There are a whole range of reasons why I don’t accept ideas of plenary verbal inspiration. Even given my prejudices, though, it seems to me there are at least some reasons why it is, even within the confines of strongly conservative thinking, a very strange idea to adopt.
- Jesus is never presented at any point as expecting people to write down what he says, far less dictating.
- Most New Testament citations of (Old Testament) scripture are not exact, and are in any case in translation.
- The Christian Church has largely, and especially in its conservative Protestant versions, expected people to encounter God and God’s teaching in translation and paraphrase.
- The evidence suggests that at least some Old Testament texts existed simultaneously in more than one recension. Similar evidence suggests that until they started to be treated as scripture, the New Testament texts went through professionally untrained and relatively careless copying.
- There are a number of words – particularly in the Hebrew Bible – where the meaning of the word in its context is at best a matter for educated guesswork.
I do not here draw upon theological concepts, or questions of canon, or the interpretation of specific verses and narratives. It seems to me that simply describing these features of the text and its transmission make it just a little bit odd, really, that anyone can have thought plenary verbal inspiration was ever a good way to describe Christian belief about a text whose actuality seems designed to frustrate it.
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Some seem to think that the KJV is ACTUALLY the inspired word of God for the current age: http://www.amazinggracebaptistchurchkjv.com/Download99.html
why cant those people be anglicans… why must they always be baptist?
Just to annoy you, I think
If Anglicans are anything like Episcopalians they haven’t read the Bible enough to have an opinion.
Signed,
A Recovering Episcopalian
Wouldn’t it sort of throw the idea of “rough drafts” out the window? After all, it’s not like normal writers do a satisfactory job the first time through. I can see how it would lead to ideas about divine dictation.
Many if not most NT quotations from the OT are from the Septuagint, a Greek, not always accurate, translation of the Hebrew and Aramaic. So “God’s Word” is quoting “God’s word” via a medium of variable quality. The Masoretic Text most modern English OTs are translated from is mediaeval, which is why sometimes the Septuagint is actually preferred. Probably better stick with the KJV – all the others were just a warm up, I reckon… this one was definitive.
The MT is generally in agreement with the Dead Sea Scrolls, and so the Masoretic tradition isn’t really all that bad.
Clayboy, thanks for posting this. Your points are all valid. Still, I find the exact wording to be special and made the way it is for a reason. Plenary inspiration? Maybe not. But the Bible is plenary special.
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