Tuesday, March 9, 2021

John C. Poirier on John 10:35 and the Doctrine of the Inerrancy of the Autographia

  

Evangelicals often equate the Scripture “cannot be set aside” (NEB for ου δυναται λυθηναι) with the claim that its meaning cannot possibly be wrong. Such a view, it is widely supposed, implies Scripture is inspired and inerrant.

 

Those who oppose reading inspirationist implications into Jesus’s retort often claim that Jesus is arguing on the Pharisees’ terms and that we cannot assume he affirms those terms. By claiming that “scripture cannot be set aside,” Jesus is trapping the Pharisees on the terms of their own unbending hermeneutic, so as to cut off the branch on which they are sitting (e.g., see Loader, Jesus’ Attitude towards the Law: A Study of the Gospels, WUNY 2/97, Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1997:472). It is they (the Pharisees) who claim, as warrant for their elevation on the Sabbath laws above all exceptions, that “scripture cannot be set aside.” Honesty should keep us, however, from going down this route. While there certainly is an element here of Jesus beating the Pharisees at their own game (cf. Jn 3:6-12; 5:31-46), it appears more likely that he agrees with them at the level of presupposition.

 

There is still, however, an obvious problem with the typical Evangelical reading of Jn 10:35, in that it fails to recognize that Jesus is speaking about Scripture’s legal inviolability, rather than about its factual integrity. The inviolability of the scriptural commandments is connected with their foundation role for halakhic matters, rather than with the text’s supposed divinity or inspired status. A legal body obviously can treat certain laws as inviolable, without in any way suggesting that the text in which those laws are imbedded is divinely inspired (cf. Jn 5:18 [λυειν το Σαββατον [!]]; 7:23.) Douglas Farrow (The Word of Truth and Disputes about Words. Winona Lake, IN, 1987:105) writes,

 

λυθηναι as it occurs in this verse is often translated ‘to be broken’, but this has frequently proved misleading. Arndt and Gingrich classify this occurrence under a heading based on these meanings: destroy, bring to an end, abolish, do away with; and with respect to commandments, laws, and statements—repeal, annul, abolish. While many want to see in John 10:35 an affirmation that “every statement of Scripture stands immutably, indestructible in its verity, unaffected by denial, human ignorance or criticism, charges of errancy or other subjective attack,” that is not quite the point of saying that Scripture is ου δυναται λυθηναι. Christ was not concerned here with the factual verity or accuracy of Scripture, but with the authority of its voice and the binding nature of its testimony.

 

To point to the inviolability of the Jewish Law, therefore, is to make a legal remark, rather than a bibliological remark. That this is so is shown by the fact that Jesus uses the expression “your law” to refer to a passage from Psa 82. If his point had been bibliological, we might have expected a reference to “David” rather than to “your law,” as the latter is usually used only for the Pentateuch. (John C. Poirier, The Invention of the Inspired Text: Philological Windows on the Theopneustia of Scripture [Library of New Testament Studies 640; London: T&T Clark, 2021], 112-13, emphasis in original)