Is The Bible True? (White vs Price)

Alpha & Omega Ministries

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Comments are disabled.

00:01

First, I would like to introduce our topic, which is, Is the Bible True? And we hope that you are here to hear two of the best minds,

00:11

I think, on opposing sides of that particular question, and as well, we have probably one of the best -known moderators of any kind of debate format in the country with us this night as well.

00:22

Well, let me first introduce a gentleman who has authored such books as The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, Jesus is

00:31

Dead, the Pre -Nicene New Testament, and you can find him at his website at robertmprice .mindvendor

00:41

.com. Would you please welcome Dr. Robert Price. That's okay.

01:00

But I think Dr. Price, he could run the whole show if he'd like, but now

01:06

I'd also like to introduce to you Dr. James White, who is the director of Alpha Omega Ministries, which is a

01:11

Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona. He has authored or contributed to more than 20 books, including

01:18

The King James Only Controversy, The Forgotten Trinity, The Potter's Freedom, Scripture Alone, and The God Who Justifies.

01:24

He is an accomplished debater, having engaged in more than 75 moderated public debates with leading proponents of Roman Catholicism, Islam, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, as well as critics such as Bart Ehrman, John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, and John Shelby Spong.

01:38

Would you please welcome Dr. James White. And we have a special blessing here this evening.

01:51

We have a gentleman who serves as the president and chairman of the board of the North Carolina -based Christian Research Institute.

01:57

He is the host of The Bible Answer Man, which can be found here in the Tampa Bay area on AM 570

02:04

WTBN, 910 AM, broadcast and heard daily across the

02:09

United States and Canada, as well as around the world, through the internet equip .org. Hank is the author of several award -winning, best -selling books, including

02:18

The Prayer of Jesus, Christianity in Crisis, Counterfeit Revival, The Faith That Demonstrates the

02:24

Farce of Evolution, and Resurrection. Would you please welcome Hank Hanegraaff.

02:31

Hank takes it from here. Thank you very much for that warm welcome.

02:39

I am delighted to be here tonight to host a debate that hopefully is enlightening to all of you.

02:48

And as you listen to the debate, be wary of dogmatic assertions and open your ears to defensible arguments.

03:00

Solomon was perhaps the wisest man who ever lived. He wrote over 3 ,000 proverbs and 105 songs.

03:10

And in the book of Proverbs, he talks about wisdom and instruction, to understand the sayings of understanding, to receive instruction in wise behavior, righteousness, justice, and equity, to give prudence to the naive, to the youth, knowledge, and discretion.

03:31

A wise man will hear and increase in learning, and a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel, to understand a proverb and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles.

03:48

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

03:54

Tonight, we are going to be instructed by men who have devoted their lives to Erudite scholarship.

04:05

We ought to listen carefully to what they have to say, and then use the information to make a difference.

04:20

If you're an atheist, you have your job description. If you're a

04:26

Christian here tonight, you likewise have a job description. That job description is to be salt and light, to make a difference while there is yet time.

04:38

The format of tonight's debate, Is the Bible True?, begins with two 20 -minute opening statements.

04:48

First off will be Dr. Price, followed by Dr. White. Since the mind can only absorb what the seat can endure, there will be a five -minute break.

05:02

And then there'll be two 15 -minute rebuttals, beginning with Dr. Price, again followed by Dr.

05:10

White. Following the rebuttals, 15 -minute cross -examinations, again beginning with Dr.

05:18

Price, cross -examining Dr. White, then

05:24

Dr. White cross -examining Dr. Price, Price cross -examining Dr. White, and White cross -examining

05:31

Dr. Price. Each of those cross -examinations will last 15 minutes.

05:36

Then there'll be another five -minute break. Michael Fallon at that time will give you instructions so that you can write down questions.

05:46

Those questions will be gathered and then posed to Dr. White and Dr.

05:52

Price. After those questions are gathered, we will resume with 10 -minute closing statements, the first by Dr.

06:01

Price, followed again by Dr. White, another five -minute break to collect the questions, and then a 30 -minute question and answer session, which involves all of you.

06:13

There'll be a one -minute answer to your question and a 30 -minute – a 30 -second,

06:19

I should say, rebuttal. With that, we start the debate. First up, with a 20 -minute opening statement,

06:28

Dr. Robert Price. Here's three things you might not know about me, not that they're strictly relevant.

06:43

I love the Bible, I go to church, and I'm a Republican. Just think about that if you get bored of the rest of it.

06:50

Anyway, the evening's topic is the accuracy of the Bible, a gigantic topic.

06:57

To make it manageable, I've decided just to deal with the accuracy of the Gospels, which is where I gather the action is anyway.

07:04

Let me first affirm that personally, I do not approach the Gospels with the notorious naturalistic presuppositions that miracles cannot happen.

07:14

How could a mortal pipsqueak like me ever know such things? But I do ask you to keep in mind that even if miracles are possible, that in no way means that every story of a miracle ever told must be accurate.

07:32

And does the possibility of miracles have anything to do with whether particular sayings ascribed to Jesus are really his?

07:41

Well, George Eldon Ladd, the dean of evangelical New Testament scholars, thought so.

07:47

In his book, The New Testament and Criticism, he said he believed that the Holy Spirit providentially kept the transmission of Jesus' sayings and deeds accurate and free from unhistorical accretions.

08:01

In other words, it boiled down to a belief that the Gospels are divinely inspired and thus accurate.

08:09

That, I believe, is the controlling assumption, the supernaturalist presupposition of evangelical apologetics.

08:17

But it is not much of an apologetic. If it took divine supervision to keep distortions out, that implies such distortion was ordinarily to be expected, doesn't it?

08:30

That it would be probable, not improbable, without a miracle stopping it.

08:36

Ladd's is a faith statement, not a defense of the faith. Apologists seem to be unable to tell the difference.

08:46

Apologists argue that the Gospels stem from eyewitnesses and are too close to the events for any false reports or spurious sayings to have crept in.

08:57

The disciples would have been vigilant, we're told, to reject and suppress any such false accounts and sayings.

09:06

We even hear that the high Christologies of Paul, John, and the writer to the

09:12

Hebrews must reflect the self -understanding of Jesus since they were circulating while disciples of Jesus were still alive and they would have nixed any exaggerations.

09:24

Now all these assumptions are gratuitous. Someone's idea of what the apostles would have or might have or should have done is mere speculation.

09:35

In fact, it is all circular. Now let's see, first we need the

09:41

Gospels to be trustworthy. What would have to have happened for that to be the result?

