There’s a game where you start a story, and the person next to you has to repeat what you said. If you’ve ever played it, you know that by the time it goes around the room, what the person said really changes. Imagine if you had around 40 people, of different backgrounds, over 1600 years, trying to do the same thing.
Miraculously, those authors all remained consistent when it came to the Bible. They agree on every point. Any error comes from either human misunderstanding or faulty copying of texts.
For instance, the story of David killing Goliath is shown very well in the book of First Samuel. Second Samuel 21:19 says that El-Hanan killed the brother of Goliath. Some modern versions leave out “the brother of” and make it sound like El-Hanan killed Goliath. This creates unnecessary confusion. If some scribe long ago had looked, he would have seen he wasn’t interpreting it right.
So, this is not an error between writers. It is an error in recording. It just didn’t get caught by the supervisor. It’s like one story Professor of Biblical Archaeology Scott Carroll tells. Some senior scribes would write comments in the margins of old Bibles. Once, a senior scribe wrote in the margin, where a junior scribe had made a foolish mistake. This senior scribe wrote, “Oh, foolish scribe!” and scolded him for not paying attention when copying something as important as Scripture. At least when your teacher marks a paper, it won’t be read by people hundreds of years later!
As an aside, some say the scribes who copied manuscripts added things. That makes no sense. First, if you’re copying the Bible, you’re going to want to be perfect. Also, if you were copying every letter of at least thousands of words by hand, with a quill pen, in a room with only candlelight and the light from a small window, wouldn’t you be more likely to get lazy and leave stuff out? I would! The words “the brother of” there are among tens of thousands of words taken out of the King James by one version in particular, the NIV, because they use different Greek. That’s why I prefer the King James Version. God will help you understand when you read it.
Other times, a co-called error is not an error at all. It’s just that the writers had different styles. Take the narrative of the paralyzed man who was lowered into a house to be healed by Jesus. Matthew and Mark focus on different things. They have different personalities and audiences. It’s like with directions. One person might tell landmarks and the color of the houses. Another might give street names, number of traffic lights, and say, “the third house in.” Each shows how to get to the same place. It’s just described differently. (The directions get you to the same house. You can’t give directions to New York, and expect the person to end up in Los Angeles. It’s like two Christians. Each has trusted Christ as personal Savior. One comes from a Christian home, and is led to Christ at age six, in the home. The other comes from a non-Christian home, and gets saved as a teen at church camp. Both came to the same place, though.)
This is why we say, while God wrote the Bible, we can say that the individual people wrote the books they did. God the Holy Spirit to write what He wanted them to record. However, He made use of each writer’s personality, training, and so on. Luke was a doctor, so he gives certain types of details in Luke and Acts. Mark was a man of action, and his Gospel shows that. Matthew was a tax collector, so he mentions money more than the other Gospels. And, so on. Just because one of these people wrote something, though, doesn’t mean it’s canon. If archaeologists found a shopping list of Paul’s, it would not suddenly become part of Scripture.
Because God is the author behind the entire Bible, it is totally consistent. This is why you must be very careful. Other texts do not say the same things as the Bible. The canon – what books are Biblical - was established as it was written. Once complete, there was no need for more. No church could declare it canon. The church only recognized what God already knew. If someone says something equal came after it, they’re wrong.
