I claim that a presumption of biblical inerrancy or of “two truths” has proven very useful to me. That is, when interacting with the text, I find it more helpful to ask questions other than, “did this really happen? Is this really inspired?”

I don’t see how the story of Balaam’s ass somehow refutes that presumption. Yes, it seems silly. So what? Things that gratify are pre-existing ideas don’t always open the mind to revelation.

Mine is not the way that most people who believe in biblical inerrancy understand the Bible. That is, they understand it according to the “conservative” view described in my main post. Historical accuracy. In my view (apparently neither “conservative” nor “critical”), this is patently ridiculous. As a result, making assumptions of inerrancy is a waste of time. Indeed, I might even go to the opposite extreme and claim complete indifference to the historical “claims” of the Bible. If it is “the word of God,” why would I care whether the events really happened as described?

After reading your comment, I suspect that you have some sympathies for this view. Right?

How is this for a theory. A later editor thought that the Book of Numbers was dragging a bit and suspected that readers were not going to be paying close attention. What better way to grab them back than to throw in a talking donkey story!

As for implausibility–I think that a talking ass is a wonderful miracle. It’s no more earthy than feeding the five thousand or turning water into wine. If God is a God of miracles, then I have no problem if his miracles turn out seeming gratuitous or bizarre. Indeed, I think it is very much like God to be gratuitous (‘needlessly wonderous’) and bizarre (or jarring to our received sensibilities).

I guess I just don’t see on what basis you could say that one miracle is “implausible” while another isn’t. It’s not like we can judge these things by our ordinary experience.

By the way, I am clearly not alone in doing this, and my impression is that most of us sort claims about inspiration, revelation, miracles, etc. based on our own sense of God’s workings. Do you believe in voodoo? That people bend forks through mental telepathy? That the Pat Robertson is God’s mouthpiece? We are constantly asked to make judgments about these sorts of things. I suspect that the only reason people are resisting my conclusions about the story of Balaam’s ass is that this story is contained in canonized scripture. (If I wrote on this blog in all sincerity that my dog had spoken to me, would you think me a prophet? Or would you worry that I am related to the Lafferty brothers?) Not that being canonized scripture is a trivial distinction between the story of Balaam and a blog entry. Nevertheless, I still don’t believe the story was factual because it does not comport with my understanding about the way in which God works with people.

That said, and here is a bone for the other side, I recognize that my understanding is still limited by my experiences. I could be wrong. It wouldn’t be the last time.

Let me tell you the story of a prophet, in some respects a very great prophet, but one “who loved the wages of unrighteousness,” who “was rebuked for his iniquity” in a most strange and unusual way, and whose actions (which included the uttering of great and true prophecies) were described by another prophet in another day as “madness.”

This is a true story, a dramatic story; one with a great lesson for all members of the Church; one that involves seeing God, receiving revelation, and facing a destroying angel in whose hand was the sword of vengeance. It includes the account of how the Lord delivered a message to the prophet in a way that, as far as we know, has never been duplicated in the entire history of the world.

This puts the matter to rest for me, although please feel free to continue discussing this as I thoroughly enjoy the new insights.