Does the Bible Misquote Jesus? Part 2

Manuscript Evidence and the Number of Meaningful Variants

OK, James, thank you again. Very lively rebuttal. I have a number of questions. Some of them can be answered very quickly, I think. First, in your opening address, you said that there are only 1 ,500 to 2 ,000 viable differences among our magistrates.

Where did you get that number? I said viable and meaningful. Where did you get that number? I got that number from a number of studies by Dan Wallace that examined both the issue of viability as far as a number of manuscripts behind a reading as well as those that actually change the meaning.

He has estimated, actually, I went above his number. He's estimated 1 ,100 to 1 ,400 at that point. I went above that number just simply so as to be careful. So this is Dan Wallace's opinion. I think Dan Wallace is an excellent scholar, and he very regularly has accurate numbers, especially in the material that he presents.

I'm just wondering how somebody knows that it's both viable and important. I mean, for example, you don't think Mark 141 is important or that Hebrews 2 .9 or does he think those are important? We would both say those are important, sir.

So those are included in the 1 ,500 to 2 ,000 number? They would be, yes, sir. It just seems like it's a little odd to come up with a number like that. That is probably more guesswork than anything, but OK.

You say there are 12 manuscripts written within a century of the books of the New Testament. That's news to me. What are these 12 manuscripts? I'm not sure why it's news to you, sir. Dr. Wallace said the same thing to you at the Greer Heard Forum as well in his opening statement.

So I don't understand how that can be news. But if you would look, for example, at Philip Comfort's New Testament text of translation commentary. And again, since Dr. Wallace presented that to you. I'm asking what the manuscripts are.

Whole list? Well, I can look one up for you. I know P52. Yes. There are a number, of course, partly would be the issue of when we date those New Testament manuscripts. Yes, it would. That is my question.

For example, P32 of Titus is quite possibly that early as well. If you want an entire list, I can look it up for you here. It'll take me some time to get to it. Well, I think the fact that Dan Wallace says something doesn't really make it so.

I didn't say just Dan Wallace. I am reading something other than Dan Wallace in front of us here. P32 is dated to the year 200. Well, again, there are many people who believe that the numbers that are assigned the back of Nestle-Aland are extremely conservative.

I see. Obviously, there are many. For example, T .C. Skeet. Conservative would mean that they're dated later than normal or earlier. I don't understand. Being dated not as early as they could be. Well, yeah.

You could date anything to any date you want. But the question is, what grounds do you have? Actually, that's correct. And are you familiar with T .C. Skeet's discussion of these variants? I do know T .C. Skeet, yes.

OK. Well, and you're aware of the fact that on a number of the papyri manuscripts listed in the Nestle-Aland text, he would actually give a earlier? OK, let's talk about T .C. Skeet. When does he date P32?

Well, again, I don't believe that he addressed P32 specifically. I believe that his was a manuscript of John that I was reading about. But are you not aware of the fact that there are variations? You're not supposed to be asking questions, I think.

You're correct. That's right. So I think that this number 12 is exceedingly high. And is the number 200 within 300 years? And so that's why I was just wondering. I'm sorry, 200 within 300 years? You said that there were 200 manuscripts.

I said 120, sir. Oh, 120. Yes. That's still probably high. Let's go to this business with the Byzantine and the Alexandrian texts, which you said you weren't talking about manuscripts. You were talking about, I believe you said, printed collations.

Is that correct? Yes, sir. Can you tell me what a collation is? Well, I was using the term there to speak of the collection of the readings of a wide family of manuscripts into one representative text, such as you have in the majority text, or you had in that particular instance, the Westcott-Hort text.

That's different from a collation of a specific manuscript, where you take a base text and then you work through a particular manuscript, providing every variation from that base text. Historically, the TR has normally been used.

But thankfully, in recent years, Codex Vaticanus has frequently been used as the base text for collation, things like that. So there's two different ways in which you can use the term. Your latter definition is what a collation is.

The other isn't a collation. It's a printed text, which is quite different. But let's talk about collations for a second. Suppose you compared a collation of a Byzantine manuscript with an Alexandrian manuscript.

