INERRANCY: Its Meaning and Application for the Inspiration of the Biblical Texts

For more information about the translation, transmission and reliability of the Biblical texts, please read What is the difference between translation and transmission? and How reliable are the Biblical manuscripts?

DEFINITION
The term inerrancy is both a view and a condition regarding the status of the original documents contained in the Holy Bible with respect to their inspiration. P. D. Feinberg defines inerrancy as, "[T]he view that when all the facts become known, they will demonstrate that the Bible in its original autographs and correctly interpreted is entirely true and never false in all it affirms, whether that relates to doctrine or ethics or to the social, physical, or life sciences" (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 1987, p. 142). Feinberg's summary is quite similar to the "Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy." Another definition for this concept is, "[T]he total truthfulness of a source of information that contains no mistakes; the word is 19th-century, but the belief it expresses is as old as Christianity" (New Dictionary of Theology, 1988, p. 337). Unfortunately, the original writings are not available to us today. The assurance of the accuracy of the Holy Scriptures was, is and will be a topic of many debates because the concept is connected with the inspiration, transmission, translation, and interpretation of the Bible.

INSPIRATION
Inerrancy falls under the umbrella of the concept of inspiration with respect to (1) what inspiration means and (2) what extent inspiration is applied. Geisler and Nix summarize this phenomenon by stating that, "The means or process of inspiration is a mystery of the providence of God, but the result of this process is a verbal (the words), plenary (extending to all parts equally), inerrant (errorless), and authoritative record" (A General Introduction to the Bible, 1986, p. 47). God is active and assertive in His communication with His creation because He inspired the prophets and apostles in their words and writings, preserves those documents throughout time, and calls those to compile, copy, translate, and teach from those documents. However, inspiration is not extended to the transmitted texts or the translation of those texts; rather, it is the original documents (called the autographa) that are inspired. Dallas Theological Seminary Professor, Roy B. Zuck, explains:

"Though human writers were used by God to record the Scriptures, using their own styles of diction and expressing their own personalities, their words were the "out-breathing" of God. Inspiration then is the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit whereby He guided and superintended the writers of Scripture so that what they wrote is the Word of God… Because of its divine origin and nature, the Bible in its original writings was without error." (Basic Bible Interpretation, 1991, p. 68)

TRANSMISSION AND TEXTUAL CRITICISM
The autographa is not available to us today; nevertheless, most Christians hold to the accuracy of the scriptures right down to the word-for-word translation. The reason has less to do with translation and more to do with the ancient and meticulous process of copying the texts (transmission) in conjunction with the vast number of manuscripts available today for comparison and study (criticism). Scholars, through careful evaluation of these ancient manuscripts, can recreate a copy of the autographa with extreme accuracy.

First, there are a few, well preserved, manuscripts of the Old Testament writings. There are the Masoretic text, the Leningrad text, and the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Old Testament done ~200 BC). Also, there are the Dead Sea Scroll fragments. By comparing all of these, scholars find incredible consistency between them. The facts are these:

1. 90 percent of the most recent critical edition of the Hebrew text contain no variants.
2. 95 percent of the Old Testament is textually sound.
3. Only a few percent of the 10 percent of variants are significant.
4. Most variants are insignificant and do not affect essential Christian doctrine.
5. The textual differences are inconsequential.
6. Variants present in the Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts are representative of the kinds that Jesus and the Disciples faced; yet, they viewed scripture as authoritative.

