The Bible

A Sampling of the first Chapter of The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy by C. Denis McKinsey

(1) Inerrancy of the Bible:
Quote from fundamentalist William Arndt’s book Bible Difficulties should suffice. On page 1 he says, “The Bible itself teaches that it is without error in every respect. When Jesus says in John 10:35 that the Scripture cannot be broken, he is ascribing perfection to our sacred book, not merely to just part of it.”

In Basic Theology Charles Ryrie, a professor at a well-known conservative bastion in Texas known as Dallas Theological Seminary, states on page77,
“Can one be a biblicist and deny inerrancy? Not if the Bible teaches its own inerrancy. . . .

If the Bible contains some errors, no matter how few or many, how can one be sure that his
understanding of Christ is correct?. . . Even if the errors are in supposedly “minor” matters, any error opens the Bible to suspicion on other points that may not be so “minor.” If inerrancy falls, other doctrines will fall, too.

In Does Inerrancy Matter? fundamentalists James Boice and James Packer state on page 8,
“Those who undermine the truth of the Bible sometimes claim truthfulness for some parts of the
Bible. These would be parts in which God has spoken as opposed to other parts in which only men have spoken. But this position is unsound. People who think like this speak of biblical authority, but at best they have partial biblical authority, since the parts containing error obviously cannot be authoritative. What is worse, they cannot even tell us precisely what parts are from God and therefore truthful and what parts are not from God and therefore are in error. Usually they say it is “the salvation parts,” quote, unquote, whatever they are, that are from God. But they do not tell us how to separate these from the non-salvation parts.”

(2) The Canon
In The Light of Reason,volume one, a writing that appeared several years ago by Schmuel Gording, the editor of the Biblical Polemics newsletter. Golding’s synopsis of the process by which the Bible was formed is not only accurate but succinct. On page 23 he says,
“First the NT was not written by any of the disciples of Jesus nor by persons who even lived in
that era….when the church fathers compiled the NT in the year 397, they collected all the writings they could find and managed them as they pleased. They decided by vote which of the books out of the collection they had made should be the word of God and rejected several, they voted others to be doubtful, and those books which had a majority of votes were voted to be the word of God. Had they voted otherwise, all, the people since calling themselves Christian would have believed otherwise. Forvthe belief of the one comes from the vote of the other.”
(Remember that this was about 400 years after Jesus – like making decisions today about events that happened at the beginning of the 1600s.)

Then, he continues by saying,
“Constantine, an unbaptized pagan, convened the Council of Nicea in the year 325 in order to
settle these disputes. A major issue was the nature of the deity they worshipped. Based upon their decisions Jesus was changed from man to God in the flesh, the sabbath was changed from Saturday to Sunday, the Passover was changed to Easter . . . and the NT was canonized as a holy book.”
In page 6 in Answering Christianity’s Most Puzzling Questions, volume one, apologist Richard Sisson states, “In fact, after the death of Jesus a whole flood of books that claimed to be inspired appeared. . .
. [D]isputes over which ones were true were so intense that the debate continued for centuries. Finally in the fourth century a group of church leaders called a council and took a vote. The 66 books that comprised our cherished Bible were declared to be Scripture by a vote of 568 to 563.”

(3) Excluded Literature
We find that mentioned in the Old Testament are many books not in the Bible. The Book of the Wars of the Lord is referred to in Num. 2l; the Book of Jasher is referred to in Joshua 10:13; the Book of Nathan and Gad is mentioned in First Chronicles and the Book of the Acts of Solomon is mentioned in Second Chronicles. All of these books, as well as many others, did not make it into Scripture, although they are mentioned in the Old Testament. Where they are, no one knows. Why were these books allowed to perish? No one knows. Why were they left out of the Old Testament? Again, no one knows.
Another group of books were left out of the New Testament. It is a rather lengthy list in which can be found the following: the Gospel According to the Hebrews, the Gospel written by Judas Iscariot, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Marcion, the Gospel of Matthias, the Gospel of Eve, and the Gospel of Philip. Besides the Gospels are such writings as the Acts of Peter, the Book of the Judgment by Peter, the Hymn by Christ, the Magical Book by Christ, and the Letter to Peter and Paul by Christ. None of these books survived the cut and all were left on the debating room floor, again, primarily because of politics in the religious realm. All of these books had their advocates and all of them lost.

In 99 Questions People Ask Most About the Bible apologist Don Stewart states on page 124 that, The primary reason for not accepting the Apocrypha as Scripture is that there is no claim within the books that they are inspired by God. This is in contrast to the Scriptures, which claim to record the revelation oi God. This is a poor rationale, because the Book of Esther doesn’t even mention God. Why is it in the Bible?

