The Bible was written in an ancient culture by people who were richly immersed in that culture. Does that mean that the Bible contains ancient cultural errors?
The Bible is the most investigated document in all of history—for good reason! It claims to be God’s Word and to tell us how we can be reconciled to him through the sacrificial death of Jesus, God in the flesh. However, analysis has also revealed how the Bible was influenced by its human authors and their cultures.
This has raised questions about whether this influence extends to errors believed in the culture.
When we say that the Bible is God’s Word, that doesn’t mean we deny that there are human authors like Moses, David, Isaiah, and Paul. The 66 books of the Bible were written in human languages (Hebrew, Greek, and a little Aramaic). They speak about events that took place within human cultures, and they conform to known genres of ancient literature.
However, they are more than human books because God the Holy Spirit inspired Scripture. As Paul says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.” (2 Timothy 3:16)
While all Scripture is inspired, a cursory look at the Bible will suggest inspiration can’t look the same for every verse of the Bible. Some of the Bible is the recorded direct words of God, described as “thus says the LORD.”
Luke details how he carefully recorded the testimony of eyewitnesses (Luke 1:1–4). Paul dictated at least some of his letters to a scribe, who had at least some discretion regarding exact wording (Romans 16:22). David’s psalms were outpourings of worship and lament from his heart. Our doctrine of inspiration needs to encompass all of these examples of Scripture and more.
So when we say Scripture is inspired, we don’t mean that the human authors were empty vessels through which God transmitted Scripture—if God had wanted to simply convey the Bible in his own speech transcribed by scribes, he could have done that.
Rather, God used the totality of the human author’s personality—including his culture, experiences, language choices, and education—while superimposing over the process so that the final product was completely accurate and without error.
—Lita Sanders
English
