Roundtable Discussion and Audience Q&A

Is one of the greatest threats in evangelicalism in reformed Christianity as a whole towards the authority and inspiration of the scriptures. Why is.

Everybody look at me and I was gonna let everybody else speak and then then then I would make comments. So yeah go ahead. Okay good morning. Is that on. I think so.

The Threat of Evangelical Cobelligerence and Political Pragmatism

Yes there we go. I one of the issues that I've been addressing on the blog on the website lately has been the issue of evangelical cobelligerence. I've named it ECB because it it doesn't have initially the doctrinal considerations that say open theism and new perspectivism and other things have but the inroads that it's made in the church is profound where people are confusing political remedy for moral maladies.

And so therefore today when most people think of evangelicals or they think of Christianity their first knee-jerk response in the medium in the world at large is oh are you part of the religious right that's trying to force a political agenda.

And I'm a conservative I'm a Republican but don't hold that against me but the bottom line is is that first and foremost I'm a Christian and the cross always waves higher than the flag. And the problem today is is that people evangelical leaders have adopted a program of treating the body of Christ as a political action committee rather than heralding the gospel.

What Elton John and Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O'Donnell need is not a constitutional amendment against them. They need the gospel. They need life transformation and I'm deeply concerned because as a pragmatic this has had tremendous inroads where people now confuse in our nation patriotism with biblical Christianity.

And I'm concerned that the church needs to get back to being the church our duty as individual citizens here we can make our voice known through the voting process we can definitely write our congressmen and senators and so forth but we are not to amass the body of Christ as some religious lobbyist to forward a moral agenda we are to stand for what is right in moral and good.

But the solution whether it be abortion or the gay issues or other things that are facing our nation. If we really believe in the authority of Scripture and we really believe in the gospel of justification by faith of sola fide then we must proclaim that rather than be viewed as political activists.

And the thing that's concerning today is that I think this is really dumbed down sola scriptura. We're now evangelical leaders with the exception of dr. MacArthur that get on national TV and talk shows will be there as political spokespeople and they're alienating the very ones that we want to reach with the gospel and I say that other God's sovereign providential choosing elective work of grace and all eternity past.

So I think in a very underhanded way in a very pragmatic way that doesn't have the theological weight that these other issues have. But certainly it has won the hearts of the people. And today when we have evangelical leaders encouraging other evangelicals 40 million of them to vote into lobbying to petition into boycott unbelievers for simply living like unbelievers.

And we've got a problem.

The Church, Worship, and the Sufficiency of Scripture

Certainly for me you know in regards to what was just said so many people view the church today as whatever we decide the church is. They don't believe that God has revealed his word with sufficient clarity or evidently doesn't isn't concerned enough about the nature of the church to have revealed in his word how the church is to be structured and what its purpose is.

So many churches exist. Maybe they have a building that's been bequeathed to them by preceding generations but very few people sitting in the pews have any clear vision as to what their purpose is as the church and how they are to worship God what the nature of worship is.

And this again comes back to a diminishment of their view of the inspiration of scripture. The sufficiency of scripture to define for us what the church is to do how the church is to do it. And when the church is defined in a way that the culture does not find to be amenable many people are choosing to please the culture in the name of success rather than pleasing God in the name of worship.

And that all goes back to whether you really do believe whether God has a purpose in the giving of scripture whether he's sovereign over things and whether we can know what the scriptures actually teach.

I teach for a seminary where you have to sign a statement before each semester that you teach and part of what that involves is in essence confessing to and promising not to teach contrary to a statement which contains the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.

Now I know that a large portion across the United States of people who signed that document do not believe what the doctrine of inerrancy has historically been. They have redefined what the doctrine of inerrancy means for them even to the point of in essence paralleling in many ways the understanding of Vatican II where you allowed people to believe that the Bible inerrantly communicates God's will regarding salvation.

But it can be wrong about basically everything else that it addresses. And the result of that is is is almost is almost worse than rank liberalism is because when you when you pretend to believe something but gutted of all meaning you're teaching your students that words don't really mean anything.

And so we can talk about believing the Trinity all we want. But let's face it how many evangelicals today are functionally Trinitarian. I would submit to you that if a person go through their entire week without once considering or seeing the relevance of the doctrine of the Trinity to their lives and their worship is that being a Trinitarian I can.

If you can go through your whole week and not even realize you're married to your wife. Are you married to your wife really are you being faithful to that commitment. All of this goes back to a tremendous degradation when I read when I read the stuff that Jim Renahan lives in back in the 17th century when I read our Baptist forebears back then and I'm sure that I'd like you to comment on this.