(See Dockery, Mathews, Sloan, Foundations for Biblical Interpretation, 1994, pp. 156-159)

Second, the New Testament writings are survived by ~25,000 manuscripts, fragments, uncials, and minuscules, etc. (Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol. 1, 1991, p. 40). The amount is overwhelming and unparalleled by any other ancient document or set of documents in history. Carbon dating and writing styles give scholars the ability to categorize these writings into scribal families and can trace the history of any copy errors that creep in. Bruce Metzger, Professor of New Testament Language and Literature, Emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary, categorizes these anomalies into seven causes of textual variants by the copyists. These seven causes seem to reflect poorly on the scribes; however, at the end of his chapter on this subject Metzger writes, "Lest the foregoing examples of alterations should give the impression that scribes were altogether wilful and capricious in transmitting ancient copies of the New Testament, it ought to be noted that other evidence points to the careful and painstaking work on the part of many faithful copyists" (The Text of the New Testament, Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 1992, p. 206). Spelling and grammar account for most of the errors. Of the 2000-plus lines of text in the New Testament, approximately 40 lines (~0.5%) are questionable (A General Introduction to the Bible, 1986, p. 475). However, the variants do not effect the proof-texts of the essential Christian doctrines. For example, the oldest known manuscripts do not contain the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8:12),or the ending of Mark 16 (vs. 14-20). However, he post-resurrection events in Mark are testified of in Matthew, Luke, and John (and to some degree in Acts). It is important to keep in mind that even though these passages are in doubt, it does not make them errors. The concepts they teach are found in other places throughout the Bible.

The race is on to find the copy that sits closest to the original. Some may view the lack of the autographa as problematic as far as trusting the precision of textual criticism and the resulting translation. However, as previously mentioned, scholars possess thousands of copies that date back several centuries and some are dated close to a few decades after the originals were penned. Dr. F. F. Bruce states, "The Bodmer Library, Geneva, houses another important collection of NT [New Testament] papyrus codices, including a copy of John's gospel dated c.A.D. 200 (P66), an incomplete copy of Luke and John perhaps a decade or two earlier (P75)…" (New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1978, p. 627). The process of document comparison and correction is the science of textual criticism and it involves comparing documents, finding the variants between copies, determining which copy was produced from which copy, and figuring out what is the closest reading to the original. Note that this science is designed for the restoration of ancient literature, religious or secular, and is not an invention of Christian scholarship. "Like so many disciplines that we take for granted in our Western culture, textual criticism originated among the Greeks. Its rise and development were connected with the Homeric epics," notes Bruce Metzger. He goes on to say, "A more scientific criticism of the text of Homer was developed in the Hellenistic age" (The Text of the New Testament, Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 1992, p. 149).

Lastly, the composite manuscripts make very accurate Hebrew and Greek texts. Scholars compile the available ancient writings and then produce a compilation manuscript (or critical text) that contains corrections for as many variants as identified. An example of this is the Nestle-Aland text of the New Testament (see Kurt and Baraba Aland's work, The Text of the New Testament). Since the texts identify the variants we have strong evidence for the preservation of the original, inerrant message through the transmission of the manuscripts.

TRANSLATION
The scribes meticulously copied the documents and in most cases took years to complete one Bible. The manuscripts were copied and transmitted in their original languages at first. Later, they were translated into other languages (e.g. Latin, Syrian) and transmitted. Martin Luther was the first known to translate the Bible into German and Tyndale was persecuted while writing his English translation. The King James Version (circa 1611) was the first English edition mass produced thanks to the printing press. Today, we celebrate the availability of the Bible in most of the languages of the world of which, a majority are translated from the original languages. Our English versions come in several reading levels, from child to adult, while ministries, like Wycliffe Bible Translators, diligently work to translate portions of God's word for the obscure languages of indigenous peoples in other countries.

There are excellent word-for-word translations of the Greek and Hebrew critical texts accompanied by the version translation on the opposite page. These are called interlinear Bibles and they have the original language with the appropriate English word below it and then the NIV (or NASB, KJV, NKJV) translation on the page next to it. In addition, scholars provide dictionaries (called lexicons) of the root words of the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek tongues. Some of the more popular lexicons are Brown, Drivers & Briggs' Hebrew Lexicon for the Old Testament, Thayer's Greek Lexicon for the New, or Strong's Greek-Hebrew Dictionary for both Testaments. From all of these helps, you can see that it is much more than a message that is captured by this process.

