Wednesday, January 4, 2023

Duane A. Garrett on Scripture Going Through Various Production States and the Question of "Inspiration"

  

. . . even a conservative view of the origin of the Bible must allow that some of the books may have gone through three stages. These are the promulgation of source materials prior to the greater writer, the collection of the source materials and the use of them by a greater writer in putting together a single work, and subsequent revision of that work. The prologue to Luke’s Gospel states that it went through at least the first two stages. . . . Regarding the ‘inspiration’ of those who first compiled the source material, a minimal view would be that at least part of what they compiled was true and trustworthy, and that the inspired greater writer was then able to separate the wheat from the chaff and use only valid material in his book. Luke, in his prologue, to his sources (Luke 1:3) indicates more than just setting down his source material in a pleasing order.

 

On the other hand, many of the original compilers of the sources themselves were surely as inspired by God as the greater writers who followed them. In the case of Luke’s Gospel, the tradents who stood between Jesus and Luke notwithstanding, much of the material (e.g., the parables) came directly from Jesus himself, and he was surely inspired! For this reason, I believe that in the case of Genesis there was genuine divine inspiration not only in the person of Moses but in the persons who compiled the stories long before him. (Duane A. Garrett, Rethinking Genesis: The Sources and Authorship of the First Book of the Pentateuch [Ross-shire: Christian Focus Publications, 2000], 250, 251)

 

Further Reading:


Biblical Prophets Changing their Words and the Words of Previous Prophets