It is commonly used phrase in the churches to refer to the Bible as the Word of God. But notice that the Bible also contains the words of false prophets, deceivers, wicked men, demons, and Satan. Can those words be considered the “Word of God”? It might be considered true in the sense that the accuracy of the words attributed to evil men and demons is inspired by God. This would agree with the scripture: 2 Timothy 3:16 (KJV) “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:” Another problem with referring to the Bible as the Word of God is regarding the man-made doctrine of “biblical inerrancy“. Many hold that the Bible is infallible, but not inerrant. As stated under Limitations  section under the wiki for biblical inerrancy:

“Those who subscribe to infallibility believe that what the scriptures say regarding matters of faith and Christian practice are wholly useful and true. Some denominations that teach infallibility hold that the historical or scientific details, which may be irrelevant to matters of faith and Christian practice, may contain errors. Those who believe in inerrancy hold that the scientific, geographic, and historic details of the scriptural texts in their original manuscripts are completely true and without error, though the scientific claims of scripture must be interpreted in the light of its phenomenological nature, not just with strict, clinical literality, which was foreign to historical narratives.”

Proponents of biblical inerrancy generally do not teach that the Bible was dictated directly by God, but that God used the “distinctive personalities and literary styles of the writers” of scripture and that God’s inspiration guided them to flawlessly project his message through their own language and personality.

Infallibility and inerrancy refer to the original texts of the Bible. Scholars who are proponents of biblical inerrancy acknowledge the potential for human error in transmission and translation, and therefore only affirm as the Word of God translations that “faithfully represent the original”.

Biblical Inerrancy refers to the bible as being without error. Some say it applies only to the original manuscripts, while others say it applies to some or all subsequent translations. And to a lesser degree some say it applies to specific bibles, like the KJV.

As stated in the wiki on Biblical Inerrancy as formulated in the Chicago Statement On Biblical Inerrancy, is the doctrine that the Protestant Bible “is without error or fault in all its teaching“; or, at least, that “Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact“.

The “Doctrine of the Inerrancy of Scripture” held by the Catholic Church, as expressed by the Second Vatican Council, is that “the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.”

It is rather ironic that this claim of biblical inerrancy as defined by the Chicago Statement On Biblical Inerrancy  can be made in spite of the fact that we do not have the original manuscripts. This argument is supposedly offset by the fact that some of the secondary historical documents which we do have show a consistent agreement with each other, which they say infers that the original manuscripts must be inerrant. That is not a clear line of logic. It can infer that the original manuscripts were reliable, but I would not go as far as to say that means the original manuscripts were inerrant. There is this gap between the oral teaching of the apostles and the word that was written down. We only have copies of what must have been originals. There is no record of original manuscripts. And even if the original manuscripts had typos or whatever, I would still believe them with the same respect given to the copies that we do have today that might contain some typographical and insignificant errors. I think it was in the good forethought of God that there would be no original manuscripts that would survive as historic records or else we might have worshiped them as a form of idolatry. Cripplegate blogger, Eric Davis, says:

“Today, we have thousands of Greek NT manuscripts, which contain everything from a few verses to all 27 books. The similarity of the manuscript content is striking: there exists an approximate agreement rate of over 99% between the biblical content. Disagreements are minor; bringing no significant doctrine or event of the NT into question. Today, we have NT critical apparatuses (e.g. UBS, Nestle-Aland), produced through painstaking work of rigorous manuscript criticism.” Differences Between the Qur’an and the Bible: An Introduction

Furthermore, I feel there is a danger to this concept of “biblical inerrancy” since it could lead to a feeling of uncertainty with respect to the scriptures since we do not have the original documents to validate biblical inerrancy and what appears to be some minor disparities in the Bible due to transcribing/transmission (accidental), translation (intellectual), or side margin insertion differences. The bible does not itself make a claim to biblical inerrancy, so why should we? I think we should just leave it as this:

The Protestant Bibles contain 66 books which are inspired by the Spirit of God through approximately 40 different authors from different times and cultures over a time span of about 1500 years. The secondary documents that we have today are mostly complimentary, not contradictory, despite secondary manuscript differences.

