New Testament Reliability

I appreciate your time, I appreciate you being here. This debate is overdue. My closest friends and family in the room know that, because I have things that I need to work out, and I really appreciate Dr. White taking the opportunity to do this, because this debate was originally scheduled for, or offered to, rather, my home church in Central California, Oakhurst Evangelical Free Church.

And we agreed, which is expected, that if I get hammered tonight, then I don't have to do another debate. So this is, really, my first ever debate. And there'll be people who are watching this, and if the elders of the church are satisfied with Dr. White's answers to my questions, we'll have a short meeting, and they'll say, do you think we can just move on, and that's probably what'll happen.

But the point is that these are very important questions. Very briefly, for those of you who know me, and I love a lot of people in this room, and I see family and friends, I see Mormons here, former Mormons, who emailed Kathy and I, and asked, what is it you're doing, Bakers?

You jump out of Mormonism, write books about Mormonism, help save families, bring them to the Lord Jesus Christ, and then dump that. And those are the words. You need to ask those kind of questions. People need to have important questions, and that's what this is going to be tonight.

Not me airing my dirty laundry, but I'm going to tell you the history in the same questions that brought me out of Mormonism, also brought me out of Christianity. And if that offends some people, let's talk about it tonight.

Because there are some absolute comparisons in our life that are absolute parallels. That's why it's great that it's being done here in Utah. And it's amazing, praise God, that it's being done while conference is going on.

So I'm assuming you guys are probably taping conference at home? Probably not. The point is, this is the best place to do it, because a lot of people don't know our history and why. So thanks to Jason and the staff of Christ Presbyterian Church.

It is my prayer tonight that what is ever said and whatever I learn, I learn here, will profoundly move my healing process forward with my family and my friends, both Christian and Mormon. Some of you know that I have an entirely split family because of the same subject.

I would like to begin my comments this evening by agreeing with Dr. White. Earlier on, on one of his podcasts, he says, there is absolutely nothing that shows that Lee Baker knows anything about textual criticism.

That is absolutely 100 true. I am not here to question his skills. I can't compete with his skills. I can't compete with his knowledge. I can't compete with his expertise. In fact, it's those skills that he has that has caused me to put this together.

It's because he is an expert. This is the perfect place to ask these questions and not the elders, maybe, back home. A very true statement. I do not compete with his experience. I know that he's well-read.

He knows everything that I wish I knew. But I'm not here to question textual criticism. What I plan to bring before you, what has torn my life apart, is not textual criticism. I believe it is intentional errors, intentional misleadings, complete inventions of scripture that has been passed off into the New Testament that I believed once.

Huge sections. When I first got my red letter Bible and I looked up these scriptures, I was amazed, appalled. There's a lot of other words I'd like to slam in there, but I won't do it tonight. When I saw red letters, the words of Jesus Christ, that this man and his skill set and those who are textual smart guys, I'm in the back of the bus, they're at the front of the bus, they say, yeah, that section was added.

We know it's not original. We know it was added to the scriptures. It takes something to swallow a scripture being added. It takes a little bit more to swallow the actual words of Jesus. And why does that bother me?

Kathy and I just came back from Africa. We took over 500 Bibles to Africa. They didn't have footnotes. They didn't have the skill to look and understand. Now, Dr. White is right. Those who have the time and the ability to read and learn these things, you'll know what's real in the Bible and what's not.

But the mere fact that I can make that statement is what drove me to come here. So it is my point that no Christian denomination can truly honor the accurate or accurately apply the word of God if the standard of transmission, translation and publication is so low.

Let me give you a couple of examples of what I mean. So I keep moving on this here. And I told Jason, all my notes will be at the church here if you want. So you don't have to write things down. Whenever I reference a scripture or show you something, everybody gets a copy if you want of all my little notes.

