RICK
<< I don't know if anyone has ever addressed this issue before.
All throughout the bible we read about "hardened hearts", knowing in thy
heart, god seeing into our hearts, etc.
Until fairly recently (100 yrs. ago or so) it was always believed that
the heart was the seat of intelligence instead of the brain.
In an inerrant book, wouldn't Omni-max Yahweh know the difference? I
don't think you can explain all of this away as figurative speaking,
when this was a universal misconception. >>
DAR (in a rush)
Not quite right Rick. Here is (part of) what of have to say on this in my
book:
****
The idea that the heart is the center of emotion
dates back thousands of years and can be found in
many religions. That it is very much a part of our
language today is probably due, in part, to the Bible,
which frequently gives great powers to the heart. God
apparently gave Solomon "a wise and understanding
heart" (1 Kings 3:12). The book of Proverbs allows
that a heart can seek knowledge: "The heart of him
that hath understanding seeketh knowledge" (Proverbs
15:14). Matthew has Jesus asking the scribes
"Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?" (Matthew
9:4). Mark assigns reasoning to this organ: "But there
were certain of the scribes sitting there, and reasoning
in their hearts,..." (Mark 2:6). The word "heart"
appears 871 times in the King James Bible (the Bible
we will be using), and in most of these instances is
credited with affecting man "in all his various
activities, in his desires, affections, emotions,
imaginations, his wisdom, knowledge, skill, and his
consciousness.1"
The Bible, along with other ancient cultures, does
speak of a "mind" but it clearly implies that the
"mind" is located in the heart. At no time does it
suggest that the "mind" or "consciousness" is linked to
the brain, or even to the head. In fact, the brain is
completely unacknowledged in the Bible, and nowhere
does the word even occur. This is especially difficult
for the person who believes that they must find the
Bible completely errorless since this silence is further
aggravated by the fact that other organs, such as the
kidneys and bowels, are mentioned and are credited
with influencing emotions and morality! *2*
The Bible was not correcting a misunderstanding
of it's time; it was agreeing with it. It is easy for us to
assume now that 'mind' means something that occurs
between our temples, but this was not generally known
in ancient times. Plato (428-348 BC) thought that the
intellectual part of the soul was contained in the head
but his student Aristotle (384-322 BC) agreed more
with the biblical view when he incorrectly said this
about the brain:
...the seat of the soul and the control of voluntary
movement in fact of nervous functions in
general are to be sought in the heart. The brain is
an organ of minor importance, perhaps necessary to
cool the blood.
(De Motu Animalum)3
At the risk of offending most popular song writers,
we may safely say that all of these faculties are now
known to be controlled by the brain, not by the heart.
The Greek physician Hippocrates (460-377 BC) was
aware of this over 2400 years ago when he wrote the
following:
Men ought to know that from the human brain and
from the brain only arise our pleasures, joys,
laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains,
griefs and tears... It is the same thing which makes
us mad or delirious, inspires us with dread and fear,
whether by night or by day, brings us sleeplessness,
inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties,
absentmindedness and acts that are contrary to
habit...
(Hippocrates, The Sacred Disease; from Friedman,
page 19)
If this were not true, then the individual who quite
recently lived for almost 2 years with his heart
replaced by a mechanical pump should have become
the emotional and intellectual equivalent of a
vegetable. In contrast, in 1974 when the South African
surgeon Barnard Christiaan hooked up a second heart
in series with the first (yes, two hearts!), his patient
should have become quite brilliant (or if the hearts
disagreed on a matter, rather bewildered). Also, the
tens of thousands of individuals who now, through
transplantation, have someone else's heart beating in
their chest, should be somewhat confused if the organ
they received had actually been performing many of
these functions of consciousness for the previous
owner (2,000 hearts are transplanted yearly in the US
alone).
We now know that a heart is no more capable of
thinking a thought than a brain is capable of pumping
blood. If the heart is poked or stimulated it may miss
a beat and not pump quite as well for a moment. Yet
when a part of the brain is stimulated, memories,
emotions, passions, fears and a full range of feelings
are brought forward. The real evidence for the
prominence of the brain is the fact that a person is
capable of experiencing all their aspects of
consciousness, emotion, desire and knowledge minus
the heart or any other single body part with the
exception of the brain and brain stem. On this,
Hippocrates was right.
*********
*2*
2. The kidneys (the King James Bible uses "reins") and
bowels: Jeremiah 31:20; Psalm 16:7; Psalm 73:21;
Revelation 2:23. Vines New Testament Dictionary, under
the topic "Reins," says: "The feeling and emotions were
regarded as having their seat in the "Kidneys."
Perfect Mirror?: The Question of Bible Perfection, pg. 13-14
Now, I have to go camping for the weekend.
cheers,
Darrel