Brother Jerry. When a bible believer says "inerrant" I wince. That's a knee jerk reaction on my part. Not your problem at all. But that's why I spoke up on it: it was getting to me. Here's the deal as I understand it:

The term inerrant was originally used to describe the "fixed stars" in their courses. Its use dates back to the 1650's . In a literary sense, infallible and inerrant are twins. But they are not the same in the text critical sense.

Starting from the very first christian confession that deals with the text of the bible and everyone since then down to the 20th century pre 1970's, bible believers always and only used the term infallible (in their confessions of faith). And it always meant then and means now, that the originals were without error AND the copies the survive today are without error. It is also part of the doctrine of infallibility that the reason the copies that survive to this day are authentically the word of God without error, is because of God's special preservation of them (you can refer to the London confession or Westminster confession for corroboration. You will look there in vain for a reference to "inerrancy"). So infallibility teaches what you're saying: i.e. that BOTH the originals and the copies are without error.

Now. Back in the 19th century when german higher criticism became known, some very earnest and godly bible teachers became concerned that real christians were about to be labeled as "obscurantists" by the intellectual world. So some men in this category, inparticular B.B. Warfield, went to europe and studied higher criticism. His goal was to embrace as much of it as he could and "baptize" it so as to preserve the church from being ostricized by the world of academia. The result of these men's efforts is a lower form of higher criticism called textual criticism. ONe of the planks in their platform is that we do not know what the originals looked like in all details. So if the higher critics find an "error" in the copies of the surviving bible manuscripts, Warfield and textual criticism will be able to say "well that's just transmission error that crept into the mss. The "originals" would not have had that. Warfield knew the historical teaching of the churches to be infallibility which taught that the copies as well as the originals were authentic. He was now changing that. So he had to come up with a new term with which to make the distinction. That term was "inerrancy" and was taken (he says) because it was already in use as a scientific term. He wanted to sound scientific. He feared being labeled as an obscurantist.

Now his worries are not mine. And his doctrine is certainly not mine. So, his word is not mine. For if I use that term, I will know I"m eliminating the copies from infallibility. But I believe the originals , the copies , and the translations that God gave us from the days of the Reformation to be the very authentic word of God!

The term inerrancy is a term of the scholars who gave us the RV, RSV, NASB, and NIV. I'm a KJV/AV man. I don't say inerrancy. I only say infallible as did the churches' confessions always say. As I said previously: The first confession where inerrancy appears (I believe) is in 1979 called The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. Check it out here. And note who you're budding up with when you say inerrancy. All neo-evangelicals, modern translations, "high degree of accuracy" folks.

Here is the modern understanding of the term inerrancy.

http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/creeds/chicago.htm

Note:

Article VI.

We affirm that the whole of Scripture and all its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine inspiration.
We deny that the inspiration of Scripture can rightly be affirmed of the whole without the parts, or of some parts but not the whole.

Article X.
We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.
We deny that any essential element of the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs. We further deny that this absence renders the assertion of Biblical inerrancy invalid or irrelevant.


Not thanks. I have much much more than "great accuracy". I have God's infallible word in my hands!

You will note that they redefine infallible to agree with inerrancy. I say redefine because the churches' confessions and doctrine has always extended infallibility to the copies!

E. Transmission and Translation Since God has nowhere promised an inerrant transmission of Scripture, it is necessary to affirm that only the autographic text of the original documents was inspired and to maintain the need of textual criticism as a means of detecting any slips that may have crept into the text in the course of its transmission.
The verdict of this science, however, is that the Hebrew and Greek text appears to be amazingly well preserved, so that we are amply justified in affirming, with the Westminster Confession, a singular providence of God in this matter and in declaring that the authority of Scripture is in no way jeopardized by the fact that the copies we possess are not entirely error-free.


So God didn't perserve His word for us the way we've always been taught and the way I believe!!!

This statement defines what is meant today by inerrancy. If you use this word, this is how you're going to be understood.