Opus 2014-163: Editor or Author

My wife found an error in the Bible.

At least that was what she said.  It certainly got my attention.  I wasn’t worried, but I was interested in what she was talking about.  She was reading in Proverbs 11:22.

(Proverbs 11:22 KJV)  As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion.

In her Bible it gave a cross reference to Genesis 27:47 but that presented a problem:  Genesis 27 only has 46 verses.  She interpreted this as a mistake in the Bible.

In one sense she was right.  It only took a little research in my copy to realize that the reference should have been Genesis 24:47.  To the eye we had the same book but the editors had found their mistake and fixed it before mine was printed.  So there was a mistake in hers but not in mine. 

Does that mean that my Bible was inspired and her’s wasn’t?  Of course not.  You need to understand what we mean by inspired.  We do not mean that every translator, editor, typesetter and spell-checker was inspired by God.  What we mean is that the original manuscript was exactly what God wanted.  Most of honest modern scholarship is aimed at getting back to the original.

Don’t get too excited about what might at first appear to be errors.  It could be the editors.  It could be the translators.  It might be an issue of reading the manuscripts.  I might even be that you were not paying attention when you read.  With a little prayerful thought you can find a solution.

None of these issues are new.  Remember that people have been able to read for centuries and there are answers.

homo unius libri