I had the privilege of meeting J. Warner (Jim) Wallace at NRB 2020 last week in Nashville. Jim is a former atheist who is now an apologist for Christianity. He used his skills as a cold case detective to investigate the Bible in an effort to disprove it, only to become convinced of its veracity. I have been a fan of his work for years. A couple of my favorite insights include the fact that despite what we learn from television, detectives love circumstantial evidence and often use it to win cases. Also, multiple eye-witness accounts of an incident never completely agree with one another and detectives use this fact to help them determine what really happened. It is when multiple eye-witness accounts are too similar that detectives get suspicious.
“The traditional definition of biblical inerrancy maintains that the Bible is accurate and completely free of error. Inerrancy does not require, however, that the biblical texts be free of any personal perspectives or idiosyncrasies. In fact, the existence of these distinctive features only helps us recognize the accounts as true eye-witness statements written by real people who revealed their human gifts (and limitations) along the way. The characteristics can help us have confidence in both the accuracy and the reliability of the accounts.” [J. Warner Wallace–Cold Case Christianity, 81]