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Jan. 17, 2011 Many people, especially ordinary Christians, entertain the notion that the Bible is inerrant, that it contains clear language about which there can be but little debate and that in all matters it is perfectly truthful. Most of these people, if they are American, read the Bible in modern English only, often from a book in a beautiful format, with leather binding, gilt-edged pages and grosgrain ribbons, all of which enhances their feeling of being in the presence of divinity. However, this clarity is an illusion in many cases. First of all, as I mentioned in a couple of articles, Hebrew, including the Hebrew of the original Jewish Bible, is written in consonants only, Thus we have: zhv (gold, pron.: zahav), csf (silver, pron.: cesef), etc.. Often the same consonants stand for different words: gdl (big, gadol; size, godel; grew, gadal); bkr (boker, morning; bakar, head of cattle). So in the course of a single book of the Bible, there are dozens of cases where different readings are possible. Standardized readings came about only from around the fifth to the tenth century, when the Masoretes edited the Bible, adding vowels, a procedure known as Niqqud: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masoretes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niqqud Often it was a rabbinical decision that settled differences of opinion among scribes. So it would be foolish and ignorant to say that God wrote the Bible with consummate precision, and it can be rendered into perfectly clear English, absent any doubt whatsoever as to the authenticity of the least word. A complicating factor is that the text is corrupt in many places. It cannot be read at all, or the apparent reading seems wrong. What happened in such a case was that the corrupt pasasge was left unvocalized (without vowels) in the main text, and a footnote was added, giving the proposed correction or substitution. Of course this left wide open the possibility of error, tendentiousness or out-and-out fraud. The written text was called Ketiv and the emendation appeared in the lower margin as a Qere. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qere_and_Ketiv This wikipedia article refers to a “small number of differences”, but as I recall from my reading of the Jewish Bible years ago, there were three or four ketiv and qere on every page of Genesis, Exodus and the other books of the Pentateuch (Torah). My overall feeling was that Gemesis and Exodus were like rusty buckets shot full of holes. But talk to average American Christians and you will find people who have probably never even heard of Niqqud, Ketiv or Qere and who have never supposed that such things exist. If they will listen long enough to have them explained, they will dismiss them immediately as having no bearing on Biblical inerrancy, as if they know from some mystical source that in spite of everything the wod of God rings loud and clear in every syllalble of the Bible. There are a couple of inerrantists who post articles on this website, but nothing they say indicates that they are in anywise conversant in Hebrew or Greek. They will discuss the meaning of the words of Moses, Paul or John at length, without having even given a thought to the historicity of these men or the authorship of their supposed utterances. With this kind of ignorance and obscurantism rampant, it is easy to see why schools have such a hard time eliminating religion from their teachings. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written five books: ELEMENTS OF GRAMMAR and A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction); A TALE OF UNG, THE ENNUNMENT and GVAGMA (fiction). I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Visit my website here. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com
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