The doctrine of inspiration is a core pillar in Christian theology. I’m sure most of us are intimately familiar with 2 Timothy 3:16-17, which says:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
That passage is the clearest statement that Scripture is ultimately from God, even though it’s written through human authors. Hopefully that’s a statement we can all agree on.
What I want to challenge is our conception of how Scripture was inspired. What does it mean that it is inspired? What would that process have looked like? Did a biblical author just enter a trance one day, sit down, and wake up with the completed version of a book laid out before them?
I know that last example probably sounds silly. But from my experience, it’s only slightly exaggerated from what many Christians imagine when they think of inspiration, along with other attributes like:
- Perfect precision
- Inerrancy
- Infallibility
- Perfectly preserved through the ages
- And more
So before moving on, I want you to pause for a minute and really think about what you mean when you say, “The Bible is the inspired Word of God.” Try to conceptualize what that process would have looked like. Would you feel uncomfortable if you learned that the text received edits over time? What if biblical authors reused content from pagan nations?
While you’re thinking about those things, I’ll lay out my thesis for this article:
Inspiration does not mean that all biblical material was originally inspired. Instead, it means that the biblical canon contains material that the Spirit intended to be included.
We’ll cover all of the points mentioned above (and more) in the ensuing article.
The Crisis We Didn’t Need
Have you finished considering your stance on inspiration? If it’s anything at all like the points I laid out above (authorship completely directed by God, perfectly precise, perfectly preserved, etc.) then the following examples are probably going to rattle you a little. But here’s the evidence:
The Superscription Above the Cross
If you’re familiar with your Bible, you’re probably aware of the written charge placed above Jesus’ head while he was on the cross. It’s one of the few events recorded in all four gospels, and it’s fascinating to compare them.
| Matthew 27:37 | Above his head they placed the written charge against him: This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. |
| Mark 15:26 | The written notice of the charge against him read: The King of the Jews. |
| Luke 23:38 | There was a written notice above him, which read: This is the King of the Jews. |
| John 19:19 | Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. |
You’ll notice that all four books differ in their accounts of what the charge said. Not one of them is the same as another. And that means we have to ask ourselves a question – a question that I’m going to put at the end of every example: Is this fatal for our understanding of “inspiration?” Can we still comfortably say the Bible is inspired when four different accounts of the same event vary?
My answer is yes.
Literary Variances
The superscription above the cross is a good example of a small detail that differs among accounts. You could easily explain it away by saying that the words are different, but the message is the same. That’s true, and I agree.
However, that means you have to give up on Scripture having perfect precision. Which gospel tells us the exact words of the charge? We don’t know.
And that’s okay.
Ancient reporting standards were different; they often cared more about the subtext than what was actually going on. So even though they were imprecise at times, it’s not to say that they were inaccurate.
There are other instances where the Bible recounts the same event in more than one book, and these events are a little trickier to reconcile. One is the story of Judas committing suicide after betraying Jesus to the Jews. Anyone who’s been around the Christian block knows how this one goes: in Matthew 27, it says that Judas hangs himself; in Acts 1, it says he fell down a hill and burst open.
However, there’s more to the story, so I’ll put them side by side below:
| Matthew 27:3-8 | Acts 1:18-19 |
|---|---|
| Then when Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that He had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us? See to that yourself!” And he threw the pieces of silver into the temple sanctuary and departed; and he went away and hanged himself. The chief priests took the pieces of silver and said, “It is not lawful to put them into the temple treasury, since it is the price of blood.” And they conferred together and with the money bought the Potter’s Field as a burial place for strangers. For this reason that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. | With the payment he received for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood. |
You’ll note the bolded areas. In Matthew, it clearly says that Judas returned the money he received for betraying Jesus, even going so far as to throw it into the temple. Compare that with Acts where it says that “Judas bought a field,” and it’s there that he died. They seem to say different things, don’t they?
Now let’s move to the Old Testament. 2 Kings 9 and 2 Chronicles 22 recount the death of Ahaziah, king of Judah, at the hands of Jehu. The passages are somewhat long, so I won’t include them here, but I encourage you to read them for yourselves.
Needless to say, in 2 Kings, Jehu confronts Joram (king of Israel) and Ahaziah in the field of Naboth. Jehu kills Joram, causing Ahaziah to flee, but Jehu’s men shoot him with an arrow. Ahaziah makes it to Megiddo, where he dies, and his servants bring him back to Jerusalem to be buried.
Contrast that with 2 Chronicles, which jumps straight to Jehu’s men finding the wounded Ahaziah and bringing him before Jehu. After being captured, Ahaziah is put to death and buried by Jehu’s men.
Once again, you’ll notice the discrepancies in the passages. Both books recount the same event, but in dramatically different ways, to the point where some are convinced this is a contradiction. There are explanations for both the Judas and Ahaziah accounts that I won’t get into here, but it does make you wonder: why doesn’t the Bible convey these things more clearly?