09:48

Apologists seem to me to reason backwards from their preferred conclusion. But ironically, as I hope to show, it is the

09:56

Gospels themselves that cast doubt on these arguments. Again, we're told

10:02

Jesus' disciples would have spent their time quashing false or exaggerated reports of miracles so that any stories that survived must be legit.

10:13

The disciples are pictured here as a sort of first century version of Snopes, that internet site where they track down and debunk urban legends.

10:23

Well, if the apostles didn't have time to spend waiting on tables, I doubt they'd have had time for this either.

10:30

Besides, had the Twelve been on hand to document every single thing

10:36

Jesus might have done or said? What's that, Andrew? Someone told you the

10:41

Master did or said what? Well, I don't remember it, but I guess it could have been while we were away on that missionary journey.

10:50

Who knows? To tell such a person spreading his miracle story to cut it out, it wasn't authorized, let it just be like John telling the lone exorcist to stop casting out demons in Jesus' name because he was working their side of the street,

11:05

I doubt if it would have happened. What do you know? Mark tells us in Mark 7, 36 that Jesus himself,

11:12

I wonder if you ever noticed this, Jesus himself did try to hush up certain miracle stories and he couldn't do it.

11:21

He would tell those he healed not to tell anyone, presumably because he didn't want to get mobbed all the time.

11:28

But the more he told them, Mark says, the more they blabbed it. Now, I know what you're thinking. Mark tells us these stories were true reports, not false rumors.

11:38

But that's not the salient point. The point is, here we see Jesus himself trying to scotch miracle stories he didn't want circulating for whatever reason and it was impossible to suppress them.

11:53

Would the disciples have had any better luck? Form critics suggest that certain

12:00

Jesus sayings originated as prophecies of the risen Lord from heaven as when he said to Paul, my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness.

12:12

Isn't this anticipated when Jesus says, whoever hears you hears me and do not worry about what to say for in that hour

12:21

I will give you wisdom they cannot answer. People remember the sayings but may not always have bothered to segregate historical

12:30

Jesus sayings from risen Jesus prophecies. Apologists seem to hate this idea, but why?

12:39

If they believe in the resurrection and in prophecy, aren't these sayings just as good, just as authoritative as quotes from the

12:48

Galilean teacher? Surely the ancient Christians thought so. Indeed, it seems to me to keep the two categories separate implies a value judgment their faith would not have allowed them to make, namely that a prophecy from Jesus wasn't really from Jesus, you just made it up, didn't you?

13:09

I think they've written that off as blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Apologists point to 1

13:16

Corinthians 7 as proof that all early Christians were always careful to segregate their own statements from historical

13:24

Jesus quotes. And now concerning the unmarried, I have no command of the

13:29

Lord, but I give my opinion as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy. To the married,

13:37

I give charge, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not separate from her husband, etc.

13:44

To the rest, I say not the Lord, that if any brother who has a wife who is not a believer but she's willing to live with him, etc.,

13:52

etc. Keep in mind that Paul regards his own inspired rulings as commands of the

13:59

Lord, 1 Corinthians 14 .37, if anyone thinks he is a prophet or a pneumatic, he ought to acknowledge that what

14:07

I am writing to you is a command of the Lord. In 1 Corinthians 7 .10,

14:13

Paul fears what he's about to say may not be taken seriously enough, so he makes sure his readers understand that he has

14:20

God's will on the matter and no tentative opinion that they may take or leave as they see fit.

14:28

The Lord says, not me. In verse 12, Paul's back to more slippery issues that do not allow for absolute answers.

14:37

When things are inherently iffy, one cannot simply lay down the law, but in clearer matters one can and with divine authority.

14:47

Now in all of this, what Jesus of Nazareth may or may not have said is just not in view.

14:54

Might false historical, I'm sorry, false reports about Jesus have survived attempts of Christians to stymie them?

15:03

Presumably the historical Jesus was neither a drunkard nor a glutton, not a demoniac or a

15:09

Samaritan, yet we still hear these reports in the Gospels, neither suppressed nor, come to think of it, even denied.

15:18

Likewise, Matthew tells us that the report of Jesus' disciples absconding with his body and faking the resurrection had spread unchecked for decades and was still current as he wrote.

15:31

Now I'm assuming these reports are false, but it demonstrates that the disciples, even if they tried, couldn't purify the

15:39

Jesus tradition of false reports. There may be some, you know, that you don't suspect that they're actually false.

15:46

It's possible. Did heretical views about the nature of Christ get suppressed as long as his disciples were around to keep an eye out for such things?

15:57

Well Mark 8, 27 through 28 tells us that already during Jesus' ministry people held all sorts of views of him that we would consider heresy, yet Jesus made no attempt to clamp the lid on them.

16:09

So what if some imagined him to be the returned Elijah or Jeremiah? He told the disciples not to try to set anyone straight, but to keep the truth of themselves.

16:20

And he certainly cannot have been publicly teaching his messiahship or divinity as C .S.

16:25

Lewis pictured, since that option is the only one no one in the crowd proposes.

16:33

Skeptics have suggested that on Easter morning the disciples did not see Jesus himself, but only chance passers -by whom in their desperation they later inferred must have been

16:46

Jesus alive again, even though it didn't look like him. Ever notice that?

16:52

In other words, a false belief of the skeptical theory is a false belief in the resurrection stemmed from cases of mistaken identity abetted by wishful thinking.

17:03

Now is this scenario some contrived modern fabrication alien to the

17:08

Gospels? Maybe not. According to Mark 6, 16 and 8, 28, there are joyful reports among the disciples of the martyr

17:18

John the Baptist that their master has been raised from the dead and seen by many witnesses.

17:26

But Mark says it was all a case of mistaken identity. It was really

17:31

Jesus these people were seeing. They only thought it was their much -missed master.

17:38

Keep that in mind when you read the Easter stories where Mary or Peter or the Emmaus disciples first think they're seeing someone else and later realize it must have been

17:49

Jesus. Paul's teaching was drastically misrepresented already during his career.

17:56

Some viewed him as a libertine. Why not do evil that good may come, as some people slanderously charge us with saying their condemnation is just,

18:06

Romans 3, 8. Others circulated the distortion that Paul told Jews not to circumcise their children,

18:13

Acts 21, 21. Others claimed that Paul still preached the need for circumcision,

18:18

Galatians 5, 11, or that he had gone to Jerusalem for the approval of the 12 as soon as he was converted,

18:24

Galatians 1, 15 through 20, a version of events that he denied vociferously but which

18:30

Acts repeats. Paul had, it seems, little control over the distortion of his own teaching during his own career.