When I read even just a few generations ago I sense a respect and a passion and a love for the Word of God that I just don't see a whole lot of it. In the professing church I see I see people willing to order their entire lives based upon the idea that God has truly revealed himself in the scriptures that Jesus Christ walks their every page that to believe in Christ and to be obedient to his word or one.

The same thing I know a lot of people today who think you can be obedient to Christ and run rush on over the Word of God. Choose pick and choose what you will and will not believe. I don't understand how you can do that and I see that as the as the root of a lot of what we see going on in evangelicalism am I missing something there do you see it just a tremendous respect for the for the Word of God.

In our Baptist forebears and the Puritans. That just simply doesn't seem to.

Lip Service to Scripture, Failed Evangelicals, and the Need for Full Doctrine

Communicate as much well as both of you were talking and I'm sort of trying to prepare my remarks while listening to you speak. I was going to go down the same road and say that I think that an evangelicalism today there's a lot of lip service that's given to the scriptures authority inerrancy infallibility and all the rest.

But once that kind of commitment is made I've been preparing for this debate on Tuesday and one of the things that about Marcus Borg is that he grew up in a very conservative Lutheran denomination North Dakota and in his book the God we never knew he expresses in seven points.

A his perception of the Christianity that he was raised in as a as a boy. And if you were to look at those you you would say that it's very familiar to you. But it's also just a little bit it's it's far enough off that it's a counterfeit.

But I think that dr. Borg's experience is not unique. In fact it's probably very common that he grew up in a church that believed in the Bible at least on on one level but the people were not equipped with the doctrines of the Bible and he grew up with a false perception of who God is.

I think about the fact that some of the leading critical scholars of our day are failed evangelicals. Bart Ehrman right who teaches at UNC University of North Carolina has written this massive volume lost Christianity's and he's a graduate Wheaton College.

Randall Balmer who has done a couple of PBS specials is a graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. In fact he wrote with John Woodbridge a great article and biblical authority back when he was a conservative evangelical so that that we took to a large degree I think that we are failing in our churches to go beyond lip service to the Bible and really teach people the full doctrines of the Bible that's the basis upon which the Christian life is built.

You have to have a firm understanding of who God is and of the full spectrum of what the Bible teaches in order to live. That's what our confessions say that they say for example that the doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all of our comfortable communion with God.

We have to have a clear understanding of who God is as one in three in order to be able to commune with him in order to be able to live the Christian life before him. And so I think that we give lip service to the Word of God but but we don't really go beyond that and we become pragmatists in all the rest cultural pragmatists.

But while we give.

Tradition, the Berean Spirit, and the Authority of Scripture

Lip service to God's Word. Jim has touched on I think the real heart of the issue if we consider what the greatest threat has ever been to the authority of the scriptures it has never been a threat from outside.

It has always been a threat from within the professing church. And it's even more pointedly it's it's been a threat from within those who profess most to believe in the authority of scripture. I cannot speak from a vast experience of exposure to other communions but within Baptist life as I was coming through seminary and I think probably about the time that James was coming through seminary there was a lot of heat a lot of effort a lot of energy expended to recover in a major Baptist denomination in our country the doctrine of inerrancy.

But the question that was always looming on the horizon was what will happen if we win. What will happen if indeed that becomes recognized the doctrine of inerrancy and infallibility becomes recognized as the doctrine of the church once again.

And the question then became what will people do with their infallible Bibles. Will they study them or will they assume that they already know what the Bible says. And there seems to be lacking brethren in far too many places the emulation of the Berean spirit where are to be found the brethren who are searching the scriptures daily whether the things they are hearing or so Professor Murray used to repeatedly press the point that a reformed church a truly reformed church is a reforming church always bringing what we believe back to the scriptures back to search the scriptures whether the things that we believe the things that our forefathers have taught us are true.

And if we lose that spirit if we lose that Berean spirit if we lose the hunger for the word if we lose a desire to rightly divided if we lose a sense of what good exegesis is and what bad exegesis is.

Then it is pointless to speak of the authority of the scriptures. Because in point of fact we may tip our hat at the doctrine of scripture but where the rubber meets the road we're still living by tradition and not by the Word of God.

Addition as the Word of God some of you have listened or read my interactions with a well-known evangelical by name Dave Hunt and I have. I have spoken at many conferences where Dave Hunt was speaking and up until a few years ago had very cordial conversations with Dave.

