In Jeremiah 8:8, the prophet is seen to be saying that the scriptures have been altered:
How can you say, "We are wise, we have the law of the LORD"? Why, that has been changed into falsehood by the lying pen of the scribes!
If that was true, then the scriptures have not been passed down to modern times in their original form. Jeremiah may well have been right. For example, the consensus of scholars is that the Book of Isaiah consisted of only 39 chapters at the time of Jeremiah, and Raymond E. Brown says in An Introduction to the New Testament, page 587, that prophets in the school of Isaiah continued writing 200 years after the prophet's death and had their compositions included in the Book of Isaiah.
That Jeremiah was right about the scriptures evolving, with additions and alterations over the centuries, does not mean they were corrupt in the sense of being false, just that they were not as originally written. Jeremiah does not substantiate his invective on this score.
It's no wonder that many people think some like this one couldn't be divinely inspired:
There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. (Ezekiel 23:20)
Ezekiel is slightly later than Jeremiah, so Jeremiah was not actually referring to this book, although the concern is the same. The Book of Ezekiel, in the form we have today, omits anthropomorphisms evident in parallel passages in Leviticus 26. Leviticus 26:12 applies to Yahweh the verb hithallakti, "I will walk," but the parallel passage in Ezekiel 37:26-27 omits the verb. Similarly, Leviticus 26:30 presents Yahweh's proclamation that "my soul will abhor you." Again the parallel passage in Ezekiel 6:5 omits the clause. Walther Eichrodt (Ezekiel: A Commentary, page 12) points to numerous glosses and additions in the book.
Sharon Moughtin-Mumby says (Sexual and Marital Metaphors in Hosea, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, pages 161-162) that many are adamant that Ezekiel chapters 16 and 23 should be exposed as pornography. She finds the undercurrent of warranted sexual violence and the depiction of the female as a necessary polluting force to be most chilling, and suggests Ezekiel 16’s assumption that sexual violence can be a means towards healing a broken relationship to be particularly disturbing. That couldn't be divinely inspired.
