On Inerrancy

[Bill Hamblin]

It seems my concerns are being largely ignored.

I suspect that's because there's no good response.

[Hick Preacher]

I suspect that's because there's no good response.

Rob gave a response-- related to Christ in the New Testament describing scripture in parallel terms to what is not called by many as Bible Inerrancy.

I put some of my thought to writing also a kind of inerrancy too.

I consider scripture in a networked canon to generate or emerge as inerrant scripture.

My view varies in some ways from Rob's naturally-- I suppose. But Rob and I do not pound the table about it. Nor do we collaborate or compare notes before we post.

A specific definition that is elaborated in an LDS to Ev interfaith set of terms is likely beyond the utility of this forum. Controversy comes into play here-- and nay sayers on each side interrupt the flow.

The only thing worst is to go and read a popular lay person's book on the topic from an Evangelical book store. Likewise some apologetic on extra biblical scripture from an LDS book store.

So getting interfaith understandings here or anywhere in a similar forum between Evs and LDS is a work in progress.

[maklelan]

Rob gave a response-- related to Christ in the New Testament describing scripture in parallel terms to what is not called by many as Bible Inerrancy.

I haven't seen a direct response to my concerns, from Rob or from anyone else.

[Bill Hamblin]

I haven't seen a direct response to my concerns, from Rob or from anyone else.

I'll respond. You're right!

[Hick Preacher]

I haven't seen a direct response to my concerns, from Rob or from anyone else.

Well I could make a list of your concerns from your OP and write what I think- itemizing each of your questions.

But I do not know what use my comments would be to you-- I am just some obscure person who became an EV who was an active LDS person. I do not have an earned seminary degree. But for 30 years have been aware of MT vs LXX variations, variations in inter-OT Biblical accounts of the same event in different Bible books, a number of NT misquotes of the OT LXX, Enoch quotes in the NT by Jesus and other Apostles, DSS motifs in Jesus' sermons and soforth...

But I was communicating with Reed Durham in the past on LDS issues in the 1980, and had some colaboration from Van Hale-- and most treasured were my snail mail discussions with Eugene Seaich on ancient texts. Perhaps you would find my experience as an active EV of 18 years of to provide some sort of perspective.

I am sorry if I have derailed the discussion because I perceive that there is an honest academic effort related to the OP.

But I am going to sleep on it-

Hick-

[ElfLord]

Hey, I have been telling people about Ezra doing that for over 30 years-- and this is the first time anyone on a www board that anyone has noted this in a positive way! This Ezra's editing can be seen in the third person voice in the Torah-- through the Chronicles-- and repeated again in the Book of Ezra. We know Ezra got it right by Christ's orientation to those scriptures ( and His Apostles too).

Rob also fails to mention a few other things:

1) The Bible as we know it had not yet been solidified. (eg. Iraneaus calls the Shepard of Hermes Scripture and quotes Liberally from I Clement; Agustine had at least 5-6 more books in his cannonical works than we do in our protestant Bibles)

2) These same Christians also complained that the Jews had indeed altered scriptures. (Iraneaus in my previous post does just that; Justin with Trypho the Jew, just a few years earlier as well)

And there are others.

It might be a good idea to compare the LXX with the DSS. Ths LXX is closer to the DSS than the MT. I read somewhere that 9 out of 10 Modern Bible Old Testaments are based off of the MT text instead of the LXX.

Institue for Biblcal and scientific studies

OT Dead Sea Scrolls.

Most Scholars saw the LXX as inferior to the Hebrew Bible called the Masoretic Text (MT). With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, this all changed. Ancient Hebrew scrolls were found that follow the LXX, not the Masoretic Text. The DSS showed that the LXX had an underlying Hebrew Text that was different from the MT.

Now Scholars think the LXX has important readings that are superior to the MT. The LXX is now very important in textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible.