He's an amiable elderly man but the problem is he has decided that at the end of his life he's going to take on Calvinism as the terrible horrible nasty thing that it is. And some of you have heard some of the interaction we had when I first having sound issues again the problem that has really come up very clearly with Dave Hunt is here is an illustration of an individual who is enslaved to his tradition.

He cannot see his tradition one that one of the most important things I've ever said to somebody on the air is when Dave was responding to various and sundry passages of scripture I was raising to him.

I finally said to him Dave that's your tradition speaking. And he said to me James I have no traditions. And my response to him was Dave the man who thinks he has no traditions is the man who is the most enslaved to his traditions.

And when mine is working when you're pointing to me going on going like this what am I supposed to do. I have no idea what means when yeah it's still third base. Okay here we go. Yeah when the thing that becomes quite frightening is when our traditions become functionally in our mind the same as the Word of God.

Dave Hunt believes he's defending the Word of God when he attacks the sovereignty of God in salvation. Dave Hunt believes that Calvinism is an affront to God. He's not even willing to listen to the possibility of being corrected.

Why. Because he really believes he has no traditions. Therefore his traditions become the Word of God itself and that becomes scary. That's why we always have to be doing what you're talking about. We can't be reforming if we are simply allowing our traditions to become defined as the Word of God itself.

If we don't see that scripture is the Anustos and I am NOT and that that's an important aspect of that. Meanwhile mr. Fallon has his phone ring. So are there.

Some questions. Yes please. Yeah. Well I just want to follow up what he said. He asked me to go to the 17th century which I didn't but I will now. And it reminds me of the words of John Robinson who was the pilgrim pastor.

He didn't come to the new world with his church but he's famous for the statement that there is always more light to break forth from the Word of God. And he didn't mean new revelations. He meant that our our understanding of the scriptures is limited and we must always be going back to the scriptures and working with them and studying them so that we might be instructed from from that text.

So I think you know I think that that's the point. Okay. Now what we would like to do is for the sake of trying to keep the signal consistent. If you have questions I'm gonna ask. If you could start lining up right over here and please ask your question and then we'll go down.

Otherwise I'll be passing this mic all over the place. So if you have questions let's start a right line right about here. Once again oh boy are we in the way of the camera. Still how we doing. Camera wise.

We're good. Okay. And if you can just ask your question then we'll go ahead and make your way to the back. But once again let's keep the questions to under 30 seconds no debates and please just keep it a question.

Thank you this for.

Hymns, Christian Music, and Biblical Doxology

Steve but I'm sure others would answer it as well and that is the content of some of their Christian you know. Choruses and things like that. It seemed like doing the hymns. When you read the hymns you can tell there's a depth of understanding of the Bible you know.

And it seems like it's just kind of deteriorating. I'm wondering is there any movement at all to for Christian music to have a more depth going toward the the hymns and that type of thing. Yeah.

And we have to we we also have to clarify it that not all hymns are biblical and so we have to measure everything through the lens of Scripture. David says in Psalm 119 54 thy statutes are my songs in the house of my pilgrimage.

And so his theology has to be our doxology his word our music his statutes our songs. And so I think that as we were talking here being a faithful Berean is examining anything in light of Scripture and if it's scriptural we embrace it.

If it's not we jettison. It's very simple. The problem is is that the great hymns were primarily written by pastors Isaac Watts and Luther and so forth. Even Wesley got it right from time to time you know and and he knows the truth now.

And I mean they're all Calvinist when they get to glory. Right. But it's it's a it's a wonderful thing that the pastors and the theologians were studied men of the Word of God and in so artists today primarily feel rather than think.

And so that's why so many of the songs today are experiential and testimonial. Now there's a place for that. But you can't catechize with the new music and I'm an author of a lot of it done 18 CDs. It's enough to keep you here for a millennia you know.

And and so it there is a deep concern that are we making music for a consumer driven market and we're seeing that spill over into publishing. Obviously a lot of the a lot of the the books that are coming out today reflect that now the problem is is with music.

It's a more powerful tool than the spoken word and I don't mean to minimize preaching because I believe it's it's it's the God-given way. But when no one you know when MacArthur writes a commentary nobody takes it home and memorizes it.

