Is the Bible the inerrant word of God?

Question

Please explain your answer. No "yes" or "no" answers please. I would like answers from everyone - Christians (Catholics, Evangelicals, Born Again, Fundamentalist), Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc.

Answer 1

The Bible was written by man for man about God. It was written years and years after Jesus even lived. The whole reason there is a Bible is because Christianity had no uniformity and a book would certainly help that. So they put one together. It was never meant to be the center of a religion, it was meant as a guide to Christianity. Simply a guide.

Answer 2

Considering the fact that certain incidents differ from one gospel to another, the Bible cannot be the inerrant word of God. For example, the synoptic gospels place the famous scene where Christ removes the moneychangers from the temple at the end of His ministry - basically the last act leading to the crucifixion. The Gospel of John has the incident occurring near the beginning of Christ's ministry. In Luke one of the criminals who is crucified with Christ chastises the other for insulting Christ (saying that they were getting the punishment that they deserved), while other gospels make no mention of this confession of conscience. You also make mention of 2nd Timothy 3, which was a letter from Paul to Timothy. Some people consider this to be scripture, but there's no reason to believe that Paul considered his correspondence with Timothy (or anyone else) to be scripture. He was writing letters of exhortation to fledgling churches, not writing a gospel or delivering prophecy. There's reason to believe that most - if not all - of the texts in the New Testament date from the first or early second centuries. They were widely used by Christians of many varied sects and denominations. The New Testament as we know it - a collection of 27 texts - can only be reliably traced back as far as the 39th Festal letter of Athanasius (367 A.D.). As individual texts they express eyewitness accounts of Christ and the apostles, and therefore bear occasional discrepancies (as eyewitness accounts usually do). Seen as a collection, those discrepancies become contradictions and prevent the collection from being the "inerrant word of God".

Answer 3

the bible IS the inerrant word of God, but there are many problems with the way we interpret it. i think we tend to dramatize some of the miracles a little bit too much, and that's one reason people call the bible ''a bunch of fairy tales''... we take a hollywood approach to everything. take the story of the parting of the red sea as an example: some of us have seen the movie ''the ten commandments,'' where moses raises up his hands and suddenly there are two walls of water in the middle of the red sea, so that's the way we picture it in our minds. but not many people know that napoleon's engineers successfully calculated the exact time when the wind would allow napoleon's army to do the same thing, nor do they know that divers have found countless egyptian chariot axles and other artifacts under the red sea in that same place. there's an underwater ridge where the israelites are believed to have crossed the red sea. it's a strip that reaches from one shore to the other, and the water is only about ten feet deep in that spot. when there is a strong enough wind blowing from the east (as is written), the water is pushed over the sides of the ridge, and the ridge is exposed. the point is, God created everything we will ever know. He can work in supernatural ways that seem natural to us, because we don't have strong enough faith to see past the natural. too many of us can only believe what we see with our own eyes, and that's one thing that causes so much controversy over the inerrant word of God.

by the way, i don't think ''born again'' is a denomination. it's just a term for a passionate christian.

Answer 4

I'm a protestant Christian and prefer to say the Bible is the word of God. Inerrancy, is a sort of made up phenomena that does more to detract from Biblical teachings than help them. If by inerrancy you mean the Bible comes from God, sure I believe it. If by inerrancy you mean we take everything in it literally, then by whose standard are we judging literal meaning. Clearly, even Jesus spoke parabolically with stories not meant to be take literally, so we can assume God does the same in the Old testament.

Answer 5

The bible is a book written by men a long time ago who believed in Jesus Christ. Like many other books (i.e. Koran) people are allowed to believe whatever they choose if it helps them get through this life. As an athiest, I don't believe it is anything more than an old book that doesn't really help me.

Answer 6

Here's what the apostle Paul said at 2 Timothy: 16-17,

16 "Every scripture [is] divinely inspired, and profitable for teaching, for conviction, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be complete, fully fitted to every good work".

The Hebrew scriptures contained errors caused by sophorem, (so called wise men or secretaries) scribes and translators. However, more confidence has been given to the Masoretic text in light of its closeness to the text of the Dead Sea scrolls. The masoretes were a group interested in preserving the traditional values of the bible. They existed between 700 and 1100 ce.

Answer 7

No. It was written by Bronze-Age desert nomads who knew nothing about the world beyond their own lands and mythologies.It doesn't get even basic facts right (is: rabbits do not chew a cud), has a magical version of history without evidence (flood, sun stopping in the sky, etc...), and even gets the histories of kings out of order. Not to mention extremely one-dimensional characters, no plot whatsoever, and insurmountable inconsistencies that should not exist if the thing were "inerrant".

It is a complilation of letters, myths, and mangled oral history. Nothing more. Nothing magical about it.

Answer 8

Yes it is. It was completely inspired by the Holy Spirit. I am a born again Pentecostal Christian. I was raised Catholic, even going through 12 years of Catholic schooling, but am now a Protestant. Reading the Bible and the leading of the Holy Spirit is what prompted me to change faiths.

Answer 9

It might have some errors because even in Revelations there are warnings to those who would add or subtract from it. Just the same it remains correct enough to still deliver the message and remain a guide book to Christ. The Bible still leads Christians to partake of the Spirit of God.

Answer 10

If you mean has the wording ever been changed then the answer is yes dozens of times. If you mean has the message changed I would say NO.. Christians have His promise that the heavens and the earth would pass away but His word would never pass away. If we are to believe that God is there we MUST believe that He can and has protected His word to man... Jim