<snip>

John Allegro in The Dead Sea Scrolls documents that when the LXX and Mt contradict, the LXX most often agrees with the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS). (Allegro 59-83). He presents a long chart comparing readings from 1Sam. demonstrating that the text of books other than the first five existed long befroe the MT existed (about 1000 years before). Allegro also documents that most of the time when there is disagreement between LXX and MT the LXX most often agrees with the DSS and DSS with LXX over the MT. A latter article also deomonstrates that this same agreement holds for Jeremaiah. The DSS contain the longer reading for Jeremaiah deomnstrtaing significant support for the LXX.

He also documents (63) that Origen's work was that of a compulation of a text placing several existing Greek translations of the OT side by side, he used a pre-existing LXX, this is merely what any good translator does in preparing a new translation. A new one was needed because the Jews abandoned the LXX and commissioned their own (Aquilla's) becasue the Chruch had come to use the LXX as it's Bbile, and they wanted to get away form the Christian's Messianic reading. Origen did not produce the translation of the LXX prophetic books, it already existed. Moreover, it can be showen to have existed in the first century. Clement of Rome (1 Clement) quotes Isaiah 53 in AD 95, and most of the quotations of the OT in the Gospels come from the LXX.

http://www.doxa.ws/Messiah/Lxx_mt.html

So apparently the Jeremiah we have in our Protestant Bible is missing a substantial amount of information.

SCORE!

Joseph Smith had learned from 1 Nephi 13:20-39 and Moses 1:40-41 that important pieces of the Bible manuscript had been removed or altered over time

Joseph Smith / BOM 1

Evangelicals 0

Continuing...

James A. Sanders,Inter Testamental and Biblical Studies at Clairmont, Cannon and Community, a Guide to Canonical Criticism. Philladelphia: Forterss Press, 1984, 15-16.

"There are remarkable differences between the LXX and MT of 1 and 2 Sam. Jeremiah, Esther, Daniel, Proverbs and Ezekiel, 40-48, and on a lesser level numerious very important differences in lesser books such as Isaiah and Job. Before the discovery of the Scrolls [Dead Sea] it was difficult to know wheather most of these should be seen as translational, Or as reflecting the inner history of the Septuegent text, or all three. Now it is abundantly clear that the second period of text transmission [which is BC], actually that of the earliest texts we have, was one of limited textual pluralism. Side by side in the Qumran library lay scrolls of Jeremiah in Hebrew dating to the pre-Chrsitian Hellenistic period reflecting both the textual tradition known in the MT and the one in the LXX without any indication of preference. So also for 1 and 2 Sam."

[note: the importance of 1 and 2 sam and Jeremiah, Esther, Daniel is that it indicates the LXX existed before the time of Christ in more than the Pentetucahal form]

Institue for Biblcal and scientific studies

OT Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) like the magnificent Isaiah scroll closely follow the Masoretic Text (MT), but there are a few exceptions. For example, Psalm 145 is an alphabetical psalm. Each verse begins with the next letter in the alphabet, but "N" is missing in the MT. In the DSS it is there, so somehow a scribe left this verse out. Another important difference is in I Samuel 11 where the MT is shortened. The longer reading in the DSS explains what happens in this chapter.

Three of the most important Biblical texts from Qumran are: (1) The Isaiah Scroll from Cave 1 which has two different text types, with about 1,375 differences from the MT. (2) The Habakkuk Commentary from Cave 1 which uses the pesher method of interpretation, and the name Yahweh is written in paleo-Hebrew. (3) The Psalm scroll from Cave 11 contains 41 canonical psalms and 7 apocryphal psalms mixed in among them. The order of the psalms differs largely from the MT (Wurthwein 1979, 32).

So as you can see... much information is missing from the Bible, just as JS and the BOM said.

EDIT: To add...

Qumran version

Parts of the Book of Jeremiah have also been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in cave 4 in Qumran. These texts, in Hebrew, correspond both to the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint Text. This discovery has shed much light on the differences between the two versions; while it was previously maintained that the Greek Septuagint (the version used by the earliest Christians) was only a poor translation, professor Emanuel Tov, senior editor of the Dead Sea Scrolls' publication, wrote that the Masoretic edition either represents a substantial rewriting of the original Hebrew, or there had previously been two different versions of the text.[19]

19.^ Tov, Emanuel: "The Septuagint and Literary Criticism", The Folio: Bulletin of the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center, 22(2):1-6

http://en.wikipedia....ook_of_Jeremiah

substantial rewritting, two different versions? Hmmm... I wonder which one repersents the "God Breathed" version!?

