not, my apologies and I will have to think more about that.
4. The Ibn Ezra's position at least shows that one can be considered an Orthodox Jew and take that stance. I think that a powerful representation of Judaism being minimally dogmatic.
1) Even if we assume that the opinion of Saadya is accepted, (I think it is not. The basic opposition of Orthodoxy to R' Slifkin's writings hinged on this point, which is we don't bend the Torah to because of science, history, archeology, and yes even logic.) that works well for a story or word without a tradition. Here, however, if we change the flood to a regional flood or to an allegory what we are implying is that the "Mesorah" was completely in the dark as to the real story, and it was only after the "Goyim" did some homework do we now know what the real story was.
An approach like this is a severe blow to tradition as in implies that tradition is completely unreliable. If it can make mistakes in regard to basic stories in the Bible, how can we trust it about the minutiae of all of Halacha.
3), 4) Yes, I am referring to reading the Torah in shul. But you'll have to put on your Gemara cap for this one.
The reason given in the Talmud for the prohibition of splitting a verse in the public Torah reading is this:
Any verse that was not split by MOSES cannot be split by us (during the reading).
Meaning, if when Moses wrote the Torah he strung certain ideas together, that structure must be preserved for the public readings as well.
Now, since this ruling applies to ALL verses, INCLUDING the 33 verses of the Ibn Ezra, we can deduce that the reasoning of the Talmud applies to those verses as well implying Mosaic authorship to ALL verses.
And since this portion of the Talmud is legal, it appears to me that the opinion of the Ibn Ezra is contrary to the Talmud.
This should not surprise you, since despite being a brilliant Bible scholar, he was not a master of Jewish Law. I am upset that I can't find the source, but I saw in one of the books of R Ovadia Yosef in the name of a Sephardi Rabbi that it was well known that Ibn Ezra was not a Halakhist.
1. This may simply be a point of disagreement - I believe that the masses in some circles simply are kept in the dark as to Saadya Gaon. Also - while many Orthodox people opposed Slifkin, many Orthodox people embrace him. It is not Orthodoxy that is at fault, it is fundamentalism. I would wager most of these concerns are really about fundamentalists, which sadly, much of the Jewish world has become. I also believe we have a different understanding of Mesorah / tradition. Saadya Gaon and HaRambam's positions are both Mesorah and they guide interpretation. The way you are describing Mesorah is not the way I and many Sepharadim interpret it. To quote Rabbi Samuel Lebens on the Torah, "what's fixed is the words, not the interpretation."
2. I like the Gemara cap analogy. I think I understand what you are saying now. The sages however, often spoke hyperbolically (as the Talmud itself testifies) and often said things that would be good as a general rule. So they could have said this as a way of showing how people should treat the Torah.
3. I am not so sure I would believe the claim that the Ibn Ezra was not a Halakhist. While he may not have written books on the subject, his poetry and response betrays his dedication to Halakha. And even if he was not a halakhist, that does not mean his claims are automatically untrue.
By the way - I would also be happy to discuss this via DM, I know I just added to it but I feel bad taking up so much space on this article's comment page lol.
Tradition means that which is passed from Rabbi to student from Sinai which came to us in the form of the Talmud.
If the rabbis of the Talmud didn't have the correct interpretation of events in the bible, how can we accept their interpretations of the law?
So, I guess the question is on Sadya himself?
Slifkin realizes this issue when he points out that various laws are based on interpretive, historical, or scientific errors. His only response is to follow Rabbi Herzog's opinion which blindly accepts halachic rulings even when based on errors. However, this is only a satisfactory approach if one has good reason to believe the tradition. Not so if one doesn't and can simply use the errors to discount the tradition.
2) In orthodoxy, LEGAL portions of the Talmud are NOT hyperbole. I am not sure if you represent conservative or reconstructionist Judaism.
3) Regarding Ibn Ezra, Dr, Abigail Rock (who has a PhD in Tanach from Bar-Ilan) also thinks that Ibn Ezra was not well versed in Talmudic law. She says the following about a contradiction in his commentary to a statement in the Talmud:
"First of all, it may be that ignorance of the halakhic ruling is what causes him to interpret verses differently than the Sages. We must assume that because of ibn Ezra’s poverty and wanderings, he did not always have the books necessary for clarifying the halakhic ruling, [5]and Ibn Ezra, unlike the French exegetes, was not a Talmudic expert.[6] In other words, it may be that ibn Ezra did not know at all that he was explaining the text in opposition to the Sages’ view. "
FOOTNOTES:
[5] This is apparently one of the reasons that ibn Ezra does not cite a great number of the French exegetes, as opposed to the Spanish exegetes and grammarians, whose work, apparently, he knew by heart.
