Free from All Error: Authorship Inerrancy Historicity of Scripture, Church Teaching, and Modern Scripture Scholars [Paperback]

William G Most (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1985

Ideal for college students, Free From All Error explains, from the perspective of Church teaching, such things as the historical accounts in the various books of the Bible, the multiple applications (or senses) of various texts, parables, the literal sense of Scripture, and the parameters under which Catholic Scripture scholars should operate. Author: William G. Most Format: Paperback, 196 pages Publisher: Franciscan Marytown Press ISBN: 9780913382516

Product Details

• Paperback: 196 pages
• Publisher: Franciscan Marytown Press (1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0913382515
• ISBN-13: 978-0913382516
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,206,241 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Intro to Biblical Criticism, December 9, 2001

By 

Joe (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Free from All Error: Authorship Inerrancy Historicity of Scripture, Church Teaching, and Modern Scripture Scholars (Paperback)

In this short book on biblical inerrancy, the late great biblical scholar Fr. William Most discusses the Catholic approach to scripture, and verifying whether the bible truly is, free from all error.

He starts by establishing the rules and boundaries necessary to properly analyze scripture. Such things as, what it means to say God author's scripture through human instruments. How the Catholic comes to the conclusion of a fully inspired inerrant book, and other questions like,

1. Can a book have different inspired authors?
2. To what limit can that be taken?
3. Can the bible have more than one literal sense?
4. Could the Holy Spirit have conveyed deeper meanings that the authors may have not understood?
5. Can there be multiple fulfillments of Scripture?

And explains one of the most important topics in the book, Genre (Ch9). Genre is a pattern of writing with its own rules of how to write and understand it. He explains why you must critique a book according to the rules its genre has set. For example, Fr. Most explains, suppose you are reading a history book about the Civil War, now you expect the history book to be a mixture of history and fiction. It is history in that the main line of the story is true to history and the background descriptions fit the period. But it is also fictional in that there are fictional fill-ins, especially word-for-word conversations between, for example, Lincoln and Grant. We expect, we even want, the author to create these fill ins, to make the story fuller and more realistic. But we do not suppose that the author really states, word for word, what these important men said. We can't even be sure that he has the substance. For someone to charge the author with a historical error regarding those conversations would not be correct, since he never asserted each conversation was historically true. This would be judging the book against its genre. So with regards to the biblical authors, we must first see what they are asserting by examining their genre. Otherwise it would be unfair to charge them with error, when they may not be asserting it as true.

He also analyses the different popular historical methods. Methods like, the "Historical Critical Method", to "Form and Redaction Criticism".

The book finishes with short discussions on Jewish Tradition, and archeology.

In addressing each topic and error claim, he shows how others have answered an apparent problem, and how some fail in their attempts. The solutions may go to far from what is allowed, or not address the problem correctly. As an example, some people argue that the entire bible is only inspired when it comes to issues involving salvation, and not historically. Fr. Most shows how this goes too far, and in effect, cuts your basis for faith. Fr. Most than analyzes each error himself, and gives exceptional answers. He deals with, Genesis, infancy gospels, apocalyptic writings, and the Wisdom literate.

The positives of the book include,

1. The book deals with the OT (often not the case with biblical inerrancy books)
2. Great answers to the "errors".
3. Answers the most prominent opponents charges.
4. Get a feel for the direction scriptural criticism may go.
5. Demonstrates the need to not be to haste in asserting biblical errors, we have seen what problems arose when science wasn't done properly in the past.

However, the book also has shortcomings. For one, the book is not well organized, so unless special attention is given, you will get confused. The author also seems to bog the book down, while explaining himself, with too many examples. This adds to the difficulty of following what the author is arguing. The book is also old (85), so it would not be an appropriate place to go for the current discussions on the topic.

With everything said, and given the books small size (and price), you cannot go wrong in getting this book. The author is clearly knowledgeable about the subject.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Late Fr Most's Defense of Catholic Biblical Inerrancy, July 16, 2006

By 

James M. Rinkevich (Ridgecrest, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Free from All Error: Authorship Inerrancy Historicity of Scripture, Church Teaching, and Modern Scripture Scholars (Paperback)

Fr. Most covers (1) how the scriptures were authored, (2) how they became scripture (by the determination of the pillar and foundation of truth, the church, (3) the senses of scripture literal and primary spiritual sense, the allegorical (he omits the anagogical and the tropological senses); (4) the inerrancy of the scriptures by showing that the error is in the reading not in the scripture; (5) the various genres in scripture; (6) he covers the various critical methods and their limits; and (7) the study of the ancient Hebrew society through ancient literature and archaeology. He refutes biblical critics with numerous examples. He cuts through circular logic used by others to show correct logical determination of what is scripture. He show by frequent example how many read errors into the scriptures.

Fr. Most had a better sense where the current direction of scripture criticism that his peers. He almost seems to expect that the critical synoptic works of the last decade (on respectively (a) Luke's use of Matthew and (b) Mark's use of Matthew and Luke) would appear. Definitely worth reading to handle seeming conflicts in scripture.

Would have given it a full 5 star if he had covered all the spiritual senses completely.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Catholic and Scholarly, July 1, 2010

By 

Bobby Bambino (Lebanon, NH United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Free from All Error: Authorship Inerrancy Historicity of Scripture, Church Teaching, and Modern Scripture Scholars (Paperback)

This book is an excellent defense of the inerrancy of scripture from a Catholic perspective. There seem to be very few books that are scholarly, faithful to the teaching magesterium, and popular, but this book delivers on all three accounts. Father Most is a world class biblical scholar, and he is able to deal with questions about the historical critical method, form criticism, and archeology among other issues. Fr Most puts the historical critical method in proper perspective, showing that there are good uses for it but that it is used improperly and hence we have all this confusion today. The only small criticism I have of it is that it is a bit disorganized. The chapters are very short and readable, but it isn't obvious that they are in the correct order.