18:38

How can you be so sure the 12 had any better luck safeguarding the teacher of their master if they even tried?

18:47

They may have been the ones adding to it. The idea that no one could have fabricated teachings in Jesus' name and gotten away with it is really absurd once you think of the

18:57

Gnostic Gospels, like the Pistis Sophia, the dialogue of the Savior, the secret book of James, and the rest.

19:05

But you may say they didn't get away with it. We true Christians reject them as forgeries.

19:12

Well, plenty of other ancient Christians treasured them. Don't you see what's going on here?

19:17

It's really theological, not historical reasoning. We can reject that evidence because it's not in the canon.

19:26

Did the Gospel writers know what Jesus had and had not said? John, like the

19:31

Gospel of Thomas, has Jesus warned that if this temple be demolished, he will raise another in three days.

19:39

John admits Jesus said it, but he immediately allegorizes it. Jesus must have meant his body, not the

19:45

Herodian temple. But for Mark and Matthew, Jesus said no such thing, and only false witnesses say he did.

19:53

Luke says Stephen said it or was reported to have said it, though he leaves it out of the trial of Jesus altogether.

20:00

People are quick to misinterpret what they hear, filtering it through their expectations and biases.

20:07

What preacher has not been chagrined to learn what his parishioners think he said in a sermon?

20:13

I've had students complain to their parents at what they thought I was teaching, only to have the parents calm down when

20:21

I explained what I had actually said and that junior half -listening had distorted. Maybe it was just too new to them.

20:29

Similarly, I found myself frequently misquoted at the newspaper and edited misleadingly on TV, for instance, on the

20:36

Faith Under Fire program. I remember thinking, am I that stupid? In an interview on an

20:43

Australian podcast, I quipped that even if the Gospels had been written ten minutes after whatever events transpired, the historian could not simply accept what they said because of the typical ease and speed of distortion.

20:58

Well, Dr. White, for one, took me to mean, as I heard him say on his own podcast, that this means

21:03

I have a total skepticism about the past and our ability to reconstruct it. Dr.

21:09

White means well, and he's smarter than I am, he's certainly after the truth, but even he seems to have misconstrued what

21:15

I said, and if he didn't, that just underlines my own point because I'm misconstruing what I said. How much more easy must it have been to misunderstand and misrepresent

21:29

Jesus' sayings for disciples as stupid as Mark makes the twelve? And in Mark chapter four,

21:36

Jesus flatly tells the disciples that the crowds, though they idolize him, understand his teaching not at all.

21:44

So much for the oral tradition. Many apologists appeal to the theories of Riesenfeld and Gerhardsen who suppose that Jesus must have made his disciples memorize his sayings verbatim and pass them on, just as the rabbis supposedly did.

22:01

It was said of Rabbi Yohanan Ben -Zachai that he was like a plastered cistern that looseth not a drop.

22:09

It's, of course, a sealed cistern, not a drunk one. That is, he didn't lose a drop of the teaching committed to him.

22:17

But the very fact of spotlighting him in this way implies he was unique in this fidelity, not typical.

22:23

And Jacob Neusner has made it plain that no one in rabbinic Judaism could keep straight who said what when.

22:31

The same saying will be ascribed to three or more rabbis in the Mishnah, generations apart, as if each were the first to say it.

22:39

Neusner shows how individual sayings cannot be dated with any certainty earlier than the documents in which they appear, that backdating them to earlier sages was often just a way to win an argument, giving one's opinion a bit of additional clout by associating it with a big name.

22:58

Now this is precisely what forum critics think happened in the case of Jesus. Some believe

23:04

Christians should never fast because the kingdom had arrived and it would be futile to pour the new wine of the kingdom into the threadbare skins of Jewish practice.

23:15

So whoever held that view attributed it to Jesus. But someone else thought it was time to take up fasting again in remembrance of Jesus, the bridegroom now taken away.

23:27

So now Jesus was made to say that too. Someone else just couldn't imagine Christians not fasting any more than not praying.

23:35

So he has Jesus say that Christians fast all right, just not in order to be seen by others unlike the hypocrites.

23:43

Well which is it? Did Jesus say any of these things? If he somehow said them all, he was a first century

23:50

Robert Gibbs or Janet Napolitano. You can always try to reread, really rewrite the various sayings in such a way as to split the difference, but don't you see what you're doing?

24:04

You might as well admit the statements are incompatible and that you only want to jam them together because your real concern is the inerrancy of the

24:13

Bible, which you hold as a matter of dogma before you ever look at the evidence, at least that's what

24:18

I used to do. No one who lacked that controlling agenda would treat the text the way apologists do.

24:27

Did Jesus want to restrict the preaching of his gospel to Jews alone, skipping Samaritans and Gentiles as in Matthew 10?

24:35

Or did he throw open the gates to the whole world as in Matthew 28? Peter and the

24:40

Jerusalem elders debate this issue in Acts 11 and 15 with no one mentioning that Jesus ever said anything on the subject.

24:48

And if he had, these debates would never have happened. It seems natural then to suggest that Matthew 10, 5 through 6 was produced by someone who was against the

24:58

Gentile mission, while the Great Commission of Matthew 28 was the product of a supporter of the

25:04

Gentile mission. Each sought to add dominical clout to his position, pulling rank by imaginatively citing opinions of Jesus no one had ever heard before.

25:16

It's the most natural thing in the world. In the more recent case of Islam, we know that many holy men fabricated so -called traditions of the

25:25

Prophet Muhammad to claim his sanction for their favorite teachings or practices. Many even later admitted that they made them up, and no one blamed them since it was all for the sake of piety, okay?

25:39

They admitted they made them up since it was all for the sake of piety. That sounds exactly like what form critics picture happening in the

25:47

Jesus tradition. Now just because it might have happened this way doesn't mean it did, any more than the mere possibility that the disciples suppressed any invented sayings or stories means they did that.

26:02

You have to weigh each case, which the Jesus Seminar, for instance, spent 11 years doing.

26:10

That's hard work, and we can't wish it away because we prefer the simplicities of Sunday school.

26:26

Thank you, Dr. Price. Now for his 20 -minute opening statement respecting, is the

26:33

Bible true? Please welcome Dr. James White. Well, good evening and welcome.

26:49

It is exciting to see all of you here this evening. I'm especially excited to see Dr. Price here this evening.

