Common Myths Surrounding the Inspiration of Scripture

In these articles we have been discussing the ways many read the Bible incorrectly. I’m not talking about doctrinal interpretation, I’m talking about the very way we approach the book. I would encourage you to look at these past articles if you haven’t already:

Today, we are looking at the “inspiration” of Scripture. Paul wrote a letter to one of his coworkers named Timothy in which he gives this charge:


2 Timothy 3:14-17 NIV

What exactly did Paul mean by “God-breathed?” I grew up thinking that this process was much like the way we use voice-to-text with our cell phones today. Ask Siri to send a text message, you speak, and the person on the other end gets your words. Siri doesn’t shape your words, Siri doesn’t give the gist of your words, it is every word exactly as you speak it. This is how I viewed the process of the Holy Spirit inspiring the words of Scripture. The Spirit whispered in the ear of Paul, Peter, Luke, Matthew, and the others, and they wrote down every word in the exact order the Spirit spoke them. I guess you could summarize this process as “strict dictation.”

If this is so, why does Paul write differently than Peter? Why does Matthew write differently than John? Why does Luke include a story that Mark does not? Isn’t the same Holy Spirit behind the writing? Isn’t the same Holy Spirit dictating word for word to each writer? Why then are they different?

And therein lies the problem. We often try to remove the human element from Scripture, forgetting that the people writing these texts had a hand in their creation as well. They were not strictly taking dictation.

Bobby Valentine puts it this way:

“The Bible is inspired of God’s Holy Spirit through the words of human beings in specific historical circumstances. Thus it is literally the word of God and the word of humans. Thus the text was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek and not Spanish, English or Southern. God’s word addressed them in that situation and may not be God’s directive for all time and all places.”

Bobby Valentine

We’ll unpack the last part of Bobby’s quote next week, and explore the context of these inspired writings next week. But if you want to see examples of this, look at the following passages…all true, but you can see the human element of the author at play:

Ask yourself: What are the differences in these passages, and why?

What do you think?


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