Is the Bible inerrant?

This is a new thread that has come out of the Age of the earth in the Bible thread and is in response to Ace88’s remarks below.

I have been reading the inspiring book “The Gentle Art of Blessing” by Pierre Pradervand and this sentence stood out to me:
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“…truth resides first and foremost in demonstration, in the truth lived, in a state of consciousness, and not in dogmas, rituals, or sacred books.”

I think the Bible is meant to be taken literally, but that the Old Testament dealing with the Israelites was replaced by the New Covenant, after Christ's death.

Fist of all Ace, a little observation. I notice that many Christians speak (as you just have) about “after Jesus’ death”, as if that was the end of the story? I always think of (and speak of) “after his resurrection and ascension”. Just puzzled, that’s all. :confused:

The Bible doesn't have many contradictions. Just because there are verses we don't understand, doesn't make them contradictions. There have been some contradictions scientists claimed for years from the Bible that later - the Bible turned out to be right. One of them was I think about James and had to do with dates, but the scientists didn't realize there were two James, not one, but discovered this later through archaeology. Many of these so-called contradictions are taken out of context, without reading the entire passage, and many others can be explained.

Many of these so-called contradictions are taken out of context, without reading the entire passage.. .

I totally sympathise about taking things out of context! Christian apologetics always take Mary Baker Eddy’s words about Jesus’ time in the tomb out of context and make it look as if she believed he never died on the cross! Yet anyone actually studying the original source material would know that this is a deliberate falsehood, designed to discredit her and Christian Science.

Anyway, back to the Bible:

From The Interpreter’s Dictionary (Vol. 4, pp. 594-595):

“It has been estimated that these manuscripts ... differ among themselves between 150,000 and 250,000 times. The actual figure is, perhaps, much higher.”

“Many thousands of these different readings are variants in orthography or grammar or style and have no effect upon the meaning of the text. But there are many thousands which have a definite effect upon the meaning of the text.”

And here is an academic, fairly balanced critique from Evangelical Textual Criticism of a book written by someone who used to believe that the Bible was inerrant, which is worth reading Ace (and yes, I am aware that books have been published trying to refute Ehrman’s observations, but this critique concedes that he makes some important points):

[url] Review of Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus[/url]

This is an excerpt from the book:

"Not only do we not have the originals [of the books of the New Testament], we don't have the first copies of the originals. We don't even have copies of the copies of the originals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. What we have are copies made later -- much later. In most instances, they are copies made many centuries later. And these copies all differ from one another, in many thousands of places. As we will see later in this book, these copies differ from one another in so many places that we don't even know how many differences there are. Possibly it is easiest to put it in comparative terms: there are more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.

"Most of these differences are completely immaterial and insignificant. A good portion of them simply show us that scribes in antiquity could spell no better than most people can today (and they didn't even have dictionaries, let alone spell check)."
From: Misquoting Jesus: the story behind who changed the Bible and why By Bart D. Ehrman pages 10-11

There’s a lecture by the author on this subject here:

[DLMURL] http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=397006836098752165 [/DLMURL] (99 min)

This is the beginning of the talk (10 min)
(and there are some fascinating other videos on this page!)

Spelling errors matter hugely, especially from the Hebrew, where one vowel can make all the difference to the meaning. I like the Amplified Bible for this reason as it tries to give all the possible meanings.

More serious are parts that it is believed may have been altered in order to back up various doctrines. For instance, take the text from 1 John 5:

KJV - 6 This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. 7 For there are three that bear record [in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 8 And there are three that bear witness in earth], the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.

* [Words in brackets and italics] = The 16th Century additions to (corruptions of) what was in the original text of the New Testament.
* Words in bold font = The correct original wording of 1Jo 5:7,8……….

For additional details regarding the corruption of the Textus Receptus that was the basis of the Greek text used by the KJV translators, browse . Below is an excerpt from that article.

Conservative biblical scholar F.F. Bruce (History of the English Bible, Third Edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1978, pages 141-142) explains the sad history of how 1Jo 5:7-8 had been errantly added to Erasmus' Greek text:

The words ["in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth."] omitted in the R.V. [Revised Version, 1881] were no part of the original Greek text, nor yet of the Latin Vulgate in its earliest form. They first appear in the writings of a Spanish Christian leader named Priscillian, who was executed for heresy in A.D. 385. Later they made their way into copies of the Latin text of the Bible. When Erasmus prepared his printed edition of the Greek New Testament, he rightly left those words out, but was attacked for this by people who felt that the passage was a valuable proof-text for the doctrine of the Trinity.

At the end of the day though, we can get so fixated on words (on the letter) that we miss the whole glory, the wonder, the power, the inspiration, the meaning and purpose of the Bible (the spirit). A vicar said to me that the Bible is about 70% about man and history and about 30% about God. It's the truth BEHIND the words that is divine. It's not every single (sometimes contradictory) word that the Bible says, but what it DOES - the inspired Word (not every literal one!) lifts us up to a higher place where we find God healing and salvation. Paul said in II Cor 3:

[COLOR="Purple"]..the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.

and that was what Mary Baker Eddy was trying to explain too::
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But mistakes could neither wholly obscure the divine Science of the Scriptures seen from Genesis to Revelation, mar the demonstration of Jesus, nor annul the healing by the prophets, who foresaw that "the stone which the builders rejected" would become "the head of the corner. " (Science and Health 139)

The Scriptures are very sacred. Our aim must be to have them understood spiritually, for only by this understanding can truth be gained. (Science and Health 547)

Love and peace,

Judy