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The Inerrancy Doctrine's Error

The Bible itself does not claim to be inerrant.  Rather it claims that men WILL add to and remove from its pages (and be punished accordingly: Revelations 22:18). "Inerrancy " is a man-made doctrine that fails some basic tests.

I believed in biblical inerrancy up until age 29, about six years ago. I would categorically dismiss purported "inconsistencies" found in books, the likes of Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible and others.  Yet my responsibility in both religion and science is to the Truth.  The ultimate litmus test had to be the question "Does the Bible stand up to itself?"

There are some minor discrepencies such as the differing accounts of Israel's north and south kingdoms (Judah), the book of Ruth rebutting the 'divinely ordered' exile from the book of Ezra... but it was going to take something far more Major than that to persuade me: 

  1. Modern Bibles have removed entire passages from the Gospel of Mark, as well as verses and segments from many other books, explaining that those passages were not present in earlier manuscripts.  Since the doctrine of inerrancy predates those corrections, inerrancy has been in error.
  2. The gospels contain two geneologies for Jesus, one in the beginning of Matthew, the other starting around Luke 3:23.  They pick two different sons of David, head through incongruous counts of generations, and claim both to direct the divinely royal bloodline to Joseph father of Jesus.  (Who, the Book says, wasn't his blood father anyhow.) It is utterly impossible for them both to be correct.  Some scholars think one of these belonged to Mary, but that doesn't erase the error in print. Truth of either one deductively excludes the other, if either of them is inerrant.
  3. Jesus himself said not to value geneologies, which means that both of these purportedly 'God-inspired' passages are contrary to the Will of the LORD.

It is not my intention to divorce people from other religious beliefs, but rather just to expose "the Inerrancy Doctrine" for  what it is... a manmade false teaching.

- Joel