Scripture: Word of God?
How can any scripture be called the Word of God? The original texts, written by divine inspiration, are now lost. We only have copies made by scribes—copies that contain errors, whether intentional or unintentional.1 As such, we cannot accurately call these copies the Word of God. Therefore, every scripture is ultimately a human creation, produced by human minds.2 As Bart Ehrman aptly observes: “If God really wanted people to have His actual words, surely He would have miraculously preserved those words, just as He had miraculously inspired them in the first place. Given the circumstance that He didn’t preserve the words, the conclusion seemed inescapable … that He hadn’t gone to the trouble of inspiring them”.3
This viewpoint, often presented by agnostics, raises a deep question: if God inspired the text, why allow it to be lost or changed?
However, I see it differently. To me, every scripture is “of the humans, for the humans, by the humans, from God.” Each time I read scripture, I re-interpret it. The Word of God is not a frozen, immutable artifact but a living experience, continually offering new inspiration according to my spiritual needs. Without this dynamic engagement, the text would cease to be the Word of God for me.
The Abrahamic Perspective: Inerrancy and History
In the context of Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—the authority of scripture rests on two key principles: 1) that scripture is the inerrant Word of God, and 2) that the faith is rooted in historical fact. When this inerrancy is questioned, as Ehrman does, it shakes the foundation of these faiths.
The Indian Perspective: A More Flexible Approach
In India, however, we approach scripture differently. For Hindus, questions of inerrancy are less significant. The understanding of scripture as the Word of God is not as rigid. Errors may have crept into the texts over centuries of copying, especially in poetic formats. However, the essence of the scriptures—the spiritual teachings—remains intact.
For example, the Vedas, considered foundational to Hindu philosophy, are believed to have been preserved with remarkable accuracy, partly due to the poetic meter and structure, which made alterations difficult without breaking the flow.4 Other Hindu texts, like the Mahabharata, have undergone more evident changes over time. Scholars acknowledge later insertions in these texts, but this does not reduce their sacredness.
Take the Mahabharata as an example. When scholars compiled the Critical Edition, they compared hundreds of manuscripts from different regions. Even then, variations between the northern and southern versions persisted. Interestingly, the Mahabharata itself claims to be an abbreviated version of a much larger original! Despite these changes, it remains revered as scripture. (Reference to Dutt’s Mahabharata)
Unlike the scribes of the Abrahamic tradition, who sometimes guessed at missing lines, Indian editors often respected the gaps in manuscripts. They left long dots (…..) in place of missing lines, acknowledging the loss rather than attempting to fill the gaps. This approach continues today, as seen in projects like Project Madurai[http://www.projectmadurai.org/], which publishes digital editions of Saiva scriptures. In contrast, as Ehrman points out, scribes in the Abrahamic tradition often introduced variations when copying from the originals.6
The Living Nature of Hindu Scripture
Ultimately, for Hindus, whether errors or additions have crept into scripture is less important than the spiritual and practical guidance these texts provide. Scripture is alive—not because it is perfectly preserved but because it continues to speak to the human condition. The Word of God transcends human errors and remains a vital, dynamic source of inspiration.
For me, the human authors of scripture were inspired by God to convey divine messages using their own language and worldview. As these texts were translated into other languages, more mistakes occurred due to misunderstandings of the original context. However, this doesn’t trouble me. Even in cases where texts are written under the names of famous figures (such as some works attributed to Shankara), these writings still hold value.
For example, the Gita contains a colophon added at the end of each chapter that provides the chapter’s name and a brief interpretation. Though not part of the original text, these additions are now considered part of the Gita, and this doesn’t disturb its authority.7 As a Hindu, this flexibility allows me to read scholarly critiques of scripture without it diminishing my bhakti.
Bhakti Over Scripture
For Hindus, while scriptures are important, our bhakti—our devotional practice—is more rooted in a personal relationship with a chosen deity or guru. This relationship is often passed down through family traditions or guided by a living guru. For those deeply invested in spiritual practice, having a guru-shishya (teacher-student) relationship provides intellectual and spiritual guidance. For others, simply following family traditions in religious matters suffices as their spirituality.
By contrast, many adherents of Abrahamic faiths, especially Protestant Christians, view their salvation as contingent on a personal “born-again” experience and faith in the inerrant Word of God as their sole authority (sola scriptura). Roman Catholics, meanwhile, place their faith in the Church’s tradition, believing that salvation is found only through the Church’s authority.
Conclusion
Hindus generally uphold the principle that truth is more important than the event, and principle is more important than the person. What is said carries more weight than when it was said, and why it was said is more important than how it was said. No amount of literary criticism or scholarly debate ever challenges our faith in the scriptures that form the foundation of our bhakti.
For me, every time I read Mukti Veda, I re-write it. The Word of God is a living experience, constantly offering new inspiration for my devotional practice. Otherwise, it would no longer remain the Word of God for me.
Revised on 17-9-2024
Gurukulam
Notes
1…for the scribes who copied texts inevitably made alterations in those texts—changing the words they copied either by accident (via a slip of the pen or other carelessness) or by design (when the scribe intentionally altered the words he copied.) Anyone reading a book in antiquity could never be completely sure that he or she was reading what the author had written. The words could have been altered. In fact, they probably had been, if only just a little.—Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, San Francisco, Harper, 2002, p. 46
2 The Bible began to appear to me as a very human book. Just as human scribes had copied, and changed, the texts of scripture, so too had human authors originally written the texts of scripture. This was a human book from beginning to end…..Many of these authors no doubt felt they were inspired by God to say what they did, but they had their own perspectives, their own beliefs, their own views, their own needs, their own desires, their own understandings, their own theologies; and these perspectives beliefs, views, needs, (p.11) desires, understandings, and theologies informed everything they said. In all these way they differed from one another….’ (pp. 11-12)—ibid.