Should this shake our confidence? My answer is no.
Proverbs Parallels Egyptian Wisdom
One of the most unsettling discoveries for many Christians is that parts of Proverbs closely parallel ancient Egyptian wisdom literature: particularly a text known as The Instruction of Amenemope. There’s some debate over when the original version of The Instruction of Amenemope was written, but it’s widely agreed that it was written before 1000 BC. The Book of Proverbs would have been compiled somewhere around 900 BC, after the creation of Amenemope’s work.
Large portions of Proverbs 22–24 mirror its structure, themes, and even phrasing. The resemblance is strong enough that most scholars acknowledge some form of literary relationship. Here are a few examples:
“Make no friendship with a man given to anger,
nor go with a wrathful man,
lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare” (Proverbs 22:24–25).
“Do not associate with the rash man nor approach him for conversation …
When he makes a statement to snare you,
and you may be released by your answer” (Amenemope xi, 13-14; xi, 17-18).
“Do not rob the poor because he is poor,
Or crush the afflicted at the gate” (Proverbs 22:22).
“Guard yourself from robbing the poor
From being violent to the weak” (Amenemope iv, 4–5).
“For wealth certainly makes itself wings
Like an eagle that flies toward the heavens” (Proverbs 23:5).
“They [dishonest riches] make themselves wings like geese,
And fly to heaven” (Amenemope x, 5).
“A false balance is an abomination to the Lord,
but a just weight is his delight” (Proverbs 11:1).
“Do not remove the scales nor alter the weights
Nor diminish the fractions of the measure;
Do not desire a measure of the fields,
Nor neglect those of the treasury” (Amenemope xvii, 18-21).
“Have I not written to you excellent things
Of counsels and knowledge?” (Proverbs 22:20).
“See for yourself these thirty chapters
They are pleasant, they educate” (Amenemope xxvii, 7–8).
That last comparison might not seem to fit on first glance, but the Hebrew for “excellent things” is shaliysh. It almost always refers to a noble position, a musical instrument, or a unit of measure – none of those fit this context particularly well, which is why it’s the only place where it was translated as “excellent things.”
There’s a prevailing thought that our modern Hebrew text contains a slight transcription error. Instead of being shaliysh (nobleman), it likely should have been shloshim (thirty). This fits the context much better and offers a clearer parallel to the quote from Amenemope.
So, did Solomon take from Egyptian wisdom literature and incorporate it into his own compilation of proverbs? I believe the evidence points in that direction. He even says in Ecclesiastes 12:9-10:
In addition to being a wise man, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge; and he pondered, searched out and arranged many proverbs. The Preacher sought to find delightful words and to write words of truth correctly.
Solomon admits to seeking out and arranging many proverbs. Plagiarism and intellectual property didn’t exist back then, so it was common for people to copy other people’s work, but what are your thoughts? How do the copied proverbs from a polytheist in Egypt fit into your model of biblical inspiration? Before you answer that, consider the next verse in the Ecclesiastes passage:
The words of wise men are like goads, and masters of these collections are like well-driven nails; they are given by one Shepherd. (v. 11)
The Preacher acknowledges that wisdom may come through many voices, but ultimately from one divine source. I’ll let you think about the implications of what that means while we move into the next section.
Paul and Pagan Poets
The same pattern of appropriation appears in the New Testament as well. In Acts 17:28, Paul quotes the poet, Aratus, when he says, “For we also are His children.”
A little earlier in the same verse, Paul quotes a Cretan philosopher, Epimenides, when he says, “for in Him we live and move and exist.”
Again, these quotes are designed to share real truth. Paul is not mocking these pagan thinkers but is instead using what they’ve said to describe reality. So again I ask, were Aratus and Epimenides divinely inspired and Paul just happened to pick up on it? Or is inspiration a different process than what most of us have commonly conceived?
Do Proverbs and Acts dismantle inspiration? I don’t believe they do.
Textual Editing
Anyone who’s serious about biblical studies knows that certain parts of the Bible have been edited over time. It’s just a fact, and one that even Scripture makes glaringly obvious. The first verses of Ezekiel 1 make this apparent:
Now it came about in the thirtieth year, on the fifth day of the fourth month, while I was by the river Chebar among the exiles, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God. (On the fifth of the month in the fifth year of King Jehoiachin’s exile, the word of the Lord came expressly to Ezekiel the priest, son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and there the hand of the Lord came upon him.)
Did you notice that? In the first three verses of Ezekiel 1, the narrative starts off in first person (“I was by the river Chebar…”), before moving to third person in verse 2 (“the word of the Lord came expressly to Ezekiel the priest”). If you keep reading into verse 4, it switches back to first person again.
