Is The Bible The Inerrant Word of God ?
The Bible is written over a period of 1500 years by more than 40 authors from all walks of life. This Book has been translated into more than 120 languages worldwide. The Bible contains errors because the Bible we are now having is the translation from the copy of the copy of the original. If you often do translations, you will understand the point I am trying to make:It is extremely hard to produce accurate translations because of various reasons, in particular cultural barriers and the myriad choices of words (example, English only has “love” while in Indonesian we have “suka”, “cinta”,”sayang”,etc.). Another determinant factor that cause errors in translations is the condition of the translator: Was he/she sleepy when he translated, did he/she fall asleep ? Was his/her focus distracted because the child was crying, the spouse wass ill or guests kept coming, etc. There are some other causes which hinders any type of texts, not only Bible, from being 100% accurately translated. Now,the important question is “what kind of errors does the Bible contain?”
The Bible is free from important-conceptual-meaningful-errors. It is not free from frivolous errors though, many errors are related to nonsensical words such as the article “the”, this tiny word can somehow disappear in the process of translation. Some other errors are connected to spelling. We can also find changes in translations, they are not errors, just different type of words used by translators to clarify the meaning or the message of the passage. Many readers are biblical illiterate so in translations, sometimes words are altered to make it more culturally relevant to the readers. One example occured many years ago. In the past, I read an article about the bible being translated to an ethnic language in one part of Indonesia. People there did not have any idea at all about what it means by ‘scarlet’ in Isaiah 18. So, when the bible is translated, the translator changed the word ‘scarlet’ into a red-coloured fruit (I forgot the name) which grows in that area.
So, I believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. There are some errors in the Bible translation process but in no way it affects the principle tenets of Christianity. No matter what version our Bible is or in what language it is written or translated, the main messages stay the same: Jesus is God, He is the Only Way, The Truth and The Life, salvation is by grace alone,etc. Based on many researches done by bible experts and history scholars, we can be confident that the Bible is 99% accurate, thus in conclusion the bible is reliable, it is indeed The Word of God.
Lippo-Cikarang,October 25,2013.
The Bible is free from important-conceptual-meaningful-errors. It is not free from frivolous errors though, many errors are related to nonsensical words such as the article “the”, this tiny word can somehow disappear in the process of translation. Some other errors are connected to spelling. We can also find changes in translations, they are not errors, just different type of words used by translators to clarify the meaning or the message of the passage. Many readers are biblical illiterate so in translations, sometimes words are altered to make it more culturally relevant to the readers. One example occured many years ago. In the past, I read an article about the bible being translated to an ethnic language in one part of Indonesia. People there did not have any idea at all about what it means by ‘scarlet’ in Isaiah 18. So, when the bible is translated, the translator changed the word ‘scarlet’ into a red-coloured fruit (I forgot the name) which grows in that area.
So, I believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. There are some errors in the Bible translation process but in no way it affects the principle tenets of Christianity. No matter what version our Bible is or in what language it is written or translated, the main messages stay the same: Jesus is God, He is the Only Way, The Truth and The Life, salvation is by grace alone,etc. Based on many researches done by bible experts and history scholars, we can be confident that the Bible is 99% accurate, thus in conclusion the bible is reliable, it is indeed The Word of God.
Lippo-Cikarang,October 25,2013.