26:54

I have been studying for this debate for a number of months now. I have come to know like he's an uncle or something like that, so I'm going to miss listening to you after this evening.

27:05

He is truly a man with an encyclopedic knowledge.

27:10

He's called the Bible geek for a good reason, and yet we need to also recognize, I think, that he is a radical skeptic.

27:19

I'm not sure if a lot of you are familiar with his books and his materials, but hopefully this evening some of those points will come out.

27:28

Dr. Price has often said that he doesn't care about majority opinions. He doesn't care about what the majority of scholars say, and he has often asked that people would respond to his arguments rather than simply using the argument from authority.

27:43

I'm going to do my best this evening to respond to his position and not to engage in the argument from authority.

27:53

Now this evening, we present a beginning, not an ending. When you leave this evening, your task will not be completed.

28:02

I believe that you will need to do more research, do more reading to think about what has been said.

28:09

You must see it as a beginning, not an end. I would encourage a serious student to follow this debate up with a comparison of Dr.

28:16

Price's work, especially his books, and I have them up on the screen right now,

28:22

Deconstructing Jesus and the Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, and I hope you will compare those works with such works as the

28:29

Jesus Legend that came out not all that long ago by Boyd and Eddy, Reinventing Jesus by Wallace et al, and Craig Keener's newly published massive tome,

28:41

The Historical Jesus of the Gospels. Tonight we can only open the topic, discuss the issues, and invite you to join into the discussion.

28:51

Now, I am going to present three points but no poems this evening. Three points because I believe that there is so much information that we could engage in this evening that we would really sort of get lost in all the details.

29:05

We're going to have enough time for cross -examination, hopefully, to flesh these things out. Point number one, we need to discuss the presuppositions that we bring to the study of history and to our understanding of even answering the question, is the

29:18

Bible true? My position is that it's difficult to debate whether the

29:23

Bible is true when it seems to me that Dr. Price rejects a priori any evidence upon which a positive answer could be given.

29:32

Now, we're going to need to dig into this because he began by saying, well, I don't have naturalistic presuppositions, but I believe that the principle of analogy, which he did not mention directly but which he has mentioned many times in his published works, is based upon a naturalistic presupposition that precludes any evidence that could give a positive answer to the question, is the

29:52

Bible true? Now, immediately, when someone says, ah, you're one of those people that says you have to allow for the supernatural, well, that's true, and they say, well, if that's the case, then you have to allow for any claim.

30:05

Any claim to supernaturalism must be accepted. That is not the case. I suggest to you that you in the audience this evening must examine each one of us for a very important term, consistency.

30:18

You must examine our presentations and how we interact with one another and how we deal with historical information for consistency.

30:27

That is the only way to determine what is true and what is false, that which is consistent.

30:33

And so I encourage you this evening to look at it in that way. I really believe that a naturalistic or historical critical perspective that rejects any possibility of God's having anything to do with this world as a presupposition is based upon a truncated worldview, a truncated view of reality that naturalism has seen in the principle of analogy.

30:56

The second point that I want to raise, Dr. Price's view of the authorship of the text, I believe is incapable of demonstration or defense.

31:05

It's theoretical, but it is a theory that flies against the consistent interpretation of the information.

31:11

And thirdly, the third point, and I'll go over each one of these now, the third is Dr. Price's view of the transmission of the text is contradicted,

31:19

I believe, by all the extant data. So let's look at those three points. Hopefully, that will provide us with a good basis for our discussion this evening.

31:26

In defense of point number one, I mentioned the principle of analogy. What is the principle of analogy?

31:33

Well, it is the statement that our understanding of the past must always be analogically rooted in our experience of the present.

31:42

For Dr. Price, this seems to mean that since there is no experience of supernatural events in the present, then it is outside the bounds of critical historiography to ever appeal to the supernatural.

31:54

Anything that is said about that must be mythical. Or as Bultmann put it, quote, the historical method includes the presupposition that history is a unity in the sense of a closed continuum of effects.

32:07

This closeness means that the continuum of historical happenings cannot be rent by the interference of supernatural transcendent powers, and that therefore there is no miracle in this sense of the word.

32:23

Now, clearly, as Ernst Troeltsch realized, that imports a whole worldview.

32:30

He said, quote, a whole worldview lies behind the historical critical method.

32:36

And it is that historical critical method that is really at the heart of Dr. Price's radical skepticism about the existence of Jesus, about whether Paul wrote anything that is attributed to him.

32:48

All of the things that come up in his voluminous writings is really based upon this embracing of the principle of analogy.

32:57

But the question is, does Dr. Price's position allow us to have any knowledge of history at all that can be called certain, or any knowledge that is true?

33:06

For example, he just brought up, and I thought it was fascinating, a statement that he made. I want to quote exactly what he said in an

33:13

Australian interview just a few years ago. He said, so it wouldn't matter if the

33:18

Gospels had been written 10 minutes after the events, you wouldn't know what to think. Legends grow up in no time, end quote.

33:25

And most of his presentation was on the idea of how quickly legend can build up, even during the lifetimes of eyewitnesses.

33:33

And so one of the questions that I'm going to be asking, and you can start thinking about it now during the cross -examination, is what kind of evidence would suffice to answer positively the thesis that we have this evening?

33:43

If you can't give an answer to that, then really, what are we debating? What kind of evidence would be necessary to answer the question, is the

33:53

Bible true, are the New Testament documents reliable? What kind of evidence would a historical position have to present to substantiate and answer that question?

34:03

A historical methodology that results in this kind of hyper -skepticism is not only self -defeating, but since it precludes any meaningful statements about history at all, it leaves its proponents either silent with just pure agnosticism, well, we just don't know, we can't really know what happened in history at all, or if they do speak to historical issues, completely inconsistent.

34:24

That is, I would ask you to listen this evening when Dr. Price says, well, we can be certain of this or certain of that, upon what basis does he make that statement?

34:33

That is very, very important. Now, he, for example, in a debate with William Lane Craig said, the first is what strikes me as a kind of double truth model.

34:42

The second is the old red herring attempts to evade the principle of historical analogy, by means of the claim that critics reject miracle stories only because they espouse philosophical naturalism.

34:51

The second follows from the first, and both commit the fallacy of ad hominem argumentation, even while projecting it onto the opponent.

34:58

Well, I do not believe that that is the case. The presuppositions of that methodology that he utilizes must be examined and examined very, very carefully.

