I lived in France for six years, so I think I can say with reasonable certitude that one meaning of the French word "livre" is "book." I said one meaning, because it can also mean "pound" in reference to a unit of weight.
All of this aside, I will say that you have a point, which is exactly the one that skeptics try to make about the unreasonable faith that Christians have in the Bible. By learning French, I discovered that it is sometimes extremely difficult, if not imposssible, to "translate" exact thoughts from one language to another. Yet God presumably chose to reveal his word to mankind in two languages that had extremely limited vocabularies and in the case of Hebrew a very imperfect alphabet. Under such conditions, how can anyone be reasonably sure that modern language translations express the meaning of the original languages?
< Literary critical evidence, archeological evidence and the like continue to support the Bible.
I don't have references in front of me right now - should I post again with more details?>>
I do wish you would get the evidence and cite it. If you will do that, I will be glad to respond to it. Among other things, I am aware of archaeological evidence that disputes the biblical account of Joshua's sacking of the city of Ai and of archaeological evidence that disputes the biblical account of the wilderness wanderings after the exodus. I'm afraid that this claim is merely something you have heard from inerrantist writers who have a bad habit of making claims that they are unwilling to defend in public forum.
<< Being new to this forum, I will guess that you are already familiar with the references (McDowell, Geisler, Moreland, Kreeft are a few).>>
Yes, we--or at least many of us--are familiar with these "references." In my case, I have even debated Geisler in public at Columbus College in Columbus, GA. Although I have tried to arrange a second debate with him at his seminary in North Carolina, he is unwilling to do it. There is another list mcdowell@atheist.tamu.edu that is responding to *Evidence That Demands a Verdict* chapter by chapter.
<<Should I interpret these to mean that your primary issue is with miracles?
If you can't prove miracles/unexplainable events with science, then you dismiss them?>>
In our debate at Seattle-Pacific University, Michael Horner of the Campus Crusade for Christ accused me of having made an a priori rejection of miracles, yet during the cross examination periods I asked him repeatedly about miracles recorded in the works of Josephus, Suetonius, Tacitus, etc. to find out if there was a single nonbiblical miracle claim from this general time period that he believed really happened. He denied belief in any of them. Finally, I just asked if he could think of a single nonbiblical miracle that he believed in, and his answer was a simple, "No" (Transcript of Horner-Till Debate, p. 16). I appreciated his frank honesty, but it pointed out the inconsistency of his position. He objected to my rejection of the resurrection on the grounds that miracle claims should not be believed without extraordinary evidence to support them, yet he himself had rejected all nonbiblical miracles on the same grounds.
So I will ask Adam Dixon the same question that I asked Horner: "Can you cite a single nonbiblical miracle claim that you accept as historical fact?" If not, then what are your grounds for accepting *every* miracle claim in the Bible?
<Are any of these available electronically? Please provide any details that you have for availability/cost.>>
I am the editor of *The Skeptical Review,* and it is available without cost for the first year. Just send me your address, and I will add you to the mailing list.
Farrell Till, Editor The Skeptical Review