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'Error' is getting tossed around here as if it is the same as 'inerrant.'
It is fact there are typist/scribal errors, but we know about them. For example, we have over 25,000 extant NT manuscripts in Latin, Greek, Aramaic, and others to compare and contrast these typos, errors in punctuation or word orders. When we compare we come up with 99% accuracy by most scholars who are truly scholars and not just book writers.
So yes, we will find such 'errors' in some of the manuscripts, but not all of them. We know they are errors because the majority of the manuscripts don't have the same errors.
There is nothing doctrinally in contrast between these various manuscripts. No matter how hard people try. If there were difficulties in understanding the text in the original language, chances are we will have difficulties dealing with the same text in our own language.
I think such a proposition to 'vote' should be founded on proper definitions.
Evangelical Biblical Inerrancy definitions:
From the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy:
1. God, who is Himself Truth and speaks truth only, has inspired Holy Scripture in order thereby to reveal Himself to lost mankind through Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Judge. Holy Scripture is God's witness to Himself.
2. Holy Scripture, being God's own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: it is to be believed, as God's instruction, in all that it affirms: obeyed, as God's command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God's pledge, in all that it promises.
3. The Holy Spirit, Scripture's divine Author, both authenticates it to us by His inward witness and opens our minds to understand its meaning.
4. Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God's acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God's saving grace in individual lives.
5. The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the Bible's own; and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the Church.
Source: Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy
Excerpts from the same source:
Article VIII.
WE AFFIRM that God in His work of inspiration utilized the distinctive personalities and literary styles of the writers whom He had chosen and prepared.
WE DENY that God, in causing these writers to use the very words that He chose, overrode their personalities.
Article X.
WE AFFIRM that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.
WE DENY that any essential element of the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs. We further deny that this absence renders the assertion of Biblical inerrancy invalid or irrelevant.
Article XI.
WE AFFIRM that Scripture, having been given by divine inspiration, is infallible, so that, far from misleading us, it is true and reliable in all the matters it addresses.
WE DENY that it is possible for the Bible to be at the same time infallible and errant in its assertions. Infallibility and inerrancy may be distinguished, but not separated.
Article XIII.
WE AFFIRM the propriety of using inerrancy as a theological term with reference to the complete truthfulness of Scripture.
WE DENY that it is proper to evaluate Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage or purpose. We further deny that inerrancy is negated by Biblical phenomena such as a lack of modern technical precision, irregularities of grammar or spelling, observational descriptions of nature, the reporting of falsehoods, the use of hyperbole and round numbers, the topical arrangement of material, variant selections of material in parallel accounts, or the use of free citations.
Article XVI.
WE AFFIRM that the doctrine of inerrancy has been integral to the Church's faith throughout its history.
WE DENY that inerrancy is a doctrine invented by scholastic Protestantism, or is a reactionary position postulated in response to negative higher criticism.
Transmission and Translation
Since God has nowhere promised an inerrant transmission of Scripture, it is necessary to affirm that only the autographic text of the original documents was inspired and to maintain the need of textual criticism as a means of detecting any slips that may have crept into the text in the course of its transmission. The verdict of this science, however, is that the Hebrew and Greek text appear to be amazingly well preserved, so that we are amply justified in affirming, with the Westminster Confession, a singular providence of God in this matter and in declaring that the authority of Scripture is in no way jeopardized by the fact that the copies we possess are not entirely error-free.
Similarly, no translation is or can be perfect, and all translations are an additional step away from the autographa. Yet the verdict of linguistic science is that English-speaking Christians, at least, are exceedingly well served in these days with a host of excellent translations and have no cause for hesitating to conclude that the true Word of God is within their reach. Indeed, in view of the frequent repetition in Scripture of the main matters with which it deals and also of the Holy Spirit's constant witness to and through the Word, no serious translation of Holy Scripture will so destroy its meaning as to render it unable to make its reader "wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. 3:15).
Holy Scripture, as the inspired Word of God witnessing authoritatively to Jesus Christ, may properly be called infallible and inerrant. These negative terms have a special value, for they explicitly safeguard crucial positive truths.
lnfallible signifies the quality of neither misleading nor being misled and so safeguards in categorical terms the truth that Holy Scripture is a sure, safe, and reliable rule and guide in all matters.
Similarly, inerrant signifies the quality of being free from all falsehood or mistake and so safeguards the truth that Holy Scripture is entirely true and trustworthy in all its assertions.
We affirm that canonical Scripture should always be interpreted on the basis that it is infallible and inerrant. However, in determining what the God-taught writer is asserting in each passage, we must pay the most careful attention to its claims and character as a human production. In inspiration, God utilized the culture and conventions of His penman's milieu, a milieu that God controls in His sovereign providence; it is misinterpretation to imagine otherwise.
