In this conversation about whether the Bible is inspired, let’s start where so many conversations begin: 2 Tim 3:16
All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
Πᾶσα γραφὴ θεόπνευστος καὶ ὠφέλιμος πρὸς διδασκαλίαν, πρὸς ἔλεγχον, πρὸς ἐπανόρθωσιν, πρὸς παιδείαν τὴν ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ·
Translation problem #1: there is an alternative way of reading the Greek – rather than being, “All scripture IS inspired by God and is useful…”, it can be read as, “All scripture inspired by God is useful…” That inspired scripture is useful is the translation followed by ASV, BBE, HNV, Douay-Rheims, Tyndale, WEB, Wycliffe,…
Translation problem #2: much as I use NRSVue as my standard, this is one of several occasions when I think it can be much improved. The Greek, θεόπνευστος (theopneustos) literally means “God-breathed”. You can clearly see that in the word: Theo (God; cf theology); pneustos (breathed – in English words like pneumatic). So, it better translates as: “All scripture is God-breathed and is useful…”; or “All God-breathed scripture is useful…”
Interpretation issue #1: The “all scripture” is NOT the Bible as we now know it. It is referring, primarily, to what we would now call the First Testament, the Old Testament, … I stopped from writing “The Hebrew Bible” at this point, because it is far more likely that the author of 2 Timothy is referring to The Septuagint, the Greek translation of The Hebrew Bible (more about this to follow below).
Interpretation issue #2: God-breathed (θεόπνευστος theopneustos) points to Gen 2:7 where God breathes into the first human. God’s breath is life-giving. The 2 Tim 3:16 text appears to be saying “All scripture is God-breathed, ie life-giving, and is useful…” (or, of course, “All God-breathed {and thereby life-giving} scripture is useful…” The concept of the Bible being “inspired” is a 3rd Century CE development; Origen played a central part in that process. The “inspiration of the scriptures” then became a lens, aided by a reinterpretation of 2 Tim 3:16, through which the scriptures were read from then on.
The rest of this post is dealing with what scripture is understood as being “inspired”.
Do you think that the documents behind the “final” text are inspired? Was Q (the collection of Jesus’ words and teachings shared by Matthew and Luke) inspired? Were J and P (material edited into Genesis etc) inspired?
Do you think the “final” Hebrew text of the First Testament and the “final” Greek text of the New Testament were inspired? We do not have these originals; we only have a varyingly likely guesstimates at the “original final” using processes called “textual criticism”.
Do you think the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the First Testament, is inspired? We would translate some of the Hebrew differently into Greek in some places now. But, and this is very important, it is the Septuagint which is normally quoted in the New Testament! Add to that the cute legend that the 70 (or 72) translators each did the translation independently, and then found that all of them were exactly the same!!!
King Ptolemy once gathered 72 Elders. He placed them in 72 chambers, each of them in a separate one, without revealing to them why they were summoned. He entered each one’s room and said: “Write for me the Torah of Moshe, your teacher”. God put it in the heart of each one to translate identically as all the others did.
Inspiration obviously proved…!!!
At this point it’s worth inserting a sub-discussion: which books/scrolls are you including in your inspired scriptures? The shortest Christian list of books is the Protestant canon (not forgetting Martin Luther’s disapproval of some New Testament material). Roman Catholics have a larger collection (Anglicans read and learn from the “extra books” in this larger collection, but cannot use them for agreement on doctrine). Eastern Orthodox have an even larger (and varying) collection, with Ethiopian Orthodox possibly having the largest list. There are some (Protestants) who underscore that the Bible is not an authoritative list of inspired books; for them, the Bible is a list of authoritative, inspired books.
As a further aside to this, however, I would address sola-scriptura (by the Bible alone) Protestants with the question: why do you accept fourth Century church consensus understanding of what is in your Bible and what is not, but do not accept fourth Century church consensus understanding of ministry, sacraments, and so forth?
I would also underscore (this is, after all, a Liturgy site) that the Bible developed in deciding (as bound books became norm) which scrolls are read in communal worship and which are not.
But, let’s press on.
Do you think the Vulgate (the Latin translation of the Bible) is inspired?
In 1546 the Council of Trent decreed that the Vulgate was the exclusive Latin authority for the Bible, but it required also that it be printed with the fewest possible faults. The so-called Clementine Vulgate, issued by Pope Clement VIII in 1592, became the authoritative biblical text of the Roman Catholic Church.
The question arrises: if God put all that effort into inspiring the scriptures, then there is no sense to that unless we can now access what God inspired – not simply our best guess at it…
So we come to: Do you think the King James/Authorised Bible is inspired?
Those who hold to the inspiration of the King James/Authorised Bible are often surprised that all editions prior to 1666 contained “the Apocrypha” (First Testament books accepted by Roman Catholicism but not Protestantism). The Inspired King James people are also confounded by there being about a thousand different editions printed between 1611 and 1769, each with changes! And essentially no two existing “original 1611 King James Bibles” are the same!!! You can insert here your own research about variations to The King James Version and which one you regard as the “inspired” English KJV!
For those of us who love the scriptures but do not need every word to be understood as inspired by God, we can work (for example following Lectio Divina) to discover what the Spirit is saying to the Church – together and individually.
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I think the verse ought to be read in apposition to the preceding verse about “all the sacred writings you have known from your youth” to wit “all scriptures inspired by God and useful for instruction…” As you note, there is no copula in the Greek verse; the verb is supplied by the preceding clause, to which this stands on apposition.
That’s a useful expansion of my points, thanks Tobias. Blessings.
And sorry for the typos, including my middle name. I hate trying to enter text on a tablet.