In Defense of Scripture: Bart Ehrman, Steven Anderson, Chris Pinto

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A jumbo edition of the program today, starting off with a little information on Bart Ehrman's most recent anti-Christian book and the Christian response ( http://www.amazon.com/How-God-Became-Jesus-Nature----ebook/dp/B00I2P2OVS ) to it.

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And welcome to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday morning, beautiful Tuesday morning here in Phoenix, Arizona.
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Nice and breezy outside, and it's just a glorious day here.
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A Dividing Line in special defense of the Bible, dealing with three topics today.
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Bart Ehrman's new book, a recent Noise of Thunder episode, and the release of New World Order Bible versions.
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Try to come up with some kind of sound effects for that. Anyway, at least
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I assume it's been released since I have a copy. I wasn't sent a copy. I was given a copy by a friend of mine who was given a copy by Steven Anderson at a gym.
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So I'm sure, I'm sure it's just in the mail, and it's gonna take some time to get here. I'm sure that's exactly what's going on.
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Anyways, we'll be looking at all those on the program today, and you might say, what do they have all in common? Well, interesting, a lot more than you might think, which as we get about going, we'll see.
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I warned you, I don't know how long ago it was, sometime last year when it was announced that Bart Ehrman has a new anti -Christian book coming out, and I wish people would just be honest.
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I wish Bart Ehrman would be honest. He makes his money by attacking the
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Christian faith. He says he does not, but it's very clear and obvious that he does.
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Just take a look at the last number of books he's written, Jesus Interrupted, Misquoting Jesus, God's Problem, Forged, and now
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How Jesus Became God. Look at the themes, and there is a very consistent theme here.
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Dr. Ehrman is very busy in attacking the heart of the Christian faith.
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Now, he might say, well, there are Christians that I'm not attacking. Yeah, they're the ultra -liberals who don't really believe anything at all.
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But as far as historic Orthodox Christianity is concerned, Bart Ehrman is our primary
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English -speaking critic, and it's not at all because he's coming up with anything new.
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In fact, he doesn't really claim to be coming up with anything new. Anyone who has gone at least through,
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I would say, a master's level would be well aware of every argument that Bart Ehrman has ever presented.
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It's standard stuff. It's the stuff that you will read from every liberal on the planet. But because Bart Ehrman is an apostate, and because Bart Ehrman graduated from Princeton, and because Bart Ehrman studied under Bruce Metzger, then he is granted expertise in all things.
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Now, it's amazing to me that this has gone unchallenged. Well, unchallenged by most anyways.
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The reality is that I'm one of the few people that I know, everybody in the audience who has read
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Bart Ehrman's doctoral dissertation, raise your hand. Hmm, yeah, okay.
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Not many people, not many people. For those who are interested, it's on the development of a particular strain, a particular portion of the
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Alexandrian text type found in certain early Egyptian writers.
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And while that would certainly be worthy of a PhD in textual critical studies,
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I don't know why that results in a granting of expertise, especially in the areas of exegesis and theology, for which
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I cannot tell that Bart Ehrman has any particular expertise at all. So, but again, the whole point is, he's an unbeliever, but he was once a believer, and therefore that makes him just the cat's meow, as far as an unbelieving world is concerned.
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And so now he's coming out with a book. I believe the official release date is March 25th, so about a week from now,
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How Jesus Became God. Now what's interesting, and what is at least somewhat appropriate here, is
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HarperCollins Publishing has decided to do something interesting. They are releasing dueling books.
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They're releasing Ehrman's book, but they are also releasing a book edited, or contributed to, by a number of Christian scholars who are responding to Ehrman.
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And if I am correct, I believe they either just, Justin Brierley either just recorded or will record very soon, an encounter between Bart Ehrman and one of the authors of this book.
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I'm referring to the book, How God Became Jesus, The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus' Divine Nature, a response to Bart Ehrman, which will be released the same time as Ehrman's book.
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And we have Michael Byrd, Craig Evans, Simon Gathercole, which is the primary name
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I'm and Charles Hill, those are the two primary names I'm excited about, and Chris Tilling.
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And they have done Yeoman's work in, very quickly, I could tell.
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Now I haven't seen Ehrman's book, but I did see How God Became Jesus when
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I was in London. And so I saw a pre -publication manuscript of it, and I have some quotes from it that I managed to grab, that has given me a good idea of where Ehrman's coming from.
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Now, I predicted, you guys can go back, I'm not Rush Limbaugh, I don't have a staff, high -paid staff, of people to go back and grab audio from old programs.
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And my microphone is neither golden, nor from what Rich is telling me, overly high quality.
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And we're gonna be working on that, I guess, getting a new microphone. But I always thought it looked pretty high quality.
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But anyway, so we're not in that league, so I can't go back and play this for you to make myself look really good.
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But I predicted what Bart Ehrman's book would be about, and I pretty much nailed it.
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Which, again, doesn't take a whole lot of insight, if you've been reading a lot of Bart Ehrman, which I have.
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I've read a lot of, I think I have all of Ehrman's stuff in my library, actually. But you know,
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I debated the guy, and so I, unlike him, took the time to listen carefully to what he was saying, and to his perspectives.
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And so I know where he's coming from, so predicting what he's gonna say on this subject wasn't overly difficult to do.
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Given his view of the New Testament, given he doesn't believe that any of their authors were eyewitnesses, given the late date of the
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Gospels, given his belief in forgeries, etc., etc., he's chopped the New Testament up into absolute mincemeat.
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And so out of that mincemeat, out of all that self -contradictory stuff, then he's free to rearrange it in any order he wants to rearrange it in, to come up with support for any development theory or evolutionary theory he wants to come up with, as far as the deity of Christ is concerned.
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And so, since Jesus, since none of the Gospels are really historically accurate, they can't tell us anything about what
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Jesus really believed, then nobody in Jesus, Jesus didn't believe himself to be God, nobody during Jesus' life believed him to be
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God. That's where he starts. And then, of course, in line with his complete enslavement to the
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Bauer hypothesis, you have all these different groups. He has to support his theory about all these different groups that were competing with one another.
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And so there's these different kinds of Christologies. So you've got, you know, your adoptionism, and eventually the full exaltation
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Christology group wins out over the others. But it's all just this mishmash, and it's all just the result of history over time, and all that kind of stuff.
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So it's all evolutionary, and what you have in the
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New Testament are just fragments of, you know, one group, another group. You can never, for Ehrman, you can never, ever, ever read, even a single author, looking for harmony or consistency.
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It must be read as being self -contradictory. It's just a given. Just a given.
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Nobody could possibly have been on the same page. They're all going all sorts of different directions. He has to do that so he can have all these different competing groups and chop
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Christology up into all these different parts and pieces. And so I, for one, am going to be extremely excited.
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I'm going to be watching my Twitter feed to see the announcement from Justin Brierley of when the
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Ehrman -Gatherick Hall conversation is going to take place. Not enough time in one unbelievable program to hear those two go at it.
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It would be really, it's going to be really exciting. I can't wait for that. So that's exciting.
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So anyways, once the book is out, I have it on pre -order.
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Obviously, I'll suffer through Ehrman's book as well. At least at high speed, it doesn't take as long.
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But I'll suffer that. I may want to read the response before I read the original.
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I don't know. But we'll see. But obviously, we'll have a further discussion of that. But just to let you know what's coming and that it's pretty much what we told you it was going to be.
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Nothing new. And again, I personally have a real hard time with the level of arrogance that Bart Ehrman displays when he pretends to be an exegete or an expert in these things when there's no particular reason to think that he is.
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He believes his own press way too much, way, way, way too much. And it's a shame.
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Anyway, so not much on Ehrman there. Just a warning, just to let you know.
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And to let you know, you may want to pre -order How God Became Jesus as well.
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It'll be coming out soon. I've pre -ordered the Kindle version, but the paperback version might come out before the
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Kindle version, actually. It normally does, in fact. But we will, of course, have a review of those various issues.
