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The Bible, in contrast, is claimed by many believers to be infallible, inerrant and perfect. Many base their entire religious ideology around the presumption that the Bible is free from errors or mistakes, so demonstrating the presence of errors is key to rebutting their religious claims. Of course there are errors and mistakes in the Bible ; the only people who deny the presence of errors and mistakes are those with a strong ideological commitment to a belief that the Bible is somehow infallible, inerrant, or perfect.
We can find errors and mistakes everywhere we look in the Bible because it's a collection of texts written centuries and millennia ago. Not all of the writers agreed and they were all ignorant of things humans have learned since then.
Scientific errors — statements that conflict with facts about reality we have learned through scientific investigation — can be found throughout the Bible because the biblical texts were written at times when human knowledge about our world was quite limited. We can't blame ancient writers for knowing less than we do now, but we can blame people alive now for preferring the errors of ancient writers over the reliable knowledge developed today.
Historical errors are mistakes in the historical record: claims about events happening or which happened but which never did and claims about events that would happen in the future but which never transpired. One might expect an ancient text to have an accurate record of ancient events, but historians, as we know, have not always been completely honest with their representation of events. In the past, records were written with an ideological agenda behind them, not for the sake of pure actual accuracy.
Historical mistakes and errors are only to be expected. Under other circumstance, the presence of scientific and historical errors wouldn't be a big deal in an ancient text. They exist in all ancient texts, including religious scriptures, and no one invests a lot of time trying to point them out.
The Bible is different, though, because so many people base their lives around the proposition that it is actually free from errors, infallible, and perfect.
If so many Christians and Jews weren't trying to force civil society and civil laws to conform to their Bible, pointing out its errors and mistakes wouldn't be necessary. Large numbers of Bible errors and mistakes are collected here.
Organized according to the individual books in the Bible, each document explains what the error or mistake is and presents the relevant verses from the Bible so it can be examined.
Sometimes they are because there is a change of speaker. When this is cited in the New Testament, John, not God, is speaking. At other times, writers cite only part of the Old Testament text. Jesus did this at His home synagogue in Nazareth see Luke citing Isa. In fact, He stopped in the middle of a sentence. Others blend two texts into one see Matt.
Occasionally a general truth is mentioned, without citing a specific text. Because two or more accounts of the same event differ, does not mean they are mutually exclusive. Matthew says there was one angel at the tomb after the resurrection; whereas John informs us there were two see But these are not contradictory reports. An infallible mathematical rule easily explains this problem: Where there are two, there is always one. Matthew did not say there was only one angel. There may also have been one angel at the tomb at one point on this confusing morning and two at another.
But if the critic comes to the texts to show they err, then the error is not in the Bible, but in the critic. Likewise, Matthew see informs us that Judas hanged himself. Once more, these accounts are not mutually exclusive.
If Judas hanged himself from a tree over the edge of a cliff or gully in this rocky area, and his body fell on sharp rocks below, then his entrails would gush out just as Luke vividly describes. It is a mistake to assume that everything contained in the Bible is commended by the Bible.
Inspiration encompasses the Bible fully in the sense that it records accurately and truthfully even the lies and errors of sinful beings. The truth of Scripture is found in what the Bible reveals , not in everything it records. The Bible is written for the common person of every generation, and it therefore uses common, everyday language. The use of observational, nonscientific language is not un scientific, it is merely pre scientific.
The Scriptures were written in ancient times by ancient standards, and it would be anachronistic to superimpose modern scientific standards upon them. However, it is no more unscientific to speak of the sun standing still see Josh. Like ordinary speech, the Bible uses round numbers see Josh. It refers to the diameter as being about one-third of the circumference of something see 1 Chron.
While this technically is only an approximation see Lindsell, ; it may be imprecise from the standpoint of a technological society to speak of 3. One should not expect to see actors referring to a wristwatch in a Shakespearean play, nor people in a prescientific age to use precise numbers. Human language is not limited to one mode of expression. So, there is no reason to suppose that only one literary genre was used in a divinely inspired Book.
The Bible reveals a number of literary devices. Whole books are written as poetry e. The Synoptic Gospels feature parables. In Galatians 4, Paul utilizes an allegory. The New Testament abounds with metaphors see 2 Cor. Jesus employed satire see Matt. Figures of speech are common throughout the Bible. It is not a mistake for a biblical writer to use a figure of speech, but it is a mistake for a reader to take a figure of speech literally. Genuine mistakes have been found-in copies of Bible text made hundreds of years after the autographs.
God only uttered the original text of Scripture, not the copies. Therefore, only the original text is without error. Inspiration does not guarantee that every copy is without error, especially in copies made from copies made from copies made from copies.
The later number cannot be correct, or he would have been older than his father. This is obviously a copyist error, but it does not alter the inerrancy of the original. First, these are errors in the copies, not the originals. Second, they are minor errors often in names or numbers which do not affect any teaching. Third, these copyist errors are relatively few in number. Fourth, usually by the context, or by another Scripture, we know which is in error.
For example, Ahaziah must have been Finally, though there is a copyist error, the entire message comes through. For example, if you received a letter with the following statement, would you assume you could collect some money? Even though there is a mistake in the first word, the entire message comes through-you are 20 million dollars richer!
And if you received another letter the next day that read like this, you would be even more sure:. We find a consistent Scriptural witness that God does not lie, for He is incapable of telling falsehood.
If God is incapable of telling a lie, it follows that the words He spoke to those who wrote the words of Scripture must also be perfectly true. At this point, I trust we have sufficient Scriptural basis to conclude that Scripture is authoritative and that the words given by God to men were without error. But how can we know that the words we have today accurately represent those words? Many people do not understand the concept of canon and this is especially true in the fallout of The Da Vinci Code and hundreds of similar books.
There seems to be a misconception that when the Bible was compiled as one book made of many different books and letters, people were engaged in gathering together some writings attributed to God and publishing them in one volume, much as one might do with the writings of a favorite poem or play-write.
But this is not how the canon came together. It later came to describe a standard or rule. By extension, it came to describe an authoritative list of something. It refers to all the writings that were breathed out by God 2 Timothy Thus without the act of inspiration, there could be no canon.
Allow me to provide an example. The canon of John Piper would only be complete when it included every word he had ever written. In truth, only the author really knows what he or she has written. John Piper may have many books available to us, but who is to say that every word of his has been made available to us?
Who is to say that he has not released other books under a pseudonym? Only he infallibly knows his canon. Similarly, it is only God who infallibly knows all He has written. The Scriptural evidence compels us to believe, then, that if we have the complete canon, God helped people find out what it includes. When the Bible was compiled into the book we know and love today, it represented every word God had ever written.
So there is a sense in which the primary task of the men who compiled the Bible was to find the complete canon of God. The primary measure they used was whether a book was inspired by God. This is a topic that could and perhaps should be covered at length, but I am not writing today to defend the canonicity of Scripture. The final topic I will write about in this opening article is transmission which describes how the words of God were transmitted from the original documents to what we have today.
This is a topic that can only be done justice in a much longer treatment, so allow me to merely point to some of the facts. We possess a wealth of biblical manuscripts in the original languages of Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. By this providential means, God has made good His promise to preserve the Scriptures. Having begun to define terms and provide background to the study of inerrancy, I will turn at last to the doctrine in the next article.
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