Tom,
Tom Said:
He believes instead that we shouldn’t take Scripture in this manner; instead it should be looked at as God telling certain individuals to write things down, but not in a manner that is without error, but retains the general message. In this way the creation story in Genesis could very well describing creation in just a general way and not contradict an old Earth view.
This is a very dangerous attitude of your friend towards the Scripture. It opens the interpretive door widely to liberalism and heresy.
There are other such unresolved (especially numerical) copyist errors in the Scripture, for instance:
40,000 (
1 Kings 4:26) - "And Solomon had 40,000 stalls of horses for his chariots, and 12,000 horsemen."
4,000 (
2 Chron. 9:25) - "Now Solomon had 4,000 stalls for horses and chariots and 12,000 horsemen, and he stationed them in the chariot cities and with the king in Jerusalem."
Which was it, 4000 or 40,000 horse stalls? In fact, this unresolved copyist error is but another proof of the
INSPIRED TRUTH in God's words.
How was this error allowed to remain in the Scripture for all of these hundreds of years when the scribes knew all along that there was a contradiction here?
The answer to this question is simple and unavoidable. The scribes and copyists through the ages held the Scripture in such respect and awe that they knowingly allowed this obvious error to remain rather than speculate as to the original manuscript content!
