Strict inerrancy

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A Latin Bible handwritten in 1407 AD.
A Latin Bible handwritten in 1407 AD.

Strict inerrancy is a belief and a doctrinal holding that states that the Bible is without error in its present form. This belief stands in opposition to the doctrine of original inerrancy, which holds merely that the Bible might originally have been without error but now contains a few minor errors from copying.

Strict inerrancy does not mean that any given translation of the Bible is inerrant. It means, rather, that we have manuscripts of the Bible, in its original language, that preserve intact the original God-inspired text.

Contents

The Importance of Strict Inerrancy

To understand why strict inerrancy is so important, one must consider what the Bible purports to be. Believers in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob also believe the Bible to be the direct Word of God. The principles of Biblical inerrancy derive mainly from the Bible's astonishing prophetic accuracy. To name the most famous example, the Bible contains over four hundred specific prophecies about Jesus Christ. Peter W. Stoner recently calculated that the probability of even forty-eight of them coming true by chance alone was 10-157. That's a digit one, preceded by 156 zeroes and a decimal point--or one ten-thousand-quinquagintillionth. To put that in perspective, ten thousand quinquagintillion is one-tenth of the square of the total number of electrons in the universe.

Strict-inerrantists firmly believe that a God capable of keeping a Promise against odds of ten thousand quinquagintillion to one is certainly capable of preserving intact His Original Words, regardless of any man's careless or even any man's attempted interference. To suggest otherwise--to suggest, in sum, that God would allow careless or malicious human beings to tamper with His Word--is to violate the very character of God.

The Evidence for Strict Inerrancy

The Old Testament alone is the best-cared-for manuscript in the history of letters. Fred Williams says this about the scribes' methods in taking care that they had produced faithful copies:
The scribes who were in charge of the Old Testament text dedicated their lives to preserving the text's accuracy when they made copies. The great lengths the scribes went to guarantee the reliability of the copies is illustrated by the fact that they would count every letter and every word, and record in the margins such things as the middle letter and word of the Torah. If a single error was found, the copy was immediately destroyed. As a software engineer, I can personally vouch that the scribe's method of protecting the text is more rigorous than the common checksumming methods used today to protect software programs from corruption.

By far the most remarkable attestation for both the prophetic power and the accuracy of transmission of the Bible occurred in 1947, with the finding in Qumran of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Those documents, which actually date as far back a 600 BC in some cases, agree word-for-word with modern Hebrew manuscripts with very few exceptions.

The New Testament was less well-protected. However, Williams reports that more than 24,000 copies of the New Testament exist, the oldest of which date to within 25 years of the writing of the last Book of the Bible (Revelation). Those copies have an enviable record of agreement among themselves, having 40 disputed lines, as compared to 764 disputed lines in the 643 copies of the Iliad of Homer.

Conclusion

The doctrine of strict inerrancy derives from a consideration of the character of God and also is very well supported. Strict inerrancy also provides a testament to the reality of the Creation story, and the absolute reliability of God's Promises to those who believe in Him.

See Also:

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