A friend pointed me to this from Revelation Restored: Divine Writ and Critical Responses by Daṿid Weiss Halivni.
It is interesting not only for its content but also as a Jewish voice speaking into the question of what the implications might be of scripture
being the word of God. That doesn’t make it right, but makes it interesting as the perspective of someone who is not participating in or heir to Christianity’s twentieth century Battle for the Bible or its more recent incarnations.
The notion arising from polemics of the Middle Ages that God, the perfect being, could not have created an imperfect instrument [speaking of scripture], subject to human corruption, strikes me as totally unfounded. The divinity of the scriptural word is not diminished by human error. One does not have to deny that God created the world because of the mess that humankind has enacted in it. In fact, it would be surprising if the situation with regard to the written Torah were otherwise–if, among all the things that humankind has blemished, only the written record of the divine word has remained immune. p. 7
This is good. I especially like the last paragraph. Thanks for sharing!
As someone coming from a different culture – a culture with a long history and many ancient texts – I have been unable to comprehend the battle in biblical criticism in the 20th century. I am no expert on this matter though.