Well, did God allow misinterpreted visions, etc. to get into His Holy Word or not? I think not. I take the eyewitness accounts of the Gospels as gospel, but remember that they were remembered from at least 30 years prior. Do you remember word for word conversations from 30 years ago? I don't remember them from yesterday! :) Therefore, I think there was plenty of help from God to get it exactly right. That's the inspired part. Likewise, the rest of scripture was also made exact and correct in the same way.
Again, the Jews did not receive full revelation until Christ appeared. The OT was a gradual revelation. It doesn't mean it wasn't true; it just wasn't full.
All of that is fine, so why then would you declare OT accounts as patently false on their faces because they appear to contradict the NT? How can you say that Joshua destroying everything in Jericho never happened by God's command, yet it was still "true"? The Jews wouldn't have had a chance to see it as you do now. That would make most of the OT a great tease to the Jews of the time. They didn't have the Gospel lens that you insist upon for truth or falsehood. Why would God SO mislead His chosen people?
Couple of things here: first the word of God (Bible) is not The Word of God (Logos), the Son of God, the pre-Incarnate eternal God and Savior of the world. Surely you don't believe the Bible is Jesus, the Incarnate Logos (even though it contains His words in the Old as well as the New Testaments) because that would be the ultimate in bibliolatry.
Second, God did not bring any distortions; the people who wrote, copied and recopied did. Just the fact that our Bibles contain commas is a corruption because, depending on where commas are located, verses can take on different meanings.
This is even more pronounced in the Old Testament with the rabbinical addition of vowels (last time I checked the good rabbis were not inspired). The Old Testament had neither punctuation marks, nor vowels. To illustrate, a "word" shp can be shape, ship, or shop. In Hebrew the verity is even greater.
We can be certain that the rabbis, in good faith I must add, wanted to make sure that no words in the Tanakh could be "misconstrued" as foreshadowing of Jesus Christ. So, I would say that while God did not, of course, put any corruption into his revealed truth, we did.
I take the eyewitness accounts of the Gospels as gospel, but remember that they were remembered from at least 30 years prior. Do you remember word for word conversations from 30 years ago?
I anticipated this question, and my answer is yes—if I repeated them every day, and I have no doubt that the Apostles repeated them every day. Remember, they preached the Gospels all along.
That's the inspired part
No that's what the Latins say: repetitio est mater studiorum (repetition is the mother of learning—and, we could say, of remembering!)
All of that is fine, so why then would you declare OT accounts as patently false on their faces because they appear to contradict the NT?
I don't think I am reaching you, FK. I said the Gospels tell us that the Jewish interpretations of the OT were sometimes false. The reason for that is that they didn't have full revelation yet. It's easy for us to go back and interpret everything according to the Gospels and say "aha, this makes sense," or "of course, this is prefiguring Christ..." etc. Thanks to the Gospels we now speak of a Triune God and the Jews are still in the dark. If that is not an indication that they did not fully receive God's revealed truth, nothing is!
We could almost liken our reading of the OT with someone receiving cheat codes for a video game. The "cheat codes" are in the Gospels.
Why would God SO mislead His chosen people?
God didn't mislead anybody! How long did it take to get Ten Commandments? How long did it take to get the whole Old Testament? The revelation was gradual. The Jews were not always receptive; rather they were disobedient and often reverting back to worshiping idols. There are numerous reasons why it took so long. It was not God's doing. At some point you have to give man some credit and say God allowed it!