A common proof-text for traditional models of inerrancy is that of Matt 5:17-18:
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. (ESV)
Commenting on how to properly exegete this text, Dewey Beegle wrote:
Traditionally, the passage has been taken to refer to the words of the law (a description for the whole Old Testament), and thus a witness for the doctrine of inerrant, verbal inspiration. But this view fails to take into account the fact that the Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament in Jesus’ day swarmed with variant spellings and forms because of the omission or additions of yods. It is recognized that Jesus argued at times from the accuracy of specific words, but in this overall statement concerning the law, his emphasis can hardly be on the words or letters. The prevailing tendency of Jewish interpretation, to stress the letter instead of the spirit of the law, is the very thing Jesus is refuting in Matthew 5:17-48.
An illustration of Jewish concern for the very letters of the Hebrew text is a rabbinical comment on Ruth 3:14. The text reads, “So she lay at his feet until the morning, but arose before one could recognize another; and he said, ‘let it not be known that the woman came to the threshing floor.’” The Hebrew word translated “before” has the letter waw, a distinctive spelling not found elsewhere in the Old Testament. The Jewish commentators felt that the occurrence of the letter waw (which, as the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, has the numerical value 6) was intended by God to inform the readers that Ruth lay on the threshing floor at Boaz’ feet for six hours. But this explanation given in a scribal mistake is hardly proof of the author’s intent in 3:14.
Zeal or the letter, the object of Jesus’ criticism, was also a plague to the apostle Paul. Legalists from Jerusalem and thereabouts visited the young churches that Paul had started and they caused great unrest among the young Christians. In his letter to the Romans, he speaks of this vital issue: “He is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal [the Greek reads “in spirit not in letter”]” (Rom. 2:29). In Romans 7:6, Paul comments further, “We serve not under the old written code [Gk. “in oldness of letter”], but in the new life of the Spirit [Gk. “in newness of spirit”].” This concept is also treated in 2 Corinthians 3:6, where Paul declares, God “qualified us to be ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code, but in the Spirit; for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life.” Thus Paul asserts with Jesus that the essence of the law is its spirit, the principles it embodies, not its letter. Accordingly, to interpret Jesus in Matthew 5:17-18 as pleading for the inerrancy of the smallest detail of the Old Testament is to misinterpret him. (Dewey M. Beegle, Scripture, Tradition, and Infallibility [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1973], 216-17, italics in original)
