At 01:09 PM 11/28/2007, Dick Fischer wrote:
>I posted part of the original message to my
>Southern Baptist Sunday School class. This was
>the response from the class leader, a truly nice
>guy, a devout Christian, and someone I genuinely
>like and respect ... Any comments any of you
>would care for me to forward to him?
>
>Dick,
>
>I read the attached message. I just want to say
>that I do not accept or agree with Science in
>regards to Christianity. I accept God's word
>as inerrant in its entirety from Genesis to Revelation. [....] "
@ Out of many comments that one could legitimately make, here's one.. ~ Janice
Note that word, "copies" When discussing Biblical
inerrancy, it is important to remember that ONLY
the original texts of the Bible are claimed to have been inerrant.
Inerrancy and Human Ignorance
http://www.tektonics.org/gk/inerrancy.html
[huge snip]
Religious and Philosophical Reasons Why We Don’t Have Inerrant Copies
This is the granddaddy of the issues in answering
this argument. The first aspect of it is one that
Skeptics themselves should easily see.
Hardened skeptics often call Christians
"bibliolaters" - thus implying that the Bible is
some sort of "leather-covered security blanket"
that Christians worship and would be frantic
without. This charge is unfortunately sometimes
true, although I could say the same of some
skeptics and their copies of Origin of the
Species, or of certain adherents of certain
Skeptics in regards to their own fearless
leaders. At any rate, we can see easily why,
first, this dichotomy is wrong, in terms of a
blanket assessment; and second, how this leads us
to the biggest reason why we do not have inerrant copies of Scripture today.
First, it is plain that neither the Bible nor a
belief in inerrancy is required to be a
Christian. If this were so, then skeptics like
Frank Morison or C. S. Lewis, who believed in the
historicity of the Resurrection but not in the
inerrancy of the Gospel reports of it, would
never become Christians. People behind the Iron
and Bamboo Curtains would never have become
Christians in times when the Bible was forbidden
in those countries and they often had no more of
the Bible than a few pitiable verses handwritten
on a paper towel. Finally, in this day beyond
when most people cannot even remember what their
name is without consulting their drivers'
license, literacy would be a prerequisite for
belief, which would be absurd being that the
Bible was written in a time when up to 95% of the
given population was illiterate. So the charge of
"bibliolatry," while unfortunately sometimes true
or appearing to be so, is nevertheless not a true
representation of Christian belief. Moreover,
given the circumstances, it is clear that "the
Word of God" for most people was not what was
written on paper, but was the original idea (what
I have called the "home office" copy) recorded on
paper. Few could have appreciated the
significance of a written, inerrant original document.
Second, it should by now be obvious, in light of
this, why we do not have inerrant copies of the
Bible today - if we did, then you might well see
genuine, widespread bibliolatry. Look back on the
checkered history of mankind in general and the
church in particular. Every Skeptic worth his
salt can recite the litany of sins associated
with, for example, the sale of relics in the
early church. These "relics" were alleged to be
pieces of Christian history that the common
believer could buy, and in exchange not only have
it for what it allegedly was, but also perhaps
thereby purchase some time for themselves or
deceased relatives out of purgatory, among other
things! The relics themselves are well-known -
most of us have heard the famous statement about
there being enough wood from the "True Cross" to
build a seaworthy ship. Other relics have ranged
from the indelicate (vials of Mary's breast milk)
to the mundane (toenail clippings of the
Apostles) to the frankly disgusting (a whole TOE of an Apostle).
Now if this is how allegedly authentic pieces of
Christian history were regarded, how would
inerrant copies of Scripture have been received?
True, there are a few of us (including myself,
and a friendly Skeptic who had been writing to
me) who would not submit to such temptations; but
by far the majority of the population in history
has not been of the sort who could resist
according some special worship to supposedly holy
items. But for comparison we might consider
Muslim treatment of copies of the Quran. While it
does not seem that Muslims hold to quite the view
that every copy is inspired, consider some
standard treatment of the text even in its
current state (thanks to "Wildcat" for this info):
It has to be wrapped in a nice cloth. It has to
be put on this thing that looks like a stand so
you don't put it on your lap. It has to be duly
kissed on front, back and top before you open it
and most of all you believe it is all the truth
and NEVER EVER DARE question it's integrity and
when you read it you have to recite it in a
prose, you don't read it like a book and some
people move back and forth, i.e sway slightly when they recite it.
