I've seen it stated more than once on this site . . .
That the fundamentalist view of the bible being the inerrant and infallible word of God, is a modern interpretation not shared by the early Christians. The view has been promulgated most notably by E R Sandeen who, among other things, held this view . . .
He proposed that the concept of innerrancy based on a literal interpretation was late in coming during the christian era, having it's beginning among the Princeton theologians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He ruled out their doctrines related to inspiration because they were based on rational thinking which he taught was absent from early christian thought.
It sounds pretty far-fetched to me . . . and like an attempt to legitimise a more cafetaria approach to Biblical teachings, by establishing a more symbolic, abstract approach . . . and then cleverly linking it to early Christian "thought" . A cherry pickers paradise?
Well . . . the following article sheds some interesting light on the claim . . .