Quote:
Originally Posted by kerry
Still copies and hence not inerrant on your terms.
For much of the biblical material it seems likely that the written versions are actually pretty late constructions. It's likely that much of the gospels for instance were stories passed along by word of mouth for a long time. Do you think the verbal stories were inspired or only became inspired once written down?
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We better define terms before going down this road.
"Inspiration" does NOT mean that they were "inspiring literature", but that they were literally "God-breathed".
My understanding is that the original written text was inspired--the human writers editing their source material according to their judgement--the whole being "superintended" by God.
Look at the prologue to the Gospel of Luke. Luke says that others were writing about what Jesus did and said, and it seemed good to him, also, to set down his record. Note that "it seemed good to him". Luke wrote what he wanted, but God used Luke's experiences etc to craft the gospel as God intended. Note also that all four gospels have different audiences, and purposes, and that is the reason the human authors wrote slightly different accounts. Not one of them contends that their writing is a straight forward dairy of the life of Jesus. We allow modern authors the ability to pick and choose how to tell their story, why should we confine the gospel writers to a different standard.