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I was looking over, again, I don't want to go into too much of what I read, but one thing
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I know I'm going to be focusing in on, and I would love to see Ehrman challenged to do some debates on these issues.
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And I would love to debate Ehrman on this particular subject, but he tries.
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His interpretation exegesis of the Carmen Christi is horrific.
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It's really bad. Really, really bad. And I think rather easily refuted, and I think he'd have a hard time maintaining that in any kind of debate.
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But I don't know that he's ever going to expose himself to that kind of refutation.
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We will see. Okay. As I said, I was handed a copy
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Sunday night by a friend at church of New World Order Bible versions.
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I guess I left the DVD in my bag in the other room.
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It's got the shrouded figure over all these Bibles and your standard conspiracy stuff.
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So I burned it to MP3 and rode out to Lake Pleasant yesterday, and it didn't take all that much time to get through it.
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And yeah, there we go. So the four that they want to focus on are the
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NIV, the New King James, the New Living Translation, the ESV. So there's the cover right there.
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And New World Order Bible version, say Paul Wittenberger film.
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All right. And I love that Anderson is now using even as avatar picture from my couch in my office where my long sword is going directly through his head.
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It's just sort of funny, the camera angle on that, but that's what he's using. And I'm not going to talk about this today, but we do have some new
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Cantor stuff. And you know how many times we talked about Pravda Theological Seminary, Veritas Theological Seminary?
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Well, did you know Pravda still exists? I found out in Ukraine, there's Pravda. There is the actual current issue of Pravda.
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See, there's this Pravda right there. There's truth. Anyway, thank you,
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Nick, for the copy of Pravda. We'll talk more about that. Anyway, so I listened to it and we got to the end.
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And actually what they do is they have the closing credits. I figured it was done. Then they have a quote unquote gospel presentation.
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Interestingly enough, it's a false gospel presentation. No repentance. In fact, it's specifically said in the presentation, you do not have to repent of your sins.
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You do not have to repent of your sins. So it's a repentance -less, non -gospel presentation, which just gives you, again, anyone who buys into that kind of reading of the text of Scripture is so far removed from any meaningful understanding of Scripture that it's really hard to take almost anything else they have to say.
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But that's what is presented at the end. I can't read those fonts.
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They're too small. But one of the pastors over in Sacramento, I would love to...
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There's a church over in Sacramento that wants me to come over and I want to try to get over there. And what would make it really interesting if Figge's listening today or in channeling like that would be to see if the folks up in Sacramento could contact this fellow and work out a debate or something like that.
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I think it'd be great. That would be very interesting to do. But anyhow, I got done listening to this and I'm just like, why on earth did
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I invest over two hours in that conversation? The material that they used in that conversation might have, of me actually speaking, might have added up to 90 seconds.
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I haven't actually sat down and measured it. But of me actually speaking, not just of Anderson asking me a question, but it might have been 90 seconds, maybe two minutes.
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I haven't sat down. It's pitiful. And the longest section was a joke.
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Believe it or not, and I don't know if I told you this, the longest section made in the film was about the
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NWT and marshmallow juice. That's actually in the film.
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That's actually in the film. Because I had made the statement that the primary mistranslations in the New World Translation are where they disagree with historical
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Christianity. And he disagreed with that. Well, I still think he's wrong. Marshmallow juice may be a weird, or whatever it was, marshmallow something might be a very weird rendering.
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But the point is these specific mistranslations that are indefensible are specifically on the topic.
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So the New World Translation disagrees with biblical Christianity. That's the whole purpose. That's the whole reason they produced the thing, was they wouldn't have to be explaining those verses all the time, at least from the
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King James or some other Bible. And so anyway, even though they show a section,
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I'm going to show you here a section where they're coming into the office. At one point, you see him walking right past where Rich is right now, where the control stuff is for the dividing line, and walk into my office.
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And we didn't know that they were taping at that point, but that's what they did. And they put that in the film. And they show that part.
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And they asked me one question about Sinaiticus. I give about a 20 -second response, and then they're gone on to something else.
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It's just amazing how little of the interview. And of course,
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I'm still hoping, they said they would do this, but I've gotten some indication that they may not.
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But I'm still hoping they'll release the entire conversation. Because I'll be perfectly honest with you, that entire conversation has a hundred times more information of interest to someone who wants to actually know something about Bible translation.
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A hundred times more information than what's found in this film. A hundred times. Easily. Without question.
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The stuff that I'm going to respond to in this, is the beginning of the film, where they try to say that the modern translations, and they focus upon the
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ESV, NIV, NLT, which is just silly, and NKJV, talk about, and never even explain, what's going on in the
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Bible. And I'm like, okay, the textual difference that would divide those off, the translational difference then divides the
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NLT off. I don't even think the NLT is a translation. It's still a paraphrase.
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So you've got the NIV and ESV pretty close together, though the NIV is much freer than the
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ESV. You got the NLT out in the ozone layer, and then the NKJV has a completely different textual basis.
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But those are the four that they go after. I mean, this film is not intended to enlighten anyone, to clear confusion, anything like that at all.
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Its audience is for the already convinced and the ignorant. That's it. It's actually the already convinced ignorant, together, is who the audience is here.
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And it is an absolute shame that that is the case. A tremendous waste of time and effort.
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But anyway, toward the beginning of the film, they try to say the modern translations deny the deity of Christ.
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And of course, there are modern translations that deny the deity of Christ. No one disputes that, but the ones they're looking at would not be included in that list, by any stretch of the imagination.
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And every single textual argument made in this film, thoroughly, fully refuted in the
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King James only controversy. And has been refuted since 1994. Every single one of them.
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That means Anderson knows that. And I know he knows that because he's read my book very carefully. He found a typographical error in the second edition.
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We had to retype set all the Greek and trying to switch over the Unicode. I know exactly how this one error happened.
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He caught that or somebody caught it. He's the one who brought it to my attention. So he has no excuses, but never does this film even pretend to fairly deal with the issues or to present to the site.
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It's just reprehensible. It is absolutely reprehensible. I do not understand the mindset of people like this.
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But anyway, I'm going to show you something. I'm going to deal with their allegations about missing verses and stuff like that at the beginning.
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Because like I said, easily refuted, Bible 101 level stuff. Very, very simply done.
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And the rest of it's all sorts of Illuminati conspiracy theory wackiness.
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And we'll look at a couple of those things. But other than that, all
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I'm going to show you today was something that just made me laugh. Now, of course,
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I listened to all of it on a ride, so I wasn't watching it. But I had sort of skimmed through it.
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And I happened to catch this thing. And it's just hilarious, what happened in irony in this.
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In fact, what I'm going to do, let me change what I have here. Let me show you something that is a regular part of my
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New Testament Reliability presentation. Those of you who have seen that presentation, you've been in the audience, maybe you picked up a book or something like that, the wretched version of it, or you saw it online when
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Lane Chaplin recorded it years ago for Trinity. Whatever.
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You may have seen this before. Well, you've seen this before. Here is
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P72. And I'm sorry. Okay. And I show this in almost every single presentation
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I do, because I saw this manuscript. I saw this very page in 1993 in Denver, Colorado, when
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I was debating Jerry Madetik's up there. It was on display. And I've told the story many times about how
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Rich and I were sitting in a health food restaurant one morning called Winchell's.
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And I was looking through the newspaper, which I almost never do. And I saw an announcement that this manuscript was going to be on display.
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I said, we're going. And you had to go in. I guess back then you couldn't.
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How did we get the tickets? Do you remember? Yeah, because you couldn't do it online in 93.
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I thought we had gotten them for a certain time period. Oh, I had to come back.
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Okay. That's what I thought. All right. Anyways. So we go in, and this is one of the first things displayed. And there were tiaras and diamonds and all sorts of stuff on display elsewhere, but this was the only biblical manuscript.
