All is inspired

 

It just struck me that evangelicals (and probably Reformed) have no canon. Not really. Think about it…

Are Bible translations divinely inspired? Presumably not, since they are subject to frequent change. Also, there are often several different translations in print at the same time, in the same language. As far as we know, God hasn´t revealed what translations He prefers. For instance, what translation – if any – of the Bible to Pidgin English is inerrant? (And what about the Bible in *Basic* English?)

But if so, most pastors can´t read the *actual* Bible, the one in Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek. Thus, they have no access to the infallible revelation in the original languages. The Bibles they use and study are literally *not inspired*. They are the works of men. An original “solution” to this is offered by KJV Only fundamentalists, who argue that the KJV translation actually was divinely inspired. While God would inspire a king who persecuted Puritans and included the Apocrypha in the Bible named after him is less clear, but I suppose the Lord works in mysterious ways. And what about Bible translations to other languages than English?

Another “solution” is to claim that only the original manuscripts were inspired. But if so, nobody has a true inspired Bible, since (of course) the original manuscripts haven´t been preserved. All we have are copies of copies, often different from each other. There are many differences between the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text. There are other problems too, such as the original Hebrew text lacking both punctuation and vowel marks. Are we to believe that the Bible used by the apostles was *quite literally the wrong Bible*, and that it wasn´t until the Middle Ages that God suddenly inspired a group of Jewish scribes to rightly divide the words of God (pun intended), adding vowels in the process?

“We have everything that is needed for salvation”. But you don´t really *know* that, since the original paragraphs have been lost. Besides, most evangelicals and Reformed believe that everything in Scripture is God-breathed, not just a few passages “necessary for salvation”. Here is a challenge: indicate those passages, and let´s see if these are always consistent in the preserved manuscripts (or consistently translated).

And oh, the canon (if there even is such a thing) has changed over the centuries…

Evangelicals and Reformed have literally no Scripture.