This is my college certificate, a bachelor of science from the University of State of New York. Behind it are my transcripts. Common? Now, if I went for my master's, if I started to work for my master's and I went back to those transcripts and I started altering those classes that I took as I worked towards a master's, what would that be called?

Fraud. You've got to think about it twice because you know where I'm going with this question, don't you? If I alter my transcripts for my college, that's called fraud. The board of regents wouldn't look at my degree and say, oh, Mr. Baker, I see where you changed your transcripts and we know that this is not original.

And because we know it's not original, we'll still accept it. That would never happen, but you do it every day with the New Testament. I take a medicine for my heart that makes me dry mouth, but think about that.

That's one example in your life where you have a rule that you live by and then you have a standard that you read the scriptures by. And I wonder why, how often that changes. Here's an actual ticket, Central California for me.

Speeding, 65 miles an hour. I paid for this ticket. Now before I went to court to get it diminished, what if I changed that 65 to a 45? I'd be in jail. But according to the standards of the day, as long as we know what has been changed, then we accept it.

Why isn't it fixed? Tonight I'm going to ask, why don't the people at the front of the bus, the smart people like Dr. White who know these things and those who put the footnotes in the Bibles, they know it's not there.

Change it then. And they say, well, we can't change the Bible. Guess what brothers and sisters, who has the authority to change the Bible to what you know it should be in comparison to the men and women who made the air?

Do you understand what I'm saying? So if the end of the book of Mark was changed, and it describes the resurrection of Jesus Christ in detail that wasn't there before, but it stays every year, every year, every year, the real authority is with the clowns that changed it, not with the people that can describe it.

Does that make sense? Here's another real document. When I moved to California, I had to sell a weapon that was illegal in California. It was pretty much a small shotgun that you put in your pocket. It's a public defender.

It's made by Taurus. What if when I sell this weapon, I change two digits on the serial number? You know immediately that's wrong. That's a federal offense. But when it comes to the New Testament, ain't that big of a deal.

Something a little bit more close to home. This is my actual paperwork for the different classification of the access I had while working at NSA, the National Security Agency, 36 years. So on the back of this it lists all the different programs that I was briefed into.

If I change any of those and then go to work for another agency and they find out that I changed my access to clearances, that would be serious. I've had this conversation with the elders of church and they said, that's serious.

And I make that comparison to the New Testament and say, oh, that's different. You bet it's different. You base your life on the words of Jesus Christ and you accept things that have been changed. Here's something that I will offer Dr. White tonight.

This is a valid contract signed by Lee and Kathy Baker and it is officially notarized by my attorney at the back. When he signs this, I will be responsible for his travel expenses every month up to $1 ,000 for a year, starting the beginning of next year.

$1 ,000 a month. But what it says in there is that when I reprint it on the 1st of January, there may be textual changes. There may be marginal notes. So we'll have to wait for that version next. Understand the point?

I believe both in my Mormon life and in the Christian life. Kathy and I were in the back of the bus. We looked to the people in the front of the bus, the smart people like Dr. White. I give him credit for that.

In fact, I'm amazed at what he knows. He's got the details, but maybe not the big picture. I think his skill set, both in Mormonism and in Christianity, is overrated and overeducated. What do I mean by that?

He can sit and describe the details of the changes to the Bible, but what is the impact? If you take a class, if you come to a conference like this, if you take a debate like this, and he tells you exactly what was changed, when it was changed, by who, what date, by what monk, and it's printed next year, and it's printed next year, and printed next year, as a mistake, who wins?

The monk who screwed up the scriptures wins. You can describe it all you want. This talent has only been around for about 150 years. That's it. That monk, when he changed, will be there for hundreds of years.

So I applaud the effort, but what is the impact? I'm not ignorant in some things. I am ignorant in textual variations, changes to the Bible, but I am very suspicious of the stretch factor in Christianity, because I saw it in Mormonism.