Do you think you would get a 95 level of agreement? Of course not. I never even intimated such a thing. How high would the agreement be? Well, again, as you pointed out in your Brill compilation, that you need to have about a 70 to assign a manuscript to a particular manuscript family.

And so Byzantine text would fall into the 50%. However, that's not the assertion I was making. I understand your assertion. But now you're telling me that if you call a Byzantine manuscript against an Alexandrian manuscript, there'll be a 50 agreement?

Well, I'm really surprised that you're not following what I'm saying, sir. Because obviously, as you know, when you're talking about percentages of variation, you're talking about not the total words in the manuscript in their readings.

You're talking about the variations. I was talking about the total words. As I displayed before the people, I was giving a computer rendering. So let me repeat my question. When you call a Byzantine and an Alexandrian manuscript, what is the level of agreement?

On variants or words, sir? On words. Words and variants are two different things. I understand that. Because in fact, you're the one who's talking about words as being 95 in agreement. I'm asking you, if you don't collate two texts, but you collate two manuscripts, what is the level of agreement in the words?

The words would, again, a collation, the percentage of difference is in the variants, not in the total words of the manuscript, sir. And what I was presenting. Are you saying that you don't know the answer?

No, sir. I think your question is comparing apples and oranges. OK, let me ask this. Let me ask this. Have you ever collated a Byzantine manuscript? A Byzantine manuscript? No, sir, I have not. OK, have you collated an Alexandrian manuscript?

I have worked on sections in seminary. Yes, sir. Have you collated an Alexandrian manuscript against a Byzantine manuscript? Using the TR, if you would call that as a, it's not even a Byzantine manuscript.

So I've never put B against a medieval minuscule, no. OK. Well, the reason it matters is because you were making a statement about Byzantine and Alexandrian texts. Yes, sir. But in fact, when you compare the manuscripts with one another, this 95 agreement seems to me to be a somewhat specious number.

Because in fact, Is that a question, sir? I'm getting there. Isn't it a specious number? No, sir, it's not. Because you seem to refuse to allow what I presented to these people. I ask anyone in the audience, go get Bible works, load Westcott and Hort, load the majority text, activate the module that compares them, and see for yourself.

But you're comparing printed text. I said that in my presentation. I even stopped and said, now, these are not manuscripts. These are printed text. It's a very important distinction. I don't have a timer.

How much time do we have? 12 minutes. 12 minutes. Oh, very good. OK, let's see. So where do we want to go from there? Let's talk about your main point, which seems to be that the original text is preserved somewhere in the manuscript tradition, that we have all these variants and that in every case, one of the variants is the original text.

Is that your understanding? Yes, I believe in the tenacity of the text, that when we have a variant, the reason that we can invest the time in looking into it is that one of the readings that is there is the original reading.

I don't believe we need to engage in conjectural emendation just simply to fill in gaps, as we do with most classical works. OK, and why do you think this? Because that seems to be the conclusion of not only Kurt Ahland and an extensive discussion of that.

I cited it in my opening statement. But that also seems to have been the belief of a large majority of the textual critical scholars down through the ages, from Tischendorf onwards, Moises Silva, Dan Wallace and others have also enunciated the exact same things.

So it's because authorities have told you this. Well, and I also find it to be very consistent with my own study of the textual variations in the New Testament. OK, would you agree that Eldon Knapp is probably the dean of text criticism in America today?

Oh, I think Eldon Epp yourself and D .C. Parker are probably the biggest names right now. Unfortunately, I would say that the the perspective that you are now pursuing and as you yourself have said for the past 10 or 15 years, you've pretty much given up on on working on the original text.

That's sort of been done. So, OK, so Epp in America and Parker, he's he's English and maybe Keith Elliott in England is a big name. How about in Germany? Who would be the authorities now living? With the Ahlins out of the out of the picture.

Barbara's still living. I'm sorry, Barbara's still living. Yeah, but I don't think she's publishing right. She's retired from the from the institute. So maybe Klaus Wachtel or Geert Mink or. Yes, well, I'm sorry, I don't keep up with German textual criticism today.