So history must be treated as history, poetry as poetry, hyperbole and metaphor as hyperbole and metaphor, generalization and approximation as what they are, and so forth. Differences between literary conventions in Bible times and in ours must also be observed: since, for instance, non-chronological narration and imprecise citation were conventional and acceptable and violated no expectations in those days, we must not regard these things as faults when we find them in Bible writers. When total precision of a particular kind was not expected nor aimed at, it is no error not to have achieved it. Scripture is inerrant, not in the sense of being absolutely precise by modern standards, but in the sense of making good its claims and achieving that measure of focused truth at which its authors aimed.
More: Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy
Note: the Bible manuscripts we have today are in 99% agreement with each other. Errors noted in the 1 percentile are punctuation, word endings, minor grammatical issues, word order, etc.
Greetings, Social Anarchist.
Sounds like you are on the right track. Our Lord and Savior is infallible. The scriptures are not.
You don't know they weren't saved.Really!
In no way do we see that Job's so called friends were saved by God. The Erroneous information given by those people was stated in the Bible as erroneous statements therefore there is no error.
You don't know they weren't saved.
Sure it does. God allows error of his character to be included in the inspired words found in the bible.I do not care either way. Your statement has no bearing on the subject of Innerrancy.
This is totally incorrect. If one disagrees with doctrine, s/he might have a very good reason, but that has nothing to do with their faith in Christ. Some people are illiterate (or semi-literate) and may not even have access to a Bible. That has nothing to do with their faith. Jesus Christ is a person and one can be a part of his body without being able to read.
Be careful whom you judge to be "not a Christian"!
Sure it does. God allows error of his character to be included in the inspired words found in the bible.
So, for example: When the Bible says that the world was created in seven days, you believe that this is a literal fact?
The spoken Word of God.Um...what did people base their faith on before the bible was canonized?
What does it mean to say that through David, God breathed, “How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones against the rock” (Psalm 137:9)? Are these inspired words without error? I think that this inspired statement by David is simply a case of God allowing the author to write a spiritual truth in a way that’s culturally relative to him. The spiritual truth of this God-breathed statement by David is to affirm that God will be victorious and wickedness will be punished. But it seems clear to me that the way David expresses this spiritual truth is culturally conditioned.
Oh you do not believe in the Bible.
I'm just saying that God allows half-truths and non-truth of his character in scripture. Just like the culturally colored way the writers sometimes describe God's will as violent. It's not in error in that God didn't want it in there but it's mistaken in who God is. Of course, we can now see that in the final and ultimate revelation of God in the person of Christ.So what that has nothing to do with inerronancy. All it says that God tell the whole story. The Truth of Falsehood.
Error in God's character? What does this mean?Sure it does. God allows error of his character to be included in the inspired words found in the bible.
You mean like when I tell someone about Christ? It's the "spoken word of God"?The spoken Word of God.
You know, like Job's friends when they totally screwed up the theology of God's character.Error in God's character? What does this mean?
In the OT God sent prophets, judges, established a priesthood. God also wrote the very first Scriptures on stone tablets. In the NT we have the words and deeds of Christ and His apostles. The apostles wrote all this down.Um...what did people base their faith on before the bible was canonized?
What is a post evangelical? What does social anarchy have to do with the Gospel?I didn't say I was evangelical. I asked the question of evangelicals, I never said I was one.
If you have a look under my picture you'll see that I identify as post-evangelical.
Edit: Actually I did refer to myself as evangelical in one of my posts. My apologies, that was a slip of the keys.
In my country I can call myself "evangelical", and people know what I mean. But I can't do that on an international forum like this because the word "evangelical" means something quite different in the USA to what it does here.
The originals were written on perishable materials. No original document survives from antiquity. Perhaps some stone imprints.What value is there holding this opinion given the fact that we don't have the originals to examine?
We have over 25,000 extant NT manuscripts. Comparing them scholars have determined they are in 99% agreement. The errors noted are some grammatical, a few glosses, punctuation and other minor details. We know this BECAUSE there are so many manuscripts.Inerrancy is often said to be true of the original documents. We don't have those, so this is a non-starter.
Since we don't have the originals, the only way for the Bible to be inerrant would be for God to insure that NO errors crept into the copies. Now we are talking about inspired copies too?
Since the many various biblical manuscripts DO have differences, now you have to sort out which, if any, was the manuscript God intended for us to have.
Even when you settle on the copy that you believe is God-inspired, we don't have the original manuscript to check it against.
Finally, when you talk about Biblical inerrancy, I have to ask, 'Which Bible?' Different Christian groups have had different collections of books in their Bibles throughout history. Which collection of books is the 'true Bible.'
Even between the Catholic and Protestant Bibles you will find differences TODAY. The Catholic bible has a longer version of Daniel and a shorter version of Jeremiah than the Protestant bibles. Which versions of these two books is 'God-inspired?'
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