35:09

Now, in defense of point number two, in Dr. Price's contribution to the five views of the historical

35:14

Jesus book, he focused upon the idea that Old Testament stories have simply been rewritten.

35:20

They are the background to create the New Testament narratives about a mythical Jesus. Yet, and this has always fascinated me, he has also lent support to Dennis R.

35:31

McDonald, who is a fellow Jesus seminar participant, in saying that he has shown very effectively how many puzzling elements in Mark's gospel may be elucidated by the hypothesis that he was following the

35:42

Iliad and the Odyssey as models. Now, here again is the issue of consistency.

35:48

Who were these writers? Who were they trying to communicate to? Who were the gospel writers?

35:54

What is the milieu out of which they come? Who are they trying to communicate to? And therefore, if they were creating a mythical Jesus, were they trying to impress

36:03

Jewish people with the existence of this mythical Jesus? Well, that would at least explain using

36:08

Old Testament stories, but it wouldn't explain trying to follow Homer in the Iliad. So if they're trying to impress

36:14

Greek -speaking people, then why the Old Testament utilization? There needs to be a consistency.

36:19

It seems to me that Dr. Price views the New Testament writers as drawing from this huge, vast array of extremely contradictory sources to create this mythological view of Jesus.

36:33

I would submit to you that we should at least give to the New Testament writers some level of recognition and understanding, that they put together a decent story and they were trying to convince somebody of something.

36:47

And therefore, there has to be some consistent use in their sources. All of the materials about borrowing from Osiris and Mithras and Dionysus and all the rest of this type of mythology, which

36:58

Dr. Price has presented in a film called The God Who Wasn't There. I think you were the longest interviewed guy there.

37:05

You had like 13 minutes. You must have had something on the guys that were putting that together or something, but about 13 minutes' worth and presenting all of these alleged parallels to the

37:14

Jesus story. Is that a consistent approach to take to the historical material?

37:20

Now, defensive point number three, I want to present up on the screen a discussion.

37:26

Dr. Price did not mention this. He focused primarily upon the Gospels. But one of the things that really struck me was

37:32

Dr. Price's theory, first of all, that basically Paul didn't write what was attributed to him, that this comes much, much later.

37:39

The Gospels are in the 2nd century, Paul's in the 2nd century. But even after that, the theory that he has presented in a scholarly paper, the 1st

37:49

Corinthians chapter 15, verses 3 through 11, is a later interpolation. Now, most of us know 1st

37:54

Corinthians 15. We know that that particular section where Paul delivers the tradition, which he himself recognized was part and parcel of the

38:04

Christian faith, that Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and He was buried, and He rose the third day according to the

38:09

Scriptures, and who saw Him in the order in which He was seen, etc., etc., that most scholars identify as one of the most primitive elements of the

38:16

Christian tradition, Dr. Price believes, is actually an interpolation. It was put into 1st

38:22

Corinthians. Whoever wrote 1st Corinthians, we don't know. But 1st Corinthians is written, and then 1st

38:27

Corinthians 15, 3 through 11, is inserted at a later point in time. Now, that kind of assertion that the text of the

38:35

Bible could undergo this kind of radical emendation means that we wouldn't really have any idea of what the original authors ever wrote or who the original authors ever were.

38:46

But I want to challenge this based upon the factual information that we have today. On the screen, you will notice

38:52

I have the first writing of 1st Corinthians. And as time goes by, and there's supposed to be a green arrow along the bottom there, but it's disappeared.

39:01

As time goes by, a copy is made of this 1st Corinthians. And then another copy is made as time goes by, and more copies.

39:09

This is the copying process that takes place over time. We can see this in the history of the transmission of the text of the

39:14

New Testament. Then, at this point right here, we have the copy of 1st

39:19

Corinthians that now inserts that text into chapter 15, verses 3 through 11.

39:26

And so it's different than the others. And so then as time goes by, and here now we have the first time that we have the earliest manuscripts when the

39:35

New Testament writings emerge into history, what would we have? We would have two different kinds of 1st

39:44

Corinthians. We would have multiple streams. One of the things that I mentioned earlier in a presentation

39:49

I made is that the New Testament manuscript tradition gives us multiple streams of transmission.

39:56

And so as the text, the Gospels, John, Paul, etc., as we begin to see the earliest evidence of them in the beginning of the 2nd century, for example,

40:07

John, or at the end of the 2nd century for P46 for the epistles of Paul, already we detect that there are multiple streams of tradition, multiple streams of manuscripts that we see in the earliest manuscripts that we possess.

40:21

They are not just simply copies of one copy of a copy, etc., etc. And so what would happen historically is we would have evidence of such a major disruption of the text.

40:33

As Kurt Auland has put it, the New Testament text is tenacious. That is, once there is a reading in it, it stays in it.

40:40

And when you have a major disruption of the text, it gives evidence of that. As Dr. Price has admitted, there is no

40:47

New Testament manuscript evidence whatsoever that substantiates his assertion that 1 Corinthians 15, 3 -11 is a later insertion into the text.

40:55

But he says, but our earliest manuscripts are too late to actually answer that question. My assertion to you is that manuscript tradition, even though the earliest we have comes from the end of the 2nd century, the late part of the 2nd century in P46, yet because of the nature of the evidence does give us documentary evidence that that text is not an interpolation.

41:21

It was there from the beginning. And if it had been an interpolation, we would have evidence in it of that in the later manuscripts.

41:27

What this really does is it challenges much of what Dr. Price says concerning the late date of the writing of the

41:35

Gospels. Putting them into the 2nd century causes innumerable problems when we actually begin looking at what the manuscripts themselves say.

41:43

And I will want to follow up on that as we have opportunity for discussion. In another debate,

41:49

Dr. Price said these words. He said, so much for the arguments used vainly by apologists to try to choke off Gospel criticism at its source.

41:58

Really, they're all attempts to get evangelical students and seminarians to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

42:05

Because if they do, things will get complicated. It will no longer be so easy to claim one is parroting the teaching of Jesus.

42:12

No longer be easy to claim a personal relationship with a figure of history whose outlines are irreparably blurred in the midst of antiquity.

42:20

The task of the apologist is a chaotic quest. The locomotive of New Testament research will not stop for such a suicidal cow astride the tracks.

42:29

I invite you instead to hop on board at the next stop. And then you can join in the exciting task of sifting the

42:35

Gospel traditions, recognizing the innumerable Gospel contradictions and anachronisms, no longer as troublesome flies in the dogmatic ointment, but rather as valuable clues and levers for unlocking the precious truths of the text, end quote.