The stretch factor, what I'm supposed to stretch out of the scriptures or out of what someone tells me, what I read. So we are not Jewish. We have been studying with the Hasidic Jews with the Orthodox Jews, with the Reformed, and with the Orthodox Jews, and the conservative Jews.

Learning, learning, learning. Read the Bible now, the Tanakh and the Torah, four times, cover to cover. Eighty-eight times, God says clearly, I am one. I am one. And in your mind already, you put that little click in, but he didn't really mean that.

Are you kidding me? That is Mormonism. John 3 .16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever would believe on him should not perish but have eternal life. Clear. Why is there no such statement like that by the same God in the Old Testament?

Why are there shadows of things to come? Why are there this is like that? Think of that. Eighty-eight times, God says, I am one. Could he have not said just once, and I will send my son? Why is there such a disconnect, at least in my mind, in my world, between the Old Testament and the New Testament?

I'd like to learn. I'd like to study. And I promised my wife this, and I have family here to help me stay on track. I told my wife that I seriously would listen twice as hard as I debate. I would listen twice as hard as I would debate, because I do want to honor God.

I do want to know the truth. Tell me the truth. Teach it to me. I went through this drill with the Mormons, picked out Mormon scriptures and said, how come this doesn't really apply to what you believe, what you say?

The point is, I believe that the core message of the New Testament has been manipulated. Now, I have used the word deceptively too many times. Dr. White has pointed out deceptively. How do I know the motives, what they were?

How could I? I don't know the motives. Okay, then you substitute, everyone here, substitute the motive for changing the scriptures. Could it be good? You think someone who came along two, three hundred years after the authors of the New Testament added or subtracted or changed something, and their motive was good?

Have that as one of your questions. The statement of faith in the church that I just left, one of the statements says, we teach that the word of God is objective, propositional revelation, verbally inspired, every word absolutely inerrant in the original document.

Awesome. As Dr. White will tell you. Who has the original document? Who has ever seen the original document? How ludicrous that is to have that as a part of a church statement, to say that it was accurate in the original when no one has seen it, no one has it, yet you raise your hand and you say, we believe the scriptures to be accurate in the original.

Why do you add that phrase in the original, when it does not exist? Now, you could guess what it used to be. You could put it together, but you don't know exactly what it is. That's part of that stretch factor.

I would like to briefly highlight two of the most important six scriptures that I was asked to email to Dr. White three weeks ago. Daniel 9 and Isaiah 53. I have several friends who are intensely watching this video, leaning forward because they hang their life on these two, Daniel 9 and Isaiah 53.

We'll go through details if possible. Daniel 9, some people know. Okay. We'll get back to this. Daniel 9 is a revelation of when Jesus Christ was to be crucified. Right? Anybody heard that before? How come it was never used by any of the early church fathers?

How come it wasn't in the New Testament? Imagine that. This is the point tonight. I'll give you several examples where the exact scripture that you now say is a definite prophecy of Jesus Christ. You figured out a hundred years ago, 50 years ago, but the New Testament didn't know it.

Well, good evening. It is great to be with you. And it is great to know that basically what my task this evening is, is to introduce you to basic textual criticism 101. So you can understand that when it comes to the text of the New Testament, what we have is the most broadly attested document of antiquity.

That means we have the most number of manuscripts in the original language, approximately 5 ,800 fragments of the New Testament in Koine Greek. We have the most number in translation, whether that's the old Latin, Syriac, Boheric, Sahitic, Coptic, whatever else it might be.

And we also have the purest line of transmission with the earliest attestation. In fact, if you've seen my debate with Dr. Bart Ehrman, probably the best known critic of the New Testament in the English speaking world today, during the cross-examination, in response to one of my questions, he said, we have far earlier attestation for the New Testament than for any other work of antiquity.

And of course, he was exactly right in that statement. And so if we are going to be skeptics about the text of the New Testament, we need to be skeptics about everything in antiquity. We can't know what was written in any context if we cannot know what we have in the New Testament.

