By Neil Earle
Speaking of God’s Word as revealed in Scripture, Psalm 119:103 exults, “How sweet are your words to my mouth, sweeter than honey to my taste.”
The 1950s comedian Jackie Gleason used the phrase “How sweet it is,” perhaps never dreaming that the Bible beat him to the punch more than 2500 years earlier.
This year of the King James Bible’s 400th anniversary our congregation has been reflecting a lot on the translation, the text, the preservation of the most famous incarnation of God’s word as written text. One area of questions that arise when we broach this subject is the question of accuracy, of reliability. After all, the Bible was written over a 1400 year period on three continents by more than sixty writers. Could it have survived the journey intact? The respected conservative scholar I. Howard Marshall has concluded, “God has not thought it necessary that we should have an error-free version of the text.” He also added: “The Bible does not give us absolute historical precision and indeed it does not claim to do so” (Biblical Inspiration, pages 67, 62).
What is going on in Biblical scholarship when such a highly respected advocate of biblical truth as Dr. Marshall can say such things?
Well, this introduces our subject today, the idea of inspiration and especially the battle between the Highly Critical and the Inerrantists. What’s that you say? In…era ….what? Well, let’s make that clear by examining three approaches to the text and what they have to say.
Today the most popular widely-touted assumption about the Bible is that it is a hodgepodge of errors, misstatements and contradictions. Ever since the French Enlightenment and even before, when incisive thinkers in Europe were trying to undermine the old order of Church and State, the Biblical documents came under unceasing attack. It became an intellectual fad especially after Charles Darwin and the evolution controversy of the late 1800s. Modernist scholars arose who attacked such Biblical themes as the virgin birth, Christ’s miracles, and the validity of the early chapters of Genesis. This frontal assault on what many saw as the essence of the faith led to the fundamentalist counterattack in the early 1900s. The evangelical rallying of the 1970s and 1980s symbolized by the Reverend Jerry Falwell built on this idea of defending the essentials. Maybe the Bible’s would-be defenders meant well but by introducing the concept of inerrancy they led Bible students down another detour that some still gladly pursue. The proud bumper sticker “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it,” is a case in point.
Inerrancy teachers postulate that the Bible, as originally written, can never be wrong. In the original draft – apart from the copies of copies we have in today’s Bibles every statement made on science, geology, history or whatever is absolutely correct. “The original authors did not and could not make mistakes.” That is the Inerrantist position. Well, we can understand where these advocates were coming from in the skeptical and critical climate of the science-obsessed 20th century, but…this idea cannot stand. For one thing, no one has seen an original letter from Paul or a first edition Genesis. These documents have crumbled into dust. We do depend on copies made by highly dedicated men and women across the centuries to bring us the living word for now (Acts 7:38). Today there are thousands and thousands of highly-proficient people called text scholars whose job it is to define and chase down the shades of meaning in the actual Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek phrases which become the basis of the translator’s art.
One little book that can settle a lot of worries on that score – that is, how good were the copies – is The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? by F. F. Bruce. This short book is getting a little dated now but is still an invaluable addition to any Christian's library. When some people humorously compiled a “List of Books Atheists should never read” – this was among the top ten. Bruce was a brilliant scholar with an ability to write to the common man or woman.
So, what’s it to be? The Hypercritical or the Inerrantist view?
Well, good Christians like to be followers of Paul who counseled, “Let your moderation be known to all.”
Professor Howard Marshal outlined a sensible middle-of-the-road position on this subject when he stated that when it comes to its intended purposes, the Bible is infallible. This is the traditional Christian position called “inspiration.” The word comes from the Greek “God-breathed” in 2 Timothy 3:16. “The Bible is entirely trustworthy for the purposes for which God inspired it,” states Dr. Marshall (page 53). And just what was that purpose? Paul outlined it in 2 Timothy 3:15 when he said that the Holy Scriptures “are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” John 20:31 puts it this way: “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
In other words it seem fairly clear from these verses that the Bible was not intended to be the last word in objective history, biography, science, chemistry and geology. No. It had an admitted unabashed theological and spiritual agenda – to make the life and teaching of Jesus Christ clear and attractive to readers to help them receive salvation. Jesus and the eternal life available through him is the golden thread through the Law, the Prophets and the Writings, as Jesus himself explained (Luke 24:44).