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And so I go over to it, and I'm just in hog heaven. And I'm reading this thing, and oh, look at the nomena sacra and all this stuff.
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And Rich is standing there looking at it, and these people would come up, and they'd sort of look down at it, and they'd look at the description.
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And I'm sort of ignoring them. And they'd sort of look over at Rich, and they'd go, can he read that?
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And Rich would go, yeah. And they'd go, look, Harold, this guy can read this. And they all start coming over, and this crowd starts gathering, and the security people get upset.
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Yes? Well, let's keep in mind, as we're walking in, there's all kinds of signs saying you've got to keep moving.
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Security's watching. I didn't say that. What's that? I didn't say anything about you have to keep moving. Oh, yeah, no. There was keep moving.
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There was all kinds of stuff. So the reason I'm getting nervous is because the security guards are taking notice of Fred and Ethel taking notice of you.
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Yeah, yeah. Well, I didn't say anything about keeping moving. And I was moving from one foot to the other, so I think that qualifies.
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So anyway, so this is, P72 is the earliest papyri manuscript we have of 1st, 2nd
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Peter, and Jude. And you can actually see right here, you can see, this is actually readable,
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Petru Epistole Be, so this is the beginning of 2nd Peter, and here's the end of 1st
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Peter right here. And what I like to do is I highlight this area and then blow it up.
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And this is an example of the Granville Sharp construction there in 2nd
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Peter 1 .1, where Jesus identified as God. Now, this, of course, is quite relevant to Bart Ehrman.
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Bart Ehrman would say that 2nd Peter is a forgery, it's much later, it's representative 1 stream here, etc.,
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etc. It's also directly relevant to people like Dan Brown and the
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Da Vinci Code and the idea that Constantine made up the deity of Christ when, obviously, this is teaching the deity of Christ long before Constantine even takes his first breath.
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So it's rather important. And you can make a very strong case in light of the fact that Peter uses a number of other
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Granville Sharp constructions in his epistle, that he specifically means us to read this as our
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God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Here you can see Soteros right there, there's
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Savior, Jesus Christ, there's a gnomonosacro. This is interesting, this particular writer here,
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God has two letters here, it's Jesus and Christ, three letters. Different people in papyri use different systems for the gnomonosacro.
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It's a fascinating area. It's a fascinating area of study. But anyway, so I've actually translated this text and seen it in person and I'm very intimately familiar with it and use it in my presentations and all the rest of that stuff.
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Okay, so there's the background. Now, let's find my cursor here, there it is, and go back and let me play you now a portion of the film and just watch carefully and you'll see why
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I found this so ironic. When we look at the Bible versions that led up to the
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King James, Tyndale, Matthew, Coverdale, Great Bible, Bishop's Bible, Geneva Bible, they all line up with the
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King James. They all basically say the same thing as the King James. Which, by the way, is a duh for what reason?
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Well, they're using the same text, even though actually, actually, there would be a number of differences based upon when those translations relied primarily upon the
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Latin Vulgate, even though the King James is heavily influenced by the Latin Vulgate as well, which, of course, was the official translation and version of the
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Roman Catholic Church. They don't mention that part, but anyway. James Bible is the culmination of the
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Bibles that preceded it. So if the King James Bible is consistent with all the other
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English Bibles that led up to it, why are these modern Bibles so different? Dr.
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James White is a guy who has debated against people that are King James only. He's written a book against those that are
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King James only. He's considered to be the expert of why King James onlyism is wrong.
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So we're going to go talk to him and figure out what his arguments are. There's where the dividing line is right there.
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That's where we're at right now. All right. How are you doing, Dr. James White? Thank you so much for speaking with us today.
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Can you just give me Codex Sinaiticus in a nutshell and Codex B in a nutshell?
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Both Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are the primary objects of the vitriol of the
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King James only movement because of the fact that they were so central in the development of a
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New Testament text other than the textus receptus. Two men by the names of Westcott and Hort.
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Now, by the way, was that I think that was just one sentence, wasn't it? I think that was just what I got one sentence there.
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They put together a critical text mainly based on two manuscripts known as Sinaiticus or Codex Aleph and Vaticanus or Codex B.
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And these two manuscripts were thought by Westcott and Hort to be older and therefore more reliable than the other
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Greek texts that had been used in the textus receptus. The modern Bibles are supposedly the result of modern archaeology and modern scholarship and modern discovery.
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I mean, even the people who promote these modern Bibles will tell you, well, the modern publishers just have more resources available to them today.
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They just have manuscripts that just weren't available to the King James translators. That's why the modern
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Bibles are better, they'll say. And the reason they say that is because the manuscripts that the modern
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Bibles are translated from, the NIV, etc., are newer discoveries, meaning that they were buried for centuries.
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Now, let me ask you something. Do you believe that the true Bible was buried for centuries? No. Did you catch it?
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Did you see it go by? Let me back it up here just just a second here.
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James translators, that's why the modern Bibles are better. What's that? And the reason they say that is because the manuscripts that the modern
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Bibles are translated from, the NIV, etc., are newer discoveries, meaning that they were buried for centuries. Let me back it up here just a second here. James translators, that's why the modern Bibles are better. What's that? I wonder where they got that. That's p72. That's the exact same page.
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There's Petra Epistolae Bay. Right there is the Granville Sharp construction. That's p72.
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That's 2 Peter 1 1. And the great irony is that this film started out with them talking about how these perversions are trying to deny the deity of Christ.
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And yet right here on the screen, did they know this? I doubt it. I doubt it.
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I mean, Anderson is no dummy. He's worked as a German translator.
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He reads at least some Greek. But being able to read the printed
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Greek is not the same as being able to read this. I mean, this is a lot tougher. And most people who can read, even with some facility, might look at that line right there and go,
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I am not sure what that is. That's difficult to read. But did they know that they were actually putting on the screen one of the non -Byzantine early papyri that are so important to the modern textual platform that actually utterly destroys their own thesis that these manuscripts try to deny the deity of Christ?
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Because there you've got the deity of Christ in one of the earliest manuscripts we have in the New Testament, more clearly translated by the new
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King James, the ESV, and the NIV. Now, I don't even know what NLT reads. Would someone who would actually admit to owning?
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Well, I bet you I have the NLT in accordance someplace.
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It undoubtedly would be buried toward the bottom of my list under the, you've never used me before.
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Why are you bringing me up now? Well, wait a minute. Maybe not.
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I should, somewhere. I've got the NET. That's the New King James. Somebody find out how the
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NLT renders 2 Peter 1 .1, because I do know that the
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ESV, NIV render it better, more clearly, as a testimony of the deity of Christ than the
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King James does. And the New King James does this as well, both the Titus 2 .13
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and 2 Peter 1 .1. So what a tremendous irony that right as they're attacking the wealth of information that every single one of the
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King James translators would have loved to have had. I mean, nowhere in this is there, even though they laud the
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King James translators, they never quote from the preface. The preface to the readers, because it is so utterly detrimental to the fiction that is
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King James only. It is truly an amazing thing.
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And I just, the irony of it was really, really funny. Yeah. Okay.
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There's the NLT from, did whatever put that there? Okay. Thank you, whatever. I'm writing to you to share, writing to you who share the precious faith we have.
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This faith was given to you because the justice and fairness of Jesus Christ, our God and Savior. So there you have our
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God and Savior. So all of the ones that they identify as perversions have a clearer testimony to the deity of Christ, the 2
34:30
Peter 1 .1 than the King James does. And yet have you watched the trailers?
34:37
Got little eight -year -olds going, I'm going to be King James only my whole life. And it's just like, oh, so sad.
34:43
So very, very sad. So anyways, we will of course have more to say about that as time goes on here.
34:54
But I wanted to share that with you. Now, the next item, next item up for bid, takes us to Chris Pinto.
35:07
It's been a while since we've talked about noise of thunder radio, but once again, someone in Twitter, and I apologize to all you folks in Twitter, when you send me something,
35:18
I end up using it on the air and I forget who it was. I don't even know how to go that far back in Twitter to find those things.