Now, what we need to understand is if I took a few paragraphs of text and I began with the front row and I had each person copy what they have and give their copy to the next row and to the next row, and we may even be cheering each other on, let's be super accurate.

Let's be super accurate. By the time it got back to the back row, you would have differences in the handwritten copies of what was distributed, even in a room of this size. That is because all handwritten documents of antiquity demonstrate textual variation, every single one, the Quran, anything else.

The only way to avoid that is to chisel what you want to communicate in a rock. The problem is rocks are not overly portable and hence have a problem in communicating information over a large stretch of space or time.

So we have textual variance. We've known that from the beginning. This is not something that is hidden from anyone who reads a basic introduction to the New Testament. And, in fact, in almost all modern English translations, and the King James had many more of these notes when it was originally printed, you will find notations, either in the column or the bottom of the page, that will note when there are important variations.

Now, it has been estimated that there are about 1 ,500 to 2 ,000 meaningful, viable variants in the New Testament. That means they do impact the meaning of the text, and they might be original. About 1 ,500 to 2 ,000.

Given that we have three million pages of handwritten text, 1 ,500 to 2 ,000 ain't half bad. In fact, it's really, really good. Now, the vast majority of variants, for example, at Romans 5 .1, there is a variant in the text between the indicative and the subjunctive form of the term ecumen.

All right? There is one letter difference. They were pronounced very, very similar to one another. We do not have to assume any kind of nefarious purposes on the part of any copyist to explain almost any textual variant in the New Testament at all.

People like to come up with things like that if you want to write books, if you want to come up with conspiracy theories, you can do that type of thing. But the reality is that I am not aware of any variants in the New Testament that could not have simply arisen from fully understood mechanisms that do not require us to believe that early church writers were trying to change things.

Dr. Ehrman has been big in trying to promote the idea of theological variants. But classical textual critical scholars have recognized, and even Dr. Ehrman recognizes, that the vast majority of scribes attempted to do their work as accurately as possible, and they did a tremendous job.

I hold in my hand the Nestialon 28th edition of the Greek New Testament. This is available for purchase. Well, not this particular one, but this is available for purchase for anyone. This is available online.

It's available on your phone. It's available in Bible programs. We hide absolutely nothing. The bottom notes are all textual notes with massive amounts of information provided to the manuscripts, where they're held, when we think they were written.

Most of them do not have dates on them, so we put it into a century or something along those lines. We do not hide the information in regards to any of the textual variants that exist in the New Testament.

What we do do is seek to consistently apply a standard so that we can arrive at the earliest possible text given the large amount of information we have. Now, please recognize something. When it comes to the New Testament, we have fragments, for example, of the Gospel of John that could be as early, written as early as 125 AD.

Now, if John was written in the late 90s or even before 70, this is a less than 100-year difference between when the original was written and the first manuscript evidence we have. For any other work of antiquity, whether it's Pliny or Suetonius or Tacitus or whoever else it might be, the average timeframe between when a book was written and when we have the first manuscript evidence is between five and 900 years, between half and a full millennium between when it was written and when we have the first manuscripts for the That is why Dr. Ehrman said, obviously, we have far earlier attestation for the New Testament than for any other work.

Now, let me, in light of our debate subject this evening, contrast this with the changes that were made in the text of the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is not a work of antiquity in English. Even if you're a Mormon, you have to admit it didn't exist in English in antiquity.

Obviously, I don't believe it existed in antiquity, period. I believe it is a modern production. There's much evidence of this. But the point is, the changes, even recently, when white and delightsome became pure and delightsome, that's not a textual variant.

That is a text that is controlled by a particular central organization. So the Book of Mormon has what is called a controlled transmission. There is one central organization that controls its text. The Quran is also a book that was initially controlled in its transmission ever since what's called the Uthmanic recension, about 25 years after the time of Muhammad.