INTERPRETATION
The mastery of the original language is not necessary if you believe that the scholars responsible for your English translation of choice are sufficiently qualified to translate from the original languages. At the very least a scholar or group of scholars surely must understand all that is involved in transforming one language into another. An understanding of the grammar, figures of speech, parables, metaphors, customs, and culture are all essential to achieve a truly accurate interpretation of the text. Also, for our personal study, scholars provide resources and commentaries to aid with the methods for interpreting passages of scripture that contain poetry, figures of speech, prophecy, etc. Dr. Roy Zuck's, Basic Bible Interpretation, is an excellent resource for this subject of interpretation.

ADDITIONAL EVIDENCES
Along with the preservation of scripture comes other evidence of its divine authenticity. Josh McDowell has an excellent chapter on fulfilled Bible prophecy in Chapter 11 of Evidence that Demands a Verdict Vol. 1. In addition, the historical accuracy of the Bible builds confidence in trusting the details not documented in history. We cannot forget the changed lives of those who discovered the truth of the Bible through reading, study, and prayer and these things testify of its inspiration. Another is the testimony of the early Church Fathers such as Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, and Augustine (Foundations for Biblical Interpretation, 1994, p. 25). As Pastor James Emery White observes, "Jesus proclaimed the absolute authority of the Scripture (Matt. 4:1-11; 5:18; John 10:35). The apostles claimed absolute authority for their writings as well, now contained in the NT (e.g., 2 Cor. 12:19; 1 Thess. 2:13)." He goes on to reference other passages as pointing to the self-proclamation of the authority of Scripture as found in the Bible (Ibid., pp. 32, 33).

CONCLUSION
The accuracy of the Holy Bible involves the concepts of inspiration, transmission, translation, and interpretation. Within the idea of inspiration rests the condition of the inerrancy of the original documents of the Bible. While we do not possess the originals we can construct, with great accuracy, a critical text based on the available manuscripts. This critical (or composite) text is accurate to within five percent for the Old Testament and to one half of a percent for the New Testament when examining and correcting the variations between the manuscripts. This text serves as an incredible representative of the original and the small portions that are in doubt do not affect any major or essential doctrines of the Christian church. This evidence makes the concept of inerrancy, as applied to the originals, a reasonable position for a Christian to hold to. In addition, translations of this text are available in most languages and scholars provide aids for understanding the Greek and Hebrew vocabulary and for correctly interpreting the passages of the Bible.

RECOMMENDED READING

Kurt and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament

Gleason Archer, Encyclodedia of Bible Difficulties

Gleason Archer, A Survey of the Old Testament Introduction

F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents

Dockery, Mathews, Sloan, Foundations for Biblical Interpretation

Geisler and Nix, From God to Us

Geisler and Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible

Josh McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol. 1

Bruce Metzger, The Text of the New Testament, Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aland, Kurt and Barbara Aland. The Text of the New Testament. 2nd ed. Translated by Erroll F. Rhodes. Grand Rapids, Mich.:Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1995.

Dockery, David S., Kenneth A. Mathews, and Robert B. Sloan, eds. Foundations for Biblical Interpretation. Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1994.

Douglas, J. D., ed. The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Regency, 1978.

Elwell, Walter A., ed. Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1987.

Ferguson, Sinclair B., David F. Wright, and J. I. Packer, eds. New Dictionary of Theology. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1988.

Geisler, Norman L. and William E. Nix. A General Introduction to the Bible. Revised ed. Chicago: Moody Press, 1986.

McDowell, Josh. Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Volume I. San Bernardino, Calif.: Here's Life, 1991.

Metzger, Bruce M. The Text of the New Testament, Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. 3rd, enlarged ed. New York: Oxford Press, 1992.

Zuck, Roy B. Basic Bible Interpretation. Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books, 1991