There is a claim sometimes found in religious news accounts, to the effect that certain people believe in the "inerrancy" of their Holy Scriptures. It is said that the chosen Scriptures are the literal Word of God, and therefore must be true. WIthout even asking whether such an assertion can be true, let us see how many Christians in fact believe it of the Bible, i.e. the Old and New Testaments.
We know perfectly well that the Old Testament is (essentially) the Holy Scripture of Judaism, and that Jews reject the chief assertion made in the New Testament, that Jesus of Nazareth was (is) the Messiah. No inconsistency can be laid upon them. But any Christians who do not strictly observe the dietary and ritual observances required of the Jews may as well quit saying that the Old Testament is the Word of God, demanding literal and unconditional acceptance. Any person who eats pork, ham, bacon, hare, lobster, crab, or shellfish at all has decided that Leviticus chapter 11:4 et seq. is not the Word of God. The same prohibition is found in Deuteronomy. And Numbers 5:12 prescribes an action that a jealous husband might bring to test his wife that would certainly violate the laws of the United States. We may as well note that St. Paul says it is not necessary for Christians to observe the Jewish rituals. But if Leviticus and Deuteronomy and Numbers are obsolete, is it not absurd to take literally the books Genesis and Exodus?
Suppose we restrict the "inerrancy" claim to the New Testament? Jesus consistently forbade his disciples to use any kind of weapons against his enemies. The only apparent exception is the whip he took to drive the moneymakers out of the Temple. (Their spiritual heirs are with us still.)
But even that case depended more upon the spiritual force of his accusations, and upon the theatrical rather than the physical use of the whip. I conclude that all advocates of guns and heavy armaments have decided to disregard the teachings of Jesus, and do not consider the Gospels reliable guides to conduct. So the militant Religious Right do not consider even the Gospels inerrant.
But just in case I seem to be picking upon them alone, let us consider two of St. Paul's strictures:
"A bishop then must be ... the husband of one wife, .." (1 Timothy 3:2 ) [deacons also- 3:12] which the Roman Catholic Church denies, and
"Let your women keep silence in the churches" (1 Corinthians 14:34) , which means that most of liberal Protestantism, indeed all who espouse the equality of the sexes, deny that all the words of St. Paul in the Epistles were the Word of God. This of course is not a big surprise.
In short, the number of Christians who have read the Bible and believe that it is "inerrant" must be vanishingly small. There are enough places where one Bible voice contradicts a previous one that we can be sure they are not all the voice of God, unless God is schizophrenic. Let's face up to the truth and admit that human judgement and custom in all cases decides what people believe, and ask ourselves whether deliberate conscious judgement is not better than thoughtless custom?