_This theory is incapable of a statement which is not self-stultifying._
To be an infallible authority upon all the matters upon which it treats, a
book must not only be guaranteed in its thought. Thought changes more or
less in finding an expression. No two statements of an idea or of a fact
can be exactly alike. There are no real synonyms. Interchangeable words
have each a special shade of meaning. The guarantee must cover the
phraseology of the original language in which the book is written. The
words must be dictated to amanuenses. The thorough-going verbal
inspirationists are the only logical defenders of infallibility.
But the guarantee would need to be pushed still further in the case of a
book written as was the Bible. The best stenographers make mistakes in
filling out their abbreviations and in distinguishing the similar signs
which stand for very dissimilar sounds. Early Hebrew was a language of
abbreviations. No vowels were used. Consonants stood alone, and their
conjunction, aided by memory, was expected to suggest the proper vowel
accompaniments. Vowel points were added to the written language centuries
after the last book of the Old Testament was written.[16] Their insertion
demanded a guarantee, if infallibility was to be secured.
This guarantee must then have followed every copyist in the original
tongues, every translation of the Hebrew and Greek into other tongues,
every copyist in modern tongues through the ages before the
printing-press, every printer, who, since Gutenberg, has issued a
Bible--if we are to be absolutely sure of having an oracular and an
infallible Book.
The Westminster Confession, indeed, seems to follow its theory through
most of these lengths, and a Protestant Council in Geneva in 1675, with a
magnificent courage of conviction, actually affirms this supernatural
direction of the translators of the Bible. But such notions are of the
same nature with the preposterous traditions of the Jews, as to the
translation of the Septuagint; according to which, seventy elders,
separated from each other, produced seventy versions, which, on
comparison, "agreed exactly"; whereby men knew that the Scriptures were
"translated by the inspiration of God." With such tales we must leave the
theory they seem necessary to authenticate in the lumber-loft of
superstitions.