[Rob Bowman]

Bill,

I don't think we're getting anywhere.

Matthew and Luke did not revise Mark. That is, they did not take the Gospel of Mark and insert things into it or take things out of it to produce a new Gospel of Mark.

Assuming Markan priority, what Matthew and Luke did was to produce different writings, separate works, intended to accomplish somewhat different purposes, which included (a) presenting additional material from and about Jesus not found in Mark and (b) presenting their material in ways that would be maximally instructive for their intended readers and that would express most effectively certain themes that each author wished to emphasize. Along the way, again assuming Markan priority, Matthew and Luke reworded much of the material in Mark to make that material (c ) more compact where that suited the author's purpose, (d) more detailed where that suited the author's purpose, (e) more understandable to their intended readers, and (e) less open to misunderstanding by their intended readers. None of these differences impinges on inerrancy as evangelicals define and use that term.

You still don't seem to get the argument. You claim the earliest Christians were inerrantists. If so, then the earliest Christians believed the Gospel of Mark was inerrant. Then why did they feel free to change it, add to it, and take away from it?

[Rob Bowman]

Bill,

You wrote:

No. It is like Paul writing an inerrant letter to the Philippians, then rewriting the same letter later. Why couldn't God inspire Jeremiah to write an inerrant scroll the first time?

How does adding new material to something he wrote previously call into question anything he had written previously? Inerrancy does not mean completeness or exhaustiveness of information.

Suppose Jeremiah had written "God is very angry with the king" and the king had burned the scroll on which those words were written. So Jeremiah took up a new scroll and wrote "God is very angry with the king, and the king's effort to destroy God's message will not prevail." How does the addition of the new statement in any way undermine the truth of the original statement? It doesn't. If you don't understand this, you simply don't understand the view you are trying to critique.

You wrote:

PS Paul didn't drink coffee!

Okay, he took a wine break.

[Bill Hamblin]

Bill,

I don't think we're getting anywhere.

Matthew and Luke did not revise Mark. That is, they did not take the Gospel of Mark and insert things into it or take things out of it to produce a new Gospel of Mark.

Assuming Markan priority, what Matthew and Luke did was to produce different writings, separate works, intended to accomplish somewhat different purposes, which included (a) presenting additional material from and about Jesus not found in Mark and (b) presenting their material in ways that would be maximally instructive for their intended readers and that would express most effectively certain themes that each author wished to emphasize. Along the way, again assuming Markan priority, Matthew and Luke reworded much of the material in Mark to make that material © more compact where that suited the author's purpose, (d) more detailed where that suited the author's purpose, (e) more understandable to their intended readers, and (e) less open to misunderstanding by their intended readers. None of these differences impinges on inerrancy as evangelicals define and use that term.

You're right, we're not getting anywhere.

You claim that early Christians believed that scripture was inerrant.

You can't provide any actual statements to that effect.

Instead you take Jewish thought from centuries later and impute it to first century Christians.

We demonstrate that the way Christians actually used scripture indicates they did not treat scripture as inerrant because they feel free to delete, change and add to scriptural texts (both NT and OT).

You say that's not evidence that early Christians did not believe in inerrancy.

So, what type of evidence would you accept as demonstrative of lack of belief in inerrancy among early Christians?

[Rob Bowman]

Deborah,

I take it the answer to my question is that you haven't read any books by evangelical scholars explaining and advocating biblical inerrancy. Therefore, your opinion that all inerrantists must be ignoramuses is itself an opinion based on ignorance (Prov. 18:13).

You wrote:

Of course disrespectful, intolerant and closed-minded views of the Book of Mormon obviously aren't held to the same standard.

