From Ken Smith:

Here is my first considered response to the first section of Don’s initial posting. Note the “first” – I’ll be posting further responses, including at least one more in response to the first section.

I have read through Don’s initial posting to a.r.c several times. The issue of “inerrancy” has come up a number of times in the past here, and the participants have (usuallly) agreed to differ.

Might I make a plea for a bit of civility in the language to be used in this debate? Don’s posting uses the same sort of language which can be found in other creationist writings, and it gives the impression, perhaps unintended, of belligerence towards anyone who disagrees. In particular, the adjective “apostate” which Don used both of the highly respected historian Ronald Numbers, and of Chris Ho-Stuart who is greatly respected by the regulars on a.r.c, is unnecesary, and adds nothing to the content of the post.

Now for some comments on terminology and language. If all participants are to be clear about what others are saying, we need to make sure that we are using the words with the same meaning. Don said that he accepted the Chicago Declaration on inerrancy. I recently posted my full Credo to a.r.c and it is available for public scrutiny on http://www.maths.uq.edu.au/~kgs

But for purposes of debating inerrancy, let me emphasise that I cannot disentangle my beliefs about Genesis from my beliefs about the rest of Scripture.

The two paragraphs in my Credo about scripture are:

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I believe that in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments God has given us an authoritative disclosure of his character and will, his redemptive acts and their meaning, and his mandate for mission.

I believe that since everything asserted by the divinely inspired authors must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted to put into the sacred writings for our salvation: anything which is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of anyone as an article of faith, nor to be regarded as necessary for salvation.

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Neither here, nor in the Chicago Declaration, is any definition of “Scripture” given. Don might think that this is a trivial point, and that we are all agreed on the 66 books of the canon. But Athanasius has joined in, and the Orthodox churches have a different canon than do most Protestants. And the Catholics are different again. Some other Eastern churches differ yet again, and the Ethiopan Church accepts the Book of Enoch.

So can we agree on a core of writings which we are all (all Christians, I should say: those atheists who have joined in are unlikely to accept any writings as inspired) prepared to accept as “inspired by God”?

But even if we are agreed, there are major problems once we start talking about the “original autographs”. Some of these were mentioned by Peter Ballard in a posting in August 1998:

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G’day all,

Considering this inerrancy debate: Most proponents of Biblical inerrancy – including (I think) all of those involved in the debate here on this newsgroup – limit inerrancy to the autographs. That is, only the original copies penned by the the Biblical authors are necessarily inerrant, but errors in copying have crept into the copies which we possess. It is almost impossible to claim that the copies are inerrant, given some of the numerical differences between Samuel/Kings and Chronicles. (e.g. compare 2 Sam 10:3-4 with 1 Chr 18:3-4 – did David take 700 or 7000 horsemen? Obviously one of them contains a copyist’s error.)

However, most proponents of inerrancy do not seem to realise that, once errors in the copies are admitted, most arguments for inerrancy fall apart. I can think of 4 main arguments I have seen for inerrancy, and only one of them applies to the autographs and not the copies:

Argument #1 (Jesus’ and the apostles’ use of the OT): “Jesus and the apostles considered Scripture absolutely authoritative”

Reply: But what they considered authoritative was the (errant) copies not the (inerrant) autographs.

Argument #2 (the epistological argument): “If the Bible contains errors, how can we be sure of ANYTHING it says?”

Reply: The same can be said about the copies. My position is this: just as errors in the copies are minor and insignificant and have no effect on our faith and the doctrine, so also the same can be said for errors in the autographs.

Argument #3 (the argument from church history): “Historically, the church has believed in an inerrant Bible”.

Reply: That is probably true, but there is little evidence of the church distinguishing errant copies from inerrant autographs. For instance, Article I of the Westminster confession calls the copies “pure”.

That just leaves Argument #4: “Certain Bible verses teach that Scripture is inspired directly by God, and errant autographs are incompatible with such a mode of inspiration”.

This argument cannot be applied to the copies, that is true. Nor do I wish to dismiss this argument as without weight. But one must realise that this is the only argument left for inerrancy, and that it is based on very few verses. Also, I would submit, none of these verses exclude the possibility of error.

Peter Ballard

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As well as the major point that all the NT writings which quote the OT must have been quoting from copies, not the “original autographs”, there are additional problems with the term “original autographs” which Peter hasn’t mentioned. The Greek word translated “scripture” is graphe (long “e” which can’t be indicated in a text message), and almost always refers to the Old Testament. In particular 2 Timothy 3:16, the verse usually used to define inspiration, can only refer to the Hebrew scriptures. And it doesn’t say which version of the Hebrew writings, or which selection of the then extant writings, are to be regarded as “inspired”.

It is not generally appreciated among the more conservative groups of Christians that a large number of quotations of “scripture” in the New Testament do not quote the Hebrew Masoretic text (MT for short), but in fact quote the Greek translation, called the Septuagint (LXX for short), made several centuries BC. Athanasius can provide more information about this, but this is one reason behind the Orthodox churches claim that the LXX was inspired by God. And since Jesus seems to have been content to quote it, who am I to disagree?