You know no one has memorized biblical theology by John Owen. I'm also I love the Puritans. It's primarily my steady diet of reading and the great themes and great songs come out of that writing. But when you have a well-crafted song within four or five listens to it it's automatic it is in your heart and minds for years to come I can still remember every time I every time I hear Maggie Mae by Rod Stewart I still smell that natural vinyl that I had in my 1964 VW bug the first car I ever had.

And when we got that radio on it was the first song that came on. It's instant recall. The arts are to buy divine design geared to do that. And that's why it's no mistake that the greatest block of Scripture on the authority of Scripture Psalm 19 7 to 11 is a song the longest chapter in the Bible every verse mentioning something to the authority of God's Word.

Psalm 119 is a song. The greatest deposit we have on the character of God are the Psalms. And so music by divine design is a powerful tool and that's why we must be careful to make sure it is theologically precise and biblically accurate.

The problem is is that many seminaries most seminaries don't have any courses in music in worship involving song and making theology a great doxology. Most artists have never been theologically studied and so therefore you know I'm again I'm a firm proponent that if we as musician Aries using songs to go into the world and worship and evangelism and so forth wouldn't it be great.

And I've asked this of seminaries and maybe some of these men will can take this farther. But wouldn't it be great if we were having seminary professors come to Nashville for a week at a time of intensive studies a week on justification by faith a week on some of the heresies that are floating around the church today a week on the Trinity a week on the solo script tour and so forth and offering this to the artists for free to come and to say once a year twice a year we're gonna offer these week intensive courses so that you can be further equipped with the Word of God.

I think it would be fantastic. Also I really believe that this should be key I believe before any artist should get a recording contract that something should precede that and that's that that should be a letter from their pastor.

I'm a churchman at heart and when you have Lone Ranger believers out in the marketplace absent of pastoral authority and biblical accountability to the local church you end up what we have to today. And and so I really believe that letter should say five things that that artist truly is saved that they know the gospel they can articulate sola fide.

That number three they are well acquainted with the essentials of the faith. Number four that they are a member of that church. Number five that the leadership of that church affirms them for the itinerant ministry that they're on and that has to be renewed annually so that when there is moral failure of which we've sadly seen in Christian artists when there is doctrinal impurity that you don't go to the record company and have the managers and the agents spin through the media you know but you have then biblical accountability and authority.

And so there isn't a movement yet but I think it's up to local churches to say no more. We're not gonna buy this we're not gonna support it. We're gonna put we're gonna say it lacks doctrinal clarity until it does remove it from the bookstores and until it is theologically precise again so that that music can be affirmed by eldership in the local church and seminaries and so forth so that it's profitable for ministry and not just entertainment or not just a consumer driven art that is the McDonald's of the industry you know it's it's as Packer used to say it's 3 ,000 miles wide in one inch deep Christianity.

And so that's part of the problem. We're seeing that now with a lot of the purpose-driven materials and other things even though Rick Warren's not a bad guy he's just missed it on this and you know and I think that there's a problem there now everything is consumer driven material that is written for sales as opposed to decided by the plumb line of truth and.

That's part of the problem we have. Okay this question is really for anybody who wants to address it but primarily for for James White. I am about the about the canon itself. As far as our infallible or inerrant knowing the canon I just have increasing difficulty trying to figure that out whether we can in errant inherently or infallibly know what those books are and I'm not so much jealous for the terms in that.

I want to know if you believe we can know for sure that.

Say Galatians is the Word of God. Yeah we need to be very careful to differentiate between theological terms when we talk about infallibility and ourselves whether we can have infallible knowledge. And things like that I frequently ask people do you have infallible knowledge of the doctrine of the Trinity.

And even when I ask audiences how many of you would like to me to hand you the microphone and you have three sentences to accurately fully and without engaging in heresy define the doctrine of the Trinity everybody all of a sudden finds the most fascinating things on the ceiling and on the floor and I hope he's not looking at me because nobody wants to do that.

When we're when we're asking you asked two different you actually asked two different questions there when you say can we know for certain that Galatians is the Word of God I say yes. I say yes because it's God's purpose to give us His Word.

And if we don't know that Galatians is the Word of God then it's not going to be able to function within the purpose that God has given us. If you say you can have infallible knowledge of almost anything that becomes an attribute of you yourself rather than an external fact of knowledge that we can see in history and we can see in how God has worked with his people so on and so forth.

Those are two different things. And the reason I'm so concerned about being clear on the what the difference between those two things is is obviously given my own background the fact that of the 56 debates I've done about 36 have been against Roman Catholic apologists and their primary approach these days is to attack the doctrine of sola scriptura.