3 In particular, as I said at the outset, I began seeing the New Testament as a very human books. The New Testament as we actually have it, I knew, was the product of human hands, the hands of the scribes who transmitted it. Then I began to see that not just the scribal text but the original text itself was a very human book. This stood very much at odds with how I had regarded the text in my late teens as a newly minted “bron-again” Christian, convinced that the Bible was the inerrant Word of God and that the biblical words themselves had come to us by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. As I realized already in graduate school, even if God had inspired the original words, we don’t have the original words. So the doctrine of inspiration was in a sense irrelevant to the Bible as we have it, since the words God reputedly inspired had been changed and, in some cases, lost. Moreover, I came to think that my earlier views of inspiration were not only irrelevant, they were probably wrong. For the only reason (I came to think) for God to inspire the Bible would be so that his people would have his actual words; but if he really wanted people to have his actual words, surely he would have miraculously preserved those words, just as he had miraculously inspired them in the first place. Given the circumstance that he didn’t preserve the words, the conclusion seemed inescapable to me that he hadn’t gone to the trouble of inspiring them.—ibid. p. 211
4 Veda Perhaps the most remarkable thing about vedic literature is that it has been orally transmitted with little change to its contents for up to 3,000 years. This accuracy has been enabled by a system of double checking. The texts were learned at least twice: as a continuous recitation, called the samhitaapaatha, in which the Sanskrit rules for combining words (sandhi) operated, and as the recitation of words without the rules of euphonic combination, called the padapaatha. Frits Staal gives an illustrative example from the vedic Samhitaas, the verse `the immortal goddess has pervaded the wide space, the depths and the heights’ is remembered in two versions, as the continuous flow of the samhitaapaatha (`orv apra amartya nivato devy udvatah’) and word for word in the padapaatha (`a/ uru/ aprah/ amartya/ nivatah/ devi/ udvatah//’).[Staal, Rules Without Meaning, Ritual, Mantras and the Human Sciences (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), p.389]– Gavin Flood, An introduction to Hinduism, Cambridge University Press, 1996., p.39
5 44. The great race of the Bharatas is its topic. Hence it is called Bharata. And because of its grave meaning as also of the Bharatas being its topic, it is called Mahabharata. 45. He who is versed in interpretations of this great work becomes purged of every sin. Such a man lives in virtue, profit and pleasure, and acquires liberation also. 46. That which is in this is elsewhere. That which does not occur here occurs nowhere else. This history is known by the name of Jaya. It should be heard by every one desirous of liberation. … 48. … The powerful Island-born Krishna [Vyasa] who will not have to come back, and who is liberation incarnate, made an abstract of the Bharata, moved by the desire of helping the cause of virtue. 49. He made another compilation consisting of sixty lakhs of verses. 50. Thirty lakhs of these were placed in the region of the celestials. In the region of the Pitris, fifteen lakhs, it should be known, are current; while in that of the Yakshas fourteen lakhs are current. 51-52. One lakh is current among human beings. Narada recited the Mahabharat to the gods; Asita-Devala to the Pitris; Shuka to the Rakshasas and the Yakshas; and Vaishampayana to human beings. This history is sacred, and of deep significance, and considered as equal to the Vedas. [Sauti to Shaunaka].— — M.N.[Manmatha Nath] Dutt, Mahabharata, Delhi, Parimala Publications, 7 vols. SWARGAROHANIKA PARVA. VOL. 7. Ch. V. p. 556
6….scribes sometimes abbreviated certain words to save time or space. The Greek word for “and,” for example, is KAI, for which some scribes simply wrote the initial letter K, with a kind of downstroke at the end to indicate that it was an abbreviation. Other common abbreviations involved what scholars have called the nomina sacra (= sacred names), a group of words such as God, Christ, Lord, Jesus, and Spirit that were abbreviated either because they occurred so frequently or else to show that they were being paid special attention. These various abbreviations sometimes led to confusion for later scribes, who mistook one abbreviation for another or misread an abbreviation as a full word. So, for example, in Rom. 12:11, Paul urges his reader to “serve the Lord.” But the word Lord, KURIW, was typically abbreviated in manuscripts as KW (with a line drawn over the top), which some early scribes misread as an abbreviation for KAIRW, which means “time.” And so in those manuscripts, Paul exhorts his readers to “serve the time.”— Ehrman, op. cit. p. 91
7 This colophon at the end of each chapter in Gita was added to elevate it to the status as ‘sruti’ by calling it as Upanishad.
Sometimes accidental mistakes were made not because words looked alike, but because they sounded alike. This could happen, for example, when a scribe was copying a text by dictation—when one scribe would be reading from a manuscript and one or more other scribes would be copying the words into new manuscripts, as sometimes happened in scriptoria after the fourth century. If two words were pronounced the same, then the scribe doing the copying might inadvertently use the wrong one in his copy, especially if it made perfectly good (but wrong) sense. This appears to be what happened, for example, in Rev. 1:5, where the author prays to “the one who released us from our sins.” The word for “release” (LUSANTI) sounds exactly like the word for “washed” (LOUSANTI), and so it is no surprise that in a number of medieval manuscripts the author prays to the one “who washed us from our sins.”—ibid. pp. 92-93
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