To play devil's advocate, it is possible that there is a book available to latter-BC early AD Jews that was not included in the LXX which contained that verse.

We know that there are books in the LXX that are not in Christian bibles, either Catholic or Protestant (there being books in the Catholic OT that are not in the Protestant); we know there are many NT books that whose options were not picked up by the early church canonizers. Many of these apocryphal books were relatively recently (re)discovered.

To keep things in perspective, I don't think this is very likely. I believe John, in all his forms, is more a paean to first century Turkish poppies than to mundane breads and wines, and, given to bouts of drug creativity, produced something like a first century version of "The Bible Codes." <G>

But, it is possible that he had access to a book which we no longer have. Just manna for thought.

Do Christians really have rivers gushing out of their bellies? Aha, obviously a lot of people aren't "true" Christians.

Maybe we should relocate Jim Mitchell to the Sahara Desert.

Here's one way the verse might be considered inerrant. Imagine this scene:

Jesus:He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

John:Er, what scripture was that, O Lord?

Jesus:Just you wait.

John:Oh, I get it! A prophecy! Where's my scroll? I wanna write this down.

Thus, anytime you see Jesus quoting a non-existent OT scripture, he's actually referring to a NT scripture, being created in real-time.

And anytime you see a continuity error on "Xena," a wizard did it.

Opus1

Grumpy wrote:
Ah! A fellow Simpsons fanatic. Here's my favorite Simpson's Bible quote, courtesy of Ned Flanders:

I've done everything the Bible tells me to do, even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff!

Another devil's [theist's] advocate.

As a general rule, it is reasonable to assume whoever wrote a New Testament passage thought it made sense at the time. For example, the much bally-hood three-days problem is overrated. Presumably the Gospel writers could count to three. It may be silly to count the way they did, but that they counted that way is nigh on undeniable.

So too here. Obviously there is no extant scripture to which this text can be matched. Perhaps the scripture has been lost. More likely, it's a strained interpretation of some passage referring only to rivers or living water.* That it was made up of whole cloth to provide fodder for future skeptics, though, is the least likely hypothesis.

* Out of curiosity, after posting this, decided to run "living waters" through a concordance. Came up with several references, of which this one seemed (at first glance anyway) most plausible. Jeremiah, 17:13, "O LORD, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters."

[This message has been edited by JubalH (edited May 08, 2001).]

Further to the "the scripture has been lost" hypothesis, happened to be browsing my Brewer's and came across this little factoid under the heading Bible, Statistics of (attributed to Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Bible, by Thos. Harwell Horne, D.D., first published in 1818): "About thirty books are mentioned in the Bible, but not included in the canon."

[This message has been edited by JubalH (edited May 08, 2001).]