Christians are already called bibliolaters now;
what if they went this far? How far would any
"people of the book" go if they believed every copy was divinely inspired?
Furthermore, consider that the laity in many
parts of the early church were forbidden to have
their own copies of Scripture; how if those
copies had each been inscribed with God's seal?
The Scripture copies themselves would become the
most expensive sort of relic, put distantly out
of reach of the common people. Some would have
taken to mind to destroy as many copies as they
could, and prevent the production of later
copies, to increase the value of their own
copies. Scribes would be hired to produce (or NOT
produce) more copies for their wealthy patrons.
This would be the problems of relics a thousandfold.
About 15 years ago, I went to see a traveling
exhibit featuring the original Declaration of
Independence. Visitors were carefully searched
before they entered; a maze of pathways led you
to center stage; and there, at the very heart of
the exhibit, one could be permitted to gaze upon
that fragile, revered document - inside a
glass-topped case that emerged from a secure area
below the observation level. If this is the type
of concern we show for our Declaration of
Independence, what would we do with inerrant
copies of the Bible? Would we approve of our
government, or a church, or some conglomerate,
hoarding the inerrant copies and guarding them
jealously? The Word of God should be accessible
to everyone; and if every translation and copy
came out inerrant, there would undoubtedly be
political, economic or ecclesiastical powers who
would take steps to take advantage of the
situation, and declare something to the effect
that "the common people" had no right or need to
have their own copies, just as did indeed happen
at certain points in Middle Age and pre-Middle
Age history. To the Skeptic who protests, as many
have, that God could or should have taken steps
to ensure that every copy and translation was
inerrant, I say that if that had been done, the
results would have been tragic - far worse than
what actually has happened in our history.
Bottom line: God wants us to worship HIM, not
scraps of paper. Our very nature to worship that
which we can see and touch and consider holy
proves that we would not be able to handle the
responsibility of inerrant copies. Indeed, it may
be said that the while the creation of inerrant
originals was highly important, their loss and destruction was equally so.
There are some less important philosophical
reasons why we do not have inerrant copies and
translations. Let's discuss each of these briefly.
* Not having inerrant copies encourages
freely-made decisions and independent thinking.
* One of the most amazing arguments I have
seen from Skeptics is that Christians like to
impose their will upon others. This, too, is
unfortunately too-often true in some ways; but by
the same token, how can such skeptics then
complain about a lack of inerrant copies and
translations of Scripture? God would not force a
decision for His Son upon anyone; it is a choice
that must be freely made. The presence of
inerrant copies would implicitly coerce people
into conversion. Skeptics, if you think that
making your own decision and thinking for
yourself is right and proper, you should welcome
the fact that God did not give us inerrant copies
of Scripture. But it seems that such complainers
only want a God who imposes at their own convenience.
* Inerrant translations would be logistically
impossible for mankind to handle.
* No one person has the same exact
understanding. No language, no culture, has
exactly the same structure and outlook. That
being the case, how would it be logistically
possible - and again, not coercive - to provide
inerrant copies and translations for every person on earth?
* An amusing cartoon in a Christian magazine
depicted a group of people, each carrying their
own personal translation of the Bible. The titles
reflected that the Bibles were indeed their "own"
translation: "Good News for Bob," "The Living
Word for Joe," etc. Now God could indeed by His
power have given each of us a special book; but
if they were attuned to each of us, what is
likely the first thing that will happen? Skeptics
delight in pointing out how much difference their
is between believers when it comes to translating
and interpreting particular parts of the Bible;
imagine how bad that controversy would be if we
each had our own copy with different contents
attuned to ourselves. Again, man's nature, and
the coercive nature of such an action, would make
this impossible; and this would be so even if
every copy was exactly the same -- people would
still let their own ideas rule the roost. And
related to that idea is this one:
* God's message in the Bible may be summed up
in just a few exemplary verses, upon which the
rest are built; and these few verses are the height of simplicity.
* Do human laws seem complicated to you? As
those involved directly in governmental work are
aware, laws come in many layers. Statutes form
the initial basis for action; then agencies
create codes whereby they plan to adhere to those
laws. Departments within agencies create
procedural rules whereby they follow those codes.
It is a complicated mess that has been the
subject of many a complaint of bureaucracy.
* In contrast, the Bible's messages are
mostly straightforward and simple. The Bible has
two primary components, OT and NT, that may be
summarized easily in a few words. Jesus and the
Jews of His time and before summarized the OT
with the two commands to love God with all that
was in you, and love your neighbor as yourself.
