Inerrancy
by
Tony Capoccia
We Evangelical Christians hold to the infallibility and inerrancy of the
Scriptures. This means that we believe that the Bible as it was originally
penned (the first copy) was perfect in every way, being the unaltered Word of
God. Many correctly observe that none of the original manuscripts exist today.
Therefore, the obvious question is, "Can we consider today's Bible translations
to be the reliable and true Word of God?"
I believe we can. First, Bible Scholars are able to determine with a high degree
of accuracy what the original manuscripts were like by studying the copies of
them from various parts of the world. It is obvious if something has been added,
deleted, or changed in the text because it will only appear in the early
manuscripts of a certain area of the world and not in the others. Also, the
copyists were extremely careful about the process of duplicating their
manuscripts. They devised a system of checks where the number of letters across
and down were actually counted to ensure accuracy.
Over time copiers have made minor errors such as misspellings, transpositions of
letters, missing conjunctions or prepositions and the like, but none of the
errors affect doctrine at all. In fact, in the entire Bible there is less than
1% of error anywhere and nothing is serious enough to challenge the Bible's
reliability or authority. There is no other ancient or near ancient document
even remotely as free from error as the Holy Bible. Personal experience, the
testimony of science, archaeological evidence, fulfilled prophecy and the
testimony of the Holy Spirit in our hearts are proofs of the truthfulness and
authority of the Scriptures.
I would suggest downloading the file
Why We Can Trust the Bible
from Bible Bulletin Board, which discusses additional reasons why the Bible has
to be true. Basically, since God holds man accountable for his sin, then God is
responsible to provide us with His "standard" for man. This "standard" must be
readable, easy to understand, readily available, and accurate, or else God could
not hold us accountable.
One Sabbath day Jesus went into the synagogue, and as was the custom He stood up
to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. He read Isaiah
61:1,2 and then said, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." The
scroll Jesus read was a copy of the original, just as our Bibles are copies. By
Jesus' time the original manuscript would have been gone, but Jesus treated the
copy in the same way as the original: He treated it as the true Word of God. We
can and should do the same.
Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "Sermons and Articles Collection" by:
Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
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