God is not primarily concerned with whether we understand astrophysics, botany, and chronology. We go wrong if we try to use it for purposes it was not designed for. The primary purpose of the Bible is its message about salvation, and that is its primary sphere of authority. It is a sufficient guide that tells us how we might be given eternal life with God. The Bible is not actually a book to be question empirically or scientifically with “how, what and why”, nor it is written that way, but to know the message it stored for us. And thank God it is a good one.The Bible is not an amulet, a charm, a fetish, or anything that will work wonders by its very presence alone. The Bible is not a book of heavenly utterances in supernatural language; it is God’s message communicated in the simplest human language possible.[1]
For some Christian, the Bible has become the Church’s idol. They have elevated the Bible to a divine status or equalize it to the sovereignty, infallibility and sanctity of God. They have equated the language of the bible with the messages of God. This has seemingly resulted in the Bible being used as a weapon of power to oppress others. Incredibly, the Church’s oppression has not been limited to the secular world, but has even been used as a weapon to oppress its own people.But, Jesus never oppressed anyone.
I am not against any kind of critical study;but interestingly, some do it right from Genesis 1. They start inquiring on the duration of creation, whether it is 24 hours a day or thousands of years, and miss the message. What the Bible wants to tell us is that God created the heavens and the earth and everything in it. That is the message for us. It is the declaration that He exists and He is the creator, master and sustainer of the universe.
We say that the Bible is inspired by God. But we do not have the original God's inspired and preserved manuscript today. The Bible was completed with the Book of Revelation probably in A.D. 96.[2] Since then it had gone through many changes and developments, and translation upon translation. Some Christians generally treat the Bible as a perfect, self-contained whole: missing nothing, containing no errors, and every word written by the infallible inspiration and verbatim of God. Naturally, this belief leads them to fight to the bitter end against biology, geology, cosmology, and every other branch of science the findings of which imply that the Bible is not literally true. The ignorance and superstition created by this millennia-long war on human progress are still hobbling us today, so it’s no wonder that atheists, skeptics and other freethinkers have strong motivation to oppose the fundamentalist belief in biblical inerrancy.
The most quoted passage used to justify inspiration is 2 Timothy 3:16: “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.”
But if we read it carefully we will see how much our own interpretation has been added to its words. Also it is worth noting that our current Biblical canon was not established until the fourth century, and that when the New Testament writers wrote of Scripture, they were referring to certain Old Testament scrolls, and probably some other writings that our canon has not preserved. That is to say that Paul, for example, did not refer to his writings as Scripture.
Christian Apologetic writer such as Alan Richardson said that Paul has no consciousness that he is engaged upon the task of writing sacred scripture; he accepts the transmitted words of the Lord as authoritative and carefully distinguishes from them the authority of his own opinions; and yet, even while he does this, he claims in effect to be writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.[3] The inspiration of the books of the Bible does not imply for us the view that they were produced or written in any manner generically from that of the writing of other great Christian books, such as, for example, The Imitation of Christ or the Pilgrim’s Progress. The inspiration of the Holy Spirit, in the sense in which St. Paul claimed to possess the Spirit’s guidance, did not cease when the New Testament books were all written, or when the canon of the New Testament was finally drawn up; there is a wide range of Christian literature from the second to the twentieth century which can with propriety be describe as inspired by the Holy Spirit in precisely the same formal sense as were the books of the Bible.[4]
Thus, the Christian view has never been and could not be that the biblical books are to be place in a class apart from all other (including Christian) writings and labeled “Holy Scripture” on the grounds that they are “more inspired” than other literature. Does “more inspired”, as the expression has been used by some moderns, mean “more inspiring”? If so, who is to judge whether the Epistle of St. Jude or the Book of Esther is more inspired than The Pilgrim’s Progress. Discussion on the “Degrees of Inspiration” is subjective and unprofitable.[5]
The absolute defend on Inspiration and infallibility by some fundamentalist has caused much strife within the Church and gave room for atheists and skeptics to argue on the validity of the Christian faith. The Bible is the written word of God in the sense that the message comes from God. It is not a total verbatim of God. It is written in human language within human culture by human being. By the very nature of human language the Bible supreme truth are veil in analogical language, that is the absolute truth of scripture are revealed in the human language and culture of the ancient Hebrews, Greeks and Romans. The freedom of style, art and composition were reserved by each authors and we can obviously see it from the variant letters. The Bible was passed down through the centuries; the manuscripts had to be labouriously recopied by scribes by hand. No doubt, they copied it faithfully but errors are obvious when compared with variant manuscripts. New Testament authors when writing their account, their ultimate goal was to convey a message – the salvation story. The readers are to receive the message and not to take it literally and start a war of words based on the manuscripts.