How about in France? I don't know anybody in France or probably Christian Bernard Amfou. These are these are the biggest names in the field. Epp, Parker, Elliott, Ahlin, Wachtel, Mink, Amfou. So far as I know, none of them agree with you on this particular point about the preservation of the text.

Ahlin doesn't, even though it's in the book. Who wrote that book? Kurt and Barbara Ahlin. Yeah, Kurt. I don't know about Barbara Ahlin, but what do you think about the movement that Parker is especially driving, which states that, in fact, it no longer makes sense to talk about the original text?

I think it is an abandonment of I agree with Moises Silva's comments. You're familiar with those. Oh, yeah. I agree with Moises Silva's comments in response to specifically D .C. Parker when. Would you like me to to read what he says or just is that since, you know, it's a time to kill?

Go ahead. Sure. Oh, actually, he he says, nor do I find it helpful when David Parker, for example, sanctifies his proposals by a theological appeal to divinely inspired textual diversity, indeed, textual confusion and contradiction that is supposed to be of greater spiritual value than apostolic authority.

Actually, his primary exhibit that he gives in response to that is your book, Orthodox Scripture and Scripture, where he says you cannot read a page. He says there is hardly a page in that book that is not, in fact, mentioned such a text or assume its accessibility.

That is the original. I'm not sure if you've changed your viewpoint since 1993, but Moises Silva certainly would seem to feel that if you now agree with Parker that you have. Yeah, I have changed my view a little bit.

But my my question is really about Parker. Why is it that David Parker thinks we can't get back to the original text? Well, there are a number of reasons of theological and genealogical. Obviously, I have focused on his theological reason in that he asserts that we have made an artificial distinction between text and tradition, which I certainly would strongly disagree with.

But as you yourself have said, as far as the current state of the manuscript tradition is concerned, we're as far back as we can get. I think the term that you used in an SBL article a few years ago was we're now we're just tinkering as far as that is concerned.

And so apart from some major find a Dead Sea Scrolls level New Testament type of find, there seems to be a fair amount of skepticism and being able to get far any farther back. Yeah, I agree with that.

Can you tell me when I've got like a minute and a half left? Absolutely. So, yeah, well, let's approach this from a different angle. This business with P75 to be a lot of people have used this. And I mean, let me say, you know, I know you keep saying I don't understand things, but, you know, the reality, I understand them.

I just I don't buy them. And so let me tell you, let me ask you about this P75 to be P75. Say it was copied in the year 175 and say B was copied in the year 350. And the 350 is not a copy of P75, but it's very close to P75.

That's an argument for showing that there was a consistent line of tradition, at least in that Alexandrian proto-Alexandrian line. Right. All right. What does that? So the fact that somebody in the middle of the fourth century accurately copies a text.

What does that tell you about somebody copying a text in the year 70? A number of things. What I was attempting to explain, and you may consider it bogus and dismiss it, it doesn't change the fact that what I was attempting to present was this issue of multifocality and the multiple lines of transmission that this these two manuscripts are probably closer together than any other two manuscripts from that time period in their readings.

And yet they are not in the same specific line of transmission. Oh, no, that's incorrect. They're both proto-Alexandrian manuscripts, aren't they? As I put on the screen, sir, what I meant by that was P75 is not the direct ancestor.

No, but they're still in the same line. There's so much in the same line of tradition that they're cousins virtually, aren't they? OK, I'm attempting to answer, but you're just arguing with my answer.

I am not really. You're not seriously going to contend that P75 and B are not in the same line of tradition. I obviously define the term line there as direct lineal genealogical ancestor, which I did in my opening statement as well.

What I'm saying is, while they're both clearly proto-Alexandrian manuscripts, they are in the same stream. They represent two different lines within that stream because Vaticanus contains readings that are older than P75.

OK, let me ask this. How many genealogical lineal manuscripts do we have related to one another? I don't even understand. You just said that they're not in a lineal genealogical line with each other. In other words, one is not a copy of another.

Exactly. How many copies of other manuscripts do we actually have? All I said, sir, is that P75 is not what was copied to make Vaticanus. I don't have any other way of expressing the statement. I'm asking a question.

