Innerancy of the Bible?

In my job search I came across a school looking for an Admin Assistant. I thought, why not. Closer look at the website and I find this statement:

"There is one book of truth: the Bible, God’s written revelation to man, authoritative, reliable, inerrant and without need of any other document(s) to complete its message."

Needless to say, I decided not to apply. Yet, it got me thinking about different views of the Bible. If people truly believe that the Bible was plunked down on Earth by God in modern English just so that we could understand how sinful we are, they are seriously misguided.

The first and most obvious problem of the above statement is that the Bible is translated. We have ancient texts that are a collection of different versions of letters or books that people wrote thousands of years ago. They were written in languages that no one speaks today and even the best translators are just guessing as to what some of the words mean (just look at some of the footnotes in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), especially Psalms. Do you really think the books of the Bible were translated without any other books? Were the translations also divinely inspired? That is just the most obvious flaw with the belief that the Bible is perfectly clear and does not need to be read in a very intentional academic way to understand the full meaning for both us and the original intended audience. (This does not mean that I don't think the Bible should be read devotionally, I just don't think this is the only way it should be read.)

This idea was backed up by a recent article in the New York Times. The author said this: "I know that this will offend some Christians, but the notion that Scripture is perfectly clear is wishful thinking, as a recent white paper prepared by the All Saints’ clergy demonstrates. The writers of the four Gospels don’t agree on even so simple a thing as which people were present at Christ’s empty tomb." If the gospels thought that even that detail could be changed in order to make the point more clear means that we can and should see the Bible as a lens through which to understand Jesus. If we only look at the literal meaning we are missing most of the Gospel, if not all.

There is also an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine about the Texas School Board and their influence on the curriculum in most other states. The Texas School Board has recently elected a near majority of Christian Conservatives with the clear agenda of changing the curriculum requirements in Texas, which because of the way textbooks are distributed, would effectively change the curriculum of 46 or 47 other states. Clearly this is an effective way to change the curriculum around the country. The people planning this understand that the students in the classroom will be in government and every other sector of life in a generation. If you can shape the basic principles that they learn you can change the way the whole country is run. School board is an elected position, that has a very low voter turn out - so the actual process of change is much simpler than electing someone to more high profile position. Of course, these Fundamentalist Christians are the same type of Christians that are running that school that I did not apply to. Perhaps someday we'll be teaching the inerrancy of the Bible in public schools one day.