As originally given

There's a lot of fuss in McGowan's book (The Divine Spiration of Scripture) about the inspiration of the Bible about "hypothetical" lost autographa, the original documents of Scripture. He seems to think of the claim to inerrancy applying only to them and this being a rather bothersome blind alley of pointless speculation.

I was just wondering if a claim that the Scriptures are inerrant "as originally given" would strictly necessarily require inerrant autographa? For example, in the case of a spoken prophetic oracle, would an error in recording the message in writing be excluded by the claim that the Scriptures as originally given are inerrent? If Paul dictated his letters, is it Paul's dictation or the amanuesnsis' scribing that is without error?

I guess so, actually, as terms like Scripture and Bible require a written document. Worth being accurate about that. You could still say the Scriptures were not originally given in written form but I reckon that's stretching it a bit.

If we're taking votes...

According to Mark Noll:

Most Christians in most churches since the founding of Christianity have believed in the inerrancy of the Bible. Or at least they have believed that the Scriptures are inspired by God, and so are the words of eternal life. The term inerrancy was not common until the nineteeth century. But the conviction that God communicates in Scripture a revelation of himself and of his deeds, and that this revelation is entirely truthful, has always been the common belief of most Catholics, most Protestants, most Orthodox, and even most of the sects of the fringe of Christianity.

Mark Noll, ‘A Brief History of Inerrancy, Mostly in America’, in The Proceedings of the Conference on Biblical Inerrancy 1987 (Nashville: Broadman, 1987), pp.9-10 quoted in McGowan, Divine Spiration, p85.