I'm asking how many copies of manuscripts do we have? In other words, where we have the original and the copy. You mean where we absolutely know which one was copied from which? You're saying B is not a copy of P75.

Because it contains different, more ancient readings, yes. Yes, I got that. So, but I'm wondering if that's usual or unusual. Do we have copies of manuscripts in the tradition? We don't have, well, the only thing I can think of you're asking is something like 1739 where we know something about the nature and the origination of what it is a copy of.

Or even Beze or something like that. But very rarely do we know the exact lineal parent of any manuscript in the first thousand years. Exactly. I mean, so the fact that they aren't, one isn't a copy of the other is in fact completely normal, right?

Because we don't have copies. Yes, sir. But they are so closely related that they're in the same line of tradition, yes? Of course. Yes, sir. Okay, good. What then does the fact that B is close to P75 but not a copy of P75, B copied in the year 350 say, what does that tell us about copying practices in the year 70?

I said what it does is demonstrate that the onus is upon the skeptic to assert that there is corruption in the primitive period. Because since we have multiple lines coming out of the early period, and yet it's the same New Testament, that if there was some kind of primitive corruption, you would have multiple corrupted lines coming out that vary massively from one another.

And that is not the case. Oh, that's not the case. So you said in seminary you did some collations of early manuscripts. Tell me, how do the early manuscripts stack up against each other in comparison with the later manuscripts?

Well, as I've said in my published works, the vast majority of meaningful and viable variants take place within the first 250, 300 years of the transmission history of the New Testament. That's a given.

Yeah, let me reword it. If you compare two Byzantine late manuscripts to one another, will they agree a lot or not very often? Well, of course. So the variations between 14th century Byzantine minuscules are almost totally based upon scribes falling asleep or slapping a bug while they're writing.

What about the early manuscripts? The early manuscripts, because as I said in my opening presentation, they're being done in a very different period of time, where very rarely did Christians have access to scriptoriums or things like that because of persecution taking place, the destruction of texts and things like that.

There is a much wider variation between them. So the earlier the manuscript, the more differences there are between them. As P72 demonstrates, these men were not, by and large, well, P75 is different, but P72, P66, these were not professional scribes.

One minute. I'm sorry? Okay, so let me just say something. The point is that the earlier you go, the more different they are. So you just extrapolate that the earliest were probably the most different.

Let me ask about P72, where you resonate with this particular text, you said, that has 2 Peter and Jude in it. What other documents are found in P72? There are some non-canonical documents in P72. My recollection was that 1 Peter and Jude were the only canonical documents in it.

Right, so I'm just wondering about your resonating with this document. I mean, do you think the scribe thought that what he was copying was scripture? Well, I don't think that you can simply jump to the conclusion that because scribes included books in a single codex, that meant that they believed that everything in that codex was necessarily scripture.

There are all sorts of works that were considered to be very beneficial for the reading of people that were included in codices that were not necessarily canonical. Yeah, I just thought that was odd, then, that particular manuscript is one that you resonate with because it's the earliest attestation we have of the Protevangelium Jacobi.

Time? Okay, good. Thank you. Okay. Dr. Ehrman, you said in your rebuttal that P52 contains a major, I believe it was, you can correct me please if I was wrong, major textual variant that changes the meaning of the text.

Do you have access to a textual variant there that is not listed in the Nessie Olin text? It's the restoration in the lacuna, as Metzger points out in his manuscripts of the New Testament, of the absence of the words et es tuta before el leilutha, and there are a couple of other variants.

I mean, there's a full discussion of it in Metzger's book on the manuscripts of the New Testament. And you would consider this to completely change the meaning of the text? No. Okay, all right. I mean, it changes the meaning of the text.

I mean, you know, I think anybody who thinks that the words of the New Testament are inspired has to think that the words matter. And so if the words change, that matters. All right, Dr. Ehrman, since you disagree with, evidently, Kurt Ahland on the issue of tenacity, could you list for us some variations in the New Testament where you are willing to assert that none of the extant readings in the manuscript tradition could possibly be the original?

No, I think there's always a possibility. It's not a question of possibility. It's a question of probability. Of course, anything could possibly have been original. The original author might have written nonsense.

