Exactly. Which is why I backed of (just a little) in response to Jeremy.

It seems plain to me that Job is written in a factual, historical fashion. I’m not saying that another argument couldn’t legitimately be advanced towards it’s being myth. But to just say, as I think is more common “Well he can’t be a real guy” is a different sort of thing.

I suppose the proof is in the pudding. If someone says “Job’s a storybook character” and that’s their only deviation from accepting Scripture at face value, then fine.

But who does that? Who denies Job’s historicity (without advancing another explanation from the text itself) and nothing else. Further, who denies a literal global flood and nothing else, or who denies Paul’s authorship of books that start with “Paul, an apostle…” and nothing else.

Precious few, it seems to me, because errancy, in any form, has ramifications.

But if Job had been written with a Hebrew equivalent of “once upon a time”, it wouldn’t be violating inerrancy, right?

If someone’s arguing that the text itself shows that it belongs in the fable genre, then they aren’t violating inerrancy.

Of course, the weaker their arguments are, the more likely it is that they’re paying lip-service to inerrancy while demonstrating a willingness to re-interpret at the drop of a hat. Which is different from explicitly denying inerrancy, but not very far.

You may be right. But I would argue that Jesus use of Lazarus is more historically ambiguous than Job.

My point was that at some point we really do need to listen to what people say about specifics in the Bible in order to determine whether or not they believe in Biblical inerrancy.
Justs saying “Do you believe the Bible is inerrant” isn’t enough, especially if the person asked believes that you’ll take their views more seriously if they say “yes”.

This is why I believe that people who hold to theistic evolution, or day-age or some other billion year old view of creation, other than a 6 24 hour day creation, do not really hold to inerrancy.

Perhaps I should have answered that question, “No, but you’d have be inconsistent in your claims of inerrancy to say that Job wasn’t a real guy.”

The answer to that depends on how you do it. If you do it by saying that the book assumes Job’s historical reality but that you disagree, then you are. If you do it by saying that the book doesn’t assume his historical reality because it’s a literary work telling a story with fictional characters to illustrate a theological point (as Jesus unmistakably does in his parables), then you aren’t denying inerrancy. I’d say you’ve gotten the book wrong, but it’s not inerrancy that you’ve denied. It’s the historical character of that particular book that you’ve denied.

There was a major discussion of this recently among a number of Christian blogs. My contribution to the discussion was Longman, Literalism, and Genesis (and an earlier treatment was The Broadness of Inerrancy). You can follow the links from the former to some of the other posts by those with different views.

By Daryl’s standard, there’s no easy way to rule out the view that you deny inerrancy by denying the historical personage of the Lazarus in Jesus’ parable about Lazarus and Abraham’s bosom.

Some people misunderstand love and think love requires never disciplining or punishing people (or, on the other extreme, that it means abusing those you love in the name of discipline or punishment). Does that mean we shouldn’t be concerned about love?

1.) The strong reliability of the Masoretic copying process means we have good Hebrew manuscripts. That’s it. Synagogues don’t have better access to the manuscripts than the rest of us. I asked you about understanding them.

2.) Our English translations of the Bible are not made from Latin. They’re not re-translations. They’re made from Greek manuscripts, ultimately copied from the originals. (Just like how all current manuscripts of the Torah are ultimately copies of the originals.)

3.) Please, be very specific about how the Christians at the Council of Nicaea edited the Torah. Did they edit Hebrew manuscripts? Did they edit manuscripts of the Greek Septuagint?

Who told you?

Now, I asked you, “Why would modern synagogues automatically be the best places to understand ancient Hebrew sources?”

The only thing you said that would answer my question is this:
“Furthermore, the spoken wisdom of Moses – transmitted only by oral tradition – is only taught by Rabbis.”

Faced with a modern Rabbi who claims, “Oh yes, what I’m about to tell you has been secretly passed down for 2000 years,” I’m going to say, “That’s nice, but I have no confidence that you’re right, even if you very sincerely think that’s where your teachings come from.”

2,000 years of oral transmission is not particularly reliable. And that’s even assuming you manage to pick the right Hebrew tradition.

The Rabbinical tradition of teaching Judaism (Old Testament history) occurs in the Synagogue. Each Torah is an exact character for character copy of the original, handed down from Moses. It has not been translated and re-translated from Greek to Latin to English. Furthermore, the spoken wisdom of Moses – transmitted only by oral tradition – is only taught by Rabbis. The Christians of the Council of Nicaea, however, edited the Torah to suit their needs.

Consequently, to learn the true and unadulterated word of God (pre-Christ), a Christian dedicated to inerrancy must learn it as Moses received it.

“Should Judaism’s sixth declaration be rendered as “Thou shalt not kill” as in the popular KJV translation, or as “Thou shalt not murder,” which is a bit closer to the connotations of the original Hebrew though still not entirely accurate?”

Three traditions. Three different readings. Inerrancy you ask? Find me an Evangelical who studied the Old Testament in a synagogue and I’ll show you an Evangelical who *truly* respects inerrancy.

And yet…and yet, when people make those claims, and others, the demonstrate one of two things. Either a disbelief in inerrancy, contra their claims, or a deficient view of Scriptural authority.

I understand that there are many reasons one might have for arguing for inerrancy. The problem, as I see it, is that many argue for inerrancy as if losing the debate means utter disaster. I really do believe it’s a red herring in that the debate often takes Christians away from uniting around the bigger reality that the Bible is authoritative and very important in the life of the believer and the life of the Church. Many of the debates about inerrancy ending up unnecessarily dividing Christians from each other.

Also, nonsensical debates get thrown in, such as the debate about the days of Genesis. Some argue that if one holds to an Old Earth position, then one does not believe in inerrancy. It gets to be ridiculous. Again, these debates seem to have no regard for the life and authority of the Church.

Upon further review…the play has been reversed. I see your point, grant your point, and acknowledge that I missed said point.