To illustrate this, let me take Don’s first section, where he listed a number of places where he claimed Jesus cited the OT as authoritative. The second paragraph of Don’s section 1 reads:

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Jesus regarded the OT scriptures as God’s word; that is, spoken by God or inspired by the Holy Spirit, although written by the hands of men (Matthew 19:4, 5; 22:31, 32, 43; Mark 12:26; Luke 20:37) and therefore even the smallest letter or stroke was inspired and would “never pass away” (Matt. 5:18; Luke 16:17). Jesus cited nearly every book in the OT as authoritative, thus authenticating the canon as we know it (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4306apol_v3n21994.asp). There is no room here for regarding any part of Scripture as deficient in any way due to it supposedly being the product of the minds of ‘illiterate primitives’ (campfire stories of Semitic nomads, ‘primitive goat-herders’ etc.).

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In 1967 the United Bible Societies published, in their “Helps for Translators” series, a book “Old Testament Quotations in the New Testament”, edited by Robert Bratcher in co-operation with the UBS Sub-committee on Translation. This presents the New Testament passages in parallel with the Old Testament passages. If the NT agrees with the MT only that is given. But if the NT disagrees with the MT the LXX is also given, and in a number of cases the LXX rendering is clearly the one used in the NT. Places where the “quotation” is more a paraphrase or an allusion are noted in the list. Of the first group of quotations in Don’s list we have the following information noted by the UBS:

Matt. 19:4 is marked as a paraphrase, and is closer to the LXX;

Matt. 19:5 is virtually identical with the LXX, and differs from the MT;

Matt. 22:31 is not marked in the UBS Greek NT as a quotation;

Matt. 22:32 omits some words from the MT, which here is the same as LXX;

Matt. 22:44 (43 was probably a typographical error) seems to be a composite of LXX and MT;

Mark 12:26 is parallel to Matt. 22:32 (see above);

Luke 20:37 is labeled a paraphrase, and again is parallel to Matt. 22:32.

Summarising this data, of the six quotations three omit some words from the OT, either MT or LXX; one is a composite of MT and LXX; one is a paraphrase and is closer to LXX; and the remaining one is identical to LXX.

There is thus clear evidence that copies of the Greek translation, not copies of the “original autograph”, is what was quoted.

We could get into a very lengthy debate, trying to analyse all the “quotations” in the NT and working out what proportion prefer the LXX to the MT. The Appendices in both the UBS Greel NT (4th edition) or in the Nestle/Aland Greek NT (27th edition) go some way towards helping, but these will only be useful for listing those places where the LXX is the obvious source. If a “quotation” is not marked as LXX it will need to be examined to see whether the LXX is a faithful translation of the MT (as it is in most cases) or whether the two differ. And. frankly, I don’t have either the inclination or the time to do this.

In addition, the OT texts from Qumran provide us with more fascinating data. Some of the Hebrew texts, although somewhat fragmentary, seem to be copies of the Hebrew which underlies some passages of the LXX where this differs from the MT, so that at least up to around AD 70 there were variant Hebrew texts. And even more interesting has been the discovery of Hebrew originals of some of the deuterocanonical or apocryphal books, indicating that the Hebrew canon was, at that time, still not closed.

The above information is presented to indicate that using the phrase “original autographs” has a large number of problems associated with it, and these cannot simply be dismissed. Nor can we lightly assume that Jesus and the early church took the MT as inerrant, since the existence of a canon corresponding to what we now know as the MT seems very doubtful.

A number of years ago I was reading an article by Henry M. Morris where, as part of his attempt to justify his interpretation of Genesis 1-11 (which, in fact, is largely based on the writings of the mid-19th century Ellen G. White – but that’s a separate story) that Jesus quoted from each of the first 11 chapters of Genesis. This struck me as unlikely, and it only took a few minutes with the “Index of Quotations” in the back of the UBS Greek New Testament to uncover the fact that the only chapters of Genesis 1-11 quoted in the NT are chapters 1, 2 and 5. I didn’t check to see if these were quoted by Jesus, since Morris was obviously wrong.

So I have reservations about Don’s claim, in his paragraph quoted above

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… Jesus cited nearly every book in the OT as authoritative, thus authenticating the canon as we know it (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4306apol_v3n21994.asp).

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Since there are no direct quotations from Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Lamentations, Obadiah, Nahum or Zechariah (15 out of 39 books)

in the NT, and some of the other books (1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, I Kings, Job, Proverbs, Ezekiel, Joel, Amos, Habakkuk and Haggai, another 10 books) aren’t quoted in the gospels, it seems to me, on the face of it, unlikely that there is evidence that “Jesus cited nearly every book”, but I need to do some more investigating here.

Salaam Ken Smith

— Dr Ken Smith – Christian, husband, unpaid mathematician, skeptic, … `Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.’ `All hope abandon, ye who enter here.’ Dante Alighieri, “Inferno”, canto III, line 9