The Word(s) of God

In Dr. McGrath's Sunday school class today, there was an interesting discussion of some of the ways that Christians at times refer to the Bible, such as "the Word of God" and "the words of God". A good example of the difference between those two expressions can be seen in the Book of Job. In the book, there are many words attributed to Job's friends. Yet at the end of the book, God is depicted as saying he wasn't pleased with what Job's friends said about him. So, when one considers the book as a whole, are the words of Job's friends the "words of God"? Or is the "Word of God" one encounters in and through the Book of Job something that requires that one read the whole story?

We also talked about textual criticism (i.e. the fact that we do not have the original manuscripts of the Biblical writings, and the need for scholars to make their best judgment about the most likely original form, at the very least the earliest form), and touched on many other topics.