Quote:
Why did God inspire a perfect original if He didn't plan on preserving it? Couldn't He have afforded some errors in His originals just as some believe He has allowed some errors in today's Bible?


Baptist Basil Manly wrote: "It is not true that plenary inspiration would be useless, unless the copies were secured by a perpetual miracle against the effects of time and of careless and corrupt transmission. A truly divine original, even if copied with no more more than ordinary human care and fidelity, is vastly superior to an original however accurately preserved, that never had divine authority. And obviously the fact that it was recognized and accepted as from God would serve greatly to insure its being preserved with more than ordinary care. Neither can it be justly said that God would supernaturally inspire the writings, unless he also miraculously preserved them from erroneous transcription. He might do the one, which He alone could do, and leave the other, as in many other matters, to the faithfulness of his servants intrusted with that responsibility"
(Bible Doctrine of Inspiration, pp. 226-227).

In response to those who objected to the infallibility of the Bible, Baptist Alvah Hovey (1820-1903) observed: "The errors from transcription, translation, etc., are such as can be detected, at least estimated, and reduced to a minimum, while errors in the original revelation could not be measured" (Bush, Baptists and the Bible, p. 281).