A copyist’s mistake

Lindsell makes a sound point that “a copyist’s mistake is something entirely different from an error in Scripture. A misspelled or a misplaced word is a far cry from error, by which is meant a misstatement or something contrary to fact” (The Battle for the Bible, p. 36), although the latter statement overlooks the possibility that a misplaced word could in fact yield a misstatement and contradiction of fact. Likewise, the addition of questionable vowel pointings by the Massoretic texts does not “mean there are errors in Scripture.” Lindsell insists, however, that textual reconstruction by lower criticism has “produced a product” that can unqualifiedly be said to be “the Word of God.… We can say honestly that the Bible we have today is the Word of God” (p. 37). It is, of course, the case that evangelical Christianity insists that both the ancient originals and the copies of those originals give us the revealed truth of God in propositionally reliable form, and that in popular parlance we speak not only of the inspired Hebrew and Greek originals but even of our contemporary Bible translations as “the Word of God,” but surely in the latter case not unconditionally so.

Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, vol. 4 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), 230–231.