Bible critics often claim that the Holy Scriptures say something they do not. Any of us can be guilty of inserting our culture into the Bible. For instance, when Jesus said "if the salt has lost its flavor..." (Matthew 5:13-20), it is wrong to mistake that as sodium chloride. That's our language. What Jesus meant by salt was not sodium chloride, but a substance that usually came from the Dead Sea that contained some of what we call salt but also contained white gypsum. That "salt" could lose its saltiness, because the gypsum content became too high as the other leached out. Our "salt" does not normally lose its saltiness. Salt has a different meaning today. We cannot retrofit today’s meaning as some have done trying to claim that Jesus didn't know what he was talking about.
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