INERRANT BIBLE MANUSCRIPTS

INERRANT BIBLE MANUSCRIPTS

"The Scriptures are inerrant in their original manuscripts." Biblical inerrantists frequently say this when confronted by evidence that the Bible we have today is not inerrant. How valid is this claim?

First of all, not a single original manuscript of any book of the Bible exists today. So we cannot say, in the present tense, "They are inerrant." Further-more, by the time the latest book of the Bible was written, all of the original manuscripts had long since been worn out and replaced by copies. And they were not firsthand copies: they were copies of copies of copies. . . This means that nobody ever saw the entire Bible as it was originally written.

Thus, even if the original manuscripts were inerrant - and there is no evidence that they ever were - there is now no way to determine which parts of the Bible were originally "true" and which parts are now "false."

So even if one were to claim that the Scriptures were inerrant in their original manuscripts, it is a hollow, meaningless claim today.

There never was an "inerrant" Bible, and there never will be.

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