And why not? It's possible. And later scribes might have corrected that nonsense. So one has to weigh probability. It's interesting that Westcott and Hort, the two giants in this field in the 19th century, were quite insistent that most of the text of the New Testament was preserved in a codex like Codex Vaticanus, and yet they resorted to conjectural emendation on a large number of occasions.

If you want an example, if you want just one example, I mean, I don't know how much sense it'll make in English, but one common one that my teacher, Bruce Metzger, used to talk about as being possibly a strong case for emendation is 1 Peter 3, verse 19, which follows a creedal statement about Christ.

The Greek text, well, I guess I better read it in English. It says, Christ suffered for sins once and for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order that he might lead us, lead you, textual variant there, to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but having been made alive in the spirit.

And then chapter 19, the next verse says, and how high toys and Fula Cape knew must see our face at K-Rug said, in which also he preached, having gone to, having gone forth, he preached to the spirits who were in prison.

Boyer and others, including Harris, have proposed emendations at this point because, well, for grammatical reasons, but also because they think that, in fact, it might be a mistake, that, in fact, this is talking about the old early Christian tradition about Enoch who was preaching, the preaching of Enoch, according to some of the apocryphal materials.

So, I mean, it strikes me that that's a plausible place where you might need an emendation. So, what percentage do you believe of the New Testament is impacted by viable meaning textual variants? I've never put a percentage on something like that because I'm not sure that percentage actually means anything.

I mean, for example, if I speak a sentence in 100 words and I change only one of the words, but the word that I change is whether I say the word not or not, the entire sentence is reversed in meaning.

Well, it'd only be a 1 change, but it'd be really important. So, I don't think percentages, I've never really tried to calculate percentages because I don't think they matter. You have often said that there are verses where variants change the meaning of an entire book.

Could you give us some examples? Of verses changing an entire book? Yeah, sure. I think that, I actually do think that if Hebrews 2 .9 said that Jesus died apart from God, that there is no place in Hebrews then where Jesus is said to have died by the grace of God.

And that the meaning now, I think, for Hebrews means that Jesus died like a full flesh and blood human being without any divine comfort or support. If the reading is not koros theu, but karas theu, that he died by the grace of God, then, in fact, you do have the teaching that Jesus' death was an act of divine grace in Hebrews, which otherwise you don't have.

And yet, when you argued that point in the Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, did you not argue that koros theu is consistent with the theology of Hebrews? Yeah, the variant changes it. How can you argue that it's consistent with the theology of Hebrews if the variant changes it?

I'm not saying koros. I'm saying that karas, depending on which variant you have, the meaning of the book changes. So, nowhere else in the book do you have this idea of Jesus' death that would be presented in Hebrews 2 .9 based upon reading 1 10th century manuscripts and Origins manuscripts, at least some of Origins manuscripts.

You said the majority, but I don't know where Origins actually said that. I'm sorry, I don't understand your question. So, your assertion then is that the book of Hebrews would not present that view of the atonement of Jesus unless you have that reading in Hebrews 2 .9.

Elsewhere, it just doesn't... Nowhere else does Hebrews say that Jesus died by the grace of God. This is the one place. I understand that, but you believe that the original is koros because that is consistent with the writing of Hebrews, with the theology of Hebrews.

And the variant changes that. Away from it. Okay, I understand what you're saying. On the Unbelievable Radio program in London, you discuss the length of time that exists between the writing of Paul's letter to the Galatians and the first extant copy, that being 150 years.

You describe this time period as enormous. That's a quote. Could you tell us what term you would use to describe the time period between, say, the original writings of Suetonius or Tacitus or Pliny and their first extant manuscript copies?

Very enormous. Sorry, ginormous would be a good one? Ginormous. Ginormous, okay. I mean, ginormous doesn't cover it. The New Testament, we have much earlier attestation than for any other book from antiquity.

What you can't do is then say, well, then you can't trust any book from antiquity. Okay, yes. Right, that's right. So it would be correct to write a book called misquoting Suetonius? Absolutely. Scholars do this.

Scholars write books all the time about how you don't know about what Plato actually wrote or what Homer wrote or Suetonius or Tacitus, Euripides. This is just what scholars do. Of course, there are scads of books on just these topics.