35:24
I hope you don't feel slighted when I get, sometimes
35:29
I can remember if it's right in front of me, I'll go, oh yeah, that guy right there. But other times, someone, you know what?
35:40
I think the guy who mentioned, yeah, the guy who mentioned this to me, the word day is in his
35:48
Twitter handle and there's green in the background.
35:55
How's that? That's sort of like when I'm writing, well, I remember there was a cactus on the right and I've gone as far back as tweet deck will allow me to go.
36:10
It's just, it's not loading anymore. I don't know why. This takes me back.
36:16
Yeah. Unfortunately, but it was somebody with a day somewhere in his handle that gave me this reference.
36:27
So if you are listening, maybe you can tweet me and I'll see it or something like that.
36:34
So anyhow, someone in channels is, is that BibleWorks?
36:40
No, I'm a Mac guy. I know BibleWorks is going to put out a Mac version, but no, that's Accordance. I was a BibleWorks guy for a long time.
36:46
But they told me they were never going Mac. So I had to switch platforms, but anyway,
36:53
Chris Pinto did a program last week.
36:58
I listened to it on Saturday. So this would have even been, it would have been like Thursday or Friday, something like that.
37:08
And once again, uh, brother Pinto, um, you know, promoting his conspiracy theory stuff and, and, um, he seems to find the expression of unbelief and liberalism to be extremely troubling.
37:28
Now I understand that. I, um, he didn't have the, uh, the joy of, uh, going to a, a liberal seminary and having to deal with that on a regular, uh, basis as I did.
37:43
But, um, he, he seems to, to think that all you've got to do is you look at the
37:51
BBC and you play with the BBC says, and that should be enough to warn us about Codex Sinaiticus.
38:00
Not seemingly getting the idea that there is nothing in Christianity, the BBC hasn't found a way of twisting.
38:06
It wouldn't matter if it was Sinaiticus, whether Sinaiticus existed or not would be irrelevant. They'd find some reason.
38:13
They want to unbelieve that they just, they just, that they want to be unbelievers. So they'll twist anything.
38:20
Um, so it, it strikes me as again, illustrative of the, of the mindset.
38:28
And, and, and my concern is I don't put Chris Pinto in the same category as Steven Anderson.
38:35
I've not found any videos of, uh, of Chris Pinto being tased at a border anywhere or anything like that.
38:43
Um, I don't have any videos of Chris Pinto, uh, uh, kicking, uh, pulpits, uh, screaming against Calvinism.
38:51
Um, and so I don't put them there, but they say a lot of the same things. And Anderson has the stuff about the
39:00
Illuminati and the Masons. Chris Pinto has stuff about Illuminati and Masons and, uh, you know, they're all behind everything and all the conspiracy theory stuff.
39:10
So they unfortunately say a lot of the same things. And the real problem here is that when it comes to actually doing a defense of the
39:20
Bible against people like a Bart Ehrman, against, uh,
39:25
Muslim Muslims who borrow Bart Ehrman, uh, to try to establish the authority of the
39:31
Quran, um, that kind of stuff. Uh, these guys are not in that arena and nor should they be.
39:41
It would be ugly if they ever wandered in. It really would be. I would not want to see
39:46
Steven Anderson or Chris Pinto taking on a Bart Ehrman or a Shabbir Ali. No, that would be, that would not be a good thing.
39:55
You know, to this day, the most commonly watched video, uh, debate of Akhmed Didat is with, um, yeah, thank you.
40:09
Uh, is with Jimmy Spiker. Now, you know, that's exactly what this would be, is if these guys, these guys are not on the front lines.
40:20
They're not. They're not on the front lines providing a meaningful apologetic defense of the
40:26
Bible against the real people who are doing the real damage. They're not out there.
40:33
And so their arguments, um, collapse when faced with the reality of the material that's there.
40:47
And they, they, pretty much this type of stuff only works within a very shielded, small community.
40:54
It doesn't work out in the real world. Okay. So with that in mind,
41:00
I want to listen to, uh, some of the things that Chris Pinto had to realize.
41:06
Well, you want to, you want to hear how I cued it up? Okay. This is, this is, as I was, as I was editing this and putting this together, this is what
41:13
Chris Pinto sounds like, uh, the way I was listening to him. They do all of the things that we've been warning you about, brethren, all of the things in terms of their view of the history of the
41:20
Bible. They zero in. So there's, there's, that's how I was listening to it. Um, this is, this is real time.
41:26
They do all of the things that we've been warning you about, brethren, all of the things in terms of their view of the history of the
41:34
Bible. Now, but that is just too slow for us to get through it. So I'm going to play it not at 1 .2,
41:41
but at 1 .4, which is a little fast, uh, but it'll help us to get through stuff.
41:46
So just listen a little bit more closely and all will be well. So, um, he starts off talking about a
41:54
BBC documentary, The Bible Hunters. Now, again, um, what do you expect?
42:02
Do you expect fair treatment? Do you expect accuracy out of the
42:08
BBC talking about anything about Christian history at all? No, you get the most sensationalistic wackoism.
42:15
They're never gonna invite anybody on who's going to have anything meaningful to say that that's just the
42:20
BBC. It's just a given. Um, so keep that in mind as we, as we listen to this.
42:29
They do all of the things that we've been warning you about, brethren, all of the things in terms of their view of the history of the
42:34
Bible. They zero in on Codex Sinaticus. By the way, uh, boy, whatever's on it today, uh, isn't she?
42:41
She's, she's, uh, what'd you have, a little extra caffeine this morning or something? I'm not sure what's going on with the young lady from, uh, from Colorado.
42:50
Um, she's definitely not partaking of what most of the other people in Colorado are partaking of her. She wouldn't be moving very fast at all.
42:57
Yeah. So, uh, she'd be too busy with the munchies, but, um, yes, it was, uh,
43:04
Paul one, two T two day, Paul one T two day. Yes.
43:09
Thank you. Uh, whatever for, uh, she tracked down the guy that gave me that link. So there you go.
43:16
Um, I appreciate that. I didn't know anybody was looking for that, but there you go. They do all of the things that we've been warning you about, brethren, all of the things in terms of their view of the history of the
43:26
Bible. They zero in on Codex Sinaticus. They talk about the importance of Sinaticus. You're going to hear clips to that effect.
43:31
Then why is Codex Sinaticus important? Well, because it cast doubt on the last 12 verses of Mark and hence the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
43:40
Now. So there are liberals who, who say that the last 12 verses of Mark, uh, are not original to Mark.
43:50
And therefore there's no resurrection. And I just go think for a moment, first of all, is there something new here is the only place in the
44:03
Bible where the resurrection is taught the longer ending of Mark. What about Luke?
44:10
What about Matthew? What about John? What about Acts? I mean, why accept this obvious liberal lunacy without challenging it?
44:27
Instead, the Chris Pinto response is, well, you see, we need to, we need to have those, that long ending of Mark to have the resurrection.
44:37
Oh, so, so now what you want to do is you've got to admit that there are manuscripts that don't contain the longer ending of Mark.
44:44
There's always going to be a question about that longer ending of Mark. And that's the only basis of the resurrection. That's where, that's the hill you're going to die on.
44:54
You're not going to, not going to go to Matthew, not going to go to Luke, not going to demonstrate the consistency, not going to demonstrate the consistency with the early patristic, patristic sources that that's been the
45:01
Christian testimony from the beginning. You're not going to go there. Amazing. Amazing.
45:07
That's why I say these guys aren't on the front lines. They're not taking these people on. And we can see why. All of that is contained in this film, but I want you to hear some of the arguments to hear how it goes.
45:18
And, but here, let's, let's start with the first clip. And then we're going to talk about their approach to this, but it's painfully obvious what they're doing.
