The doctrine of inspiration speaks of the Bible’s dual authorship. The key issue in inspiration is the roles that God and the human authors play. The proper view of biblical inspiration has been labeled the verbal-plenary view of inspiration. In this post we will take a quick look at what verbal-plenary inspiration means and how it is evident in intertextuality.
Verbal-Plenary Inspiration
The term verbal emphasizes the inspiration of the very words of Scripture. The Holy Spirit guided the words to be chosen in the Bible so that every word in Scripture is from God Himself. At the same time, God respected the characteristics of the individual human authors who were writing the text, such that the human authors’ styles and vocabularies are preserved while remaining free from any errors.
The term plenary means “full” or “complete.”1 In the context of biblical inspiration, plenary means that the entirety of every biblical autograph2 is equally inspired. It is impossible for any Scripture to be wrong or to contradict any other Scripture. The Bible is the final authority on any matter about which it speaks.
The verbal-plenary view of inspiration preserves the perfect balance of dual authorship of every word of Scripture to the entire extent of the Bible. This is the view that the Bible claims about itself and it is the only orthodox view to be taken of the Bible throughout history.
Intertextuality
Intertextuality is a concept that describes the relationship between texts as one text references, quotes, or influences another text. The biblical authors held the proper verbal-plenary theory of inspiration and their view on the Bible’s dual authorship is occasionally visible as they deal with previously revealed texts. Let’s take a look at Jesus’ views of the Bible as he deals with the handwashing controversy in Mark 7:6–13. This is just one example of verbal-plenary inspiration being evident in intertextuality, but I would encourage you to keep an eye out for similar phenomena as you continue in your personal Bible study.
In the context of the controversy over handwashing, Jesus rebuked His contemporaries:
6And He said to them, “Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written:
‘This people honors Me with their lips,
But their heart is far away from Me.
7‘But in vain do they worship Me,
Teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.’8Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.” (Mark 7:6–8)
Immediately evident in this rebuke is the authority of the Scriptures above the traditions of men. Because Jesus held to a verbal-plenary view of inspiration, He understood that the Bible was above any manmade traditions and so when a tradition went contrary to Scriptures, He refuted the tradition with Scriptures. The immediate problem was the tradition of nĕṭîlat yādayim (נְטִילַת יָדַיִם), which was a set of traditions regarding handwashing that went beyond the biblical prescription,3 and which Jesus refutes on the authority of Scripture, citing Isaiah 29:13.
The dual authorship of Scripture is evident in this intertextual application of Isaiah. The verse in Isaiah begins, “Then the Lord said, ‘Because this people…’” (Isa. 29:13a). The word translated “Lord” is ʾădōnāy (אֲדֹנָי), referring to God Himself, yet when Jesus quotes the passage, He says, “Rightly did Isaiah prophesy” (Mark 7:6b), because through the principle of dual authorship the words came from both Isaiah and God.
Then Jesus argues further:
9 He was also saying to them, “You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. 10 For Moses said,4 ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘He who speaks evil of father or mother, is to be put to death’; 11 but you say, ‘If a man says to his father or his mother, whatever I have that would help you is Corban (that is to say, given to God),’ 12 you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother; 13 thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that.” (Mark 7:9–13)
In the previous case, a tradition was added to the law, but in this case, there was a tradition that developed to make a loophole so that people could avoid the law. In this instance, Jesus ascribes the words to Moses, “For Moses said, ‘Honor…’” (Mark 7:10a), and then calls it “the word of God” (Mark 7:13b), thus equating these words of Moses with the word of God, which is appropriate since the words also came from God (Exod. 20:1).
- The word plenary entered late Middle English through the late Latin plenarius, meaning “complete,” which likewise is related to late Latin plenus, meaning “full.”
- An autograph of Scripture is the original document that the biblical author wrote. As will be seen in the later discussion on textual criticism, the autographs of Scripture have been lost, but the text has been preserved in a plethora of copied manuscripts.
- For a fascinating study on Matthew 15:1–20; Mark 7L1–23; John 7:1, see Arnold Fruchtenbaum, Yeshua: The Life of Messiah from a Messianic Jewish Perspective (San Antonio, TX: Ariel Ministries, 2016), §79.
- The parallel text of Matthew 15:4a has “For God said…” instead of Mark 7:10a “For Moses said…” This is another indication of the dual authorship since bot God and Moses said the content that follows. This raises a question: Since Matthew has “God” and Mark has “Moses,” was one of them in error? Of course not. There are a couple of proposed solutions, one of which being that Jesus repeated Himself—maybe the crowd was large and noisy and not everyone heard the first time—so that once he said, “For Moses said…” and then He repeated, “For God said…” In this case, rather than writing the same quote twice, Matthew and Mark each would have written once and each recording a different introductory phrase that Jesus used.