There are two ways to contest or investigate the historical veracity or credibility of the biblical texts. So far the majority of posts seem to tackle the matter from a micro perspective--focusing on particular details or comments or words within indivdual narrative units and demonstrating the biblical comments in this respect to be unsupportable. The debate as to what is meant by Saul's having utterly destroyed the Amalekites is a good example (ie. did he "utterly" destroy them or not?). Such apporaches are fine so far as they go but tend to provide the determined and resourceful inerrantist with rather easy loopholes and escapes because it is relatively easy to quibble over small choices of words and terminology (for a group so insistent on taking the claims of the biblical texts literally or "in their plainest sense" as they so often like to say, they are the most determined not to do so when specific claims such as these are investigated; they can't interpret the words in the most permissive and loosest sense fast enough in such cases).
It is much more helpful to look at the claims of the Bible from a macro perspective because here the inerrantist has no defense except to retreat into the bastion of ignorance or deceit. It is here they are in the greatest trouble because they frequently and carelessly betray their almost near total ignorance of the facts (or worse, they misrepresent them or simply make stuff up). Had they chosen to limit their defense to ths spiritual ideas and themes of scripture they would have been fine because such things cannot be established or verified in any empiracle sense--they are basically phiosophical and theological positions and they are either meaningful and instructive to you or they are not. There is no right and wrong in such a debate, just opposing philosophical positions of varying degrees of popularity. Hence the Bible could and could not be inerrant at the same time; it all depends on who you ask.
But this is simply not true of specific scientific and historical claims which by their very nature are, to varying degree, falsifiable and verifible and subject to validation (the state of evidence varies considerably). It is when the inerrantists extend their claims of inerrancy and accuracy to the specific historical and scientific claims of the Bible that they quite literally shoot themselves in the foot. Because there is a great deal that we can and do know about certain issues (eg. the scope of the state of Israel at a given period in time or the settlement patterns of the communities of the region at a given time), and such information is (a) sufficiently well established and demonstrated that the issues involved are simply no longer open to debate (b) irreconcilable with the specific claims of the biblical literature. In such cases there is no debate--the Bible is wrong, case closed, end of story. Inerrantists who say otherwise simply do knot know what they are talking about (at least in most cases the issue is simply one of ignorance; in the cases of those individuals who have demonstrated some real effort at research and who still grossly misrepresent the facts, such as Josh McDowell, one has to seriously suspect that the party involved is simply dishonest and lacks any intellectual or academic integrity). For those of us who do have expertise and education in the relevant subjects (eg. archaeology and historical analysis plus the relevant criticisms-- literary, form, redaction, source, etc--it is immensely frustrating and disheartening to see individuals who obviously haven't got a clue what they are talking about and who are thoroughly ignorant of even the basic data mouthing off and making sweeping unsupportable conclusions about the alleged historicity of the biblical stories. It is like a nuclear physicist being lectured by a child who doesn't even know what an atom is, literally.
A few quick examples:
Anyone familair with the archaeological data of ancient Israel and its larger ANE context and with the literature and religious developments of the period (as revealed in the mountainous epigraphic and textual artifacts) will have problems with just about everything in the Tanaach. It is accepted by all qualified commentators in the field now that there is nothing even remotely historical in any of the pre-monarchic narratives. The archaeological data has solidly refuted the historical claims of the patriarchal narratives and of the exodus/conquest account. We now know (know, not assume) that the community that would later be called Israel did not escape from Egypt and take Cannan by force; rather the Israelites were indigenous Cannanites who took possession of the highlands slowly and through largely peaceful means; there was no exodus from Egypt and no conquest and these are the facts. This issue has been settled and is no loneger an issue of debate, except among those who don't know any better.
And it is becoming even more recognized now that even the narratives of the Davidic monarchy and the stories about Saul, David and Solomon are likewise mere tales with little or no basis in actual history. Aside from the fact that the last two decades of archaeological research have all but left the concept of a monarchy in the early iron period in utter shambles and all but moribund, a nyone trained in literary criticism and literary analysis will recognize at once that the stories here, regardless of what inspired them, are mere literature, not historical accounts in any shape or form. Therefore it is therefore somewhat silly to be arguing over the specific details and words of a story when the very story itself--the big picture--has been shown to be a fiction. It is like arguing about whether or not King Arthur actually carried a sword named excalibur; it is irrelevant if there never was a king Arthur or a round table of brave knights. Because most of the great figures in the Bible are no more or are even less historical than Arthur.
The issue of biblical errancy therefore is really a non issue. The Bible is entirely errant if one reads it from the perspective of history or science. It can and may well be inerrant on the spiritual level if the modern reader finds himself in agreement with its positions and claims in this regard (ie. about the nature of God and God's relationship to man). The later is not an issue open to debate because it it is philosophical and subjective. The former--the biblical's historical and scientific veracity--has long been settled and is simply not open to debate except among the grossly uninformed.
Bruce Wildish Toronto