You may think that it is more of my opinion than a case with evidence when I say that the “Message” is the inspired one. Let us go back to the time of the early apostle. Apostles such as Peter, John and Paul preached the gospel and thousands were added into the Church. But they didn’t hold any 66 books called Bible and preached. It is the message and the message is inspired and is with power.
New Testament authors and even Jesus[6] paid no importance to the manuscripts. This is obvious when they quoted the Old Testament passage incorrectly. I am not telling that they paid no regard to the scriptures but what they thought important or wanted to convey was the message and not the passages or letters written in the manuscripts.
Every time I read the New Testament I see biblical authors quoting the Old Testament quite a bit. They were anxious to cite Old Testament prophecy in support of their claims. I will highlight some particular biblical verses and explain that biblical authors intended to convey something more important than what was actually written in the manuscript - the inspired message.
One of the most dazzling examples of the Bible misquoting itself appears in Mark 1:2:As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I am sending my messenger before your face, who shall prepare your way.”
There is no verse like this in the Book of Isaiah. The Old Testament verse whose wording comes closest is in a different prophet, Malachi (Malachi 3:1).
This implies that Mark supposed author of a divinely inspired and inerrant gospel, remembered the quote correctly, but made a mistake and attributed it to the wrong prophet. The next verse, Mark 1:3, is more clearly a quote of Isaiah 40:3, which may explain the confusion – apparently Mark garbled the two prophets together.
If you’ve been following along, you may have noticed that the King James Bible gives this verse differently – it begins “As it is written in the prophets…” – which would encompass Mark’s synthesis of Malachi and Isaiah.
There’s a sensible reason for the variant wording. Before the invention of the printing press,the Bible was passed down through the centuries; the manuscripts had to be labouriously recopied by scribes. Usually they copied it faithfully, including the mistakes. But sometimes, when they noticed a mistake, they were bothered enough to try to correct it. This is one of those cases. Evidently, some medieval scribe tried to cover for Mark’s mistake by changing the inaccurate “Isaiah” to the more general “the prophets”. This “corrected” manuscript was passed on and gave rise to a tradition of variant manuscripts, one of which served as the source for the KJV.
Meanwhile, the original manuscript with the error was recopied exactly as written by a more scrupulous or less observant scribe and passed down in a separate chain of historical transmission, creating two competing wordings for this passage.Although both the “Isaiah” and “the prophets” variants have survived to this day, there can be no doubt that the “Isaiah” wording is the original.[7]
My point here is that Mark gives more emphasis to the message when recording his gospel. I don’t think Mark wrote his gospel with the availability of several manuscripts as reference on his desk, the way writers and researchers does today. I am not saying Mark has no regard for the scriptures but probably was quoting it from memory, which gave him room for error. Mark’s intention is to present the message to the readers that he thought is more important.
Another blatant example of biblical writers getting it wrong was when Matthew forgets which prophet said what. After Judas throws down his thirty pieces of silver in the temple and commits suicide, Matthew writes in 27:9 that this event “fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value; and gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord appointed me.”The verse that Matthew was citing isn’t in Jeremiah, but in Zechariah (11:13). Considering this entry, the previous one, and the next one, Matthew seems to have a bit of a blind spot regarding this book.
Apologists offer several explanations. Some are simply too silly to bother with – such as that the Holy Spirit originally inspired Jeremiah to speak these words, but he didn’t bother to write them down, and then some time later, the Holy Spirit inspired Zechariah to say the same thing again, presumably to make sure it was written down this time.
