"What sets the sixty-six books apart from and over all other human texts and makes them suitable to “rule” (“canon”=rule) is their being uniquely “of God.” Evangelicals concur with the Bible’s own claim to be “breathed out” (theopneustos) from God (2. Tim 3:16). Typically translated as “inspiration,” this notion speaks directly to the nature of the Bible and its divine origin. Evangelicals concur with the Great Tradition in viewing the Bible to be the product of God’s own authorship through the words of human witnesses who nevertheless used their own wits to compose under the Spirit’s supernatural supervision. Evangelicals put great emphasis on the Bible’s self-attestation (e.g., Ps. 119; Rom. 3:2; 2 Pet. 1:20-21) and especially on Jesus’ attitude toward the Old Testament Scriptures (e.g., Mt. 5:17-19; M. 7:6-8; 12:36; Jn. 10:35). If Jesus recognized the Scriptures as God’s own word, surely his followers should do no less. That God spoke “by the prophets” (Heb. 1:1) meant by their writings as well, and hence, by extension, the New Testament documents, too. Indeed, most evangelicals came to associate inspiration with the words rather than the authors of Scripture (or their ideas). Inspiration is thus “verbal” and “plenary” because each and every words pulls its weight in communicating God’s word. The inspiration of Scripture is the means whereby God preserves in writing his revelation in the history of Israel and Jesus Christ. The primary emphasis is on god’s providential guiding of the process of the texts’ composition. BB. Warfield defined inspiration as “that extraordinary, supernatural influence…exerted by the Holy Ghost on the writers of our Sacred Books, by which their words were rendered also the words of God.” Though it is common for outsiders to associate verbal plenary inspiration with the so-called “dictation” theory, such a view fails to do justice to what evangelical theologians actually have said and believe. What matters to evangelicals in the inspired result, not a detailed knowledge or uniform understanding of the process."