45:25
Yeah, it's painfully obvious what they're doing. Well, you may have to play a little bit with this because I don't know why, but it's almost like he had this playing on a
45:35
DVD player, sitting next to the microphone or something like that. The quality of the BBC documentary part may not even be usable.
45:40
Let's see if it is. 200 years ago, for the first time, the historical story of Jesus and the reliability of new
45:50
Testament gospels came under attack. What historians discovered was that the texts on which
45:57
Christianity were based were not reliable. They weren't historically authentic. And that meant what price the word of God.
46:04
Now, immediately, who is this guy? I would love to see this guy on Unbelievable with a
46:10
Simon Gathercolt or, or with a Peter Williams. There was somebody that can just take them apart at the seams as we've done over and over again.
46:18
Why not focus on that? Why sit there and go, the BBC finds liberals.
46:24
And by the way, saying this the first time was 200 years ago, shows such an incredible level of naivete.
46:30
It really does. I mean, evidently, not too many people read much about guys like Celsus anymore.
46:41
But this is just another illustration of utter ignorance on the part of moderns who don't know anything about history.
46:54
Because if you've read any of the early church fathers, you know that they were concerned about such things as the harmony of the gospels because there were critics attacking it then too.
47:09
Even before there was a Byzantine text or a King James, there were critics of the
47:16
Christian faith then. That's why you have the Hexapla and that's why have Tatian's Diatessaron and that's why you have
47:23
Origen responding to Celsus and Jerome and Augustine. If you know anything about the early church, you know that this kind of argumentation was going on back then.
47:36
So to sit there and glibly say, well, 200 years ago, the first time just makes me just want to go, seriously, you've got a
47:43
PhD in what? I mean, honestly, but of course,
47:49
Chris Pindo doesn't challenge that because that wouldn't fit the paradigm thing.
47:56
Okay. Roughly at the beginning of the 19th century, although you had a lot of skeptical attacks that had come even before that, but they were never taken seriously.
48:04
They were never taken seriously, which is why people wrote entire books in response to them.
48:10
I'm not sure what he's referring to. If he is referring to the early church, he can't be speaking seriously because they did take him seriously.
48:16
They were always seen as, well, they're just heretics. They're unbelievers. They're skeptics. Yeah, that's exactly what the
48:22
BBC is. But you take it pretty seriously, don't you? Yeah, you do seem to be taking him very, very seriously,
48:29
Chris. In other words, they said, okay, we agree with the skeptics and the problems that they have with this verse and that verse and this one and this one, et cetera, et cetera, and so on.
48:37
We're going to start to embrace their arguments. However, we disagree with their conclusion because their conclusion is because of all these problems in the text, they then conclude the
48:45
Bible cannot be the word of God. And you had now your scholars who began to say, well, we agree that all these things are problems and that there were a lot of forgeries that were entered into the text, et cetera, but we still think the
48:57
Bible is the word of God anyway. And now the reason they embrace that view is because when Tischendorf went hunting for Bibles, supposedly his stated ambition was to find the earliest copies of the text so he could refute, he said, the skeptics.
49:10
He's going to prove that they're wrong. Well, I'm glad that Chris is now pointing this out. It would have been nice if that was in the film rather than all the shots at Tischendorf and trying to make him look like a buffoon.
49:24
It would have been nice if they had mentioned, well, actually, Tischendorf's pretty consistent in stating that his purpose in doing what he was doing was to vindicate the inspiration of the text of the
49:38
Bible. And he knew that if you could find an old enough copy that you would be able to accomplish it.
49:47
And that's exactly what he thought he had done. With Sinaiticus, his response to German critical thinking still has much validity even to this day.
50:03
But again, that's where the real battle lines are. And unfortunately, the King James and Byzantine guys aren't on that battle line.
50:13
They're in the back lobbing short shells at those of us that are at the battle line. They're the ones, we're getting it from both directions.
50:21
We get them from the atheists in the front and the unbelievers in the front, and then we get them from the King James guys in the back, basically, is what you get going on.
50:30
And even though that's what he said he was setting out to do, what actually happened was his discovery of Codex Sinaiticus seemed to confirm many of their arguments and their suspicions.
50:40
That's the really odd sort of thing. I don't believe that's the case at all. Obviously, and again,
50:49
Chris Pindell seems to want to have his cake and eat it too. Because if Sinaiticus is this
50:57
Jesuit -used ploy, then the whole Simonides thing doesn't make any sense.
51:04
Because he never makes the accusation that he was trying to come up with a weird text to substantiate critics or any of that kind of stuff.
51:14
Instead, you've got this idea, well, yeah, he was just trying to make this as a present for the czar.
51:21
But the funny thing is, keep in mind, those of you who didn't take the time to listen to the encounter between myself and Chris Pindell on this subject, remember something that's important.
51:35
One of the issues that comes up is, why are there so many corrections in Sinaiticus?
51:42
And who made the corrections? And why are they in so many different hands? I just don't think we ever got any meaningful answers from Mr.
51:48
Pindell on those issues. But one of the things he's going to really focus in on here is a tremendous amount of inflation in a recent number given as to the number of variations in Sinaiticus.
52:07
Now, he sees that as an example of, look, it's really unreliable, but doesn't he realize that this new number he gives of 35 ,000 changes in Sinaiticus only makes his own thesis look all the more silly?
52:27
Oh, yeah, Simonides was a tremendous calligrapher, but, well, that'd make 35 ,000 corrections.
52:33
I'm not even sure who had the time to do that or who did it and how they did it in all these different hands, but there's 35 ,000 corrections.
52:41
He doesn't even seem to realize that he's chopping himself off the knees and, of course, that leaves him completely incapacitated to respond to the abuse of Sinaiticus by the
52:55
BBC saying, oh, it shows us the scribes didn't really think the text was fixed. What are you babbling about?
53:01
This book was in use for hundreds of years and the majority, well,
53:08
I'm not going to say the majority, you have to discern between the initial corrections that were made at the time of the production of the manuscript and changes that are made later on.
53:22
And when something is in use for as many hundreds of years as this was in use, it's easy to understand why changes will be made later on.
53:30
The one I've used a number of times, in fact, you know what? That was a
53:37
Star Trek thing. Let me see. Do I have it here?
53:42
I do. I just need to change back to desktop presenter.
53:50
You got it? You have the screen.
53:59
Can you see? For some reason, you selected desktop presenter and not it. I don't know what it is.
54:05
What are you talking about? Accordance. I'm not in accordance. I want desktop presenter. Oh, desktop presenter.
54:10
You've got desktop presenter showing itself. Okay. There we go. How about now? Yeah, that works.
54:15
Okay, good. Wonderful. So I've got it up in the lower corner for you there.
54:22
Ah, make it big. Make it big. All right. Make it big. Big, big, big. Big, big, big. Okay. Here is the textual variant of 1
54:29
Timothy 3 .16. Okay. I make a presentation. In fact,
54:35
I'll just go back here. Here's the textual information on 1
54:40
Timothy 3 .16 as you would find it. This is from Lagos. You'll notice that in the modern texts, you have
54:47
Haas, Ephanorothe, and Sarki, who was manifest in the flesh. You have the textual variant indicator here.
54:54
Here's the indicator in the apparatus. And you'll see that the text is read by the original
55:00
Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, CFG, 3365, a few others, Didymus, Epiphanius.
55:06
You have Haas in the original reading of D. D, remember, is a diglot.
55:14
So it's Latin. It's a Western text, Latin, Greek, another Latin text, which makes sense.
55:19
You have the reading of Thaos by the corrector of Sinaiticus, the corrector of Alexandrinus, second hand of C, second hand of D, Psi 1739 -1881, which are minuscule manuscripts, but were copied from second or third century manuscripts, so they're important.
55:34
And of course, that's the majority text reading and the manuscript of the Vulgate. Then I say, that still hasn't explained to us what the difference is.
55:42
I show folks the lines, use color to show the difference in the lines, and then blow up what the difference between Thaos and Haas is.
