Inspired By Actual Events

What's most ironic about the assertion that the Bible is literally inerrant is that the Bible never makes that claim for itself.  When asked about itself, the Bible most prominently serves up a familiar touchstone verse from 2 Timothy 3:16-17.

"All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work."

The challenge, though, is that this is in no way an affirmation of literal inerrancy.  2 Timothy proclaims first that the Bible is inspired, or literally, "God Breathed." It doesn't say "empirically provable to be without error and in complete agreement with itself." It doesn't say "the Lord God Himself meticulously typed out every word of every verse, and then ran Gospellcheck on it twice to make sure He hadn't missed anything."

Instead, it suggests that those who wrote it were doing so out in response to their experience of the Living God. Second, 2 Timothy claims that the Bible is powerfully useful in forming the Christian life. You teach from it, and use it to test and guide your faith. But one can embrace all of those things without requiring the Bible to be a seamless, mechanistic system.

The assumption...shoot...the presupposition...that there are no textual flaws or disagreements within the books that make up our canon is not necessary for one to appropriately engage with the text as the rule for one's faith and life.

To say otherwise...well...it's just not scriptural.