And one of their primary approaches in attacking the doctrine of sola scriptura is to question you on the issue of the canon. They in essence say you're biting the hand that feeds you. If you do not have our authority for the canon of scripture then you have no scripture at all.

So how can you then reject what we say about transubstantiation or papal infallibility or whatever. And it flows from an errant understanding of what the canon is and also the fact that they're attempting to promote the idea of an infallible church where an attribute of divinity in reality has been attributed to the church the church's infallible ability to define both the extent of scripture the canon and the meaning of scripture the interpretation and the extent of tradition and the meaning of tradition.

That's why I use the term sola ecclesia. We believe in sola scriptura. Rome believes in sola ecclesia even though she says she's under the authority of scripture and tradition. If you define what both are and what both mean you can't be under their authority if you do.

Especially if you claim to define it infallibly without being able to be corrected. And so that's why I try to differentiate between those those terms. And so keeping those in mind. Yes we can. We have the promise of God himself in the fact that he's given us the scriptures that we can know with certainty what the scriptures are.

But that doesn't make me infallible. And that also means that those early Christians for example who didn't believe the book of Revelation of scripture doesn't mean that they're going to hell. Especially I mean if you just saw the book of Revelation for the first time never had any history with it all.

What would you think. Let's just think a few seconds about the you know ten headed beasts and you know stuff like that we'd. I'm very thankful the new to the the early Christians were not uncritical that there had to be discussion and there had to be an understanding of what revelation was about and what its history was.

And it wasn't just a gullible. Hey as long as it claims to be scripture we'll accept it kind of an attitude. But there's a difference between my having creaturely certainty within this fallen world in light of what's God's purpose is to give that to me.

And then my becoming infallible. Because all the time in fact in the last debate I'm not sure if you how many of you saw the last debate I had with Bill Rutland on Long Island one of the questions he asked me is dr. white.

You claim personal infallibility. It's like um no I mean duh. But the whole idea was well then you could be wrong about everything you said and my response was soak at the Pope we're not. They honest us God's Word.

Is there's a vast difference between the.

Canon, Infallible Knowledge, and the Witness of the Holy Spirit

Two so my question is also for dr. white very similar to the last one. I almost sat down when I heard it but I think it's a little bit different angle so I'll ask it anyways if you'll bear with me given your presentation you know there is a can and it's known infallibly to God.

The 50 million dollar question which logically rises and I'm often asked is okay so how do we know which ones those are. Then I guess my question is do you see us even today and in our present context individually having to wrestle through that and determine that for ourselves.

Obviously there'll be a subjective element there. Dr. Renningham read some things last night from Calvin about the testimony of the Spirit to our spirit and that sort of thing. Do you see a place for someone.

I'll just make this very straightforward saying you know James is the right straw epistle and I don't sense the Spirit of God speaking to my spirit that it's part of Scripture or do you see us bound in some way or something by the consensus that has existed up to this time of great believers and so forth.

That's a very.

Good question and I should mention just in passing that though Luther did say that Luther never made any moves to have James quote-unquote removed from the cannon. That's a very common assertion that is made.

But he quotes from James in his various other commentaries and things like that the question is is excellent and I think I sort of gave the foundation for the answer in pointing out that we need to approach this from a theological perspective and that is if God has a purpose for giving the scriptures to the church then our certainty is tied to his establishment and guidance of that church over time.

And so I don't believe that every generation has to has to recreate the canon because the church is not recreated with each generation. Each generation has to has to agonize my for the faith. That's one thing to agonize the faith to defend the faith.

That's that's something completely different than revisiting the doctrine of the Trinity in every generation revisiting the canon in every generation. I don't believe that that that follows at all the difference I would say and I'll let dr. Renahan if he wants to comment on this as well.

There's a I see a fundamental difference between the fact that the scriptures have been given to the church and have been established for the church over time. And the issue of the personal witness of the Holy Spirit the witness of the Holy Spirit first of all is required because of our our benighted souls our our our fallen nature we need to have the scales of darkness removed from our eyes as the psalmist in the same psalm that Steve was just referring to said open my eyes they may see wonderful things from your law there is a supernatural element to that.

But then the the testimony of the Spirit in regards to the Word of God I think is different than saying you are recreating the canon in and of yourself. I see that as as a testimony to the entirety of the Word of God being God speaking to us and the fact that we as as new creatures in Christ that heart of flesh that is given to us in the place of the heart of stone naturally beats for the the words of the shepherd that we will hear his voice and that's that's my understanding of what that testimony is about and that I think Calvin would make a strong distinction between that and and the issue of the canon.