The NT, too, may be summarized with just a few
words - notably those of John 3:16, although
certainly there are other good candidates.
* As noted earlier, neither the Bible nor
belief in its inerrancy is required to become a
Christian. All that is needed is acceptance of
these few words and what they represent; the rest
is equivalent, spiritually speaking, of
enforcement codes - how to live the life that God
has called you to. Thus there is no need for
inerrant copies when the basic message, all that
is essentially needed, is so crystal-clear.
|
[]
Issues of Translation Are Our Languages Perfect Enough?
The words of Jim Merritt above are good for a
decent belly laugh. Following his (apparent)
logic means that if someone wants to translate
Meritt's phrase, "I'm not disagreeing with
events, I'm disagreeing with what is WRITTEN"
into German, and it comes out reading, "I like
sticking weinerschnitzel in my ear and I like
riding goats bareback," then it is Meritt's
fault, not the translator's fault, and it would
merely be an "amusing misdirection" on Meritt's
part to say that his words were translated improperly.
But there is always an initial question that is
quite legitimate: Why do we have translation
problems with the Bible? The answer is that there
are ALWAYS translation problems with ANY document
and translations between ANY two languages. There
are a variety of reasons for this; let's look at
some specifically relevant to the Bible.
Textual criticism has indicated that we have
received the text of our Bible quite well - we
are able to achieve 95% accuracy for the OT, 99%
accuracy in the NT. That means only 50 pages of
your OT and 3 of your NT (in a Bible without
commentary) are questionable - and that is a
transcription rate that historians would be
delighted to have for any ancient document.
Indeed, it is amazing to observe some of the
measures taken, especially by the Masoretic
scribes, to ensure accurate transcription. But
the scribes, concerned with copying "word for
word," were not attempting to accommodate later
humans who might not understand the terms,
figures of speech, etc. of their day. The
reverence associated - even necessitated - with
transcribing God's Word certainly would be
impressed upon Biblical scribes, and would
reinforce the idea that the exact words were
important. However, words are meaningless without
understanding, and that is why it is unfortunate
that context was not always preserved with the exact words.
Have you ever noticed that when a new "version"
of the Bible is issued, that even when it is
doctrinally satisfactory with the most stringent
fundamentalists, there is always a hue and cry?
Take the "street lingo" version of the Bible - it
reads "Do not take the name of the Lord in vain"
as "Don't diss the name of the Almighty, because
payback is a monster," as an example. You can
just see the little old ladies in church fainting
at the idea. Blasphemy!, they'd say. But it isn't
necessarily! It's an attempt to keep the Bible in
context with a specific culture, which CAN be
done without sacrificing doctrine. And that is
what God would want us to do: Tell the truth, but
make sure others understand it without
compromising it. The words of the Apostle Paul are quite appropriate here:
"Though I am free and belong to no man, I make
myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as
possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win
the Jews. To those under the law I became like
one under the law (though I myself am not under
the law), so as to win those under the law. To
those not having the law I became like one not
having the law (though I am not free from God's
law but am under Christ's law), so as to win
those not having the law. To the weak I became
weak, to win the weak. I have become all things
to all men so that by all possible means I might
save some. I do all this for the sake of the
gospel, that I may share in its blessings."
(1 Cor 9:19-23)
This is not to say that context should be
emphasized to the point of radically altering the
text. Eternal truths or the basic facts do not
require much tailoring, but "trivia" areas
probably require, if nothing else, an explanatory
footnote. For example, there are places where
Abraham and his contemporaries put their hands
under each other's "thighs" (a euphemism for the
genitals) to make a pledge. People who are
squeamish and uninformed (as well as looking for
an excuse to stop reading) will slap the Bible
shut on verses like that and squeal, "Oooo, what
a FILTHY-MINDED book!" Not so in terms of the
society in which this was written; that's our own
post-Victorian squeamishness at work! Or another
example, from the skeptic Steve Allen - whose two
books on the Bible are full of silly
misunderstandings like <http://www.tektonics.org/gk/goldmice.html>this one.