They should be, and I for one hold myself to the same standard as far as anything I say about Mormonism as I would like you to observe with regard to evangelicalism. Anyone who shoots his mouth off about the Book of Mormon without studying it and hearing what Mormons have to say about it is going to display his ignorance, just as you have displayed regarding what evangelicals believe about the Bible.

[Rob Bowman]

maklelan,

You wrote:

It seems my concerns are being largely ignored.

Try here.

[Duncan]

I don't even pretend to know the issues invovled here but came across some eyars ago a controversy about where exactley Jesus cast out a demon or something to into a herd of pigs and both Matthew and Mark place it at different places, I actaully have to catch a bus here so I wikied it and you can go to the link for further info,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gergesenes

I was wondering what people thought about this in terms of inerrancy, Thanks for reading!

[Rob Bowman]

Bill,

You wrote:

You're right, we're not getting anywhere.

You claim that early Christians believed that scripture was inerrant.

You can't provide any actual statements to that effect.

Matthew 5:17-18

John 10:35

You asked:

So, what type of evidence would you accept as demonstrative of lack of belief in inerrancy among early Christians?

Well, for starters, assertions like "Paul's doctrine of justification by faith is contradicted by James" or "the Old Testament presents the exodus miracles as fact although the reality is they didn't happen" or even a generality such as "Scripture contains errors and cannot always be counted on to tell us the truth."

Or perhaps, "And now, if there are faults, they are the mistakes of men."

[Rob Bowman]

Duncan,

Good question. Biblical inerrancy does not mean that the biblical narratives present events in exact chronological order. The Gospel writers place their material in different spots in their narrative for thematic or pedagogical reasons. For example, Matthew groups parables of Jesus together into one section, various miracles of Jesus into one section, and so forth.

I don't even pretend to know the issues invovled here but came across some eyars ago a controversy about where exactley Jesus cast out a demon or something to into a herd of pigs and both Matthew and Mark place it at different places, I actaully have to catch a bus here so I wikied it and you can go to the link for further info,

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Gergesenes

I was wondering what people thought about this in terms of inerrancy, Thanks for reading!

[ElfLord]

Duncan,

Good question. Biblical inerrancy does not mean that the biblical narratives present events in exact chronological order. The Gospel writers place their material in different spots in their narrative for thematic or pedagogical reasons. For example, Matthew groups parables of Jesus together into one section, various miracles of Jesus into one section, and so forth.

And what about the Histories? Such as the book of Daniel?

[Vance]

They should be, and I for one hold myself to the same standard as far as anything I say about Mormonism as I would like you to observe with regard to evangelicalism.

Is this an open invitation for me to point out instances of you using a standard for things Mormon that you refuse to use for things Evangelical?

Wow!! If you think I am obnoxious now.

[Hick Preacher]

In a thread now closed Hughes responded to a reply I posted onlineto the I have a few issues with this response. First, I

[Vance]

From one of the sources provided to us,

http://ag.org/top/beliefs/position_papers/pp_downloads/pp_4175_inerrancy.pdf

We conceive the Bible to be in actuality the very Word of God. The divine

Author prompted the original thought in the mind of the writers (Amos 3:8 ); He then

guided their choice of words to express such thoughts (Exodus 4:12,15); and, lastly, He

illumines the mind of the reader of such words in a way that the reader potentially may

comprehend the same truth as was originally in the mind of the writer (1 Corinthians

2:12; Ephesians 1:17,18). Thus, both thought and language are revelatory and inspired.

With this in mind.

Why would "the divine Author" do this?

Assuming Markan priority, what Matthew and Luke did was to produce different writings, separate works, intended to accomplish somewhat different purposes, which included (a) presenting additional material from and about Jesus not found in Mark and (b) presenting their material in ways that would be maximally instructive for their intended readers and that would express most effectively certain themes that each author wished to emphasize.

Why not just get it right the first time?

And why would Rob credit Matthew, Mark and Luke with authorship?

And why would "the divine Author" not get it right the first time?

As in.

Suppose Jeremiah had written "God is very angry with the king" and the king had burned the scroll on which those words were written. So Jeremiah took up a new scroll and wrote "God is very angry with the king, and the king's effort to destroy God's message will not prevail."

