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Do We Have the Very Words of the Biblical Authors? 71
say that!” And if they say (as they probably did in this case with Jesus),
“Well, you gave the impression that . . . ,” you will say, “But what I said
was . . .” This is how important words are.
One of the strongest statements of Jesus’s concern for preserving his
own words, as well as the very words of the Old Testament, is Matthew
5:17–18:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I
have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to
you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will
pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
The words “iota” and “dot” probably refer to the smallest Hebrew letter
(yod) and to the tiny hook that distinguishes some Hebrew letters
from others. This is Jesus’s way of emphasizing the importance of the
details of Scripture, including the very words. D. A. Carson comments,
“In any event Jesus here upholds the authority of the Old Testament
Scriptures right down to the ‘least stroke of a pen.’ His is the highest
possible view of the Old Testament.” 1
Peter Cared about Words
Peter seems to have learned from Jesus the importance of getting an author’s
words right, and thus the danger of twisting words, because in his
second letter (in a passage we’ve already seen), he warns against those
who take the words of Paul and distort them to suit their own error:
There are some things in [Paul’s letters] that are hard to understand,
which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as
they do the other Scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this
beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error
of lawless people and lose your own stability. (2 Pet. 3:16–17)
If lawless people twist Paul’s written epistles into meanings that lead
to destruction, what is the remedy? Part of the remedy is preserving and
presenting the very words Paul wrote. How else will other people be persuaded
that Paul did not teach what the word-twisters say he taught? The
1
D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in Matthew, Mark, Luke, vol. 8, Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E.
Gaebelein (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984), 145.