How are emendations to the Masoretic Text viewed within the doctrine of inerrancy?
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Inerrantists do not view the Masoretic text as inerrant in itself, but they consider it highly reliable. John Wenham, in Christ and the Bible (170ff.), outlines a variety of evidence for its faithful transmission of the original, all the while implying its imperfection:
It was well known that the copying of the Scriptures had been carried out with almost unimaginable care and reverence, with the result that the differences between existing Hebrew manuscripts were small. [...] Vowel pointing was not in use during the early centuries of our era, and these sources do not always corroborate the vowels that were later adopted and standardized by the Massoretes, but all the sources show a remarkable constancy in the transmission of the consonantal text.
But this dependence on indirect evidence to establish the fidelity of the transmission of the text gave place to direct proof with the amazing discoveries at Qumran [...] showing only very small differences from the Massoretic text. Indeed, they appeared if anything to be slightly inferior in text to the Massoretic manuscripts that were written a thousand years later.
So how then do inerrantists view emendations to this Masoretic text? Extremely cautiously, but not because of Masoretic inerrancy. John MacArthur writes in The Inerrant Word, quoting Douglas Petrovich:
Is there really a high likelihood that a modern scholar (without any textual evidence for his emendation) might correctly impeach all extant ancient witnesses to the biblical text? If "a reading found in only one single translation, without any corroborating witnesses or original-language manuscripts, has an extremely small chance of possessing the correct reading found in the autographa," what are the odds of a reading without support in any ancient translation?
Three observations concerning conjectural emendation help to identify their nature: (1) a conjectural emendation exhibits a high degree of subjectivity; (2) with increased knowledge and evidence, most such emendations later prove to be unnecessary; and (3) scholars should consider conjectural emendation only as a last resort. In other words, as long as there is any moderately reasonable explanation for the text as it stands, that option ought always to be preferred.
MacArthur describes the mindset he sees as necessary to the inerrantist:
Adhering consistently to biblical inerrancy requires an admission of one's own ignorance and inability to resolve every problem. [...] Our first assumption should be that we are in error rather than applying the hermeneutic of doubt to the text.
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In matters of chronology/numbers, the bible has many demonstrable copy errors. These are found more in the kings books than any other, and most of them of the single digit variety. Haley has done a good job comparing the parallel passages showing how we can arrive at the correct figure. As far as emendations are concerned, if they are emendations, they too appear in questionable chronological/historical statements, and as has been said, should only be proposed as a last resort.
Haley, John W., "Alleged Discrpencies of the Bible" 1992 whitaker house.
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