Biblical Arguments

Satsvarupa dasa Goswami: At Bhaktivedanta Manor in London in 1973, Srila Prabhupada held a series of conversations with respectable guests. Some of them were priests. During one young priest's visit, several of Prabhupada's disciples began to argue with him on the basis of the Bible. The debate was whether the Bible condoned meat-eating.

One of the devotees cited a passage in Genesis indicating that man was meant to protect the animals and eat vegetable foodstuffs, but the priest countered this by making reference to a later passage in the Bible regarding the covenant of Noah, where God allowed His followers to eat meat. Another devotee brought up the example of Daniel in the Old Testament and made a claim that he was a vegetarian. The priest also countered this with other Biblical arguments. The conversation then turned to Greek and Hebrew translations, with the priest countering the devotees' arguments and they again stating new arguments from different places in the Bible.

During this excited exchange, Srila Prabhupada was mostly silent. He had brought up his main argument that the Bible recommends "Thou shalt not kill," and that Jesus was upholding this law, but once the conversation got into many different areas of Biblical scholarship, Prabhupada did not take part. Of course, the priest was not convinced by any of the Biblical arguments presented by the devotees, and after some time he left. Later in the evening, Prabhupada called the devotees into his room. Commenting on the discussion with the priest, Prabhupada said that he did not think it was a good idea that the devotees had discussed so much on the basis of the Bible. Giving serious instructions to his preacher-disciples, Prabhupada said that in the future, they should stick to the Bhagavad-gita and make their arguments on this basis. Soon after, in Paris, Prabhupada met with more Christians. He regularly raised the point before them that the Bible states, "Thou shalt not kill." On one occasion, a Christian guest referred to the Gospel of St. John and the phrase, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God." Prabhupada liked this and related it to the Vedic conclusion that everything is created by the will of the Supreme. In a lecture Prabhupada gave in Paris, he quoted that verse from St. John, "In the beginning was the Word," and gave a Krishna conscious purport. Some Christians in the audience, however, argued with Prabhupada's purport and interpretation of the Bible. During this same Paris visit, Srila Prabhupada asked his secretary to begin writing a commentary on the Bible from the Krishna conscious point of view. Prabhupada was interested in the results, but then he called off the project, saying that the Christians would never accept our statements about the Bible. Prabhupada wanted Christians to appreciate the principles of Krishna consciousness, and he wanted them to know that we appreciated them, but too much Bible scholarship or speculation by the devotees was not appropriate.