The parenthetical notation in verses 2-3 was clearly added after the original manuscript was written. This is one of the most obvious examples of later textual addition, but there’s also the more famous example of the false ending of the Gospel of Mark. In many Bibles, Mark 16 concludes at verse 20. However, the segment of text from verses 9-20 is not found in the earliest, most reliable Greek manuscripts of Mark. Most scholars believe verses 9–20 were a later addition to Mark’s Gospel. Whether one regards them as canonical or as an early church appendix, their existence demonstrates that the transmission process was not mechanically frozen.
Are textual edits, additions, and variations fatal to our understanding of inspiration? To the modern understanding of the term, probably. All of the points I’ve brought up so far are difficult to deal with. For some Christians, that can feel threatening, and I understand why.
But here’s the thing: these biblical passages don’t undermine Christianity; they just don’t fit within the version of inspiration we were taught.
The Modern Precision Trap
Unfortunately, we’ve all (directly or indirectly) been taught that the Bible was written to us. The Bible was written for us, yes, but it wasn’t written to us. It was written, predominantly, to an ancient Israelite and Jewish audience.
Since we live in a time of science, information, and precision, we’ve unconsciously tried to import those categories onto the Scriptures. We’ve subtly redefined truth as technical exactness, and then judged Scripture by a standard it never claimed. The original audience didn’t really care about those things. They often used paraphrases, editorial shaping, and as mentioned above, intellectual property wasn’t a thing.
Trying to make the Bible something it’s not is one of the first mistakes we make as modern readers.
The Bible never claims to conform to modern standards of technical precision. It does claim divine authority and truthfulness, but not journalistic uniformity. I personally affirm the inerrancy of the original manuscripts, not because I can reconstruct them perfectly, but because I trust the God who breathed them out.
What “Inspired” Actually Means
Let’s circle back to 2 Timothy 3:14-17 and face it head-on. It says:
You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
Paul has just finished stating that evil men will proceed from bad to worse, “deceiving and being deceived” (v. 13). He then goes on to affirm that his audience (and us, by extension) have the sacred writings which provide wisdom that leads to salvation in Jesus. These recognized “sacred writings” are Scripture; in other words, Paul is describing the nature of Scripture as Scripture.
He is not commenting on every source that Scripture may incorporate.
So, if Amenemope, Aratus, and Epimenides, weren’t inspired by God (at least, not in the commonly understood way), then how could their work make it into the canon of Scripture? The answer is pretty straightforward:
Inspiration does not mean that every original source was inspired. It means that the Spirit intended the final canonical text.
In other words, “inspiration” is a property of the canon, not of every prior draft, source, or quotation. When Paul quotes Aratus, Aratus is not retroactively elevated to Scripture. The Spirit is not endorsing the entirety of Greek philosophy. Rather, the Spirit is authorizing the inclusion of that specific line within a canonical work for a redemptive purpose.
I think it’s worth mentioning why Paul says Scripture is inspired, as well. He did not say it’s inspired so that we can have historical and scientific clarity, or that we can have a perfectly precise account of past events.
It’s so that we can be adequate and equipped for every good work. The Bible doesn’t have to be everything we think it must, in order for it to serve its purpose.
The Real Stakes
So far, we’ve seen that the Bible isn’t always what we were taught to expect. The ancient writers weren’t concerned with many of things that we fret over today, and therefore, we shouldn’t try to import modern ideas and expectations onto the text. That’s why, historically, inerrancy aimed to defend God’s truthfulness, Scripture’s trustworthiness, and the reliability of its message. It was not about journalistic uniformity, zero literary variation, or no editorial development.
Inerrancy simply asserts that the Scriptures, in their original manuscripts, are true and reliable in all matters addressed (history, ethics, doctrine, etc.). With that in mind, let’s go back to the example of the differing accounts of the superscript on the cross. If one account says, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews,” and another says, “The King of the Jews,” can both be true at the same time?
Absolutely. The core message hasn’t changed, even though the exact words aren’t identical. This still falls within the definition of inerrancy.
A Stronger Doctrine
The biggest problem I see with the modern understanding of “inspiration” is that it actually makes the Bible more vulnerable to criticism. When we demand a form of precision the Bible never claims, it opens the door for critics and skeptics to target passages like the superscription above the cross, or any of the other examples I’ve presented above.
All a critic has to do is point out one inconsistency, and suddenly the entire Bible is on shaky ground.
That’s why it’s so important to see what the Bible actually has to say about itself — and what it doesn’t. I believe that inspiration means the Spirit breathed out the canon as the faithful witness to God’s redemptive work, not that every source was originally dictated, nor that ancient authors wrote like modern journalists.
Am I saying that the church eventually approved some edited documents and called it “Scripture?” Yes and no. What I am saying is that God actively superintended history, canon formation was guided by the Holy Spirit, and we can be sure that the 66 books in Scripture belong there.
The text doesn’t need our help defending itself. All we need to do is take it as it is and affirm what it’s meant to be.
