Talk:The Bible is inerrant - Part 2 (Talk.Origins)

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Re: "Do you believe the Bible is the Word of God? If you answer yes, then it is logical to concluded thatthe Bible is inerrant."

Strictly speaking, you also need to believe that (i) God is incapable of error, and (ii) God intended the Bible to be factually correct (including that God did not want to present the Israelites with simplified explanations of complex phenomena that they might not understand otherwise - aka "lies to children").

Re: "Actually the Hebrew is differentiating between the four front limbs that are use for crawling and the two hind limbs which are used for hopping."

If this is so, then hares should be described as two-legged, but they are not.

Finally, if the Genealogy for Jesus listed by Luke is via Mary rather than Joseph, it's necessary to explain the Catholic tradition that Mary's father was named Joachim, not Heli.

Roy 16:53, 7 Feb 2005 (GMT)

• You may have a point regarding the additional assumptions about God. But I'll leave it to someone else to word that in if they feel it is necessary.
• Regarding the number of legs, whilst not directly answering your point, I have added some extra argument that indirectly addresses this. And sorry mate, but if the cap fits...
• It may be useful to explain Catholic tradition on this point, but it is hardly "necessary" for us to explain someone else's reasoning.

Philip J. Rayment 09:15, 8 Feb 2005 (GMT)

I can't speak for others, but I for one don't think the ancient Israelites were any less intelligent than people today. But that doesn't mean you should assume they never made mistakes, particularly about things which are not obvious such as rabbit coprophagy (though the description of camels as not having divided hooves is hard to fathom). Nor can you rule out possible copying errors from later non-nomadic scribes. In any case, given the capacity of many people to hold fast to ideas which are palpably incorrect (e.g. the flat earth society) I can't see how to completely rule out the possibility that the Israelites simply 'knew' that insects had 4 legs regardless of the evidence - particularly since once this became part of scripture it would be self-reinforcing. The odd phrasibng of the levitical text could even be seen as an attempt to harmonise a pre-concieved idea of grasshoppers having 4 legs with the physical evidence.

Re the genealogies, as far as I can tell the idea that Luke's genealogy refers to Mary is of recent origin. From http://www.frontline-apologetics.com/Genealogy.htm

Against this solution, Biblical scholar Alfred Plummer said that it was "not advocated by

anyone until Annius of Viterbo propounded it, .A.D. 1490"

Some claim older sources, but don't provide actual examples. If this idea is recent, some explanation is needed as to why.

Incidentally, while researching I also found this: The scribes of some manuscripts sometimes took exceedingly great liberties with the texts. This is the case of one of the most venerable manuscripts after the two referred to above, the Sixth century Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis. The scribe probably noticed the difference between Luke's and Matthew's genealogy of Jesus, so he put Matthew's genealogy into his copy of Luke, but as the second contained fewer names than the first, he padded it out with extra names (without balancing them up). at http://home.swipnet.se/islam/books/maurice/10sources.htm.

Roy 13:16, 16 Mar 2005 (GMT)

Since there are a huge number of biblical manuscripts, many more than for any other ancient work and including even first-century papyri, it is easy to detect such aberrant versions. Oelphick 18:33, 22 October 2006 (EDT)