A lot of non-Christians don’t have a very good handle on what inerrancy means, and well, so do a lot of Christians for that matter. Basically, inerrancy means that the Bible is truthful, it doesn’t contain errors, and you shouldn’t judge it by a standard that doesn’t match the author’s purpose. So, when we come to the matter of specific numbers of things in the Bible, a careful reader should proceed with caution. Otherwise, you might read Revelation 7 and turn into a Jehovah’s Witness.

Obviously though that’s not the case for every number. Some numbers are meant to be understood as exactly that number. Certainly Jesus did actually have 12 disciples whom he named apostles. But this understanding of the number 12 in this wouldn’t preclude there from being additional symbolic meaning. In the gospel of John, we come across a number that seems interestingly specific.

The disciples caught 153 fish.

Not 152. Not 154. Not at least 153. Not about 150. Not “many fish.”

153.

What kind of number is this? I am not sure there are other good ways of interpreting it that do not at least take it at face value as an exact count of the fish caught. Even interpreters who ascribe additional symbolic meaning to the number still concede that it refers to an exact count of the fish.

If it could somehow be shown that there were 152 fish rather than 153, reinterpreting the number’s significance as primarily symbolic would feel very ad hoc. Perhaps there is additional symbolic meaning—but would that mean we should not understand 153 to mean 153?

The number seems intentionally precise. Perhaps it also means more, but it is unlikely to mean less. So if that count is wrong, even by one fish, how could a person still hold to biblical inerrancy?

Therefore, it would not be a stretch to say that biblical inerrancy literally hangs on one fish.