We have already learned from the apostle John, author of the Fourth Gospel, that he was not writing an unbiased scholarly account. He wanted readers to believe in Jesus the Son of God. Many historians would be critical of that approach today but then the Bible’s purpose is not to stake everything on accurate, spotless history. No. There are many examples of what Marshall and others call “historical imprecision” in the Bible. Ancient writers allowed for much flexibility in telling their story. History is often the facet in which the diamond gem of the story is set. In Acts 22:7, for example, Paul testifies that at his conversion he and his companions fell to the ground after a supernatural light appeared. Luke wrote earlier, however, that Paul’s companions remained standing (Acts 9:7). The easy way out is to argue that they first fell, then stood. But that would be making a “cute” argument that comes across as sleight of hand. Similarly, in Acts 21:11, when a prophet foretells that Jewish enemies would bind Paul. But Acts 21:33 shows the Romans binding Paul. Rather than elaborating a long list of clever-sounding rebuttals (which place Christians on the defensive) these and other points make it appear that we are wise to focus on the writer’s main intent in telling the story. The large numbers in Kings and Chronicles are heavily debated. That does not take away from the main point that it was God who gave kings such as David his kingdom (2 Samuel 22:21).
Other discrepancies occur as in Matthew 27:9 where Matthew misquotes his Old Testament source. It is Zechariah not Jeremiah who wrote the text Matthew cited (Zechariah 11:12). But the translator Jerome, preparing the first Bible between two covers around 400 AD, saw such points but was not unduly troubled by them. “The Bible writers speak with one voice,” Jerome ruminated, so in some ways it matters not who made the original declaration. In 1 Corinthians 1: 14-16 Paul changes his opinion and corrects himself form one verse to the next. Context is important. Paul makes a mistake but it is just the kind of mistake we all make when we are upset or mad at our subordinates. The error adds to the total effect of the message. It has that ring of reality about it.
Marshall says it well: "[T]he Bible does contain what may be regarded as errors and contradictions by modern standards but which are not in fact contrary to its own standards and purpose.” The purpose was to convey the message of salvation in many creative and sometimes highly imaginative ways – by poem, story, allegory, inventory, genealogy, prophetic utterance, prayer, riddles, paradoxes, laments, clever witticisms, parables, and its own distinctive pre-modern way of telling the story. For example, there was such a thing in ancient writing as “Block Logic” where two different statements were purposely set next to each other, as in Proverbs 26:4-5. This passage details how two different occasions call for two different reactions. They are juxtaposed to create attention and heighten interest and also for purposes of easier memorization.
Yes the Bible is almost a world of its own, a small universe of meaning and symbolism and diverse styles, electric with excitement and encouragement. What a task the Bible writers had! They were trying to capture and encapsulate inside its pages some of the glory and majesty and some of the thought patterns of the Great God of the Universe. We can spend all day (and you’ve hear me do that – or at least come close to it) talking about the Bible's amazing reliability, how it preserved in its pages the memories of whole empires. Yes, there were people whom scholars thought were once lost to history or who never existed – the Hittites, the Assyrians, for example – and yet were later found to be as extensive as the Bible had indicated. This is a wonderful theme, the theme of what is called “apologetics,” and you have heard us cover some of these very points here in church. The fact is that for the Christian reader, illuminated by the Holy Spirit, there is quite simply no other book that possesses the punch and drawing power of the Scriptures.
Let’s end with a quote by James Packer: ‘Still, as on the Emmaus road (where Jesus appeared to two forlorn disciples) nothing brings such balm and such a glow to the sad heart as to find that some part of Scripture, written centuries ago, nonetheless deals with precisely one’s own personal problem, and that central to its resolution of that problem is the abiding reality of the person, place, work and grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (God has Spoken, page 13). How true! How sweet it is!