[6] This fact is evident from the absence of Talmudic citations in his commentary.
I certainly agree that these incongruities are only the tip of the iceberg, and that there are many real ones.
To me, it seems that the Torah giving a factual account of foundational historical events is a key prerequisite to considering it divinely inspired. For example, if there were a religion whose sacred book was The Odyssey, and the Odyssey were found to be full of factual errors, that should decrease one's credence in the Odyssey being divinely inspired.
If one makes statements about what people ought to do in the modern world based on what's written in the Torah, but one is willing to sidestep that wherever it's found that the Torah's statements are based on factual inaccuracies, then for me it's not easy to see what motivates them to follow the rest of the commandments, or gives them a reason to think the rest of the Torah is divinely inspired.
As a fairly conservative Christian, I don’t really see what’s supposed to be the big deal (at least with the passages which I consider authoritative). We needn’t look to old women today to challenge the 120 number, we find several later in Genesis! That Moses didn’t write all of the Pentateuch isn’t a big deal, who says he did? The more interesting point about Ur of the Chaldees is that it’s probably just wrong, as Urkesh seems much more likely.
I didn’t see what this “implausible” Exodus is supposed to entail, but it will probably depend too much on clearly hyperbolic numbers, unwarranted extrapolations about dead Pharoahs, and an assumption contra the text that the story implies that no Jews were in Canaan during the Exodus.
I don't know how Orthodox Jews are, but defending the flood is a very big thing in conservative Christian circles. Christian creationists attribute everything from the Grand Canyon to little outcrops of limestone to it. We in the geolgy biz find this very amusing.
A few also have elaborate fanfictions about how actual history intersects with the flood. l I once saw chart explaining how all the peoples of the world derived from Noah's sons, including native Americans and the Chinese.
It's hard for me to see how this disproves religion, though. As a Christian, I'm much less well - informed about Jewish theology, but Christian theologians have been allegorizing Bible stories for as long as there have been Christian theologians.
There are some fundamentalist Orthodox Jews who do similar things, and for evolution as well. Like trying to find reasons why the rate of radioactive decay could have changed over time such that the universe could plausibly be 6000 years old.
You're going to be better informed on the history of allegory in Christian theology than me XD
But I think the fact that the Bible has lots of factual inaccuracies matters a great deal for the plausibility of Judaism and Christianity. If one makes statements about what people ought to do in the modern world based on what's written in the Bible, but one is willing to sidestep that wherever it's found that the Bible's statements are based on factual inaccuracies, then for me it's not easy to see what motivates them to follow the rest of the Bible, or gives them a reason to think the rest of the Bible is divinely inspired.
For another small question, Jesus would frequently quote the Old Testament, and seems to have just accepted it as a factual account (as basically all Jews did at the time). So wouldn't the Old Testament having factual errors cast doubt on the divinity of Jesus, if he didn't point these errors out?
I think this is true to some extent -- for instance, it's evidence against Christianity that the Gospels sometimes record Jesus saying contradictory things. But I'm not sure this is the case with many of the stories in Genesis. It seems perfectly reasonable, for instance, to say that God means the Tower of Babel to teach you about human hubris rather than historical linguistics.
This is a reasonable argument, but I don't think it succeeds. It doesn't seem deceptive to reference the story of Theseus around ancient Greeks without telling them it's historically inaccurate. This would be a problem if Jesus intended to correct every theological and historical error of his culture, but I don't know why a Christian would think that.
Nor is it obvious to me that Jesus always does view Old Testament stories as historically accurate (does the meaning of Matthew 12:38 - 42 change much depending on whether or not Jonah was a historical figure?).
Great post.
I do think however, that the criticisms of the actual text should be separated from that of the explanations of Midrash and Talmud.
For example, Abarbanel explicitly states that Rebecca was not 3 years old.
Additionally, although the Talmud is clear that Moses authored the entire Torah, that idea is not found in the Torah itself.
Thanks so much! :)
I try to be clear about when I'm critiquing the text versus the Midrash, and I agree that it can be confusing if I'm discussing the text in one sentence and the Midrash in the next. I'll keep that in mind for future essays.
Abarbanel is based
I am not sure you understood me.
What I meant is that there is a fundamental difference between critiques of the text itself and critiques of the Midrash.