Bucaille says on page 77 of The Bible, the Quran, and Science, “In the early days of Christianity many writings on Jesus were in circulation. They were not subsequently retained as being worthy of authenticity and the church ordered them to be hidden. Hence their name, the Apocrypha. Some of the texts of these works have been well preserved because they have benefited from the fact that they were generally valued.”

(4) Authorship
Apologists who claim precise knowledge as to the authorship and date of composition of each book in the Bible are nearly always whistling in the dark. They don’t know and, indeed, knowledgeable scholars who are sufficiently honest are often willing to admit that it simply can’t be determined and involves a tremendous amount of guessing, estimating, and theorizing.

(5) Originals
One of their writers, Norman Ward, states on page 6 in a book called Perfected and Perverted,
“In discussing the text of the Bible the revisionists [those who do not believe the King James is
the only Bible will often use the phrase “According to the Original Greek.” This leads one to believe that they have access to the original autograph manuscripts. Nobody today has the original writings themselves. Let me repeat that; the original autographical manuscripts of the NT no longer exist. They were written on perishable material and it is unlikely that they lasted for more than a few years, let alone 19 centuries.”

Later Ward states,
“Often the same people who refer you to the original Greek will also refer you to the original Bible. There was no “original Bible.” At no time did the original autographical manuscripts of the 27 books of the NT ever reside between the covers of one particular book. To say I believe in the verbal, plenary [complete], inspiration of the original Bible is to say you believe in nothing, for no such book ever existed.”
So what can we deduce from our analysis of the originals? Essentially, it’s this. When somebody gives you a book, be it the RSV, the KJV, the NIV, or what have you, all they are doing is giving you a writing that was put together by a group of scholars who read some ancient manuscripts that purportedly are accurate representations of the originals, which no longer exist. That’s what you receive when you go to the store to buy a Bible. You cannot obtain a copy of the Bible. As one of the scholars who was quoted earlier stated, the book was never assembled within the covers of one particular volume.
As far as the existence of the original autographical manuscripts is concerned, Ward is supported by apologist Don Stewart on page 33 in 99 Questions people Ask Most About the Bible:
“With rare exceptions, the original autographs of the ancient works have been lost. . . . The
science of attempting to reconstruct the text of these documents is known as textual criticism. . . . We do not possess any of the original writings of the Old or New Testament. We are dependent upon copies to reconstruct the text.”

On the next page Ward states, “The original manuscripts in which the books of the Bible were written have been lost. Today we do not possess any biblical book in its original form. This is true for the originals of almost all other ancient writings as well.” Ward concludes by saying, “We do not have the original autographs of the books of the Bible.” So Ward is in full agreement with our earlier analysis of this situation.

(6) Variances
The fundamentalist book Biblical Criticism states on Page 128,
“The originals probably written on papyrus scrolls have all perished. For over 1400 years the
NT copied by hand and the copyists, the scribes, made every conceivable error as well at times
intentionally altering text. Such errors and alterations survived in various ways with a basic tendency to accumulate. Scribes seldom left out anything lest they omit something inspired. There are now in existence, extant, in whole or in part, 5,338 Greek manuscripts as well as hundreds of copies of ancient translations, not counting over 8,000 copies of the Latin Vulgate.
That may lead readers to believe that with that many manuscripts we must know what the original said. No, the more extant manuscripts the greater the problem becomes because no two manuscripts anywhere in existence are exactly alike. In a General Introduction to the Bible Norman Geisler states on page 360, “The multiplicity of manuscripts produces a corresponding number of variant readings. For the more manuscripts that are copied, the greater will be the number copyist errors. On page 252 he states that in the New Testament there are over 200,000 variants in some 5,000 manuscripts.”

In The Bible, the Quran, and Science Bucaille says on page79, “One might reply that other texts may be used for comparison. But how does one choose between variations that change the meaning?”
On the next page he quotes a book by Oscar Culmann to the effect that sometimes the variations “are the result of inadvertent flaws. The copier misses a word, leaves it out or conversely he inserts it twice. Or a whole section of a sentence is carelessly omitted because in the manuscript to be copied it appeared between two identical words. Sometimes it is a matter of deliberate corrections.
Either the copier has taken the liberty of correcting the text according to his own ideas or he has tried to bring it into line with a parallel text in a more or less skillful attempt to reduce the number of discrepancies.
Culmann is saying, in other words, that they are rewriting the script. He continues,
“As little by little the NT writings broke away from the rest of early christian literature and
came to be regarded as holy Scripture, so the copiers became more and more hesitant about taking the same liberties as their predecessors. They thought they were copying authentic text when in fact they wrote down the variations. Finally, a copier sometimes wrote annotations in the margin to explain an obscure passage. The following copier thinking the sentence he found in the margin had been left out of the passage by his predecessor thought it necessary to include the margin notes in the text. This process often made the new text even more obscure.

