Inspiration is not Dictation (2)

Ezekiel 1-3

Why is it important to understand and talk about inspiration in a way that gets us away from either something like dictation or, again, some sort of event where God overtakes the human mind and sort of just downloads information? I want to show you a few examples from the text that a dictation idea or some sort of trancelike state idea really cannot account for. The phenomena of the text is really what drives the way we should talk about inspiration.

If we go to, for example, Ezek 1 and take a look at the first few verses, I want you to notice carefully what we read. “In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the Chebar canal, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. On the fifth day of the month (it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin), the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the Chebar canal, and the hand of the Lord was upon him there.”

What I’d like you to notice here is that the text begins with the writer using the first person: “I was among the exiles. I saw visions of God.” And then it transitions to the third person, as though someone else is writing. “The word of the Lord came to Ezekiel.” If Ezekiel’s the one writing this, why didn’t he say, “The word of the Lord came to me.”? It’s a very clear indication that you have two hands in the text, some sort of editorial activity going on where first person language on Ezekiel’s part is part of the text, and third person language (the result of an editor) is also in the text. If inspiration happens by dictation, none of this makes any sense.

The Superscription on the Cross

Let me show you another example of why it’s important for us to let the phenomena of the text drive our understanding of inspiration. Now, this example is going to come from the nt. I’m going to show you something from the Synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I’m picking this example because it’s probably the easiest one to show you to make the point. What I want you to know as well is that this sort of thing also happens in the ot quite a bit between the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles.

If we go to the Synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—we know because we’ve read the Gospels a lot that they record many of the same events. They’re after the same subject matter, but we also know that the language, the wording disagrees in the way the same content is presented. This is even more apparent in Greek. If we were reading the passage in Greek, you would see different vocabulary, you would see different verb tenses, you would see different grammatical constructions. The words are not the same, even though the content conveyed is the same.

By way of illustration, if we look at the superscriptions on the cross, this is one episode that gets recorded in all four Gospels, so we have the three Synoptics: Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and I’ve thrown John in here. If you look at the superscriptions on the cross, they’re all different in some way. Now, the point that I’m trying to make here is if this was dictation, if inspiration worked by dictation, there was no human mental activity going on. Looking at something like this just would make no sense at all. Can’t God remember the way He did it the first time? Why would God download a different set of words to a different author? Is He just being playful or mischievous? It just doesn’t make any sense. You have to have human mental activity.

We’re not divorcing God’s role from this, but, again, God is the ultimate source, and the human writer is the immediate source of what we’re reading, so we need to understand inspiration that way in both Testaments, especially as we’ll see later on in the ot

AMENEMOPE