MORE PROBLEMS WITH THE BIBLE AS THE "INERRANT WORD OF GOD"

I've noted before that Richard Friedman has done some remarkable work on who really wrote the first 5 books of the Old Testament and how that obviously subverts any claim to inerrancy. Bart D. Erhman has done the same kind of analysis for the New Testament and in a short book has presented clear evidence that even today, we are a long way from what the New Testament really said.

Here's one example from page 185:

We might consider briefly several other textual changes of a similar sort. One occurs in a passage I have already mentioned, Romans 16, in which Paul speaks of a woman, Junia, and a man who was presumably her husband, Andronicus, both of whom he calls "foremost among the apostles" (v. 7). This is a significant verse, because it is the only place in the New Testament in which a woman is referred to as an apostle. Interpreters have been so impressed by the passage that a large number of them have insisted that it cannot mean what it says, and so have translated the verse as referring not to a woman named Junia but to a man named Junias, who along with his companion Andronicus is praised as an apostle. The problem with this translation is that whereas Junia was a common name for a woman, there is no evidence in the ancient world for "Junias" as a man's name. Paul is referring to a woman named Junia, even though in some modern English Bibles (you may want to check your own!) translators continue to refer to this female apostle as if she were a man named Junias.