Editorial discrepancies

Jason Engwer recently referred to this article–which includes the following statement:

Accordingly, the postulation of a pre-existing, forty-member genealogy structured around Abraham, David, Josiah, and Joseph does more than merely solve a math problem. 

http://hypotyposeis.org/weblog/2014/10/cbq-article-on-matt-117-published.html

I haven't read Carlson's article. But I'd like to make a general observation. As is widely documented, the Bible contains some apparent discrepancies. Discrepancies about names and numbers, times and places. That's not a novel observation on my part. And there are various proposals to harmonize these apparently discrepancies. 

Now I'd like to make a neglected point: some Bible writers undoubtedly use written sources. And in so doing, they make selective use of their sources. Once again, that's not a novel observation on my part. Historians typically use written sources. And when a historian quotes from a source, he doesn't normally quote the whole text. He only quotes what's relevant.

This, however, invites what I'll call editorial discrepancies. Editorial discrepancies aren't the same as factual discrepancies.

Say a written source mentions a certain number of people. Say it totals their number. 

When a historian excerpts that source, he may only quote what it says about the people of interest to him. Yet when he copies the original source, he may include the total. 

That creates a discrepancy, because he mentions fewer people than the total. The discrepancy is generated by the fact that he's omitted some information. The total is correct, but if you add it up yourself, based on what he shows you, it doesn't add up. Yet that's not a mistake. He didn't make a mistake. Rather, the discrepancy is due to missing information. If he copied the total, but he didn't copy every name, then the total number doesn't match what's on display. Yet what he wrote is factually accurate. It's just that the reader lacks access to the original source, which contains the missing information. If you could compare the original source with the redacted document, it would fall right into place. 

Take another example. When we write about someone, we may give their full name at the outset. Their first and last name. Having, however, initially identified them, we don't continue to give their full name. Thereafter, we refer to them either by their first or last name. 

If, however, you were to copy part of what a biographer or historian wrote about someone, that might be confusing, because the part you copy may only use the first or last name. That can be even more confusing if there are two people with the same first or last name. To the reader, it may seem like you confused two different people. But that's simply an editorial discrepancy, not a factual discrepancy. 

For instance, in Bible times, people could be referred to by first or last name. Sometimes both. And I think the surname was generally more important in Bible times. Who was your father? What was your clan? 

It also wouldn't surprise me if, in Bible times, more people went by the same name. In the US, because we're so multiethnic, there's probably a greater variety of names than in a more linguistically homogenous culture. 

If a Bible writer selectively quotes from a written sources, it's easy to see how the source might mention two people who share the same name. The original source might initially distinguish them by giving their full names, but that's something it only does once. The first time they are introduced. After than, they are distinguished by context. 

If, however, a Bible writer is only quoting the relevant part of his source, then the excerpt may not include their full names. But that could be confusing to the reader.

Let's take a concrete example. There's a famous Muslim philosopher who's commonly referred to simply as Al-Ghazâlî. However, his full name is Abû Hâmid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazâlî. Quite a mouthful! 

A writer won't give the full name every time he mentions to him. At most, he will only give the full name when he introduces him to the reader. Thereafter, he will use the simplified designation. 

In fact, editorial discrepancies are commonplace in the computer age, where we often copy/paste from electronic texts. I suspect the Bible contains quite a few editorial discrepancies. These are not errors. They are simply an artifact of incorporating written source material into a historical account. 

Since, however, the reader doesn't have access to the original source, it may not be possible to harmonize an editorial discrepancy. We can't see what the author saw. We can't see what he left out. All we have is the end-product of his editorial process. So we're often in no position to reconstruct the original. Yet that doesn't mean he made a mistake. To the contrary, editorial discrepancies are to be expected. And that's entirely consistent with inerrancy.