42:52

Now, I am left personally to wonder what kind of precious treasures of the text are left when everything in the text has been turned into contradictions, anachronisms, and myths.

43:07

Surely it is stretching credulity to think that the author is the New Testament text intended to be interpreted in this particular fashion.

43:15

And so when we approach this subject tonight in the debate, in the discussions that happen afterwards, in your place of business, in school, in your home, amongst your family members where you might have atheists who question the reliability of the

43:32

New Testament, we always must first examine the presuppositions that are brought to the argument.

43:38

Is a person willing to allow the New Testament text to be the New Testament text? Or do you start with the presupposition that these cannot be taken as historical documents because they narrate something that is supernatural?

43:51

Now, of course, the New Testament, when you think about it, what portion of the New Testament text is actually taken up narrating a supernatural event?

43:59

Now, I think this New Testament text is supernatural in and of itself, but what portion even of Jesus's ministry and teaching is taken up narrating supernatural events?

44:11

And as you go into the church age and you look at the epistles, how much of that is taken up with supernatural events like axe heads floating or raising people from the dead?

44:22

A very small portion of it. It's there. It is part and parcel of the worldview of the authors and those who follow after the authors.

44:33

But I would submit to you that a methodology that starts off the presupposition that says that's impossible is a methodology that is begging the question.

44:43

Now, immediately someone will say, but James, that means you must accept any miracle claim made by anyone.

44:51

That is not the case. The miracles that take place in the text of the New Testament are consistent with the message of the

44:58

New Testament itself. And I have often engaged in critical examination of other claims, and I try to be consistent in the same application of the historical methodology.

45:09

For example, in regards to Joseph Smith's first vision, a Mormon might say, oh, but you can't… you can't question that because it's supernatural, and yet it's rooted in history.

45:21

Now, I allow the Mormon to try to harmonize the facts, but I also examine them in the exact same basis.

45:29

And that's all I'm asking that we be allowed to do. Dr. Price often refers to us apologists, and I know

45:35

I have one minute left to go, us apologists as trying to spin the evidence, trying to harmonize things that cannot be harmonized.

45:43

But I suggest to you that to do history is to do harmonization. You can't look at Josephus, Suetonius, Tacitus, Pliny without harmonizing their statements.

45:54

You can't look at Dr. Price's books without harmonizing his statements as well.

46:00

I simply suggest to us all that we need to allow that same standard in the examination of the historical material regarding the

46:07

New Testament and not be closed immediately to the existence of God and His desire to communicate with His people in such a way that we all together can possess the treasures that are the

46:20

New Testament Scriptures. Thank you very much. LARSON Thank you,

46:31

Dr. White. We will now take a five -minute break. And now for a 15 -minute rebuttal to the opening statement by Dr.

46:44

White. Please welcome back to the microphone Dr. Robert Price. PRICE What a pleasure and a privilege it is to have someone who fair -mindedly and comprehensively reads your stuff to comment on it.

47:04

Otherwise, it's a waste of time. This definitely isn't one. And it also goes to show the truth of that gospel passage,

47:09

I tell you the truth, men will give account for every idle word they speak or print.

47:15

Anyway, the principle of analogy thing, I don't think that implies a naturalistic worldview.

47:22

It implies what some call, I forget who coined this, methodological atheism in exactly the same way meteorology does.

47:32

The Nancy Hicks gribble doing the weather, she doesn't know that God is not going to whip up a tornado to scour sinful

47:46

Arlen, Texas. It could happen as an overt miracle out of a clear sky.

47:53

But if it does, she doesn't know that, so she can't predict it. It might well be, but what are you going to say, what's the percentage of that, the likelihood that it's going to happen?

48:04

It's exactly that, but in reverse that historians are doing when they say, we can only trace and weigh human activities and events, if there have been invasions from beyond the historical nexus of human mortal actions, we just don't know how to trace them.

48:27

Because they happen to look just like myths, even if they happened.

48:33

Let me just give you two other opinions, I think this was even Bultman's point of view, it was not

48:38

Bob Funk's. Bob would quote Bultman, meaning, yeah, we believe in naturalism.

48:43

I'm not sure Bultman meant that, but I can't help thinking what Rudolph Otto said about it, it was one of the great history of religion critics.

48:52

He said, this cuts both ways. We don't have any kind of verifiable recent or current documented instances from people whose standards we would accept of guys hopping out of a boat and walking on water, changing water into wine, coming out of the grave a few days later.

49:12

If we did, that might change, but as it is now, the only reports and stories we have that look like that happen to be myths, as anybody else would admit.

49:23

Warfield was certainly not quick to defend the miracles of Gautama the Buddha, even though some of them are very similar to New Testament ones.

49:30

On the other hand, there was Karl Barth, who as I understand him, said Jesus Christ came out of that grave on the third day.

49:38

It really happened. But as historians who were not there, there is no way we can prove that or even make it look likely.

49:47

As those who accept the preached gospel of Christianity, we believe it. It's not a historical judgment.

49:53

It's a response to the preaching of Christ. It did happen. He says, as I understand him, he wasn't fiddling around with some kind of half -baked thing where it happened in the history of meaning but not real.

50:06

No, no, as I understand him, if you had your video camera, you'd have picked it up, but nobody did, and we can't do it now.

50:13

That's, I think, the point of the principle of analogy. And yes, it does mean that you can disqualify a lot of evidence for a lot of supernatural reports that look more like myths.

50:29

But the other side, I'm sorry, I skipped the Rudolph Otto thing I was about to say. Otto says there are plenty of gospel stories that are paralleled.

50:38

Did Jesus cast out demons? Well, we weren't there, but it's certainly not a problem to imagine he did because you can go to plenty of exorcism meetings today and see the same stuff happening.

50:48

Whether you think it's aberrant psychology or actual demons, that's another issue. But if you want to see gospel -like events,

50:56

I can tell you where to go to see them. If you want to see divine healing lines and all that, they're not uncommon, you can see them on TV.

51:03

Now, is that really happening? Could you verify if you've got the amazing Randy in to check out

51:08

Jesus? Who knows? It's too late for that, but the point is, if we see gospel stories where things that are still happening today happen, that's no problem.

51:19

There's no bias about the supernatural except that it doesn't leave readable fingerprints if it happens.

51:25

The believer may imagine he has some alternate epistemological access to these things, but I think it's just faith of the will to believe.

51:35

It's just that history can't decide this. That doesn't mean you've proven it didn't happen, right?