55:52
And as you can see, Thaos, Theta Sigma in unsealed text, and Haas are extremely similar, especially when they are in, when
56:01
Thaos is in the Nominus Sacra, the abbreviation that Christians used in the early text.
56:08
Then I give you a blow -up of Codex Sinaiticus.
56:15
Now remember, I don't know how many years I've been using this, but it's been at least five, six, seven years.
56:22
And so long before I ever heard of Chris Pinto and his theories and so on and so forth,
56:29
I was making this presentation. Was there something you wanted to say? I was just going to say, when you started the beginning of that portion, when we were trying to get it maximized, we lost connection with YouTube, but it came back,
56:40
I'm going to say, about 30 seconds into that. I just want to announce that that was not the Jesuits, it was
56:47
YouTube. We're back. But YouTube might be controlled by the Jesuits.
56:52
That's a good point. Yeah. Wait a minute. Oh yeah, it's Ancestry, the Mormon's house. You get confused.
56:59
That's true. Yeah, if YouTube ever buys Ancestry .com, then it was going to be really, really strange.
57:05
But anyway, okay. So despite the interruption here, here is 1
57:12
Timothy 3 .16, and here is Codex Sinaiticus. You can see here musterion, and then you have three dots, and then you have theta, sigma written above.
57:25
Now, there's Haas. Anybody who looks at this, you don't have to be a trained papyrologist, or in this case, not really papyri, is it?
57:36
But anyway, a studier of manuscripts, that Omicron there looks just like that Omicron there.
57:47
And that sigma there looks just like that sigma there, or that sigma there. That's the original.
57:54
The original reading of Sinaiticus is Haas. And it doesn't take anybody to really think too hard to see that this is a much later hand.
58:10
Completely different ink, completely different formation of the letters. And that's not how thetas are written here.
58:21
That's not how a final form sigma would be written.
58:30
This is a much, much later hand. Now, why would that happen? Well, theas becomes the ecclesiastical text reading.
58:39
It becomes the Byzantine text reading. And so here you have a manuscript, and this is actually argumentation against the
58:48
Crispinto theory. Why would there be a Haas? Why would it be changed in this way with three dots into theas?
58:57
What you have here is a manuscript that's in use for hundreds of years. And as the
59:03
Byzantine text becomes predominant, then someone who is accustomed to, familiar with, the
59:08
Byzantine reading of theas makes the alteration. Thankfully, does not attempt to, does it using dots and putting it in line rather than trying to efface this.
59:20
But very clearly, the original is Haas and not theas in Sinaiticus.
59:27
So, there you have an example of this type of...
59:35
Now, taking us back to Crispinto's show, how does this prove that the scribes thought the
59:49
New Testament text was unreliable? It doesn't. It actually proves the opposite.
59:56
If they had thought that it was just sort of a fluid thing, why make corrections? Why not go, oh, this is just another fine way of reading it?
01:00:05
No, you make corrections because you think that there is an original reading, and whoever made this change at a much later period of time thought theas was the original reading.
01:00:16
That doesn't mean that the scribes had some postmodern, ooey -gooey, squishy view.
01:00:21
And so my point is, instead of refuting the BBC stupidity, Crispinto uses the
01:00:29
BBC stupidity to attack Sinaiticus, and that's wrong.
01:00:38
That's just wrong. And I think it's interesting that...
01:00:46
But anyways, I'm going to go back to accordance here. Okay. All right.
01:00:51
So, we go back to whatever it was we were listening to here, because we need to get this done within the next 28 minutes or so.
01:00:59
But on closer inspection, the codex revealed some disturbing features. Christians believed that the
01:01:05
Bible was the unchanged and unchangeable Word of God. Yet this earliest Bible was full of edits and corrections.
01:01:11
Now, again, the BBC is playing on the ignorance of its audience.
01:01:20
Not so much the ignorance of Christians. And I know I've met a lot of Christians, and unfortunately, church hasn't done a really good job in educating its people all the time.
01:01:34
But I know an entire church filled with people who are fully aware of the fact that there are textual variants in the
01:01:47
New Testament and still believe the Bible is Word of God. I know of at least one church, and I know there's many others.
01:01:54
So here we have the BBC playing on ignorance. Oh, Christians have thought the Bible is unchanging
01:02:00
Word of God, but there's textual variants in this manuscript. I would love to get these people into a context where they had to answer for their misrepresentations.
01:02:14
But that's probably why my phone doesn't ring very often asking me to do things like that. Erasmus wrote about textual variants.
01:02:27
Erasmus wrote about textual variants in the production of the Textus Receptus. Erasmus admitted to it sometimes inserting entire text from the
01:02:36
Latin Vulgate into the Greek manuscripts. The King James Bible.
01:02:45
The King James Bible. Let me point something out, and I would love...I have a feeling Chris Pinto is going to listen to this.
01:02:51
He might be listening right now because I mentioned on Twitter that I was going to respond to his program. He might be listening right now.
01:02:59
So I'm going to challenge Chris Pinto. In light of his own statements, could you please explain the approximately 37 times...37
01:03:18
times that the King James translators in the original publication of the
01:03:26
King James in the New Testament gave marginal notes giving the readings of different manuscripts for that particular text?
01:03:39
Since you all seem to have such a hard time with the new
01:03:44
King James doing that, with modern translators, you're undercutting the authority of the Word of God. You're causing people to doubt the veracity of the
01:03:51
Word of God. Well, Mr. Pinto, Mr. Anderson, all you guys who say the same things but don't seem to think these things through, was the
01:04:01
King James doing the same thing? When the King James gave a different reading than had been found in Wycliffe or Tyndale or Coverdale or the
01:04:09
Bishop's Bible or the Jeeva Bible, were the King James translators trying to undercut the confidence of people in the
01:04:19
Word of God? When they gave 582 alternative translations in marginal notes, 112 giving a more literal rendering of the
01:04:33
Greek than the translators suited proper for the text itself, you think they were undercutting the authority of the
01:04:42
Word of God? For example, in Luke 1736, in the 1611
01:04:49
King James version of the Bible, beside the words, two men shall be in the field, the one shall be taken, the other left, the margin reads, quotes, this 36th verse is wanting in most of the
01:05:01
Greek copies. Really? Yeah, it is.
01:05:10
In fact, interestingly enough, that came in from the
01:05:16
Latin Vulgate. It isn't a part of the TR.
01:05:22
Those of you who are TR only, you should not want Luke 1736 in the
01:05:28
King James because it comes from the Latin Vulgate. The translators noted it.
01:05:35
Were they trying to undercut the authority of the Bible? Just want some consistency here.
01:05:42
Just want some consistency. Unfortunately, we don't normally get consistency from our
01:05:49
King James -only friends. Virtually every page has corrections on it.
01:05:54
There are nearly 35 ,000 corrections in the entire manuscript. Some of these are more obvious.
01:06:00
Okay, did everybody hear that? Did everybody hear what Dr. Scott McKendrick just said? Now, this is a very recent documentary that was just produced a short time ago.
01:06:09
Now, you all heard, if you saw Tears Among the Wheat, if you listened to Codex Sinaticus audio CD, and if you have looked at the other
01:06:15
BBC documentary on the Codex Sinaticus, the one called Beautiful Books, we have the link on our website at noiseofthunder .com.
01:06:22
Dr. McKendrick says in that one, several years ago, he said there were 23 ,000 corrections in the
01:06:29
Codex Sinaticus. Now he's saying that there's 35 ,000 corrections. 35 ,000.
01:06:35
How did they come up with an extra, what is that, 12 ,000 corrections somewhere in the past few years? Now it's 35 ,000 corrections.
01:06:43
Unbelievable. Okay, we're going to go to our commercial. Okay. He never discusses this, unfortunately.
01:06:50
The rest of us, who I think are a little more serious about this subject, we were going to ask you, sorry,
01:06:57
Chris, but have you thought about how it can go from 23 ,000 to 35 ,000?