So what should have been done for our
translations of the Bible? The best thing perhaps
would have been - and barring a wealth of new
archaeological finds, it is too late now to take
it up - for scribes to maintain the exact,
word-for-word translation along with
regularly-updated (but also physically separate)
commentaries explaining various customs, figures
of speech, and events in their context. As time
passed, later generations would still have the
exact verbiage - but also a series of
commentaries that would allow them to "stay in
touch" with the full meaning of what had
originally been written. We, too, should study
the culture and history surrounding the Bible, so
that we may more clearly understand what is being
said; or at the very least, so that we do not
make write books full of embarrassing assertions like Steve Allen.
At any rate, any new version or translation of
the Bible should be taken up with excessive care.
Ideally, the work should be done by people who
have a thorough knowledge of both the original
languages and the receiving language; but this is
not always practicable, and in the meantime,
there are souls that are literally starving for
the Good News. So don't waste time complaining.
If you're a complainer, do your homework!
Have you ever read Chaucer or Shakespeare in the
original? Most of you would look at that Olde
English and understand a few words of it, but
unless you were a scholar of that time period, or
had Cliff's Notes, you would miss most or all of
the puns, political references, etc. peculiar to
that time. Now if we have such trouble with 400
year-old English, imagine what trouble the
Septuagint translators had with even older
Hebrew! They read it - but you can bet they didn't always UNDERSTAND it!
Modern investigative techniques have helped us
clear up many of these kinds of problems in the
Bible, but not all of them - and because many of
our translators seem to revere the text nearly to
the point of worship, many of these discoveries
have not surfaced in our modern Bible
translations. For example, in the list of unclean
"birds" in Leviticus, the final entry is "bat".
Skeptics (Jim Merritt and C. Dennis McKinsey, for
example) point this out as an error: Bats are not
birds. However, the Hebrew word in Leviticus that
we translate "birds" is better rendered "flying
things" - it was a generic term for any animal
that flew; more literally, "the owner of a wing."
(See
<http://www.tektonics.org/af/batbird.html>here
for more.) This applies obviously to birds, but
also to bats, and certain insects. Unfortunately,
even our newest Bibles use the word "birds,"
which only provides more grist for the skeptical
mill. Our translators should be careful of this
kind of thing. But it seems they revere the exact
wording in some cases more than they revere exact
understanding. At the very least, our Bibles
should have footnotes explaining passages like
the one in Leviticus. You usually have to get a
commentary to get a proper explanation.
What are some of the difficulties encountered in
any translation? Let's start with something
related to Hebrew specifically: The old form of
the language didn't use vowels. (Why that is so
is beyond our scope here. Perhaps they couldn't
afford the $250 to buy each one, or else their
vowels were stolen and later purchased by the
Hawaiians at a Phonetic Garage Sale.) To
illustrate the problem, try reading this:
gt n bd
Does this say "get in bed?" Got no bid? Got on
bad? An ancient Hebrew could figure it out, but
not us so easily. Context helps, of course, but
remember that context is not always helpful, and
where there was a place where either of two or
three words MIGHT make sense, the scribes who
added vowel points much later on were undoubtedly
working with their own preconceived notions. To
make the problem worse, suppose an earlier scribe
had slipped and added an extra consonant:
gt n brd
That extra "r" could lead to translating the
phrase "get on board." From there, things could
get worse. Maybe the scribe skipped his coffee break and did this:
grt n bld
Now we have a phrase that's totally off. A later
scribe could get very confused and just change
the consonants altogether, just to make sense of the phrase.
These are problems in Hebrew only; there are
greater problems for all languages across the
board. In Aramaic Sources of Mark's Gospel,
Maurice Casey, in examining the process of Mark's
use of Aramaic sources in composing his Greek
Gospel, offers these inevitable complications of
translation and bilingualism, and actual examples in practice:
* How a bilingual learns a language -- and
how they keep up with it -- inevitably affects
their translation ability. There is a vast
difference between a person who grows up with
both languages (and may therefore be less
proficient in both of them) and a person who
learned a second language, and did not use their
first language for many years.
* As Casey puts it, though, "All bilinguals
suffer from interference," and translators more so [94] A couple of examples:
* Bilinguals "often use a linguistic item
more frequently because it has a close parallel
in their other language. " Thus: "...Danish
students are reported using the English definite
article more often than monoglot speakers of
English. This reflects 'the fact that Danish and
English seem to have slightly different
conceptions of what constitutes generic as
opposed to specific reference.' " Or: "...there
is a tendency for English loanwords among
speakers of Australian German to be feminine --
die Road, die Yard, etc. -- and this is probably
due to the similarity in sound between the German
die and the accented form of English 'the',
whereas the German masculine der and neuter das sound different." [94]
* When a source text is culture-specific,
there is great need for changes to make the text
intelligible. The French cartoon Asterix the
Gaul, with its many exotic character names, has
"given rise to different decisions by translators
into several different languages." [97] The name
of a village chieftain is Abraracoucix in French,
and remains so in Italian and Dutch, but was
rendered Majestix in German, Swedish, Danish, and
Norwegian, and became Vitalstatistix in English.