Did "the divine Author" change It's mind?

Why would "the divine Author" tell the wrong details to one New Testament (not author, but) scribe, and then tell differently wrong details to another scribe (as in casting out the devils into the swine event)?

[Hick Preacher]

Rob also fails to mention a few other things:

1) The Bible as we know it had not yet been solidified. (eg. Iraneaus calls the Shepard of Hermes Scripture and quotes Liberally from I Clement; Agustine had at least 5-6 more books in his cannonical works than we do in our protestant Bibles)

2) These same Christians also complained that the Jews had indeed altered scriptures. (Iraneaus in my previous post does just that; Justin with Trypho the Jew, just a few years earlier as well)

And there are others.

It might be a good idea to compare the LXX with the DSS. Ths LXX is closer to the DSS than the MT. I read somewhere that 9 out of 10 Modern Bible Old Testaments are based off of the MT text instead of the LXX.

http://www.doxa.ws/Messiah/Lxx_mt.html

So apparently the Jeremiah we have in our Protestant Bible is missing a substantial amount of information.

SCORE!

Joseph Smith / BOM 1

Evangelicals 0

Continuing...

So as you can see... much information is missing from the Bible, just as JS and the BOM said.

EDIT: To add...

http://en.wikipedia....ook_of_Jeremiah

substantial rewritting, two different versions? Hmmm... I wonder which one represents the "God Breathed" version!?

The Shepard is appropriate to read-- I read it about 25 years ago-- its says that Jesus was just another adopted son-- like many others. That will not work in the canon of the Bible. If ECFs were in the habit of making edits to scripture-- they would have just modified a few things in the Shepard- and we would have it today in the Bible.

Peter does teach things that are not in the MT or LXX but are in the DSS-- esp certain things about angels and their first estate I recall.

Some of the formatting or homiletics of Christ's Sermon on the Mount are also seen in the DSS- but not in the MT or LXX.

Yet none of these things really effect inerrancy in my mind. The Bible is a progressive library that contain books that coinside to together that when viewed in the Spirit generate theme that emerges out of that network as consistent system of ideas.

As One has to step back a ways as to visually perceive a broken tile mosaic of a human face- so is the inerrant theme of the Bible. If you view and scrutinize too closely one will only see a junk pile of broken tiles-- but from afar you see the face. So it is with visualising the inerrancy of the Bible.

Both versions of Jeremy are acceptable. One book is like a pixel set in a photograph, a little variation is not going to change the identity of a person in a photo portrait.

[thesometimesaint]

Hick Preacher:

In what way is the Bible inerrant that can not be said of the Book of Mormon?

[ElfLord]

The Shepard is appropriate to read-- I read it about 25 years ago-- its says that Jesus was just another adopted son-- like many others. That will not work in the canon of the Bible. If ECFs were in the habit of making edits to scripture-- they would have just modified a few things in the Shepard- and we would have it today in the Bible.

Peter does teach things that are not in the MT or LXX but are in the DSS-- esp certain things about angels and their first estate I recall.

Some of the formatting or homiletics of Christ's Sermon on the Mount are also seen in the DSS- but not in the MT or LXX.

Yet none of these things really effect inerrancy in my mind. The Bible is a progressive library that contain books that coinside to together that when viewed in the Spirit generate theme that emerges out of that network as consistent system of ideas.

As One has to step back a ways as to visually perceive a broken tile mosaic of a human face- so is the inerrant theme of the Bible. If you view and scrutinize too closely one will only see a junk pile of broken tiles-- but from afar you see the face. So it is with visualising the inerrancy of the Bible.

Both versions of Jeremy are acceptable. One book is like a pixel set in a photograph, a little variation is not going to change the identity of a person in a photo portrait.

But it is going to make all the difference in the world at successfully identifying the person in the Photo with face recognition software.

