The Inerrancy of the Bible

We are a Bible class at a Christian high school. We are opening a discussion defending the inerrancy and infallibility of the Word of God. This discussion is open to anyone who wishes to participate.It is our stand that the King James Version of the Holy Bible is completely perfect. Even though the Bible may seem to contain errors and contradictions, it is our steadfast belief that if one would study the passage in question thoroughly, his study would only prove that the Bible is without error. This is our belief because of two reasons: 1) In John 17:17 the Bible states that God’s Word is truth. 2) We have never found an error or contradiction in the Bible.We are opening this discussion to prove these reasons. We are ready to receive and refute any apparent contradiction or error in the King James Bible.

John 17:14 states of Christ, I have given them thy word John 17:17 records Christ’s request of God, Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. There is no contradiction here. Jesus is merely stating that the Word of God is true. The Bible claims to be the Word of God in II Timothy 3:16. And Jesus stated in John 10:35 that the Scripture cannot be broken. It is well known that the Bible claims to be the Word of God and that, as a book from God, it also claims to be completely true. We have opened this discussion to demonstrate the validity of these claims.

There is really only one King James Version of the Bible (not counting the NKJV). However, the KJV has gone through four minor revisions for two reasons.1) The revisions of 1629 and 1638 corrected some typographical errors discovered in the original printing. The typesetting of the original printing of the KJV was completed by hand, one letter at a time. There are a total of 789,500 words in the KJV. The typesetters of 1611 did not have computers to run spelling and grammar checks on their work, and it is only reasonable to expect them to make a few mistakes (only about 400 by the way, which makes their first printing 99.95% accurate). However, though these corrections were needed for the printed edition, there is no indication that any changes were ever made to the actual text of the KJV.2) The revisions of 1762 and 1769 were actually a single revision broken into two parts. This revision was necessary to accommodate recent typesetting and spelling changes in the English language itself. For instance, in the 1611 typesetting, the lower case letter s looks like our letter f, the letter’s u and v are reversed (v for u and u for v), the letter j looks like our letter i, and the letter d looks more like the Greek delta. There were also some minor spelling changes such as feare to fear, mee to me, ranne to ran, and ftarres to stars. Once again, there were no changes made to the actual text of the King James Version.

As you already know, this exact statement is not found in the four Gospels. Yet we do find an explanation for this fact. John 21:25 says, And there are also many other which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. There are only 82,590 words in the Gospels and not all of those are quotes of Jesus. It is quite probable that Jesus did make this statement for it coincides perfectly with Matthew 10:41-42 and Luke 14:12-14.

The answer to this is that they were simply using a different classification system. Our current animal classification system was developed by Carolus Linnaeus in the 1800s. Linnaeus based his system on similarities of basic body structure. There are a few exceptions to this system such as the duck-billed platypus and the spiny anteater, and even now not all biologists agree on how all organisms should be classified. Likewise, the classification system of the 1500s BC probably had a few animals (the bat as a fowl and the whale as a fish) that were exceptions to the norm of their positions in the charts. This does not necessarily mean that their system was wrong and ours is right. It just means that they used different criteria for their classification than we do.

As we can see in II Kings 8:16, the concept of a co-regency was not an unfamiliar one to the Children of Israel. Most of the supposed contradictions between the books of Kings and Chronicles are consistent with this fact. One must read the passages in question carefully to determine whether the dates given are those of a co-regency.II Chronicles 21:12-20 tells us that Ahaziah's father was sick of a sore disease for two years before dying. It is very probable that Ahaziah was made co-regent in Jehoram's eleventh year and sole regent in his twelfth year. Jehoiachin's co-regency is explained in Ezekiel 19. There it is explained that he was made a "young lion" to learn how to be a "lion" or a king. Jotham reigned for 16 years after his father's death, but he also ruled in his father's stead after Uzziah was smitten with leprosy for attempting to enter the Holy place of God unlawfully (II Chronicles 26:16-27:1). As stated in the verses, Solomon had 4,000 stalls that housed both chariots and horses. These stalls were then sub-divided to accomodate 40,000 horses. So Solomon had 40,000 stalls for his horses.Sorry for the delay. We are attempting to work out each problem as a class before posting our solution. We are still working on the others and will post our reply as soon as we are able. Thank you for your patience.

To claim that the book is in error, one must prove that Jesus never made this statement. You cannot prove that. Therefore you cannot claim that the book is in error.

There are several classification systems used in America today for organizing books and libraries. The Dewey Decimal System and the Library of Congress Numbering System are two of them. These two systems do not agree with each other as to how different books should be classified, but this does not make one system right and the other wrong. They are simply different. Our current system for classifying animals did not exist when the book of Leviticus was written. It was developed in the eighteenth century by Carolus Linnaeus. Therefore whatever system was in use in 1500 BC was different from the one used today. It is possible that one of those differences was the classification of the bat as a fowl.

The Greek word that you are referring to is Areios Pagos. It is a reference to a place in Athens where the Greek mythologies teach that Ares was brought before the court of the gods for killing Halirrhothius. It literally means the hill (pagos) of Ares (Areios). Ares was the Greek god of war, but with the rise of the Roman Empire, his name was changed to Mars. The name of the hill then can be transliterated as Areopagus, translated as the Hill of Ares, or translated as Mars' Hill.