Then there is an example of how two German
editions of Alice and Wonderland translated a particular passage differently:
'Perhaps it doesn't understand English,'
thought Alice, 'I dare say it's a French mouse,
come over with William the Conqueror.'
One edition substituted "English" so that the
translation simply said that the mouse did not
understand much, and to make the reference to
William the Conqueror intelligible, added a
phrase about William coming from England. A
different translation though made the language
not understood by the mouse into German, and
changed William the Conqueror into Napoleon.
[101] There were thus two different methods used
to make the text intelligible to native readers.
* A German person on a bus asks a person next
to an empty seat, "Ist dieser Platz frei?" It is
literally in English, "Is this place free?" But
an English person would say, "Is this seat
taken?" Or, a polite request in Polish to a
distinguished guest to take a seat is literally,
in English, "Mrs Vanessa! Please! Sit! Sit!" The
"short imperative" to "Sit!" sounds "like a
command rather than a polite request" made to
someone unruly rather than to a distinguished
guest. (For a great example of this sort of
misunderstanding by critics in the Bible, see
<http://www.tektonics.org/gk/jesusrudemom.html>here.) [105]
* Translating Dickens into German, there is a
phrase in The Olde Curiosity Shop where a
character speaks of it being "a fine week for
ducks." English speakers naturally know this to
mean it was a rainy week. A German translator
however concluded that for us, "a fine week for
ducks" meant it was a fine week to go hunting for them! [106]
* Such then are typical problems of
translating from one language to another. The
sort of exhaustive knowledge required to perform
an exact translation is simply beyond the
understanding of most people, and presents a practical impossibility.
----------
When discussing Biblical inerrancy, it is
important to remember that ONLY the original
texts of the Bible are claimed to have been
inerrant. Furthermore, one might suggest that the
"original" text was in something of a different
format. How? Take the book of Ezekiel as an
example. Zeke certainly didn't bang out all 48
chapters of his book in one sitting; his oracles
were composed over his lifetime, and were
collected together at a later date (by him, or by
one of his students; it makes no difference),
when - presumably - they were put together into
the unified whole like that we now have. But did
the collector of this material leave everything
"as it was"? In all likelihood, yes, given the
reverence held for the work of a prophet; but
this would not necessarily prevent the addition
of transitional phrases needed to make the
oracles into a sensible whole. Skeptics will
throw up their hands at this and ask how we can
therefore believe accept our present text, since
any number of errors could have crept in. At this we should reply with:
* The percentages given earlier: The OT
is 95% accurately transcribed; the NT, 99%. That
means (in a Bible without any commentary) 50
pages of your OT and 3 pages of your NT may have
been fumbled by later writers. Since most of the
"errors" critics harp on turn upon no more than
one or two letters or words, those 53 pages give
us plenty of room to accept intellectually the
idea that the original texts were inerrant! (By
the way, if the Skeptic wants to lower those
percentages, he just adds more room for the
possibility of transcription errors. It kind of
leaves them stuck, logically speaking.)
* The reverence accorded to prophetic
material. This would not allow for wholesale
change, but only for, at most, the tailoring
necessary for creating a unified whole.
Bottom line: It is a matter of ideological
orientation in both directions. Christians have a
predisposition to say that the original text,
whatever its form, was inerrant, and that we have
a shadow of it in our modern Bible; Skeptics have
a disposition to say that it was not, and the
worst of them will posit all manner of textual
conspiracies otherwise unevidenced in the text. I
affirm this in light of several years now of
dealing with such persons who clearly seldom or
never make their arguments having done adequate homework.