[maklelan]

I apologize for missing this, Rob. Thanks for pointing me to it. However, I don't see any direct engaging of the scriptural problems I brought up.

maklelan,

You wrote:

I never implied any such thing. I defend the claim that Christ taught scriptural inerrancy based on extant texts reporting what Jesus said, not on hypothetical statements not recorded in extant texts.

But when I asserted that the biblical texts report no such claim you replied that my view of scripture precluded such a conclusion, since it could have slipped out of the text somewhere. I showed that your assertion does not hold for my view of scripture. Since you provided no other rebuttal to my point, I figured you were happy to assume your understanding of my view of scripture for the sake of argument.

You wrote:

You are repeating propaganda. Christians throughout church history have taught that Scripture was without error:

Irenaeus (late second century): "We must believe God, who has given us the right understanding, since the Holy Scriptures are perfect, because they are spoken by the Word of God and the Spirit of God" (Adv. Haer. 2.47).

Augustine (fourth/fifth centuries): "Only to those books which are called canonical have I learned to give honor so that I believe most firmly that no author in these books made any error in writing" (Ep. 82.1).

Thomas Aquinas (thirteenth century): "It is heretical to say that any falsehood whatsoever is contained either in the Gospels or in any canonical Scripture" (Comm. on Job. 13, lect. 1).

Just to mention a few rather notable examples.

I appreciate you bringing these to my attention, and this pushes the notion all the way back to late antiquity, but it's still derivative of the New Testament. I can understand readers of Timothy misunderstanding the text, but I've put forth the argument already that it is not approximating inerrancy.

You wrote:

You are continuing to assume a question-begging understanding of inerrancy to preclude erroneous readings in the manuscripts. All evangelicals agree that the manuscripts have erroneous readings.

I'm doing no such thing. My point was to show that authority =/= inerrancy, and you haven't responded to that yet.

You wrote:

You are mistaken about whether I believe Jesus' statement in Matthew 5:17-18. I most certainly do believe it.

Then you are misreading it. See below.

The church did not abolish the law; it recognized that Jesus had fulfilled the Mosaic Law as a covenant so that it was now superseded by the new covenant.

First, what exactly do you mean by "fulfilled"? Please be specific, and I would appreciate OT descriptions of an anticipated "fulfillment" rather than NT claims of fulfillment.

Next, Matthew is saying that the law wouldn't be fulfilled until the heaven and earth pass away. He made that pretty clear. Jesus does not tell his disciples that those who used to teach his law when it was relevant would be called great in the kingdom of heaven. He says "whoever will do them and will teach them" (future indicative) will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. The law was still in effect when in Matt 5:18-19, and it would remain so, according to the text, until heaven and earth passed away (which would "accomplish all"). That's not up for debate. He very clearly states that it will be in effect until the heaven and earth pass away. Full stop. He then says one's righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees, and he continues by adding stipulations to the law, just like the rabbis. Not only can you not murder, you can't even get angry. Not only can you not commit adultery, but you can't even lust after a woman in your mind. He's making the law even more strict. Luke, on the other hand, said the law stopped being relevant as soon as John began to preach. Tow entirely different scenarios.

The Mosaic Law continues to teach truth, just as much as it ever did; not one statement in the OT becomes false.

There are several statements about the law being eternal. Those statements have clearly become false (unless we decided that it didn't really mean "eternal," which is, of course, false).

Rather, the regulations of the Mosaic covenant become outmoded by the coming of Christ, whose sacrificial death and resurrection inaugurated the new covenant predicted by OT prophets and foreshadowed in the Mosaic sacrificial system.

No such new covenant is predicted in the Hebrew Bible. Jer 31:31-33 predicts a new covenant with the houses of Israel and Judah, but those houses are long gone by the time of the New Testament. Jeremiah is predicting a restoration of the houses of Israel and Judah to the land of Israel after the exile (Jer 29:14). An end to sacrifice was never intimated anywhere, the rhetoric of mercy over sacrifice notwithstanding.

I grant that the issues here are theologically complex, but no NT writer asserts that something in the OT is false. Inerrancy means that the Bible never teaches falsehood; it does not mean that every stipulation in the Bible applies to everyone in every circumstance for all time.

