Article by: Kenneth J. Ester
The Inerrant Bible
It is often claimed that the Bible we read today is the inerrant Word of God. It is believed that the writers were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write what God wanted written. Is this true? Yes and no.
Yes, the writers were inspired by the Holy Spirit. Yes they wrote what God wanted written. When the writers were done writing their manuscripts, they truly did have the inerrant Word of God. Then they handed those manuscripts over to an assistant and he took them to Kinkos and made a bunch of perfect copies. Right? Ummm, no!
You see, in the first centuries, they had no way of creating copies of manuscripts other than to hand the original manuscript to a copyist who would re-write the entire manuscript word for word. Then do it again and again. If someone wanted their own copy of the manuscripts, they would get one of those copies and have their own copyist re-write it word for word. The problem is that those men copying the manuscripts word for word were not God inspired.
In 1611 when they translated the manuscripts into the King James Version of the Bible, those scholars nearly worked miracles of their own. They had to compare the many manuscripts they had at their disposal and look for all of the differences, and there were a lot of them. You see, when a copyist would re-write the manuscript, they would make minor mistakes. They would spell a word wrong or invert a number. Sometimes they lost their place and missed entire portions. There are even cases where they intentionally made changes, replacing one word for another believing the word they chose is a better word for their time period. In some places they even added entire sentences as they tried to make something clearer to the reader. Then when the next copyist made a copy years later, he would copy the changes thinking they were correct and make his own mistakes and changes. So errors and changes, though minor or well meant, compiled on top of each other with each new copyist who re-wrote a manuscript.
So the scholars of 1611 had to sort through all kinds of differences and try and figure out what was the correct word and what was not. What were copyist errors and what were original words. If they found that the oldest manuscripts said one thing and the more recent manuscripts had something else, they would conclude that the older manuscripts were correct unless they had a specific reason to believe they were not. In the end, they gave us the KJV Bible and it was an awesome job they did, but it was not perfect. Which is not there fault necessarily. They could only do what they could do with the manuscripts they had at the time.
Today there are KJV Purists who claim the KJV is the only trustworthy Bible out there. They will point to the verses in other versions that are missing as their proof, which only shows their lack of understanding of the truth. The truth is, we have thousands more manuscripts than we had over 400 years ago. As they have studied the many more manuscripts, they have found that there are verses in the KJV that are not in the oldest manuscripts we have now. So it has become apparent that those verses were added by copyists later on and not a part of the original manuscripts. KJV purists are fighting to hold the KJV Bible as the trustworthy Bible when in fact it contains verses the original manuscripts did not have.
Another problem is that the scholars themselves are not God Inspired, so they also made some mistakes in their translations. Translating ancient Hebrew and Greek to English is no simple feat. Which is one reason why we have so many different versions today. Not only are they trying to translate the words correctly, but they are dealing with making them understood by today's readers. Some KJV Purists will argue that is one reason the new versions cannot be trusted, but they ignore that the scholars for the KJV did that same exact thing. Do you think the people of the first century spoke with all the "thees" and "thous" and all that? Of course not! They translated the manuscripts to the Old English ways of speaking of the 1600's. Today we don't speak like that, so why continue to use it?
The Bibles we have on the shelves today are not the true inerrant Word of God. They have minor translation mistakes as well as copyist mistakes. Overall, many scholars believe what we have on the shelves today are up to around 99.5% accurate to the original manuscripts. That is awesome, but that is not good enough to be called "inerrant"!
Look, I will attest to the belief that the Bible we have today is the true Word of God. I just wont go so far as say it is inerrant. Inerrant means to be perfect with no errors at all. Its not perfect. There are in fact mistakes in translations as well as copyist mistakes. However, I will claim it is the "True Word of God" because there are very few problems with anything that has to do with theology or anything important. In the rare cases where there is a translation problem in a version, it can be identified and corrected by comparing the different versions as well as studying with Strong's Concordance.
There are indeed some very bad versions out there in my opinion. Just don't mess with versions that are not accepted by scholars to be accurate. Stick with the KJV, NIV, NASB, Young's and a few others. Compare those and you can find the absolute true Word of God! However, if you stick with just one version, no matter which version it is, you are limiting yourself to make the same mistakes that are in that one version.
Most articles seem to use the KJV or NIV. There are some others but those two seem to be the most common. So when I study the Bible, I stick with the NASB. Then when I read an article and look up the verses they use, I look them up with the NASB and by default I am always comparing at least two different versions. Of the different versions, I have found the NASB to be one of the most accurate as there seems to be fewer places where I found it caused me any problems finding God's Truth instead of man's interpretation. Yet it is written in a plain enough English that I don't get stuck trying to stumble through it. Yet even though I would promote the NASB, I would never say to trust it completely.
The original manuscripts were definitely the inerrant Word of God. Today, we do not have the original manuscripts and what we have on the shelves is only a very close copy. It can be trusted to be the true Word of God. There are truly no real contradictions, and I have looked into over a hundred the atheists had made claims about. It is absolutely the trustworthy Word of God. It just isn't quite exactly inerrant.