Skeptical obfuscation in this area, however,
abounds: One 19th-century Skeptic said that there
were "150,000 blunders in the Hebrew and 7,000 in
the Greek." That sounds bad until you remember
that these "blunders" consist for the largest
part of JUST ONE LETTER OR NUMERAL spread across
multiple copies! Thus, if a letter is put 26
different ways in 26 different manuscripts, that
counts as 26 "errors". Let's keep things on
perspective, here! It should be obvious that
since many of the "errors" in our Bibles turn on
single letters, numbers or words, no doctrine of
Christian belief is the least bit altered by any
questionable reading in Scripture. Nor does
salvation require a functional belief in
inerrancy; indeed, if it did, those who were
illiterate or did not have a Bible in their own
language could never be saved. The number of
horses in Solomon's army, the name of Saul's
daughter who had no children - these things
should be recognized and corrections noted, but
they should be no cause for shipwreck of anyone's
faith or an excuse for disbelief in the Good News
of salvation through Jesus Christ. For certain
Skeptics, however, the miscues are gold; but they
are fools' gold: They conceal the true reason for
their disbelief, whether that be a dislike of
Christians, the inability to come to terms with
God, or the desire to live a sinful lifestyle, or
any number of reasons not listed here. No
convinced skeptic will turn to Christ simply
because we explain why Chronicles says Ahab's
bathtub held 75 gallons while Kings says 85.
Their reasons for disbelief are beyond that. But
for those who watch and observe our debates, and
are considering not only our answers, but the WAY
in which we answer, the apologetic for inerrancy
is important. We should be aware of the basic
issues surrounding translation and transcription.
A few further considerations in this regard:
* Who is it who "killed" the languages in
question? As I reminded a certain well-known
skeptic recently, it was men who did it.
(Although remember, Hebrew and Greek are still
alive today.) And in any event, the language of
the NT - Koine Greek, a sort of common man's
Greek of the time - was in NT times the
established lingua franca of the Roman Empire. It
was the language used and/or usable by the most
people alive in the Roman Empire at that time.
Thus did God ensure the rapid spread of His message of salvation.
* Moreover, we have also lost touch with
various social and literary constraints that
governed the composition of the Bible. My
favorite example of late has involved passages
composed with Greco-Roman rhetorical technique in
mind. Thus, for example, as I have noted in our
reply to Jim Merritt, the alleged contradictions
between the accounts of Paul's conversion in Acts
can be understood in a way that sees them as
quite
<http://www.tektonics.org/lp/paulthree.html>intentional.
Likewise, understanding ancient proverbial
literature in its context eliminates a great many
perceived difficulties, in particular regarding the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
* This may not apply to either Meritt or
Barker, or to any skeptic in particular, but if
there are so many of us willing to learn a
foreign language for travel, business, or just
for the heck of it, why should we complain about
learning Biblical Hebrew or Greek? Again, this is
not necessary to grasp the most important truths
of the Bible, but there is also no excuse for not
taking the time to study - especially if we are
going to be like skeptics and pick at things of
which we have no knowledge, like Barker, Merritt, and of course Steve Allen.
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[]
So How Would God Have Kept The Copies Inerrant??
Finally, with all of the questions and complaints
they make, skeptics fail to inform us of what
practical measures they would have had God take
to ensure inerrant copies and translations. The
pat answer might be, "The same way God supposedly
inspired the originals!" But this, again, would
constitute an act of coercion upon those who do
not believe; and so would any other suggested
method. Would Skeptics have God manipulate the
hands of every scribe? Would a scribe's hands
"freeze up" or stop functioning when he or she
was about to write an incorrect translation?
Would the paper the error was written on suddenly
burst into flames? Would God assume control of
our printing presses? What if a Skeptic wanted to
write a commentary, and interposed an "incorrect"
idea? Would all form critics disappear in a puff
of smoke? If we accept this logic, why not
complain that God did not have each of us born
with the Gospel tattooed inside our eyelids?
Indeed, why not go all the way back and ask why
God didn't just send the elephant to trod on the
serpent? Any method of preserving inerrancy would
undoubtedly involve a great deal of coercion on
God's part, which would be a violation of our
free will. Skeptics, however, are welcome to send
suggestions on how such a process would be
accomplished. So far only one of you (my
"friendly Skeptic") has done so. He suggested
that the inerrant original should have been
preserved in stone. Perhaps a good idea --
although it still does not avoid the problems we
have delineated above; it merely puts a different
spin on them. I can see, for example, those
corrupt monks of the Middle Ages putting armed
guards around Original Bible Monument and keeping
the peasantry away from it...and the Romans, who
regularly smashed the religious artifacts of
defeated enemies, doing that to the originals...and so on.
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Received on Wed Nov 28 14:02:32 2007
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