Biblical Inerrancy - reconciling apparent discrepancies

[harshcshah]

I am quite certain that the Church teaches that the Bible, as the inspired Word of God, is inerrant and that the Church has taught this throughout history. Now, considering this, how are we to reconcile apparent discrepancies in the Bible? Certain Bible versions, even Catholic ones, seemingly treat this as not much to worry about and attribute them to certain accounts being written apart from each other, anachronistically reading things into the past etc. I do not think such a position is orthodox. What are we to do about such apparent discrepancies in the secondary details of the Biblical accounts?

 

[Anesti33]

There is one phenomenon that accounts for many of the issues seen in the Bible: eyewitness testimony. If you ask 5 eyewitnesses to describe an event, they will all describe it differently, with a different narrative, different details, and from a different viewpoint.

Therefore, when taking down testimony such as St. Luke did for his gospel and the Book of Acts, his eyewitnesses will differ from those used in Matthew, Mark, and John. With every other factor not yet accounted for, your eyewitnesses are telling different stories.

This does not mean that some of the eyewitnesses are lying or mistaken. The details could all be true, from their particular viewpoints.

 

[dscath]

Hard to answer without specific instances you feel are in error.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

There’s all sorts of paradoxes in the Bible.
And people sometimes love to point to this to prop their own agenda — such as their exit strategy from Christianity.

For instance:

“ Blessed are those who hunger.” (Matthew 5:6)
“No one who comes to me will ever be hungry.” (John 6:35)

But…

Does this make the Bible “wrong”, or does it point to the fact that the world is complicated?

Even secular wisdom has contradictions in it.

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder”
“Out of sight out of mind”

(And nobody works themselves into a snit over these contradictions )

 

[Magnanimity]

I am quite certain that the Church teaches that the Bible, as the inspired Word of God, is inerrant

No. Let’s stop the discussion here before we go off the rails. Can we do that? See here for some of the historical data. “Inerrancy” is most certainly a wild-child of the Protestant Reformation. The locus of authority shifts from the church to the scriptures (in the mind of the Protestant). So, rather than thinking that the church can be without error, the Reformation introduces the idea that the Bible alone can be without error. You do not find the conceptual language of “inerrancy” regarding the sacred scriptures in any meaningful way prior to the Reformation. The pre-Reformational approach to the sacred scriptures was heavily allegorical and spiritual. The historical evidence for this is abundant.

So, the payoff here is that Catholics can reject any notion of inerrancy. The Catholic already believes that the church herself communicates truths in faith and morals. Apparent discrepancies can move into the realm of real discrepancies because…what would it matter? In the sacred scriptures, God is trying to communicate something to you about Reality–about Himself, about humanity, about love, about a great many important things. To get hung up in the minutiae is to miss the forest for the trees and to also be out of step with the whole history of biblical interpretation for 1500 years prior to the Reformation.

 

[Bithynian]

the Church teaches that the Bible, as the inspired Word of God, is inerrant

Inerrancy is a very nebulous term as it’s often used with wildly differing qualifications. For example: (1) it might mean ‘without error’ in the most general sense; (2) it could also mean that the Scriptures are without error in respect to geography, chronology, history, astronomy, etc.; and (3) it can also mean that Scripture is without error in respect to the salvific purpose of the authors (both divine and human). At times, the broader conceptualisation of inerrancy can entail an overly literal and anachronistic reading of Scripture. In addition there is a vague distinction between inerrancy and infallibility (whose definition, again, can vary between theological texts).

This is a useful Q&A article: Is Scripture Inerrant? | Catholic Answers

It’s also useful to note that the words ‘inerrant’ and ‘inerrancy’ in English only acquired their current meaning of ‘without error’ in the mid-19th century (also the case for Italian inerranza in 1847): this period is strongly associated with liberal biblical scholarship that sought to ‘demythologise’ the Scriptures using whatever historical, critical and scientific frameworks that prevailed at the time. Prior to the 19th century, ‘inerrant’ in English (and other European languages) simply meant ‘fixed, not wandering’ and was only used as specialised terminology in astrology. This is also the case for Latin inerrans, which was never used with the meaning of ‘without error’, and so one will not find the word (or its translation as ‘inerrant’) in any Latin-language theological texts. Most resources - such as Pope Leo XIII’s Providentissimus Deus - use the expression sine errore.

 

[OurLadyofSorrows]

I am quite certain that the Church teaches that the Bible, as the inspired Word of God, is inerrant and that the Church has taught this throughout history. Now, considering this, how are we to reconcile apparent discrepancies in the Bible? Certain Bible versions, even Catholic ones, seemingly treat this as not much to worry about and attribute them to certain accounts being written apart from each other, anachronistically reading things into the past etc. I do not think such a position is orthodox. What are we to do about such apparent discrepancies in the secondary details of the Biblical accounts?

Can we look at each version and an example of the way it has translated a verse to discuss this, rather then a generic idea