EVERYONE must deal with the actual text, and therefore contradictions and problems are real issues. The Midrash, however, is not accepted as binding by many authorities and one need not accept the opinion of the Midrash and Aggadic Talmud.
Therefore, even if we were to thoroughly refute of the content in the Midrash, we can still believe in the divinity of the Bible. Not so with the text obviously.
The Abarbanel, for example, regularly, dismisses the commentary of the Midrash in his quest for actual "pshat".
I agree with all of that. I like to critique the Midrash because it's just a lot of fun to discuss, and I know lots of people who accept the Midrash as well, but I think your point that criticisms of the two are completely separable. One can be an Orthodox Jew and reject most Midrashim.
This was a very entertaining and interesting post!
I actually have a series coming out addressing most of those concerns. As a comment on some of the items mentioned - Rabbi Dovid Tzvi Hoffman thinks it plausible that the Flood story is hyperbolic. I believe Saadya Gaon and Maimonides would both make room for the hyperbolics of the story of the Ark. Regarding the ages of people in Tanakh - those are all representative figures. I have to find the source where I heard / read that but there is no trouble from an Orthodox Jewish perspective to view ages in Tanakh that way. Additionally, given the observation of Ur of the Chaldeans, it is entirely possible this is one of those esoteric "33 verses" that the Ibn Ezra says were not written by Moshe. Even if they were, I dont think it a blow to what we mean when we say the Torah is Divine. See the Guide for the Perplexed Chelek Alef Perek Alef. Final note - Rabbi Dr. Raphael Zarum's book has some interesting perspectives on these topics.
Thanks; I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I'm excited to read your series!
I agree with Bpsb's objections to your objections. Specifically on Moshe's authorship, I think the evidence in favor of his authorship is that it's always been the Rabbinical tradition, but the evidence against is that there are many verses in the Torah which would be anarchonistic if Moshe had written them. So to me it seems more parsimonious to just say he didn't write it than to say he later wrote it and that all the verses that seem to imply he didn't are later additions.
It's like if someone claims William the Conqueror (who lived around 1000 CE) wrote Hamlet (~1600), except for all of the parts of Hamlet which reference things which happened later in English history. It just makes more sense that he didn't write it.
I remember seeing in Rabbi Hoffman’s commentary that the flood was a local regional flood and not a global one. This is a weak apologetic pshat, as the simple reading and context of the story is that “mankind” was destroyed.
Additionally, throughout Jewish history, the story of the flood was understood literally and not as an allegory or regional flood. The only reason Rabbi Hoffman said what he said was because of findings outside of Judaism. This shows that traditional Judaism had no knowledge of any issues with the flood, which casts much doubt on whether these apologetics can be used to justify the Bible, even if they are logically coherent as solutions, since they don’t originate from Judaism and Judaism was not even aware of them.
Your point regarding Ibn Ezra is correct, but it is not at all accepted by most Orthodox Jews. I even think it is against the Halacha.
The Talmud in Tractate Megillah 22a states that it is forbidden to read only part of a verse during public Torah readings. The reasoning behind this is to maintain the integrity and sanctity of the Torah text as it was given. The verse must be read in its entirety as it was "originally written and transmitted by Moses". This implies that every verse was written by Moses as there are no exceptions to the above rule.
Completely agreed.
I understand the resistance to apologetics - but I am also not completely convinced that an ironclad eternal case need be entertained for a particular text to be Divine. A few points:
1. the flood was traditionally understood historically because there was no reason to assume otherwise. Now that we have the field of archeology we can use Saadya Gaons principle of rereading biblical verses when they go against reason at face value.
2. I'm not sure what you mean by justifying the Bible - this isn't really a tact that rationalists employ to prove the veracity of the Bible. More often than not, the overarching ethical teaching is what's most important. The Midrash often completely reframes biblical stories such that they are unrecognizable.
3. Reading the Torah - that is in a synagogue reading correct? If so - not sure I understand the relevance. If not, my apologies and I will have to think more about that.
4. The Ibn Ezra's position at least shows that one can be considered an Orthodox Jew and take that stance. I think that a powerful representation of Judaism being minimally dogmatic.
1) Even if we assume that the opinion of Saadya is accepted, (I think it is not. The basic opposition of Orthodoxy to R' Slifkin's writings hinged on this point, which is we don't bend the Torah to because of science, history, archeology, and yes even logic.) that works well for a story or word without a tradition. Here, however, if we change the flood to a regional flood or to an allegory what we are implying is that the "Mesorah" was completely in the dark as to the real story, and it was only after the "Goyim" did some homework do we now know what the real story was.
