Can I trust my Bible?
How can texts written by ordinary human beings in the context of common human experience be at the same time the eternal and unchanging Word of God? The following points seek to clarify the nature of inspiration. Inspiration Is Not Dictation Except in some specialized cases, inspiration does not mean dictation. God did not whisper into the ears of the biblical authors but rather worked through each author’s own circumstances, thoughts, intentions, and personalities to communicate his divine message. The exceptions would be in those cases where the author is told to write exactly what he is told (as in some prophetic texts) or where God himself inscribes the text (as in the Decalogue, inscribed on stone tablets “by the finger of God”; Exod. 31:18). Evidence that inspiration does not mean dictation is the differences among biblical authors in literary styles, including vocabulary choice, sentence structure, level of diction, and choice of genre. Mark’s Gospel, for example,