And so when you cite them in your works, you will say, according to the best sources, and we'll question the reliability of Suetonius or Gospel of Thomas. There's no scholar who's an expert in Suetonius or Cicero or the Gospel of Thomas who would tell you that we absolutely know what these texts originally said.

So when you say, know what these texts originally said, but they will believe that we have a sufficiently clear knowledge to quote Suetonius, you quote Suetonius, don't you? Yes, of course. I quote the manuscript tradition of Suetonius.

I mean, it's just understood among scholars what you're quoting. And so you say in your books, I'm not really quoting Suetonius. I'm just, this isn't really what he said. I'm saying that we don't have the original text for any writing from the ancient world.

The New Testament is no different. Just as you can't establish the original text of the New Testament because you don't have sufficient evidence, you can't establish the original text of Suetonius because you don't have original evidence.

For some of these authors, I mean, the manuscript tradition is pathetic. I mean, for some very important works from antiquity, we have one manuscript that's a palimpsest. And so, I mean, yes, absolutely, we have exactly the same problem.

And when you say that, well, nobody goes on about the Gospel of Thomas, absolutely wrong. Scholars of the Gospel of Thomas talk about this all the time. I mean, this is a major issue of scholarship. I'm sorry, I didn't say that they don't discuss such things, sir, but anyway.

Peter Williams of Cambridge suggested that if you were to edit an edition of the Greek New Testament using all your own decisions regarding textual variants, that it would differ less from the Nessial and UBS platform than the Textus Receptus does.

Would you agree? Yes. So, you would say if you included all of your own readings, such as, depending on Codex Beze and Mark 141, for the reading of anger, would you put that in your text? Yeah, I would.

Okay. And yet, the resultant text would be less different than the King James is from the New American Standard if it was translated? I'm sorry, you lost me there because I thought we were talking about Greek.

Well, yes, but I'm trying to give an illustration to the people in the audience. The King James is translated from the TR. The New American Standard is translated from the NA -27, or actually NA -25. I think the last one was 26.

But the point is that the differences in readings would be less than you have if you're sitting there with a King James versus a New American Standard. Would that be correct? I don't know. I've never actually thought about it.

It seems to me it would make a big difference whether you want to say Jesus got angry at a leper or whether he loved him. It seems pretty significant. Okay. And looking at that particular one, you do believe that Orgis Thais is the original there?

That's right. Would you comment on what has been said by Dr. Parker, for example, where he says the more he studied Codex Beze Cantabrigiantis, the more he's become convinced that its unique readings, especially when they're alone, are insignificant if you're searching for the original reading?

Or Dr. Ollin's assertion that any of the readings of Beze when they do not have earlier attestation should be looked at somewhat askance? Yeah, well, Ollin doesn't like Codex Beze. Parker loves Codex Beze, but he does have this suspicion about it.

I believe Parker agrees with me on Mark 141, doesn't he? I have no idea what he says about 141. He didn't comment on it in Codex Beze in his book on it. Yeah, no, it's a great book, but I think that he agrees with me on Mark 141.

However, is it not true that Scrivener, Metzger in the book you have right there and commenting on Beze, they all recognize that Codex Beze is incredibly free? Oh yeah, I think so too. I think a lot of its variants, in fact, are very strange indeed.

It just shows that how early manuscripts differ so widely from one another. This is a case in point. So if Codex Beze adds all sorts of commentary, the number of steps Paul stepped down, the time frame when he lectured in Acts, all these things are added.

Why wouldn't it be more likely, given that there is no earlier manuscript support for that reading, that the writer of Codex D saw the very same strong language that you yourself have pointed to in your argumentation?

He casts him out. He strongly upbraids him and made a change, as he did in so many other places in his writings. Yeah, that's a standard argument. That's what people have said for years, and I disagree with it.

I think that, in fact, on internal grounds, there are solid reasons for thinking that it was Orgis Theis. My principal reasoning has nothing to do with the value of Codex Beze, as you probably know. I mean, you've read my articles on it.