01:07:03
Did you think about it? The manuscript hasn't changed. Tischendorf went through it.
01:07:10
People have gone through this thing with a fine tooth comb. I have, like so many other people, the facsimile of this thing sitting on my shelf.
01:07:20
It hasn't changed. I have not walked into my office one time and found someone scribbling in my facsimile of Codex Sinaticus.
01:07:27
Not one time. So this massive inflation of numbers, you think that maybe they're using a different standard of counting now.
01:07:42
Maybe they're counting every word, every syllable, every letter.
01:07:49
I don't know. But to go from about 8 ,000 to 35 ,000 sounds like someone's counting pretty much every word now.
01:08:00
So if you have a line or if you have four or five words in a marginal note or something like that, now that all of a sudden jumps in number, that would make sense if they've just completely changed the rules they're using for counting this stuff.
01:08:20
But you couldn't change the manuscript anymore. It's completely online. It's in print. It's everywhere.
01:08:27
And it's not like it's so huge that, well, we're just now getting to the last portions of the
01:08:33
Old Testament and we're discovering all these things. No. The idea being, man, if you look at any pages, you're not going to be able to find the text from all the changes.
01:08:45
It's online. Go look at it yourself. It's not like that.
01:08:53
But again, given his own theory, can you see how fatal this is to his own theory?
01:09:01
You've got a limited amount of time. Simonides is writing out the original text and then you've got multiple hands doing 35 ,000 corrections.
01:09:12
Don't you see how absolutely fatal this is to your theory? Evidently not.
01:09:19
Evidently not. But should notice those things, but not getting to it.
01:09:25
Okay, we continue on. Most of the thousands of edits are tiny, though any change can be regarded as significant.
01:09:32
And when one edit concerns words uttered by Jesus as he was dying on the cross, it's enormously challenging.
01:09:38
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Oddly, this was marked as doubtful by one of the correctors of the
01:09:44
Sinaticus, but reinstated by a later corrector. There are 35 ,000 edits in the
01:09:50
Codex Sinaticus, which suggests that the scribes were unsure about the integrity of the biblical text. But the anomalies of the
01:09:56
Codex didn't end there. Okay, no, now he's going to go on to the next thing, which is the shorter ending of the
01:10:02
Gospel of Mark, which is the, that's what he's alluding to. But notice, they've just questioned, now in Luke, when
01:10:08
Jesus is being crucified and he says, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. I've talked about this on the program before. James White and others question whether or not they've actually believed that that is not a legitimate verse in the
01:10:19
New Testament. One that most every Christian around the world is familiar with. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
01:10:25
But what was the inspiration for doubting that? The initial inspiration for doubting it was Codex Sinaticus.
01:10:31
No, it was not. That is, that is not the case at all.
01:10:38
Let's take a look at it. It's Luke 23, 34. Don't have time to repeat everything that we did on this program.
01:10:46
I don't remember when it was. Oh, Algo is in so we will algo that. But I had
01:10:54
Alan Kirshner on the program a number of years ago, and we discussed, we did for an hour, we did
01:11:00
Luke 23, 34. And what's interesting is that we are told that, well, up until Sinaticus, there was no reason to question the words.
01:11:19
And Jesus said, Father, forgive them if they do not know what they're doing. But that's not the case.
01:11:25
I have, again, if you look at the information, if you just look up Kirshner, because he's an author, so look up Luke 23, 34 on the blog, you'll be able to find the program that we did on that particular subject.
01:11:46
And yeah, wow, it was in 2005?
01:11:54
From the lips of Jesus, inscribable hand, Father, forgive them. That'd be interesting. I mean,
01:12:00
I'm going to go ahead and take a look at that, see if that's it. No, now that, well, that will do it for you.
01:12:13
That's not the dividing line we did. But that's a very lengthy paper. I have it here in the store.
01:12:19
It was September 4th, 2008. Okay, September 4th, 2008, August 5th, 2012,
01:12:25
April, wait a minute, April 5th, 2012. Oh, okay. All right. Why did
01:12:32
I read that as, I'm not sure why I read that the way I did. Well, this one actually says - 2012, 04, 05.
01:12:39
Okay, that's where it is. Okay, it cut off to the next line, so I didn't see the 2012 part.
01:12:44
This one actually states, though, this is the one where you're discussing Luke 23, 34. Right, right. So there's a dividing line where we did it, and there is an article from Alan Kirshner for April 5th of 2012 on this that also gives you all the, pretty much all the information that you would need without necessarily just looking at my accordance setup over here.
01:13:08
But the point is that Luke 23, 34, you will note that in the data that is found here, that one of the manuscripts that does not contain this line is
01:13:32
Codex Washingtonianus. I've called that Washingtonius.
01:13:37
I've been corrected. It's Washingtonianus, which is much harder to say and is just sort of a
01:13:45
Latin silliness. But anyway, which in the Gospels is a
01:13:50
Byzantine text. D also does not have it, which is a
01:13:56
Western text. Vaticanus, which had been known long before Sinaiticus, does not have that.
01:14:04
And interestingly enough, when the papyri begin to be discovered, P75 one of our earliest and best sources for the
01:14:12
Gospel of Luke, likewise, do not have that. As well as the Syriac and Boheric, which are based upon an
01:14:21
Alexandrian original. The text is originally written in Sinaiticus, then deleted, and then reinserted.
01:14:36
So you have at least three different hands at work on that particular.
01:14:42
Alexandrianus, evidently, since it's in brackets, is damaged there, but given the amount of space, is assumed to have contained it.
01:14:51
Especially because Alexandrianus is Byzantine in the Gospels, but not outside of the
01:14:59
Gospels. So this was known before Sinaiticus came along.
01:15:09
And what you have are all the major manuscript families joining together in having testimony in their earliest representatives against the originality of this particular text.
01:15:26
So to say, well, what was the originality of the original, here's the statement again.
01:15:33
One that most every Christian around the world is familiar with. Oh, so because every Christian around the world is familiar with it, it must be biblical, right?
01:15:41
I mean, sadly, I have a feeling if we asked the question, you know, God helps those who help themselves, that would probably need to be added to the canon, too.
01:15:48
Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. But what was the inspiration for doubting that? The initial inspiration for doubting it was
01:15:54
Codex Sinaiticus. No, it wasn't. No, it wasn't. And we've just demonstrated that that is the case.
01:16:02
The arrival of Sinaiticus was an absolute bombshell in Victorian society and in the world, not just of theology, but across the whole community.
01:16:09
For the first time, it could be demonstrated without any doubt to the scholarly mind that the end of Mark, as people have known it for hundreds of years, was not the end as Mark had written it.
01:16:18
That meant that there was a real doubt about all of the Gospels. That meant there was a doubt about all of the
01:16:26
Gospels. Oh, give me a break. Who is this guy? Again, why isn't the next breath out of Chris Pinto's mouth the easy refutation of this kind of silliness?
01:16:41
I mean, this is just BBC venting of its hatred of Christianity.
01:16:49
It's not serious. Haven't you heard the unbelievable programs where you actually get these people on with someone who's meaningful, who can take them apart?
01:17:00
But no, that's not what we get. It's like, oh, see? See? We told you.
01:17:05
If you have that Sinaiticus thing, then these people must be right.
01:17:12
No, they're not. No, they're not. So because we can recognize a problem with a later addition to the ending of the
01:17:24
Gospel of Mark, that means that we don't know the Resurrection took place. That means we don't know that at Hebrews 7 .24,
01:17:31
the term operabaton is used, even though every Greek manuscript in the world has it. Seriously? That kind of radical skepticism?
01:17:38
You just capitulate to it and go, oh, because of that, then we need to be King James only. We need to enshrine this particular.
01:17:47
That's why this kind of stuff is absolutely battery acid to serious apologetics.
01:17:56
You can't send people into the university setting with this kind of mindset.
