Biblical Inerrancy Not a Biblical Teaching

Pel. wrote:

“The Bible makes no claim to be either inerrant or complete. One has to

step outside of the Bible to discover the origins of this blind bibliolatry.”

Pse. wrote: ~Mat 5:18 For verily I ;Jesus Christ] say unto you, Till heaven
and earth pass... one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till
all be fulfilled.

“I stand on this promise...that i hold the innerrant Word of God.”

Pl. Responds:

Jesus was speaking as a Divine teacher, when nothing he had ever said in
New Testament times had been written down anywhere.

In this instance, Jesus was not referring to scripture, but to what he and his
Father had actually ruled, was his Law on several matters. The evidence for
this is in the fact that Jesus fulfilled the Mosaic Law by his self-sacrifice, but
according to your interpretation of the words of Jesus that law is still in
force.

I will agree that the sentence you posted is inerrant in that it represents the
position of Jesus as regards the Law of Moses. However, the Law of Moses
did not stand forever, because it was not intended to stand forever. The
Book of Hebrews explains why not.

It must be clearly understood that not all of God’s Laws belong to the
Mosaic Code. God gave his Law in the beginning and thereafter at each
dispensation of the Gospel, although you will note that the Law in toto does
not remain the same, but changes to suit the conditions of patriarchal
families, or the people of Israel. That is the whole purpose of divine
revelation, so that God can inform his people and adjust his instructions to
suit their changing circumstances and conditions.

Yet it can be shown that certain of God’s Laws are not subject to change,
whatever the sitz im leben of the People of God, and these laws are eternal
laws that will not pass away regardless of circumstance, custom, condition,
zeitgeist, etc.

Did Jesus know that the Mosaic Law would be finished with when he made
Atonement? Of course he did. Then his statement at Matthew 5:18 did not
refer to the Mosaic Code, since he fulfilled what Paul later called ‘a
schoolteacher to bring us to Christ.’ When the world was brought to Christ,
or, better to day, when Christ was brought to the world and had fulfilled his
Messianic mission by his salvic death, then the Mosaic Law was of no more
force, because it had been fulfilled.

There were some Jews accepted Christ but insisted that Christians also keep
the Mosaic Law. There were Judaizers, marked as heretics, and are of the
same spirit as are so-called “Messianic Christians” today [this group,
incidentally, is not accepted either by Judaism or by Christianity].

Those to whom the Mosaic Law was given as a binding Covenant do not
believe that the Mosaic Law is incumbent on all the people of the world.
Gentiles, that is, those not of the blood of Israel, are, according to Israelites,
not bound by the ritual minutiae of the Mosaic Law, but are saved under the
Noahide Law.

Now to go back to the notion of an inerrant Bible – clearly there is no such

thing, which is confirmed by mainstream Christians that constantly review
what Bibles and ancient MSS are extant to update and find better ways of
expressing what has been saved of what was written in the infancy of the
world. They do not believe the Bible to be inerrant or else they would not be
constantly revising it. Their constant review is prima facie evidence of their
dissatisfaction with the Bible in all its present forms.

Those that adhere to the AV 1611 do not use the AV 1611 text, but an
updated version of it to regularise the spelling in 18th century English where
‘fifh’ is replaced by ‘fish,’ and ‘fit ftill’ is replaced by ‘sit still,’ etc.

There are more academic Bible scholars working on the text of the Bible
today than there have been in all previous ages taken together. Linguistics,
form criticism, higher criticism, anthropology, and a whole raft of
disciplines, such as critics are wont to throw up against the text of “The
Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ,” and are finding new
and better ways to understand some of the obscure passages in traditional
Bibles.

The errors in ancient texts and versions are discovered, and their presence
makes an inerrant Bible sitting on your shelf impossible. When you claim
the Bible is inerrant, you are making the claim that it contains not one single
error. The Myth of biblical Inerrancy is thus exploded by the recognition of
one error that ought not to be there. In addition, there is more than one error
in the Holy Bible, so inerrancy is but a pipe dream that vanishes when the
sleeper wakes and examines the text for himself.

I have never met an inerrantist that is sufficiently familiar with the text of
the Bible to recognise its errors. Yet, they are there ready for the keen eyed
Bible reader to see. Most of them are immediately recognisable provided
that the reader has not been divested of his honesty by swallowing the
inerrancy myth, hook, line, and sinker.

If you will read the Hebrew text of 2 Samuel 22:13, it reads,

‘out of the brightness before him [God] coals of fire flamed.’

I would have inserted the Hebrew text here, but it does not always post
correctly on FB or on Scribd, so I give you the English translation of the
Hebrew.

The identical [plagiarised?] verse in Psalm 18 is longer and reads,

‘out of the brightness before him [God] his thick clouds passed away;
hailstones and coals for fire.’

How does an inerrantist deal with these discrepant readings without

suffering apoplexy? A sane person will immediately recognise the
difference in the sentences and will subscribe to the view that one makes no
sense but the other one does make sense. By this conclusion, inerrancy is
dissipated and we come face to face with the fact that the Bible is not
inerrant, and does not claim to be inerrant. If it did, with this error staring us
in the face, then its claim would be unreliable because we have found an
error, whereas an inerrant tome will not have one single error in the whole
run of its text.
The above is but one example of a textual error in the bible. It is most likely
an error made by a tired or inept copyist when he was copying one
monograph to make up another one and missed out part of the sentence that
made it make sense.

There are literally dozens of similar and discrete errors, most of them known
for centuries that have caused professors of an inerrant Bible to be held in
derision by Bible readers, preachers, and theologians, and continues to do so
to this very day.

It is sad to see someone standing in Inerrantists’ Corner, holding on to their

false position because they do not know how to abandon it gracefully and
not look rather silly for holding opinions that are directly controverted by the
facts on the page of the Bible itself. It is like someone insisting that you are
a Quaker when you know full well that you are a Peculiar Baptist. No
matter how many times they call you a Quaker, it doesn’t make you one.

Now, some that are foolish will consider what I have written and ‘attack on
the Bible.’ But, is it an attack to speak of something as it really is and not as
it is mistakenly held to be? I do not doubt your sincerity, nor your love for
the Bible, but by the same token you must not doubt mine on either of those
scores.

God is not well served when we believe something that is not so. God is
only Well served when we undertake to learn the truth and then to speak it as
boldly as would an angel from the realms divine.

Therefore, I boldly assert that not only is the Bible not free from errors, but
it does not claim to be, and neither is the Book of Mormon, and Latter-day
saints do not claim it to be inerrant, but as is clearly written therein, ‘If there
are mistakes, they are the mistakes of men,’ just as they are in the case of the
Holy Bible.

May God bless you to now your Bible better.

Pelagius ~j~