Despite any claims to contrary, God does not write down scripture.
God speaks to human beings and some human beings are inspired sufficiently to write scripture.
The question I ask is: how accurate is the human version of God's word?
Jesus actions on Earth were reported orally until Paul recorded his letters to his churches.
The Gospels weren't written by Jesus's disciples but by 'The Way' scribes long after Paul's and Peter's death.
In some cases, centuries after Jesus's resurrection.
Who were the first scriptural scribes?
Scripture was written by Babylonian and Egyptian pagan scribes long before God spoke to Abraham.
How much of God's word appeared in the text of pagan priests working for the local king?
Human beings, no matter what their social profession, are primarily motivated by self-interest.
Kingdoms and so-called empires were and continue to be tribal in perspective.
Us versus them perspective.
Pagan priests focus was to continue their good fortune and the good will of their master, the king.
There was always a lead god and subordinate gods in service to the priests.
Considering such gods were actually nonexistent, the stories the priests told were metaphor meant to promote themselves and their masters.
So, if later scribes copied and modified pagan priest stories, then how credible is version of such stories for those of us living far forward in time?
There is plenty of evidence that Hebrew scribes copied and modified pagan priest stories.
Scriptural scholars argue about the extent that pagan priests influenced later scripture.
It is clear from the evidence, that early kingdom text is mimicked in later kingdom text.
It is not unreasonable to ask how much Christian scripture was influenced by pagan scripture.
Human culture is at most, evolutionary over the millennia.
As I illustrated in a previous chapter, human method of rule hasn't changed, in practice, significantly in 10millennia.
That is, there is always a few at the top and everyone else has to follow in a hierarchical line.
It wasn't very long before 'The Way' morphed into a diverse collection of competing churches where those at the top of each church were deciding for all the other members of that church.
It is evident in Paul's letters, that such a process was already underway.
The later Gospels illustrate, in their differences, that each bishop had his theory about God.
So, although the later copies of the original scriptural text show consistency, the question is how diverse the original text was compared to the copies which survived.
The early concaves assembled to deal with heresy suggest the original texts were far more diverse than the surviving copies suggest.
This is my point.
God speaks with one voice, but human beings write with diversity.
It is not enough that scholars scrutinize scripture, it is equally important that the average churchgoer know more than scriptural content and the meaning of scriptural metaphor.
Scriptural context and scriptural origins are required to separate scribe bias from God's actual word.
Also, it is important to insure all of God's word is in scripture.
There is still the matter of knowing God's word after the 5th century CE.
