Mike Leake makes a great point at his blog: Some parts of your Bible are not inspired by God.
Leake primarily has the punctuation in mind, as the original manuscripts had no punctuation.
…if we believe that the only original manuscripts are fully inspired, authoritative, and without error it means we do not believe the verse divisions or punctuation in your Bible falls under that category. Those were not present in either the original Hebrew or the Greek. Those were added much later.
Leake gives an example where shifting a comma might adjust the way we read a verse. Such discussions are not contrary to a belief in the inspiration or inerrancy of Scripture. Things such as comma placement are translators’ decisions. If you compare different translations, you’ll often see a variety of choices on such matter.
We also should keep in mind that verse divisions, red letters, paragraph breaks, footnotes, page formatting, and section headings are also translation or publication decisions, not components of the original manuscripts. If the context and train of thought of the text take you across some of these contrived boundaries, make sure you allow it to do so.
Thx 👌🏻
I agree. Inspired is the Greek adjective theopnuestos, literally, “God breathed”. The Torah and the prophets, I regard as God-breathed, but the remnant I regard as good history motivated by God. The New Testament, I regard as inspired with the exception of the epistles of Titus, and perhaps 2 & 3 John.
There are 17 verses in the New Testament that Paul actually tells us are his own ideas. They are: 1 Corinthians 7:6 “But I speak this by permission, and not of commandment”.,7…,8…,9…,10…,11…,12: “But to the rest speak I, not the Lord:” …,13…,14…,15…,16…. And 2 Corinthians 8:8 “I speak not by commandment”, …, 9…, 10…, 12…, 13…, 14. It seems that Peter is also giving a non-inspired writing when he says Paul’s epistles are hard to understand in 2 Peter 3:16 “As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood,”