51:41

It's just that you can't give it the seal of, yeah, probably true. You just have to say, who knows?

51:46

We weren't there. Now, but is the goal of talking about the truth of the

51:53

Bible the issue of whether you can prove the truth of the Bible? I would not think it is.

51:59

A couple of other things that Jim said, are theories of authorship rendered unduly speculative because one doesn't believe in miracles if one doesn't?

52:14

And again, I don't. If somebody tells me my aunt went to a healing rally, she had cancer, they verified that she did, and then they verified she didn't,

52:22

I say, that is great. And I'm saying you lie and so and so. I don't know what goes on in the universe.

52:28

I'm not the paradigm police, and I don't think historians are either. Just what's the evidence?

52:35

Does my approach to the principle of analogy, et cetera, lead to total historical skepticism?

52:43

Yes and no. One thing that all historians will tell you is that the further back you go, and it doesn't have to be very far, you're going to have to be able to, you're going to have to be content with provisional tentative judgments.

52:56

And they keep coming up with evidence of like Tutankhamun, the pharaoh. They say, oh, he was murdered, you can tell because of the skulls and that.

53:04

Now they did some sort of DNA test. Oh, he wasn't murdered, he had this kind of disease. I don't invest much in that, but you always have to say, tentatively, we think this happened.

53:15

Now, more recently, we don't. My father was present with General Patton's army during the liberation of Dachau.

53:22

He told me about the horrors he had seen, and he decided that since they're Holocaust denial nuts, he would, for the sake of anybody that might read it, write down what he saw in Dachau.

53:34

And then, scant weeks later, they happened to release the, what's his name, the guy that did

53:42

It's a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra's color footage of Dachau's liberation.

53:49

Dachau wasn't exactly like my father had said. He remembered real well, well, in a case like that, you know, the

53:55

Holocaust denials are just nuts. You know, there's no way to make their view, to prove it or make it even look remotely probable, because luckily, we're still close enough to those events.

54:07

You get back to the Napoleonic War, there's no serious doubt, but it starts getting fuzzy on this or that.

54:14

You go back to the ancient world, it gets real fuzzy, and all you can do is to say, tentatively, seems to me the evidence points in this direction, but if you find something new, bring it on.

54:25

There's no room for dogma on that. And so, I would say, the further back you go, right, everything has to be held open.

54:33

You just can't dogmatize about that. Even Dachau, even that is probabilistic.

54:39

It's just that the evidence is so massive, and from all sides, that it's just 99 .999999,

54:46

that's improbable. But, you know, you go further and it gets foggier. So that's the radical character of it.

54:54

I don't know what on earth could possibly suffice to defend or prove that Moses divided the

55:01

Red Sea as in the Charlton Heston movie, even if it happened. How on earth could you possibly even begin, short of a trip in a time machine, to make that likely?

55:12

You're just going to have to believe that or not. It's a question of theology, which I'm not ridiculing.

55:17

It's just not a historical judgment. Though we weren't there, we know it didn't happen, right?

55:23

The negative, whatever, skeptical critics don't say that, or if they do, they're just bigots.

55:29

I don't know how they claim to know that. Is it inconsistency to suggest that the gospel writers would have drawn upon the

55:40

Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, and Homer and Euripides and some others, as I think they plainly did?

55:48

Not at all, once you remind yourself of the cosmopolitan character of Judaism, especially diaspora

55:55

Judaism in the Roman Empire in the century surrounding the New Testament. We have tile mosaics on synagogues that show

56:05

Zeus riding a chariot through the Zodiac. We have Alexandrian Jewish sarcophagi that show the

56:12

Torah and the wheel of the resurrected god Attis. We have all kinds of stuff like this.

56:20

Have Ezekiel made over into a Greek tragedy, and so on it goes. In fact, the knowledge of the dying and rising gods, you can find this in Ezekiel.

56:31

Baal and Osiris were well known to ancient Israel. Ezekiel just wished they hadn't been.

56:38

But this is nothing new they'd had to borrow, though it wouldn't have sounded odd if they did hear about it from Attis or whoever.

56:45

It was old Jewish stuff for a long time. Even if it hadn't been, what does 2 Maccabees tell us?

56:51

That Antiochus Epiphanes decided to give Jews the privilege of worshipping

56:56

Dionysus, and it said force them into the celebrations. They'd have known about this stuff.

57:02

A lot of them didn't accept it. But you only get as mad about Hellenization and cultural corruption as Judah did if fellow

57:10

Jews were accepting it. I see no inconsistency at all. The business about 1

57:15

Corinthians 15, we ain't got no textual evidence of any kind before the

57:22

Chester Beatty papyri. The point is there may have been a standardization of texts, as William O.

57:29

Walker, Jr., and others have suggested, analogous to what happened in early Islam. People had very different copies of scripture, and they eventually collected them all, came up with one edition, burned the originals, and said, okay, now everybody, are you going to be happy?

57:42

We can read the same text. It may well be we have all these copies of a standardized edition.

57:48

And as to the business about precious treasures in the text, what's left? Well, I don't care if a room full of randomly typing monkeys wrote these things.

57:59

They say what they say. If you go to stuff that everybody would agree here is not in the original text, let him who was without sin cast the first stone, oops, not in the original text of John.

58:11

And not in the earliest manuscripts. I kind of like that. I think it's pretty profound. You know not what spirit you are of.

58:18

The Son of Man came not to destroy men's lives, but to say, oops, not in the original manuscript.

58:24

That's junk. No, no, it's not. Or how about, take up your cross and follow me.

58:29

I think that is obviously a post -Jesus Christian prophecy, also one of the greatest statements in the

58:35

New Testament, no matter who said it. As Martin Luther said, if they don't preach the gospel, it doesn't matter if Peter, James, and Paul said it.

58:42

If they do preach the gospel, it doesn't matter if Judas, Herod, and Antipas said it. I'll leave that for the moment.

58:57

Thank you, Dr. Price. Now for a 15 -minute rebuttal to the opening statement by Dr. Robert Price. Please welcome back to the microphone

59:05

Dr. James White. Thank you very, very much.

59:13

While it is still fresh in your memory, I want to immediately address what was just said when

59:21

Dr. Price said, well, we don't have manuscript evidence. But the manuscript evidence we have demonstrates something about what was going on in the decades and years beforehand.

59:33

And then Dr. Price said something about the standardization of text just as we had in Islam. This is my area.

59:42

There was never a Christian Uthman. There is no evidence whatsoever, and all sorts of evidence against the idea there was ever a standardization of text.