After having quoted Culmann Bucaille concludes on the next page by saying, “All that modern textual criticism can do in this respect is to try to reconstitute a text which has the most likelihood of coming near to the original. In any case, there can be no hope of going back to the original text itself.”
In essence, the problem is that even though you may have the original in the manuscripts, it is buried in there somewhere, assuming it’s in there at all, and you don’t know which one has it. The more manuscripts that are present, the greater the number of variations that are apparent and the less chance of being able to reconstruct what the supposed original said. If you have a verse in which five thousand manuscripts say it says one thing, while four thousand say it says another, why assume the five thousand are more correct than the four thousand?

It could be the reverse. In an attempt to allay the fears of true believers that there is no copy of the real Bible, the apologist Geisler states on page 366 in A Gerural Introduction to to the Bible,

“At first the great multitude of variants would seem to be a liability to the integrity of the Bible text. But just the contrary is true. The larger number of variants supplies at the same time the means of checking on those variants. As strange as it may appear, the corruption of the text provides the means for its own correction.”

And, of course, that is absurd. The more variations on a story that are submitted, the less chance one has of reconstructing what really occurred. Geisler is trying to tell us that the greater the number of variants, the greater the possibility of reconstructing the original text when the opposite is true. In Reasons Skeptics Should Consider Christianity apologists McDowell and Stewart team up to state on page 78, “With the abundance of manuscripts, that is, handwritten copies of the NT numbering over 25,000, nothing has been lost in the transmission of the text.”

In the first place, even if there were a million copies, how do they know that the original is located somewhere in that million? But even more importantly, they slipped in a rather insidious concept. Notice what they said: “nothing has been lost.” That could very well be true. Nothing has been lost. It is in the 25,000 copies, but where? That’s being kept surreptitiously behind the scenes. Even if it is contained within, its precise location becomes the central question. Where is it? Which one has it? Do we play a shell game? That’s the fallacy in their logic. True, the more texts and manuscripts you have, the greater the chance of having the original. But simultaneously, the chance that you can’t find the original increases exponentially. It’s lost; it’s buried somewhere in a maze of conjecture and the greater the number of manuscripts the less chance you have of finding the real McCoy. That second part is crucial and that’s what they want to overlook.

(7) Versions
Here is one example of Versions being important: One need only turn to the ASV’s version of 2 Tim. 3:16 to see a major problem. There are two ways to read the verse. Some versions contend that it says, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” That’s the version fundamentalists propound. However, the ASV, the NEB, and the Living Bible say, ‘Every Scripture inspired by God is also profitable for teaching.” Notice the latter does not say every Scripture is inspired; it says Scripture that is inspired is profitable to teach, which clearly implies that other Scripture is not.
This is a fundamental teaching of extreme importance. Indeed, if someone were asked to show where the Bible says that it is the inspired word of God, virtually every apologist in the land would race to 2Tim. 3:16. That is not only the strongest passage but the one relied upon the most. Clearly scholars are in disagreement as to what it says in the supposed original. Support for our position is provided by Ryrie in What You Should Know About Inerrancy. On page 39 he states,
“If some one wishes to reduce the amount of scripture included in this verse he translates it, all
Scripture inspired by God is also profitable. In other words, whatever parts of Scripture that are
inspired are profitable but the other uninspired parts are not. Thus, by such a translation only part of the Bible is inspired. Is this translation accurate? The answer is yes. Is such a translation required?
The answer is no. Equally correct and preferable is the translation: All Scripture is inspired of God
and is profitable.”
So anybody alleging there is no material aspect of biblical doctrine affected by conflicting variances is practising self-deception.

