From The Times:
The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect “total accuracy” from the Bible.
“We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision,” they say in The Gift of Scripture.
Duh.
So the Bible is the inspired word of God, but not, I guess, inspired to, um, accuracy. Heh. Consder this, though: the Pope is infallible (when he speaks under certain circumstances), but the Bible -- which predates him by, oh, a few years, at least -- is not. It'll be fun to see how this plays out.