The Bible is the inerrant Word of God

Thanks again for your patience dj21... First I'll answer your questions of my beliefs regarding the Bible's inerrancy: | RE: "Do you believe God directly authored the Bible (as with Muhammad & the Koran)? | Or do you believe men wrote using their own words under God"s inspiration/approval?" First, a self-authenticating proclamation about Scripture from Scripture: 2 Timothy 3:16 (NASB) [16] All Scripture is [a]inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; [a] Literally, "God breathed" Some will ask whether Paul believed he was writing Scripture when he sent epistles to the churches and to individuals. He probably didn't have a concept of a complete canon, but he was certainly aware that his letters were circulated among the early churches, and other apostles/church fathers certainly regarded his writings among "the rest of the Scriptures". For instance, the apostle Peter made this statement in one of his own epistles: 2 Peter 3:15-16 (NASB) [15] ...and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, [16] as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. Notice the reference to "Paul" and how the "untaught and unstable" distort the meaning of certain things in his letters as they distort similar teachings in the "rest of the Scriptures". I believe that the Bible is Divine, not merely human in Origin: - Every book was physically composed and written by men - The Bible was compiled and delivered to the world by men - The marks of human origin are firmly established on every page of every book The Divine part includes (but is not limited to): - Involvement in and throughout the whole preparation of the material to be written and of the men to write it (including the earliest oral tradition) - Involvement in and throughout the whole process of the gathering, classification and use of the material by the writers - Influential in and throughout the whole process of the actual writing, from divine orchestration to spiritual illumination to direct revelation and various other forms of inspiration | RE: "Do you believe we can expect God to communicate in a clear and coherent fashion?" Yes. Now, this is not a rebuttal (at least, it's not intended to be), but I must point out that one of your assertions has the potential to subtly redefine our previously agreed definition of "inerrant", currently: "no factual errors or irreconcilable conflicts". The assertion: "An optimistic assessment would be that New Testament transcriptions were about 95% accurate. I would assert that this in itself is evidence enough that the Bible is not inerrant, after all, inerrant does not mean "very minor errors" or "very few errors", it means "error free". Completely." First, transcription errors that occurred within any given manuscript were not replicated to every other early manuscript copy. There are literally several thousands of manuscripts from different regions, etc... While there are no surviving original autographs, the Bible actually has stronger ancient manuscript/copy support than any other work of classical history, including Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, and Tacitus. When the earliest extant manuscripts are compared with later manuscripts, the resulting corrected text is demonstrably unaltered. Yes, different alterations/insertions and transcription errors (effectively, typos) in virtuously any passage can be found in almost any manuscript, but the majority texts will agree and expose the minority alterations/transcription errors such that they have either been corrected in the modern versions/translations or highlighted as appearing only in certain manuscripts (generally specified as later manuscripts, etc...). In no case does any potentially preserved alteration constitute a "factual error" or "irreconcilable conflict". That is the great benefit of comparison using the broad source of early and late manuscripts. In other words, errors are almost always in a unique place such that the can be identified by comparing to almost any other critical/received manuscript/partial or to the majority text. In the few instances where an alteration was copied, it can still be identified by comparing to the majority text. Finally, you seem to be introducing a new burden for me, saying, "I believe you need to show scholarship that asserts that there has never been an error in transcription, or else show that 'very minor errors' / 'few errors' is somehow equal to 'error free.'" I would agree to that if we hadn't already established my burden, "You need only make a compelling case that the Bible is without error or irreconcilable conflict", and I would add, according to the specified definition of inerrant: "no factual errors or irreconcilable conflicts". We should not now expand that definition to include "error(s) in transcription". Note: My burden did not originally include "scholarship that asserts that there has never been an error in transcription". If you had pointed to specific transcription errors and asserted factual error or irreconcilable conflict, then I would have been forced to deal with the assertion(s). As it stands, I do have several assertions to address under points #2 ("Dubious Science") and #3 ("Irreconcilable Discrepancies"). I look forward to rebuttals dealing with points #2 and #3.