An approach like this is a severe blow to tradition as in implies that tradition is completely unreliable. If it can make mistakes in regard to basic stories in the Bible, how can we trust it about the minutiae of all of Halacha.
3), 4) Yes, I am referring to reading the Torah in shul. But you'll have to put on your Gemara cap for this one.
The reason given in the Talmud for the prohibition of splitting a verse in the public Torah reading is this:
Any verse that was not split by MOSES cannot be split by us (during the reading).
Meaning, if when Moses wrote the Torah he strung certain ideas together, that structure must be preserved for the public readings as well.
Now, since this ruling applies to ALL verses, INCLUDING the 33 verses of the Ibn Ezra, we can deduce that the reasoning of the Talmud applies to those verses as well implying Mosaic authorship to ALL verses.
And since this portion of the Talmud is legal, it appears to me that the opinion of the Ibn Ezra is contrary to the Talmud.
This should not surprise you, since despite being a brilliant Bible scholar, he was not a master of Jewish Law. I am upset that I can't find the source, but I saw in one of the books of R Ovadia Yosef in the name of a Sephardi Rabbi that it was well known that Ibn Ezra was not a Halakhist.
1. This may simply be a point of disagreement - I believe that the masses in some circles simply are kept in the dark as to Saadya Gaon. Also - while many Orthodox people opposed Slifkin, many Orthodox people embrace him. It is not Orthodoxy that is at fault, it is fundamentalism. I would wager most of these concerns are really about fundamentalists, which sadly, much of the Jewish world has become. I also believe we have a different understanding of Mesorah / tradition. Saadya Gaon and HaRambam's positions are both Mesorah and they guide interpretation. The way you are describing Mesorah is not the way I and many Sepharadim interpret it. To quote Rabbi Samuel Lebens on the Torah, "what's fixed is the words, not the interpretation."
2. I like the Gemara cap analogy. I think I understand what you are saying now. The sages however, often spoke hyperbolically (as the Talmud itself testifies) and often said things that would be good as a general rule. So they could have said this as a way of showing how people should treat the Torah.
3. I am not so sure I would believe the claim that the Ibn Ezra was not a Halakhist. While he may not have written books on the subject, his poetry and response betrays his dedication to Halakha. And even if he was not a halakhist, that does not mean his claims are automatically untrue.
By the way - I would also be happy to discuss this via DM, I know I just added to it but I feel bad taking up so much space on this article's comment page lol.
1) I don't understand how you addressed my point.
Tradition means that which is passed from Rabbi to student from Sinai which came to us in the form of the Talmud.
If the rabbis of the Talmud didn't have the correct interpretation of events in the bible, how can we accept their interpretations of the law?
So, I guess the question is on Sadya himself?
Slifkin realizes this issue when he points out that various laws are based on interpretive, historical, or scientific errors. His only response is to follow Rabbi Herzog's opinion which blindly accepts halachic rulings even when based on errors. However, this is only a satisfactory approach if one has good reason to believe the tradition. Not so if one doesn't and can simply use the errors to discount the tradition.
2) In orthodoxy, LEGAL portions of the Talmud are NOT hyperbole. I am not sure if you represent conservative or reconstructionist Judaism.
3) Regarding Ibn Ezra, Dr, Abigail Rock (who has a PhD in Tanach from Bar-Ilan) also thinks that Ibn Ezra was not well versed in Talmudic law. She says the following about a contradiction in his commentary to a statement in the Talmud:
"First of all, it may be that ignorance of the halakhic ruling is what causes him to interpret verses differently than the Sages. We must assume that because of ibn Ezra’s poverty and wanderings, he did not always have the books necessary for clarifying the halakhic ruling, [5]and Ibn Ezra, unlike the French exegetes, was not a Talmudic expert.[6] In other words, it may be that ibn Ezra did not know at all that he was explaining the text in opposition to the Sages’ view. "
FOOTNOTES:
[5] This is apparently one of the reasons that ibn Ezra does not cite a great number of the French exegetes, as opposed to the Spanish exegetes and grammarians, whose work, apparently, he knew by heart.
[6] This fact is evident from the absence of Talmudic citations in his commentary.
