A few points on inerrancy
Hello @joanofarcs-stigmata I finally had the time to gather my thoughts on this and do a small amount of research, hope you're well and this is still something you're up for dialoguing on :)
My position is that the bible is inerrant, which, colloquially, means it is always telling the truth. More precisely, my position is "The inerrancy of Scripture means that Scripture in the original manuscripts do not affirm anything that is contrary to fact"
Insert obvious caveats for vagueness (e.g. 8000 soldiers could be 7999) poetic/parabolic meaning, hyperbole and figures of speech, and "technically scientifically incorrect statements that are true in context e.g. 'the sun rises'", loose quotations, unusual grammar etc.
HOWEVER there is exactly one (1) genuine example of something in scripture that seems to be wrong that I know of! II Samuel 8 says 700 horsemen, I Chronicles 18 says 7000 horsemen, of the same battle. I'm not persuaded of any explanation except that this is a copying error. However, note that this still a) does not mean the original manuscript was wrong b) is very small.
So I'm open to very very small insignificant errors in our current versions of the bible. But that is the only one I know of (that I am persuaded is genuine).
Anyway so that's where I'm at, I have a couple points to say in defence of my position and my concerns with not taking an inerrant position which I would love to hear your thoughts on :)
1) The bible seems to claim to be true in a historical/scientific sense
Which comes through strongly in how new testament folks speak about the old testament events. For example, in Romans 4 Paul seems to really think that Abraham was 100 years old when Sarah had a child. Or in Matthew 12 Jesus seems to talk about the events of Jonah as real events.
I wonder how you would explain passages like these? Are they talking about them like I would quote a myth or talk about a fictional character, e.g. "Achilles slew Hector" "Batman fought the joker". If so, is that not somewhat misleading on Paul and Jesus' part, given his audience (from what I understand) would have taken these things literally?
Basically, if these things are not historically true, why do we have Jesus and the apostles treating them like they are?
Which is of course a bold claim, but I think is true and helpful to point out here. Btw, would be happy to hear your pushback on any of my claims in this including the part where I claim there are no/minimal errors in scripture :)
Proving Scripture with history is dangerous because, of course, it can place human reason and the historical process above scripture in your epistemology. But in this context I think it's still useful to point out the historical support I think inerrancy enjoys.
Aside from my lack of knowledge of any notable historical errors in scripture, I'm aware of several positive cases where history was aligned with scripture, or scripture being the only extant source of information that is later confirmed in other sources. See the pool of Siloam, found in 2005. Nineveh, The Hittite Empire (!), Sargon of Akkad. Just some of the things found in the bible that were once thought mythical but later confirmed by archaeology.
And there seems to be consistently accurate ecology, distances between locations, period appropriate technology, names, cultural practices etc.
Anyway all this to say, I wonder whether there's any specific errors that prevent you from taking an inerrant view? And what you make of the positive evidence?
3) A few thoughts on authorship
So on authorship I understand you dispute most if not all traditional authorship? I wonder if you think it's a tenable view to say something like "even if the authors are not original, the content is still accurate"
We believe in God, and the inspiration of the scriptures, so is it a huge leap to go from "God inspired Moses to write the Torah completely accurately" to "God inspired a historian to write a collection of Moses' and other sources sayings to thus create the Torah completely accurately". Especially given in both cases, they are writing about events long in the past!
I'm not saying I agree with this btw (although I will concede Deuteronomy was not entirely written by Moses purely on the basis that it includes a description of his own death haha). I do tend to go with the traditional authorship. But I'm wondering whether "The scriptures we have were not written by the original authors" and "The scriptures are inerrant" are views that can co-exist.
So in summary, the bible seems to claim to be historically true (when it speaks about historical events), seems, from what I know, to be incredibly accurate in such things, and I think even without holding to original authorship this is good reason to think inerrancy might be true.
And inerrancy is I think a very healthy position because it means you can trust scripture and apply it a lot more to your life. I think the biggest danger in our cultural context of taking a liberal view of scripture is that it allows you to consider 'errors' all those scriptures you don't like, thus making the scripture bend to your view rather than taking instruction from it. What do you see as the pros/cons of your position?
