Daniel Cox

Early on in my Christian life I heard these catchy definitions of grace and mercy:

This is my public key, on keyserver.ubuntu.com as "Daniel Patrick Cox" <danielpcox ET gmail DAWT com>:

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Our notion of verbal plenary inspiration need not require that the process eventually resulting in the canonical text involved no editing. We can be certain the original drafts of, for example, Paul's letters were full of ink blots and corrections, perhaps having begun with an outline, and certainly with a plan. And the end result? The inspired Word of God.

Is it therefore so hard to believe that Deuteronomy 34 was added to the original Mosaic Pentateuch by a prophet late in the history of Israel? It is our belief that we evangelicals balk at the concept entirely because of an erroneous image we hold of Moses writing the Pentateuch in a single sitting, or at least without reflection and preparation. We imagine that if Moses were truly inspired, such that his words could be held as the very words of God, he would not have had to revise, or be revised.

Certainly if God himself had written the Pentateuch directly, his work would require no revision. God is omniscient, infallible, and unchanging, and he would therefore surely have his whole structure in mind with all of its intertextuality, symbolism, nuance and "punch", perfected even before he reached for his pen. But is it not evident to all, except those who believe in dictation, that God's inspiration of the text of the Bible was through the personalities, writing styles and, dare we say, writing methods of his human vessels?

If, as we believe, the Bible is the verbal plenary inspiration of God (that is, the meaning of the Bible is in its very words, exactly reflect the mind and will of God, has God's own authority, and is in fact breathed out by him with perfect intention), and yet without violation of the human authors' own personalities, then we must depart from both extreme notions of the mechanism of inspiration: The human authors were not merely passive secretaries taking God's dictation, nor were they charging ahead of the Holy Spirit, introducing their own thoughts and opinions into the text, perhaps adding to God something about slavery here and a touch of apparent sexism there. Further, it could not have been some hybrid, whereby the human authors guessed at God's mind and then presented their work to him for verification. No man can guess at the mind of God on the scale or with the complexity and interconnectedness displayed in the biblical text. We are almost forced to conclude that a mystery is at work: The Bible is both fully a result of the careful and intentional work of its human authors, and fully the perfect representation of the mind of God, by his grace.

Why then should we assume, eisegetically, that the canonical Pentateuch had on it no human hand besides that of Moses? Exegetically, besides suspiciously recording the death of Moses himself, Deuteronomy 34 (to continue our earlier example), includes the statement, "And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses..." (Deut. 34:10) This statement, a comment on Deuteronomy 18 where God promises a future prophet "like Moses", is best understood as coming from a prophet late enough in the history of Israel to be able to say that a prophet like Moses has not arisen.

For further discussion on the foregoing topic in much greater depth, please see The Meaning of the Pentateuch, by John H. Sailhamer.