Here is the full article:
https://www.etzion.org.il/en/tanakh/studies-tanakh/biblical-commentaries/rabbi-avraham-ibn-ezra-c-his-approach-midrash-and#:~:text=Despite%20these%20words%20of%20Ibn%20Ezra%20expressing%20the
Very interesting about the Ibn Ezra thank you! I'm happy to discuss further over DM but just for clarity's sake I am Orthodox
The Maharshal in his introduction to Yam Shel Shlomom blasts Ibn Ezra for not being a Talmudist
Woah - thank you for pointing that out. Time for some further reading on my end.
I was raised and educated strictly Orthodox. And I continue to identify that way. I see no reason to do otherwise.
The incongruities you have cited are only the tip of the iceberg. And not merely apparent incongruities, but very real ones.
And yet, there is nothing at all "inconvenient" about any of them. You just have to know how to read and understand them, and the system as a whole.
(Not as you would a mathematics textbook. That isn't going to work. Nor, I daresay, unless I am entirely mistaken, was that ever the intent.)
Thanks for the comment!
I certainly agree that these incongruities are only the tip of the iceberg, and that there are many real ones.
To me, it seems that the Torah giving a factual account of foundational historical events is a key prerequisite to considering it divinely inspired. For example, if there were a religion whose sacred book was The Odyssey, and the Odyssey were found to be full of factual errors, that should decrease one's credence in the Odyssey being divinely inspired.
If one makes statements about what people ought to do in the modern world based on what's written in the Torah, but one is willing to sidestep that wherever it's found that the Torah's statements are based on factual inaccuracies, then for me it's not easy to see what motivates them to follow the rest of the commandments, or gives them a reason to think the rest of the Torah is divinely inspired.
As a fairly conservative Christian, I don’t really see what’s supposed to be the big deal (at least with the passages which I consider authoritative). We needn’t look to old women today to challenge the 120 number, we find several later in Genesis! That Moses didn’t write all of the Pentateuch isn’t a big deal, who says he did? The more interesting point about Ur of the Chaldees is that it’s probably just wrong, as Urkesh seems much more likely.
I didn’t see what this “implausible” Exodus is supposed to entail, but it will probably depend too much on clearly hyperbolic numbers, unwarranted extrapolations about dead Pharoahs, and an assumption contra the text that the story implies that no Jews were in Canaan during the Exodus.
I don't know how Orthodox Jews are, but defending the flood is a very big thing in conservative Christian circles. Christian creationists attribute everything from the Grand Canyon to little outcrops of limestone to it. We in the geolgy biz find this very amusing.
A few also have elaborate fanfictions about how actual history intersects with the flood. l I once saw chart explaining how all the peoples of the world derived from Noah's sons, including native Americans and the Chinese.
It's hard for me to see how this disproves religion, though. As a Christian, I'm much less well - informed about Jewish theology, but Christian theologians have been allegorizing Bible stories for as long as there have been Christian theologians.
Hey, thanks for the comment!
There are some fundamentalist Orthodox Jews who do similar things, and for evolution as well. Like trying to find reasons why the rate of radioactive decay could have changed over time such that the universe could plausibly be 6000 years old.
You're going to be better informed on the history of allegory in Christian theology than me XD
But I think the fact that the Bible has lots of factual inaccuracies matters a great deal for the plausibility of Judaism and Christianity. If one makes statements about what people ought to do in the modern world based on what's written in the Bible, but one is willing to sidestep that wherever it's found that the Bible's statements are based on factual inaccuracies, then for me it's not easy to see what motivates them to follow the rest of the Bible, or gives them a reason to think the rest of the Bible is divinely inspired.
For another small question, Jesus would frequently quote the Old Testament, and seems to have just accepted it as a factual account (as basically all Jews did at the time). So wouldn't the Old Testament having factual errors cast doubt on the divinity of Jesus, if he didn't point these errors out?
You're welcome!
That's interesting, I've also heard that one.
I think this is true to some extent -- for instance, it's evidence against Christianity that the Gospels sometimes record Jesus saying contradictory things. But I'm not sure this is the case with many of the stories in Genesis. It seems perfectly reasonable, for instance, to say that God means the Tower of Babel to teach you about human hubris rather than historical linguistics.
This is a reasonable argument, but I don't think it succeeds. It doesn't seem deceptive to reference the story of Theseus around ancient Greeks without telling them it's historically inaccurate. This would be a problem if Jesus intended to correct every theological and historical error of his culture, but I don't know why a Christian would think that.
Nor is it obvious to me that Jesus always does view Old Testament stories as historically accurate (does the meaning of Matthew 12:38 - 42 change much depending on whether or not Jonah was a historical figure?).