Would you would you agree I agree wholeheartedly I.

Was concerned afterwards went to bed last night thinking about it woke up this morning thinking about it that that this doctrine can be misunderstood as if there's some kind of personal experience and immediate revelation that comes to me as an individual that says James belongs in the Bible or Galatians belongs in the Bible or Romans belongs in the Bible or Psalms belong in the Bible.

And that's not what the testimony of the Spirit is at all. It's it's just that our eyes are opened when we are brought to faith in Christ. The power of the work of God allows us to see the truth of the scripture in the way that the unconverted person cannot do so.

In 1st Corinthians chapter 2 which I didn't get to go to last night Paul makes that as clear as can be where the things that are contained in the scriptures are revealed to us now. We often read those verses as if they're talking about sometime in the future when Paul in fact says that this is what belongs to us now and it's because we know Christ it it it just is an astounding difference to me.

I I have a brother who's not Mike. Some of you know my brother Mike but we have a third brother named Tom who's just a wonderful guy. He's about 13 years older than I am and not a believer and he just cannot see in the Word of God the things that that Mike and I and that our mother see he just can't see it and to him.

It's it's just a matter of religion. It's just a matter of your choice that that's all that it is to you where Mike and I and our mother and and the rest of our family members who have come to Christ.

Love to come to worship. Love to hear the Word of God proclaimed. Love to read the Word of God. Love to pray. An unconverted person can't do that. And it's not because at some point in my life I've had this voice speak in my ear the the testimony of the scripture gives no new revelation no new revelation at all.

All of the revelation that we have is inscripturated. It just helps me to see that that inscripturated word is God's.

Word itself. Hello gentlemen. I have a question first I want to say that I'm glad that you mentioned that in the future you're planning to address some of the things that Islamic scholars are bringing up.

I think that's the way to go. But my question is a how much do we allow for ascribable errors for example. I mean I have a the particular example I'm thinking of enough 2nd Samuel 21 19 where it says that Elhanan killed the Goliath and in a in translation where Christian scholars understand they put the brother of and in 1st Chronicles 25 it says that he killed let me or let my whatever the brother of Goliath.

So basically and in a commentary that I read about this is that it's a definitely a tribal scribal error. So I was wondering how much do with that. Do we allow as Christians for that. Because you can say okay these are parallel passages we could see okay and then we can reconcile that.

And the argument that I've heard is that not every passage has a parallel passage so you know what if it's you know just a scribal error. Right there we can't see everything. So thank.

You please two two things it's difficult to address this without having done the the full presentation where I go through and illustrate a lot of these things and talk about the languages and and and things like that.

So I hesitate to make grand statements without supporting them. But you sort of have to in a question answer type thing. There is a fair amount of difference between the textual study of the New Testament documents and those of the Old Testament documents.

A couple reasons. Linguistically the the Hebrew language is written differently as you know for example some of the differences in the Old Testament have to do with numbers. How long somebody reigned something like that the Hebrews used letters to represent those things and it's very easy to see how words that are letters that are representing numbers.

Some people interpret it as a word or something like that in later times Hebrew is very different and not only that we're talking about a much longer period of transmission looking at the Exodus at twelve to fourteen hundred years before Christ and there's a long period of time there that we're looking at.

We also have the fact that you have the Greek Septuagint and the fact that the Old Testament version that's primarily used in the New Testament is not the Hebrew Old Testament it's the Greek translation thereof which raises all sorts of issues especially when the New Testament writers cite a passage from the Septuagint that is different from the Hebrew that raises all sorts of issues in the New Testament.

You're you're dealing with a with a different situation not only because of the but also because the way it was transmitted that is the Old Testament was transmitted primarily by the people of Israel through the people of Israel and the New Testament documents.

The New Testament Christians wanted their writings to go to everyone as quickly as possible and so the earliest writings that we have the papyri manuscripts p52 p72 p66 p46 they all demonstrate they were not written by professional scribes.

They were written by just plain old believers. I was telling someone during the break that or maybe it was even during the presentation I forget now which I didn't get to tell the whole story that rich back there had to rescue me from from security guards during the papal treasures exhibit in Denver in 1993 because I saw in a newspaper that they were gonna have a couple a page of manuscript p72 which is the earliest known manuscript of Jude and first and second Peter and this papal treasures exhibit had crowns and tiaras and diamonds and all this stuff.