Abstract

I address an epistemic and related ontological dificulty with the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. The ontological problem: If biblical inerrancy applies to the original autographs, why would God allow these to disappear from the scene? The epistemological problem: Given that the original autographs are gone, we lack a way to know exactly what the original writings were. The first problem is solved by distinguishing text types and tokens, and claiming that semantic meaning and inerrancy are underivative features types. The second is resolved by claiming that in the actual world, we are epistemically better off with the original tokens gone.