Consider the Johannine Comma controversy. This is an example of margin insertion related to John 5:7-8. This section was not in the oldest manuscripts but is in the many of the succeeding secondary manuscripts. In a similar way, the The Longer Ending of Mark poses a similar debate. The following are examples that many scholars say indicate copyist errors:

  • Was Ahaziah 22 or 42 years old when he came to the throne? (2 Kings 8:26 vs. 2 Chronicles 22:2). Most scholars say this is a copyist error.
  • Was Jehoiachin 8 or 18 years old when he became the 19th king of Judah? (2 Kings 24:8 vs. 2 Chronicles 36:9)
  • Did Solomon have 40,000 or 4,000 talls? (1 Kings 4:26 vs. 2 Chronicles 9:25)
  • Did God sent Gad to threaten David with 7 or 3 years of famine? (2 Samuel 24:13 vs. 1 Chronicles 21:12)
  • How many horsemen did David capture after defeating the King of Zobah, 7,000 or 1,700? (1 Chronicles 18:4 vs. 2 Samuel 8:4)
  • Did the Temple contain 2,000 or 3,000 baths? (1 Kings 7:26 vs. 2 Chronicles 4:5)

Of course we might invest time in comparing different versions of the Bible for validation of certain scriptures and even delve into the underlying exegesis on certain words and phrases to get a better understanding. But I can’t see how anybody born of the Spirit can go wrong if they are following the Lord. Isn’t it God’s job to get us saved and keep us saved? Isn’t it the Holy Spirit’s job to lead us into all Truth? Let’s just trust God. As it is written,

John 10:27-29 King James Version (KJV) 27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: 28 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. 29 My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.

Also, I might invoke the argumentative style of Paul in Galatians where He reminds us of how God came into our lives. He did it when we believed the Gospel and received the Spirit, not when we came to the conclusion that the Bible is trustworthy because it is supposedly “inerrant”. This man-made doctrine of biblical inerrancy is not necessary to validate our salvation. As it is written,

KJV Romans 8:16 God’s Spirit witnesses with our spirits that we are the children of God by faith in Christ.

In reality, today’s versions are based upon scholarly comparison of thousands of biblical manuscripts (such as the Dead Sea Scrolls) and thousands of biblical citations in the writings of the early Church Fathers.

Proponents of biblical inerrancy often cite 2 Timothy 3:16 as evidence that scripture is inerrant. For this argument, they prefer translations which render the verse as “all scripture is given by inspiration of God”, which they say means the whole bible must be inerrant. The bible itself makes no such claim. Another rendering of this scripture is: “Every inspired scripture is also useful…”

The Onlyhism(s): There are variations of this inerrancy domain:

  • Textus Receptus Onlyism: refers to the inerrancy of the succession of bibles based on the Greek text of the New Testament, which originated with the first printed Greek New Testament, published in 1516 by the Dutch Catholic Scholar, Desiderius Erasmus. It was also the basis for the original German Luther Bible, the translation into English by William Tyndale, The King James Version, and others.
  • King James Onlyism: refers to the original text has been supernaturally preserved without error in its copies and that the English translation made from that supposed perfect manuscript was also supernaturally composed. Peter Ruckman is a major proponent of this position.
  • Textual Criticism Evangelical Christians generally accept the findings of textual criticism, which suggests that the manuscript copies are not perfect, and strict inerrancy is only applied to the original autographs (the manuscripts written by the original authors) rather than the copies.

However, challenging this view, evangelical theologian Wayne Grudem writes:

“For most practical purposes, then, the current published scholarly texts of the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament are the same as the original manuscripts. Thus, when we say that the original manuscripts were inerrant, we are also implying that over 99 percent of the words in our present manuscripts are also inerrant, for they are exact copies of the originals.”

In Christian Bibles, the New Testament Gospels were derived from oral traditions in the second half of the first century. There is about a 40 year period between the death of Jesus Christ and the first written gospel, the Gospel of Mark near the end of the first century. There is hardly anything known about this short, oral tradition period.

The original autographs, that is, the original Greek writings and manuscripts written by the original authors of the New Testament, have not survived. But historically copies exist of those original autographs, transmitted and preserved in a number of manuscript traditions. There have been some minor variations, additions or omissions, in some of the texts. When ancient scribes copied earlier books, they sometimes wrote notes on the margins of the page (marginal glosses) to correct their text – especially if a scribe accidentally omitted a word or line – and to comment about the text. When later scribes were copying the copy, they were sometimes uncertain if a note was intended to be included as part of the text. The three main textual traditions of the Greek New Testament are sometimes called the :

  • Alexandrian text-type (generally minimalist)
  • Byzantine text-type (generally maximalist), and
  • Western text-type (occasionally wild).

Together they comprise most of the ancient manuscripts.

I think we should stick with the Bible as  “inspired by God”, not “inerrant”.  Otherwise, we have to constantly defend the Bible against all sorts of imperfections that old manuscripts might reveal.