S11. Could We Have Stopped People Dieing If We Knew?

While googling ideas and thoughts about apologetics, we came across a You Tube video that claimed 6 scientific facts that give validity to the Bible. (https://youtu.be/EvOWr83qYk0)

It referred to sanitation practices, an understanding of germs and quarantine as well as foods that we know today need refrigeration. For example, they cited the following:

In London in 1846 during the London cholera epidemic 1600 people died because sewerage was in the streets in drains carrying the disease, whereas the Bible stated the following over three thousand years ago:

Deuteronomy 23:12-13

Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement.

1847 there was an 18% death rate in childbirth in what was then a modern healthcare facility. After much research, it was discovered that the doctors were working on autopsies - dead bodies in the same facility and didn’t understand that they had to wash their hands thoroughly before working with the delivery of the babies. When they washed their hands the mortality rate during childbirth dropped from 18% to 2%

Numbers 19:11-12

“Whoever touches a human corpse will be unclean for seven days. They must purify themselves with the water on the third day and on the seventh day; then they will be clean. But if they do not purify themselves on the third and seventh days, they will not be clean.

How did they know thousands of years ago through the scriptures that touching dead bodies made a person unclean but we didn’t know this 150 years ago?

This doesn’t prove or even mean that they understood germ theory, but it is odd that the Bible would codify actions that protect against it over 3000 years ago, while not having it codified nor doing those things in the 1800’s cause widespread death and that we now codify it because we better understand it.

Put another way:

• Three and a half thousand years ago the Bible said - do this by faith

• Now we say - do this because science has discovered why it is important.

• In the 1800’s they didn’t do it and many people died.

ARE YOU SURE that modern science is disproving the wisdom of the Bible?