So I assume you've read my article on Mark 141. I have. So Codex Beze is, to some extent, neither here nor there. It provides us with a reading, but it isn't the strong argument for the reading being original.

Okay, and would that be one of the readings that you feel changes the entire meaning of a book? Well, no, I wouldn't put it that way with that reading. I would say that that reading provides a different nuance.

Jesus gets angry a couple of times in the Gospel of Mark, and it's interesting to try and see why he gets angry in the Gospel of Mark. And this would be another place where he gets angry at Mark. I mean, it struck most scribes as a little bit odd for him to get angry at this point, and this leper comes up and wants to be healed, and it says Jesus got angry.

And so, well, that's a little hard to figure out. No wonder they changed it to he felt compassion for the man. I mean, it makes sense that they would make the change. But in fact, he probably said he got angry.

And then the task of the exegete, the interpreter, is to try and make sense of why it is now it says that Jesus got angry when this leper approached him. And so, it changes the meaning of the book to the extent that it gives you a fuller understanding of why Jesus gets angry in the Gospel of Mark.

By the way, he doesn't get angry in Matthew or Luke. When you repeatedly say that we don't know what the original writings of the New Testament said, given that there are entire sections of text where there is no variation basically at all, would you agree that we know what those sections of the New Testament said?

Okay, let me explain why, because I don't think I've explained it very well. Let's say Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians, and they got a copy. And then somebody made a copy of that original, and then made a couple mistakes.

And then somebody copied that copy, made a few mistakes. And then the original was lost, and the first copy was lost. And that all other manuscripts ultimately derive from that third copy. In other words, that third copy was, the original wasn't copied anymore, the first copy wasn't copied anymore.

The second copy was copied twice, and both of those was copied five times, and each of those was copied 20 times. So, they all go back in a genealogical line to the third copy rather than to the original.

All you can reconstruct is what was in the third copy. And all manuscripts, when they agree 95 of the time, or whatever number you want to put on it, when they agree 95 of the time, that just shows that they all go back to that copy.

It doesn't show they go back to the original. And so, this kind of perspective, I want to make sure that we're all understanding exactly what you're saying. This is why you would say that if anything was ever inspired, in essence, we'd have to have the original for it to be inspired.

No, look, I told you long ago that this was not going to be a debate about my doctrine of inspiration. I'm not saying anything has to be one way or the other. God could have inspired the originals and then decided to allow scribes to change the originals.

God could have inspired all the textual variants. I mean, if you're saying if it's impossible, then when you're talking about God, nothing is impossible. The church father origin maintained that all of the textual variants were inspired by God, that he inspired the scribes.

So, well, that's perfectly fine if that's what you want to think. I simply don't think so. My view is that if God wanted us to have his words, he wouldn't have allowed his words to be changed so that we don't know what the words were.

So the standard then that would have to exist for you to have maintained the position that you held would have been either the originals or some perfect copy thereof. Why would God not allow the originals to be preserved?

I used to ask myself that question. I mean, if he inspired Mark to write down this book, why wouldn't he let it? I mean, it wouldn't be impossible for it to be preserved. There are other books that are preserved that long.

Why wouldn't he tell Christians, you know, keep that book so that you have something to judge the copies by? But he didn't do that. We don't have the original. So it made me suspect that maybe God wasn't that interested in giving us his words.

If he was, why didn't he give them to us? That was my question. So clearly that's not the perspective of the apostles themselves, who themselves did not have access to any originals of the Old Testament, and yet they quoted freely from the Old Testament based upon even translations of the Old Testament.

That's right. It was not their view. I'm sorry? That is not their view. Right. So as you are thinking about this then— I should say, though, when they quote the Old Testament, it's a very interesting thing because they quote it in different forms, and in the form they quote it often is not the form that we have it.

Matthew, for example, quotes the Old Testament sometimes. He'll give a quotation of Scripture that you can't find in the Bible. Why is that? Because he had a different form than we have. So to apply your standard then, how could there have been any revelation given without the ability for perfect copying down through the ages?

It didn't have to be perfectly copied. God could have just preserved the originals. So if there is any claimed Scripture from antiquity that does not have the originals— the Qur 'an has textual variation in it— that can't possibly come from God then?