In another prophetic misfire, Matthew claims that Jesus’ living in Nazareth “fulfilled that which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene” (2:23). There is no such prophecy in the Bible. Generations of Christian apologists have exercised their creativity in trying to figure out what Matthew might have had in mind here but still no concrete explanation can be given.[8] And in John 7:38 shows that Jesus incorrectly quotes a scripture, or quotes a scripture that wasn't included in the canon of the bible, making the bible incomplete.[9]
Now, let us take a look into the book of Acts show Christianity spread and grew in numbers. You will see that it was message behind all the conversion for the message came with power. “So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith” (Acts 6:7). “…the word of God continued to spread and flourish” (Acts 12:24). “When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord” (Acts 13:12). “This went on for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord” (Acts 19:10). “In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power” (Acts 19:20).
The very act the disciples were doing was preaching the gospel message and was teaching about the Lord. The message they have seen and heard. The word of God that was spreading was the message - the gospel. It was a verbal form of communication from one person to another. Today, there is a chance for us to think that Christians came to know God through the 66 books of the Bible. But it is totally wrong, for there are no so called 66 books Bible in the early Christian era. It was the inspired message that came with power and many people were converted. It was the message that changed them and it is the message that changed you and me when we believed on the message of the salvation story.
Conclusion:
We don’t need to go so far afield to show that Christian claims of inerrancy are false; nor do we need to undertake the Herculean task of trying to explain complex epistemology to religious believers who are determined to reject it.
For Christian apologists, inspiration or infallibility is a “term of art”: a word or phrase used by professionals to convey a specialized meaning, which may be very different from the way the general public understands the term. When the average, scripturally naive Christian layperson hears that the Bible is “inspire” or “infallible”, they doubtless imagine a total verbatim of Godor perfect-in-itself, unassailable book. By these lax standards, a claim of infallibility could be made for the Quran, the Book of Mormon, or indeed, practically any book. Naturally, this is a double standard that Christian apologists show no interest in delving into.
Bibliolatry, faith in sola scriptura or taking bible literally based on the redacted books of the Bible and simply connecting its authority to a lost scripture (the original) is just insensible. Christianity is not a religion but a way to life and a way to God. But for some it is purely religion. Immanuel Kant about two hundred years ago said, "Our ultimate purpose in reading the Bible is to make us better men and women."[10] We should use it for purposes it was designed for.In the simplest form, the Bible is to know Jesus and to be like Him. The Bible is the written testimony of the divine revealed Word – Jesus Christ. The Bible is a salvation history of human kind and the center of our faith.
1. Dake’sAnnoted Reference Bible, 509.
2. Wayne Jackson, “When Was the Book of Revelation Written?” (California: www.christiancourier.com, N.D, retrieved 29/11/2013), https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/1552-when-was-the-book-of-revelation-written.
3. Cf. I cor. 7:10, 12, 25, 40.
4. Alan Richardson, Christian Apologetics (London: SCM Press Ltd), 206-208.
5. Alan Richardson, Christian Apologetics (London: SCM Press Ltd), 208.
6. In Mark 2:26, Mark’s record shows Jesus referring incorrectly to Abiathar the high priest where it should have been to Abiathar’s father, Ahimelech (1 Samuel 21:1-6).
7. John Gill’s Exposition, “Mark 1:2” (Virginia: www.biblestudytools.com, N.D. retrieve 29/11/2013), http://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/gills-exposition-of-the-bible/mark-1-2.html
8. Paul Copan, “Did New Testament Writers Misquote the Old Testament?” (Missouri: www.enrichmentjournal.ag.org, N.D. retrieved 29/11/20), http://enrichmentjournal.ag.org/201302/201302_026_misquote_OT.cfm
9. J. Sidlow Baxter, Studies in Problem Text (Grand Rapids: zondervan Publishing House), 11.
10. Manfred Barthel, What the Bible Really Says (New York: Bell Publishing Company), 11.
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