In Luke 5:22 and Matthew 9:4, Jesus asks the scribes:

> "What reason ye in your hearts?"

Skeptics criticize this as a scientific error, questioning the Bible for appearing to claim the circulatory organ functions as the brain. This objection does not account for ancient anthropological taxonomy. According to the ancient Semitic and Greco-Roman methods of categorizing human faculties, the 'heart' (Greek: kardia, Hebrew: leb) served as a holistic metaphor designating the center of human intellect, volition, and intangible will. It was a recognized figure of speech for the inner mind, not an anatomical textbook claim.

A skeptical objection asks, "Couldn't God have really impressed everyone by providing predictions about the Nazis, or space travel? Couldn't Jesus have impressed His audience by comparing the mustard tree to the redwoods?"

Such predictions to the ancients would have been a distraction from the Gospel, and without the proper context, could have been a reason not to understand or believe it.

The Bible uses equivocal language that serves as a divine accommodation to human finitude without being an accommodation to human error.

Concerning ancient conceptions of how various bodily organs were the "center" of various aspects of our personality: The heart as the seat of emotions and thought was a prominent idea, though some began to contest this view in Greece by the 300s BC in preference for the brain. However, "heart preference" maintained its prominence among most people.

What difference does it make that no specific data is given in the Bible as to where the "seat of the mind is located"? The Bible emphasizes how the heart "deviseth a man's way," "inspires speech," "believes," "is joyful," "is deceitful," "is good" (Prov. 16:9; Mt. 12:34; Rom. 10:10; 1 Chron. 16:10; Jer. 17:9; Lk. 6:45). Besides the heart, the Bible also focuses (to a lesser extent) on the emotional and moral significance of the bowels and kidneys.

Even today, in spite of knowing better, we speak of "believing in our heart." Does one object to people when they say this, too?

There is no statement that, for example, "one kidney prompts man to do good, the other to do evil." We have expressions, but not designations. One can only find error by reading into the words presented a host of beliefs and issues not expressed in the text. God is no more in error than we are when we speak of "believing in one's heart" idiomatically.

Regarding the Biblical statement that "the life is in the blood..." The Hebrew word for "life" is nephesh and carries the meaning of breath or vitality. Technically the "breath" is in the blood since that is where oxygen is carried to the rest of the body.