01:18:02
You can't do it. It's not going to work. Okay. Now I want you to listen to a
01:18:09
Cambridge scholar there. Cambridge scholar, just because he's from Cambridge, that doesn't mean that what he's saying is true. We understand that.
01:18:14
But nevertheless, this is not just some hack. Okay. This is what they're teaching at the major universities of the world.
01:18:20
And notice what he says about Sinaiticus. He says when Sinaiticus was discovered, it was a bombshell. It was a bombshell to discover these alternative readings.
01:18:30
Which had been known for a long time, but not by everybody in society. This is why, brethren,
01:18:36
I believe that the whole story surrounding Codex Sinaiticus is very important to understand.
01:18:43
I .e., you need to buy a conspiracy theory that these are all Jesuit frauds anyways. Because most Christians today do not realize how the world of Christian academia and Bible scholarship changed as a result of that manuscript in particular.
01:18:56
And this is yet another documentary that makes that point. So in other words, believe the
01:19:01
BBC and their ridiculous assertion. But what these scholars don't want to face is they don't want to face the real history of the manuscripts that they're using and the fact that they come from highly doubtful and dubious points of origin.
01:19:15
Yeah, that's us. Believing scholars today who do not buy into the
01:19:20
King James stuff and the conspiracy stuff and the Simonides made up Sinaiticus and the
01:19:27
Vaticanus' Jesuit fraud and all the papyri have been influenced by the
01:19:32
Jesuits. You know, if you don't produce films that are just, you know, the term Jesuit appears 74 ,000 times, then that's the people that are being talked about here.
01:19:43
Highly doubtful. And that's the part that they don't really want to be confronted with. And they get bent out of shape when we confront them.
01:19:51
Who have you confronted other than me? And I don't think I was one who's bent out of shape after this debate.
01:19:57
Always remember when you hear these arguments, brethren, what they're doing is they are using highly doubtful manuscripts to cast doubt on the
01:20:04
Word of God. And what Christians should... On the Word of God. Notice, again, he says it's not
01:20:09
King James only, but in the mind of the King James onlyest, the King James, Word of God, same thing. Really take strength and confidence in is that all of this began roughly 200 years ago.
01:20:18
The skeptics... Don't worry about Celsus and all those guys. They didn't have... Never believed anyway, so they're always going to be taking potshots at the
01:20:26
Bible. But then it's the middle of the 19th century. It's 150 years ago. That's where the big changes happened, where people really began to doubt whether the
01:20:33
Bible was the inspired and errant Word of God. And these scholars are admitting it. They're admitting that these doubts crept in because of these doubtful manuscripts.
01:20:40
That's so important to understand, beloved. Okay. So in other words, you believe the history presented by the
01:20:47
BBC. And there you go. Now, remember... Yes? Well, I was just going to say, how many times can he say doubtful?
01:20:55
Because I think it's doubtful that he could say it more doubtfully. Doubtful, yeah. I understand. I mean, it's very doubtful that he's not doubtful.
01:21:04
It's doubtful he's counted enough times that he's said doubtful. Yeah. And who is it that's doubtful? Anyone. Anyway. The Father forgave them, for they know not what they do, was given a marginal note explaining that some manuscripts omit these words.
01:21:16
For most Christians, the text of the Bible and the Word of God had always meant one and the same thing.
01:21:23
Therefore, the appearance of a radically revised text and of a radically revised translation was bound to shake that belief.
01:21:30
Why should the public accept that this is the final revision? So here's... Because there were text notes in the 1881, but there were text notes in the 1611 too, and it didn't go...
01:21:45
Okay. Consistency. Okay. This is the big thing. We've got just enough time to...
01:21:51
The whole reason that Paul Day directed me to this was for this last section right here.
01:21:59
So we've got just enough time to cover it. We timed this one just about right, actually. Here's...
01:22:05
I'm actually going to slow it down a little bit more, so we... Here we go. Of the Christian population. What they're describing, brethren, is what has happened to Western civilization.
01:22:17
England and the United States in particular. You look at what happened from this time, from 1881, when the revision committee finished their work and they released the revised edition.
01:22:28
As a result of all of this, look from there until the present day, the last 130 years of Western civilization.
01:22:36
We have for the first time in the entire history of Christianity, we've got gay Christianity right now. That hasn't happened for two millennia, but it's happening right now.
01:22:47
Why? Because the foundation of the Christian faith has been shaken with modern day textual criticism.
01:22:55
There's no question about that. The people who are in denial of that, they are just denying what is obvious to everybody else because they don't want to accept it.
01:23:03
They want to defend the critical text and they don't realize or they're not willing to face the fact that the critical text has been put together on very shaky evidence and argument and theory.
01:23:16
It's been a series of theories that have been put together that have been devastating to the faith of Christianity because it has caused so many people, countless souls, to lose confidence in the
01:23:28
Bible as the inspired and errant word of God. There's no question about that. There's no question about it.
01:23:35
Well, what do you say? When someone actually thinks that Codex Sinaiticus is responsible for gay
01:23:44
Christianity, we have a pretty radically different understanding of why people believe in the word of God in the first place.
01:23:55
I have debated, quote unquote, gay
01:24:01
Christians. I don't think Chris Pinto has. I've taken on their best representatives.
01:24:08
I don't think Chris Pinto has. And my respect for acceptance of the existence of thankfulness for Codex Sinaiticus has never been a detriment because I'd like to challenge
01:24:24
Chris Pinto. Could you show me one place where Codex Sinaiticus is relevant to providing a meaningful biblical apologetic to homosexuality?
01:24:36
Does it not read Ars Inquietes? Is Romans 1 missing? What is it?
01:24:43
Well, okay, it's just the overall effect. You mean the overall effect of liberals who misuse the existence of textual variation as an argument against the
01:24:56
Bible? Is that what you mean? It has nothing to do with Sinaiticus. Even someone like a
01:25:04
Bart Ehrman would find this argumentation utterly fallacious because he will say the only important variants are the ones that came before the first manuscripts we have.
01:25:17
So the whole argument that, well, you know, the reason people don't believe in the Bible is because they can't trust anymore because of textual variation.
01:25:24
Is that really why people don't believe in the Bible? I've talked to a couple folks who actually made that argument, but the vast majority of folks had no knowledge.
01:25:35
They'd never heard of Sinaiticus, couldn't have cared less one way or the other. Their reasons for rejecting the
01:25:40
Bible's Word of God had nothing to do with its transmission over time. Later on, they might pick that up as a club to sort of defend themselves, but it had nothing to do with why they abandoned it in the first place.
01:25:54
The reality is Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, the papyri, provide us with the richest textual history of any work of antiquity, and the only way anyone's ever going to, on a historical level, enter into that field of debate is to stop playing this game and start recognizing what the real history of the text actually was.
01:26:19
And then you can see that God has preserved His Word, not with a photocopier, but by that immediate distribution throughout the known world, which precludes any purposeful editing and mangling of the text.
01:26:37
I've made that argument over and over again. What Chris Pinto is seeing is the secularization of the
01:26:44
Western mind, and a secularized mind will use anything to excuse its rebellion against God.
01:26:52
To say, we need to get rid of the things that the secular mind is using to excuse its rebellion is absurd, and can only be believed by those who are not in any way, shape, or form engaging the society itself and engaging that secular mind.
01:27:13
That's what caught my attention. It's because Sinaiticus! We've got gay Christianity! If you really think that, if you really think that, you're not even on the battlefield.
01:27:29
That noise of thunder is the cannons 30 miles away from where you are, because you're not even on the battlefield.
01:27:38
You're not making appropriate, proper distinctions in recognizing the real sources of unbelief.
01:27:46
So there you go. We covered a wide range of stuff today, and hopefully it was edifying to you and helpful to you as well.
01:27:55
We'll be back again on Thursday, Lord willing, and who knows what will happen since then.
01:28:00
I did see an amazing brief email from Ergon Kanner I've got to tell you about. It's just sad, but we'll get all to that in the future.