And so, in a controlled transmission, that's very different than what we have in the New Testament. You have to trust whoever controls it. Whoever controls it controls the text. The New Testament was never controlled.

The New Testament was immediately distributed widely across the known world. It is something called a free transmission of the text, especially because the Christian church was under persecution. So there could never have been a control of what was in it, what it contained, or anything along the lines.

Besides that, it was written by multiple authors at multiple times to multiple audiences. So it took different paths of transmission over time, and over later began to be collected into single collections, such as P46, which is a collection of Paul's writings, the earliest manuscripts we have of Paul.

P75, P66, early gospel manuscripts. I'm doing my third doctorate on P45 and CBGM. That's Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts, a very unusual manuscript. But that began happening later on as they began to become collected together.

Initially, they were individual books. And so there is no control. So for example, when you compare the 1833 Book of Commandments to the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants and find over 400 words added or deleted from a single section, that is controlled transmission.

That is not free transmission we have in the New Testament. There is no parallel between the two whatsoever. And so we do have two blocks of text, 12 verses. The two largest textual variants in the New Testament are the longer ending of Mark, which was mentioned earlier, and was called the Percopaea Adultery, the story of the woman taken in adultery, John 7 .53 through 8 .11.

12 verses each. Now, any modern translation is going to have brackets or notes in regards to both of these texts. There is much earlier evidence for the longer ending of Mark than there is for the story of the woman taken in adultery.

That first appears in Codex Vesicantiburgiensis, which is in the 5th century, and I call it the living Bible of the early church. It is more of a paraphrase than anything else. It is not reliable in almost anything.

We are well aware of these texts, and the question becomes, well, why don't you tell people? I do all the time. Anybody who reads an introductory text of the New Testament knows this. When I preach, if I preach through John, I let people know.

I talk about textual variations. So it's not like no one ever does that. I realize that's not popular, but it's not popular because you're trying to hide something. It's not popular because a lot of ministers who go through seminary aren't all that clear themselves on all the details.

And so, as my church history professor said long ago, what is a mist in the pulpit is a fog in the pew. And so if the preacher isn't all that clear on it, he's not necessarily going to be bringing it up in his sermons.

And so we must recognize that, for example, if you look at your Bible right now, if you can compare the King James with the ESV, you will see that the ESV in Gospel of John goes from John 5, verse 3 to John 5, verse 5.

John 5, verse 4 isn't there. Now, remember, when we talk about the Bible, we're talking about as it was originally written, not as it was translated 1 ,600 years later. And so when we talk about adding things to the Bible or taking away things from the Bible, that's actually a misnomer.

It is really not understanding that what we want to know is what the apostles originally wrote. That must be our greatest desire. So John 5, verse 4 talks, it's the healing of the man by the pool, and it's the explanation of the angel coming down and stirring the waters.

Now, who is responsible for the insertion of that verse in later manuscripts? My suggestion to you is this is called a marginal gloss. It is an explanation of why a bunch of people are laying around a pool in Jerusalem in the first place.

And it would be written in the margin of a manuscript. And so when that manuscript is then copied by someone else, if you couldn't go back and ask the guy who originally copied it, hey, why is this in the margin?

The tendency of scribes was to be conservative, which is a good thing. They tend to be conservative. They didn't want to lose anything. And so since it was written in the margin, the copyist inserted it directly into his text at a later point in time.

He's not trying to be evil or deceptive or anything else. He's trying to conserve what he has. Now why is this important? I submit to you that in the text and the notes of this volume, I have everything that the inspired apostles ever wrote.

The original readings still exist. They have not been lost. What we have to do is work through the fact that, for example, it's very clear that later manuscripts, there is an expansion of the names. I call it the expansion of piety.

So an earlier manuscript will have the Lord, and a later manuscript will have the Lord Jesus. Or if the earlier manuscript has the Lord Jesus, a later manuscript would have the Lord Jesus Christ. It's an expansion of the divine names out of respect and things like that, not deception or anything along those lines.