Yes, the writers were inspired by the Holy Spirit. Yes they wrote what God wanted written. When the writers were done writing their manuscripts, they truly did have the inerrant Word of God. Then they handed those manuscripts over to an assistant and he took them to Kinkos and made a bunch of perfect copies. Right? Ummm, no!
You see, in the first centuries, they had no way of creating copies of manuscripts other than to hand the original manuscript to a copyist who would re-write the entire manuscript word for word. Then do it again and again. If someone wanted their own copy of the manuscripts, they would get one of those copies and have their own copyist re-write it word for word. The problem is that those men copying the manuscripts word for word were not God inspired.
In 1611 when they translated the manuscripts into the King James Version of the Bible, those scholars nearly worked miracles of their own. They had to compare the many manuscripts they had at their disposal and look for all of the differences, and there were a lot of them. You see, when a copyist would re-write the manuscript, they would make minor mistakes. They would spell a word wrong or invert a number. Sometimes they lost their place and missed entire portions. There are even cases where they intentionally made changes, replacing one word for another believing the word they chose is a better word for their time period. In some places they even added entire sentences as they tried to make something clearer to the reader. Then when the next copyist made a copy years later, he would copy the changes thinking they were correct and make his own mistakes and changes. So errors and changes, though minor or well meant, compiled on top of each other with each new copyist who re-wrote a manuscript.
So the scholars of 1611 had to sort through all kinds of differences and try and figure out what was the correct word and what was not. What were copyist errors and what were original words. If they found that the oldest manuscripts said one thing and the more recent manuscripts had something else, they would conclude that the older manuscripts were correct unless they had a specific reason to believe they were not. In the end, they gave us the KJV Bible and it was an awesome job they did, but it was not perfect. Which is not there fault necessarily. They could only do what they could do with the manuscripts they had at the time.
Today there are KJV Purists who claim the KJV is the only trustworthy Bible out there. They will point to the verses in other versions that are missing as their proof, which only shows their lack of understanding of the truth. The truth is, we have thousands more manuscripts than we had over 400 years ago. As they have studied the many more manuscripts, they have found that there are verses in the KJV that are not in the oldest manuscripts we have now. So it has become apparent that those verses were added by copyists later on and not a part of the original manuscripts. KJV purists are fighting to hold the KJV Bible as the trustworthy Bible when in fact it contains verses the original manuscripts did not have.
Another problem is that the scholars themselves are not God Inspired, so they also made some mistakes in their translations. Translating ancient Hebrew and Greek to English is no simple feat. Which is one reason why we have so many different versions today. Not only are they trying to translate the words correctly, but they are dealing with making them understood by today's readers. Some KJV Purists will argue that is one reason the new versions cannot be trusted, but they ignore that the scholars for the KJV did that same exact thing. Do you think the people of the first century spoke with all the "thees" and "thous" and all that? Of course not! They translated the manuscripts to the Old English ways of speaking of the 1600's. Today we don't speak like that, so why continue to use it?
The Bibles we have on the shelves today are not the true inerrant Word of God. They have minor translation mistakes as well as copyist mistakes. Overall, many scholars believe what we have on the shelves today are up to around 99.5% accurate to the original manuscripts. That is awesome, but that is not good enough to be called "inerrant"!
Look, I will attest to the belief that the Bible we have today is the true Word of God. I just wont go so far as say it is inerrant. Inerrant means to be perfect with no errors at all. Its not perfect. There are in fact mistakes in translations as well as copyist mistakes. However, I will claim it is the "True Word of God" because there are very few problems with anything that has to do with theology or anything important. In the rare cases where there is a translation problem in a version, it can be identified and corrected by comparing the different versions as well as studying with Strong's Concordance.
There are indeed some very bad versions out there in my opinion. Just don't mess with versions that are not accepted by scholars to be accurate. Stick with the KJV, NIV, NASB, Young's and a few others. Compare those and you can find the absolute true Word of God! However, if you stick with just one version, no matter which version it is, you are limiting yourself to make the same mistakes that are in that one version.
Most articles seem to use the KJV or NIV. There are some others but those two seem to be the most common. So when I study the Bible, I stick with the NASB. Then when I read an article and look up the verses they use, I look them up with the NASB and by default I am always comparing at least two different versions. Of the different versions, I have found the NASB to be one of the most accurate as there seems to be fewer places where I found it caused me any problems finding God's Truth instead of man's interpretation. Yet it is written in a plain enough English that I don't get stuck trying to stumble through it. Yet even though I would promote the NASB, I would never say to trust it completely.
The original manuscripts were definitely the inerrant Word of God. Today, we do not have the original manuscripts and what we have on the shelves is only a very close copy. It can be trusted to be the true Word of God. There are truly no real contradictions, and I have looked into over a hundred the atheists had made claims about. It is absolutely the trustworthy Word of God. It just isn't quite exactly inerrant.