I don't believe I ever inferred or implied that I believed inerrancy meant everything applies all the time. The NT needed to preserve the OT if it wished to insist it was a higher manifestation of Judaism's relationship with God. They accomplished this through the very common practice of reinterpreting past scriptures to make them apply to contemporary circumstances. They certainly believed that they understood them correctly, but I have shown that they simply did not. Their readings conflict entirely with the texts' original significances. Additionally, the OT itself teaches that other parts of the OT are false. Ezekiel's statement that Exod 22:29 was a bad commandment given only to mislead Israel shows that.

The fact is that I believe Matthew 5:17-18 and you clearly do not. You not only reject the jot and tittle of the Old Testament, you reject the broad landscape and dominant worldview of the OT. That is, you maintain that the Exodus and Conquest never happened, that the general narrative of the OT is unhistorical, that the monotheistic perspective that dominates the OT was a late imposition by Deuteronomists that suppressed the most ancient Israelite religious beliefs, and so forth. Your confidence in the OT is almost as weak as Marcion's. This makes debating "inerrancy" somewhat beside the point, except that denial of inerrancy is the foot in the door of radical skepticism regarding the reliability of the Bible. From the presence of editorial "seams" and the like in OT narrative or a handful of theologically curious textual variants (e.g., at Deut. 32:8-9), you proceed to justify sweeping rejection of the general outlook and dominant theological content of the OT. I don't think I'm overstating things here, but correct me if you think I am.

Feel free to state it as broadly or as specifically as you wish, but I'd appreciate substantiation of these accusations, and I would appreciate direct responses to the scriptural problems I brought up. Simply sidestepping them with these unsupported accusations of misguided and inappropriate skepticism doesn't do the trick.

[ElfLord]

From one of the sources provided to us,

http://ag.org/top/be...5_inerrancy.pdf

I liked this one...

Claim: 3. The Bible contains errors in matters of science, history, morality, reasoning,

quotations, etc., so as to render it untrustworthy.

First, while this is a popular claim, it is difficult to substantiate. Both science and

time tend to vindicate the Scriptures.

Second, the Bible does not claim to be a textbook on nonreligious topics. Yet,

when it does speak in these areas, its statements, though incomplete and expressed in

popular terminology, are never in error.

Third, the Bible must be studied against the background of its day. Matters of

culture, language, and literary procedure must be carefully considered. If the Scriptures

are approached with an attitude of sincerity and intelligent inquiry, they will prove to

possess the quality of infallibility.

So what happens when History doesn't line up with the Bible?

There is much uncertainty about the chronology of the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, and Pekah, and from 2 Kgs. 15:1

[Hick Preacher]

Hick Preacher:

In what way is the Bible inerrant that can not be said of the Book of Mormon?

A single Bible book can be said to be inerrant because it is related to a known culture, people and nation and an actual continuous tradition of history. The Bible as a whole is inerrant as a Salvation-History of Israel.

Even if the Bible has flaws, it still can perfectly fulfil it mission to communicates the themes of the human problem, the struggle with the problem, God

[Hick Preacher]

But it is going to make all the difference in the world at successfully identifying the person in the Photo with face recognition software.

It depends on the hermeneutic circle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutic_circle

Face recognition software no doubt uses certain facial recognition algorithms that are applied to tell who is who in the picture or security scan.

One could say that inerrancy vs. errancy determination is too based on certain thematic recognition algorithms. Even if here are disruptions or damage to the matrix of information in the Bible as a whole, still the alogoritmatic motifs remain recognizable in scripture. The knowledge of the motif aids in the backfilling or retrospective interpretation of the meaning of the text.

Similar methods of understanding old and damaged tests early Israel are being applied by DSS researchers-and LDS researches in many areas. The motifs seen in Gnostic books often shed light upon and/or suggest certain interpretations of verses found in the Bible canon. The same holds true of ideas seen in the DSS.

Likewise over the centuries motifs seen with in the 66 book Bible canon are applied in the interpretation of one book verse, when motif or parallel teaching is seen in some other canonical book.

Hick-