If there's going to be an expansion, it's that kind of expansion. But the point is, all the original readings are there, and what we are blessed to have is the ability, in light of all of the manuscript evidence that we have, to be able to determine what those original readings are.

And when we have particularly difficult variants, you let the reader know. You're straight up front and you let the reader know. Now, if you want to say, well, I don't like having any variants at all.

Well, that's what Bart Ehrman says. Bart Ehrman says, if God inspired the scripture, he would have never allowed textual variants. What do you mean? So if a poor scribe is copying a manuscript he wants to have for his family, and it's tired, and his eyesight isn't all that good, and he's working by candlelight, and he hasn't had a lot to eat that year in the 900s because of famines, and he's about to make a mistake, what's God going to do?

Strike him dead or something before he makes the mistake? Of course not. If we only had one manuscript, this would be an issue. But we don't just have one manuscript of any text of scripture. We have many manuscripts to compare with one another.

And so when a scribe makes a mistake, he gets sleepy, in 1 John 3, 1, there is a beautiful phrase, and such we are. We are the children of God. It was an error that was made due to something called homoetelioton.

The ending of one word, clathoman, is the same as the ending of esmen. The guy's eye went from clathoman to esmen, and he skipped over chiesmen, and so he accidentally deleted the statement, we are the children of God.

Now if we only had one manuscript of 1 John, that's a problem. We have hundreds of them, and we can recognize the standard error that was made by a scribe. This is a great blessing. It is not any reason to abandon the message that comes from the early church that there was an empty tomb outside of Jerusalem, and Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

If you're going to deny that, you're going to need a whole lot more than the evidence from the New Testament, which is the best preserved work of antiquity, bar none. Thank you very.

Much. I could not have said it better myself. Exactly my point of being here, the professor, the doctor, made my point. He knows well the changes. He knows exactly what is or isn't in. I don't think everybody here knew that before you came.

I didn't know that. I wasn't a stupid Christian. I thought that the gospel of Jesus Christ was somehow God-breathed. Ever hear that phrase? Is there a comma? But this and this and this was added. Dr. White ended on the ending of the book of Mark.

Imagine this. Imagine this. The book of Mark ends without a description of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, right? Mary comes to the tomb. It's empty. The stone has been rolled away. She runs away scared.

Tells no one. Live with it, Christians. That's how it was originally written. So when Dr. White says we know what was originally written, then shame on all the pastors who don't teach it that way. Shame on the experts who don't explain that the words of Jesus Christ were added to that.

Mary, don't touch me. How about the woman caught in adultery? In every single movie known to mankind of Christianity, I love that scene. Fake. Can I use that word? Fake. It's not in the original text.

So he's absolutely right. The skill is there to know the difference between what was written and what is not. Do you understand the importance of that? You're sitting here in the year 2019 being explained what we know because of the number of transcripts we have, because of the number of manuscripts we have.

It's clear now. It's clear now. Wasn't clear to my grandfather. Wasn't clear to his father. Wasn't clear to his grandfather. How many hundreds of thousands of Christians went on the word of God as it was printed then?

Just a hundred years ago, much less 1900 years ago. So when you giggle when he makes a joke about how we pass a series of notes back and back and back, it may be funny. It may be cute. It may have a little ring to it.

But think of all the others who have come before you who did not have that skill. That's why I stand here, is because I say shame on the pastors, shame on the Bible study teachers who know this, but don't teach it.

And a lot of people do teach it. But what I'm asking is why does the authority of the person who screwed it up outweigh his authority? I would buy a Bible if he edited it and William Lane Craig, who I met and talked about Mormonism too, if he edited it, if N .T. Wright edited it, if C .S. Lewis gave it a shot, why is it that we are just satisfied with the ability to describe the problem, not fix the problem?