(8) Greek and Hebrew
The Bible’s defenders will often say that you have to go back to the original Greek. you have to know Greek and Hebrew. The obvious retort is that if that is true, then why do scholars who know Greek and Hebrew fluently still disagree, often strongly. Because that doesn’t solve the dilemma, that’s why.
In his Answers to Questions About the Bible apologist Robert Mounce asks this very question on page 29: “If a knowledge of the original Greek clears up all questions then why are the experts still arguing?” This question should bother any reasonably objective observer of the Bible and Mounce answers it by saying, “I sympathize with those lay students of Scripture who are from time to time put down by someone who has studied a bit of Greek and settles every argument with the shibboleth ‘The original Greek says.” Mounce concludes, “A knowledge of the Greek does not solve all problems.”
It certainly doesn’t, even among the experts. This Greek question is well addressed in Dr. Peter
Ruckman’s Problem Texts. Known for vituperation and not mincing his words, the president of the Pensacola Bible Institute lays it on the line as well as anybody when he says on page 58,
“One of the standard gimmicks which the stick men set up at the flat joints is that a knowledge
of the original Greek is essential to understand the NT. This age-old con man’s tool has probably put more young men out of the ministry and destroyed the fidelity of more christian teachers than any other single gimmick. Prevailing opinion is that the NT teaches that without a knowledge of Greek grammar and a knowledge of the Greek text, the hidden riches of the word of God are unavailable to the student.

Since no one has ever produced a chapter or verse of either testament that says anything of the kind or has even given a general hint in that direction, it is amazing how 5,000 ministerial students fall sucker for that trotline every year and take it in. Ruckman follows them up on page 66 with the statement, ”You need Greek grammar like a baby kangaroo needs a cradle.” On page 438 he says,
“The confidence of the Bible department of Bob Jones university according to the president is
to be placed in the Greek and the Hebrew without saying which Greek or which Hebrew or which text or which set of manuscripts or who interprets any of them. The expression the Greek and the Hebrew is as inane a piece of foolishness as ever busted out of a Halloween party. There is no such thing as the Greek and the Hebrew to put confidence in. Bob Jones III, who originally founded the university, knew it when he wrote it.”

(9) Interpretation
Fundamentalist James Sire’s book Scripture Twisting. Interestingly, the rules Sire lays down for
interpreting Scripture are often ignored by fundamentalists. For instance, Sire states in “Misreading Rule #4″ that the simplest error is the failure to consider the immediate context of the verse or passage in question. To say this rule is violated routinely, especially in regard to interpreting Old Testament passages and their messianic reliability, is an understatement of the first magnitude. Fundamentalists ignore this maxim en masse. They allege that many Old Testament passages pertain to Jesus Christ when one need only look at the context to see they clearly do not. In “Misreading Rule #12” Sire says, “Some parts of the Bible are obscure. Puzzling to say the least.

Scholars simply don’t know what is being said or referred. Sometimes even when we have considered all the evidence seemingly available in Scripture, there is not enough to satisfy our curiosity or to draw solid conclusions” (page 82). All of these comments are valid. Then Sire says, “The inadequacy in scriptural data, however, has not kept people from speculating.”
They have let their imaginations run wild. To illustrate his point Sire refers to the giants roaming the earth discussed in the sixth chapter of Genesis. Who these giants are is a matter of conjecture and Sire notes that speculation has run rampant in this matter. Other examples of unleashed imaginations are clearly evident in any discussion of the Book of Revelation and the book of Daniel. Apologists have gone through the Bible and twisted and distorted verses with reckless abandon. The current social issue of abortion provides another example in which apologists have perverted many verses that have nothing to do with abortion and speculated no end in order to buttress a wholly unbiblical precept.
On page 150 sire says, “No translation of Scripture is without its problems. Some passages have been notoriously difficult to translate, let alone fully understand.” On page 52 he states, “In all matters where Scriptures are vague or silent we should not pronounce that the Bible has the answer. “Unfortunately, this rule is violated on a regular basis also. Sire concludes by saying,”

Many matters in Scripture are not obvious at all.
R. C. Sproul, who perceptively states on page 17 of Knowing Scripture, “Absurdities often sound
profound because they are incapable of being understood. Sproul continues, When we hear things, we do not understand sometimes we think they are simply too deep for us to grasp, when in fact they are mere unintelligible-statements like one-hand crapping.”

Many people who read the Bible assume it to be profound not realizing that it abounds in
contradictions and absurdities. Because the Bible sounds like a fountain of wisdom, readers often tend to demean themselves and feel they are simply incapable of analyzing the book when, in truth, the problem often lies not with them but with the book itself.

Don Stewart on page 72 of 99 Questions People Ask Most About the Bible: “The final evidence of the truthfulness of the disciples’ testimony, is that they were martyred for their beliefs.” How silly can one be! Many people have died for their beliefs. That certainly does not mean they were truthful, that their beliefs were valid.
The burning and the banning has been on the part of those supporting the Bible, not those who are trying to reveal it for what it is. If there has been any persecution it has been by people who are in support of the Book and not by those critical of its validity. That history accounts in large measure for the fact that the Bible is so strong today. An intelligent analyst of the national scene recently made a very observant statement in saying, “If you think it is hard living as a Christian in this nation, you ought to try living as not one.

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