That’s right, I found an error in my Bible. It’s not a very big error, but it’s an error nonetheless. What is this error?
And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.
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That’s right, in my copy of the English Standard Version, Isaiah 6:7 (quoted above verbatim), has the beginning quote for the angel’s speach but not the end quote!
Of course, if one has a little historical perspective, one will realize that not only did the original Hebrew not have quotations marks…it didn’t even have vowels in the text. Thus the addition of the vowels is not inspired, nor is the punctuation as it occurs in the English language.
Naturally, this isn’t a problem to those of us who hold to a correct view of inerrancy, which is that the original autographs were inspired by God and without error. Copies and translations of those originals, however, are not inerrant.
Unfortunately, inerrancy is almost never taught correctly in churches these days and most Christians have a Bibilolatrous view of Scripture. But most people would think that admitting modern translations have errors would open up all kinds of problems with stating the Scripture is authoritative.
This is easily dismissed by Scripture itself. In the New Testament, Old Testament passages were frequently quoted using the Septuagint (LXX) instead of the Hebrew Scriptures. Even Jesus quoted the LXX, and He used it authoritatively. That is because what is inspired is the content and not the lingustic labels given to that content. This is why translation can take place, and this is why translations are still authoritative.
January 24th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
Nice. Now you’ve got me looking through my NASB looking for Type-o’s.
January 25th, 2006 at 7:54 am
And you may find some. Of course, they are edited fairly well overall so any typographical errors are likely to be minor.
One thing about the error I mentioned above in my ESV. I’ve got a pocket-size version of the text that I carry with me everywhere so I can read Scripture when I have free time, and I’ve also got one of the Reformation Study Bibles with the ESV text. The error in Isaiah 6:7 is in BOTH copies, so it appears to be something with the actual ESV text itself and not just the formatting issue with any specific text.
This, I think, merely demonstrates an error that is common to the computer age, one that would not have happened previously because different versions would have been type-set manually rather than simply reformatted with a computer program that stores the text unchanged. Still, while that is a minor drawback to modern technology, it still probably helps keep down error rates since fewer people are involved in the process to mess it up :-)
In any case, finding errors like this does not affect inerrancy as it is actually taught, even though it may well affect many people’s misconceptions of inerrancy. The bottom line is that as uncomfortable as it may be to the average Christian, we have to accept that there are such things as copying errors, mistranslations, and even some instances of willful altering of the Scripture. This is why it’s important for us to all have a correct understanding of inerrancy as well as a good understanding of textual criticism. Without knowing that, it would be fairly simple for a skeptic to convince you that you ought not have any confidence in Scripture now when, in reality, textual critcism gives us solid reason to accept that the Bible we have as still authoritative because of its closeness to the original autographs.