Where else in your life do you accept that? Where else in your life, you obviously didn't like that answer. Where else in your life? If there's an error found in aviation, do they keep that and say we're going to teach this just among ourselves?

How about the medical field? How about the financial field? How about what I did for 36 years? A counter-terrorism instructor. I learned something about the bad guys, about the terrorists. We published it everywhere.

You get it on your home computer in the State Department. We don't have little classes where I teach when I can. Big deal, 200 people, 300 people, 400 people see this. Do you understand the power of the printing of those mistakes over and over and over in the Bible?

Yet we have a collection of people that say, but we know which one's wrong. I say, shame on them. An hour and a half before I came here, I took a look at the Amazon Prime. Man, oh man. And the search was for books on textual criticism.

Textual criticism, the New Testament, 288 books. Textual criticism throughout the Bible, 448. The history of the Bible and textual criticism, 244. Total results for history of the Bible translations, 2 ,000.

So that's a collection of over 3 ,000 books that describe what we're talking about tonight. You're absolutely right. If you've got the time and the energy and the ability, you can find all the mistakes.

But the kids that I left the Bible with in Africa, when they read the ending of Mark, there is no footnote because it costs more money for those Bibles. I'm telling you, the little extra effort that is being described, it's out there if you can find it.

Sure, no problem. How about this? N .T. Wright, no slouch. N .T. Wright said, quote, the resurrection of Jesus Christ took everyone by surprise. The disciples were not expecting it. They knew perfectly well that if you were following someone who you thought was the Messiah and he got killed, that was it.

He's not the guy. We know at least a dozen other messianic or prophetic movements within a hundred years of either side of Jesus Christ where they routinely ended with the death of the founder. So I'm supposed to believe that the Jews just missed the fact that the Messiah was supposed to die when N .T. Wright says, rightly so, that none of the apostles knew he was going to die.

That information that they witnessed took them by surprise, right? So it's not light. It's not easy. It's not funny that the Jews or anybody else missed the fact that the Messiah was supposed to die. And you know why the Jews missed it and why the apostles missed it?

Because it's not in the Old Testament. The fact that the Messiah was supposed to die is not there. The fact that he was supposed to be born of a virgin is not there. The fact that he was supposed to die for your sin is not there.

Yeah. Scan your brain now and see if you can get it. How about John 8, 1 through 11? Now this is what Dr. Wright mentioned. This is P66, P75. I have no idea what that is. It's awesome that he gives these things names.

In his industry, they have titles. They know it so well, they give it names. I'm sure that stands for papyrus or something. P66 and P75. What does that mean? Do you know, ma 'am? P66? Anybody here? What is it?

And when was it written? End of statement. That's the point. The point is that was completely made up. This is the woman caught in adultery. Completely made up. Did you know that? And it even says it in the Bible.

You don't think it was made up? No, it wasn't made up. It's breathed by the word of God, right? It was protected by the Holy Spirit. There you go. That's why this is awesome to be here. It's because if there's 200 of you, there's 260 different views.

That's why Christianity is the most variegated religion on the planet. That means different. So what point do we recognize that a percentage of scripture is not original? Hosea chapter 11, verse 1. Matthew makes a comparison in chapter 2, verse 13 to 15.

My son I call out of Egypt. Do you people know that? I'm not going to read the whole thing. In context, what does that mean? Is that Jesus and Mary and Joseph went to Egypt and then he called them back out, right?

Is that the point? I see some heads nodding. Wrong. It's talking about the exodus of Egypt. It's taken completely out of context. That is intentional. That's not a mistake. John chapter 5, verse 7 to 8.

For there are three that bear witness in heaven, the father, the word, the Holy Ghost. These three are one. These three bear witness on earth in spirit and the water and the blood. And these three are one.

That is the strongest reflection of the Trinity in the New Testament. It was invented. It's not invented or it's not the strongest. Okay. Let's go with a possible expert. William Lane Craig. I spent 15 minutes with him.