59:52

The fact that the papyri contained the most variants from one another demonstrate there was never a standardization of text whatsoever.

01:00:00

There was never any Uthman who could gather up the codices, as we see in Sahih al -Bukhari 6, 509, and 510, and create the edited version.

01:00:09

Even Uthman did not succeed. Ibn Masud and Ubaid Ibn Ka 'b still had their codices. They didn't give up, and we still have evidence of their readings for quite some time.

01:00:17

But the fact of the matter is that the New Testament textual evidence absolutely contradicts any idea of a standardization of text.

01:00:25

And as I pointed out by the graphic, we would have evidence of other lines of transmission of 1

01:00:31

Corinthians chapter 15 lacking verses 3 through 11 if, in fact, it was originally written and distributed without that particular text.

01:00:39

That is extremely important to understand. Very, very interesting, because I was going to raise this point as well.

01:00:44

Dr. Price just mentioned a statement that he's made numerous times from Mark chapter 8, that Jesus' statement, take up the cross and follow me, is an anachronism, a glowing anachronism,

01:00:56

I think, if I'm quoting you correctly at one point, a glowing anachronism, as if the people – and remember,

01:01:02

Mark chapter 8, Jesus calls the crowds to himself. And what does he say to them? Take up your cross, deny yourselves, take up your cross and follow me.

01:01:11

Would people in Galilee have understood that statement? You better believe they would have.

01:01:17

Even if they themselves had never seen the practice of Roman crucifixion, which in Galilee they probably had, even if they had not seen it themselves, they certainly had heard about it.

01:01:27

It was one of the most impressive weapons that the Roman Empire had to keep people in line.

01:01:33

And so what Jesus was doing was saying, follow me, enter the death march. To take up a cross meant you were going to your death.

01:01:41

To deny yourselves, take up the cross. There is no reason to think that this is a post -Jesus, post -crucifixion concept if we'll just allow the text to speak for itself.

01:01:51

There have been many times I've heard Dr. Price present his interpretation of a text. And I know that Dr.

01:01:57

Price would call me an apparatchik spin doctor to try to harmonize every statement, but there are so many times like this one where I go, well, that one's just so obvious to me.

01:02:07

I mean, the people that heard those words originally would surely have known exactly what he was talking about at that time.

01:02:15

Dr. Price just pointed out that the Israelites knew about dying and rising gods, which most assuredly the Old Testament demonstrates they did.

01:02:22

But as Mettinger has documented rather fully, Yahweh was never one of those dying and rising gods.

01:02:28

And the idea that those who followed after Yahweh, who said the Shema each morning,

01:02:33

Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh HaKad, that they would then buy into the utilization of pagan mythologies about dying and rising gods as the pattern for Jesus, which

01:02:45

Dr. Price did suggest as a possibility in the movie, The God Who Wasn't There, is to me amazing.

01:02:52

How in the world could you convince monotheistic Jews who did not believe in a dying and rising god to adopt this kind of a pagan mythology in regards to Jesus, a man who never actually walked the planet?

01:03:06

How that would be impressive to the Jewish people is really difficult for me to understand. But notice

01:03:11

I just said something that Dr. Price would disagree with. I talked about the monotheistic Jews, and he just talked about the

01:03:18

Hellenization of the Jewish people. He mentioned the synagogue that's been discovered at Sephora, and the fact that we find in their pagan frescoes with Hebrew characters and things like that.

01:03:30

But what Dr. Price didn't mention is that that comes long after the time of Jesus. It comes long after AD 70, maybe as much as 200 years after that time period.

01:03:40

And folks, there was a massive cultural shift in Galilee after AD 70, and I can guarantee in Jerusalem as well.

01:03:48

AD 70 involved a tremendous change in the experience of the

01:03:54

Jewish people both in Judea and in what we would call Galilee. And so to take that information, as far as I can tell,

01:04:01

I've tried to look as accurately as possible at what Dr. Price has presented in regards to this information about the alleged

01:04:07

Hellenizing of the Jews. It is all well after the New Testament period. It is not reflective of what we actually see in positive evidence from archaeology as to the real

01:04:17

Judaism and the conservative Judaism that was practiced at that time. And so what that means is the authors of the

01:04:25

New Testament text do come from that milieu. They are seeking to speak to other Jews, especially in Mark and Matthew.

01:04:32

Certainly, Paul is doing so before he goes out to the Diaspora Jews. He is seeking to communicate with individuals who have that common heritage in the

01:04:42

Tanakh, in the Old Testament scriptures. And therefore, the idea that they would be drawing from pagan sources to create a mythological messiah just boggles my mind that this would be an apologetic that would have worked, because whatever it was they did, it worked.

01:05:00

Christianity, despite the fact that it became religio illicita under the Roman Empire, Christianity grew and prospered, and it did so against great odds.

01:05:12

Are we really to believe that this was because the authors, people who didn't even know each other, drew from this source over here and that source over there and put together a mythological story that had no consistency to it?

01:05:24

See, that's where I think that the pursuit of the historical principle of analogy collapses, because we are talking about the fact that as Christians, yes, we believe that God has been active in history.

01:05:38

We believe God's active tonight. We believe God's active in bringing every one of you here. We believe God is active in bringing

01:05:43

Robert Price here this evening. But is that some sort of a claim that has no connection with history?

01:05:51

Dr. Price would tell us, well, that's a theological conclusion, not a historical conclusion. Well, if you define history in such a way that it has to be silent on any place where God breaks into history, then you can understand that kind of a statement.

01:06:06

But what happens when God breaks into history? What happens when God actually does things, not just simply a resurrection or a parting of the

01:06:15

Red Sea, but when He guides the courses of nations and things like that? Remember, the prophet

01:06:20

Isaiah in Isaiah 41, when he was challenging the false gods, what did he say to the false gods?

01:06:25

Tell us what's going to happen in the future and, remember, tell us what happened in the past and why it happened.

01:06:32

In other words, a naturalistic view of history can only tell you what happened in the past, not why.

01:06:40

But you see, the Christian view of history means that history has a purpose. It has a meaning.

01:06:46

It's not just, oh, we don't know. Yes, we do claim that there are times when God tells us exactly why things took place and that they took place to accomplish

01:06:55

His purposes and to glorify Him. But you see, the issue this evening is not just the radical skepticism that says we don't know.

01:07:03

What follows from that, and again, I do not want to misrepresent Dr. Price.

01:07:09

I hope that you see, sir, that I have bent over backwards to understand your position. I really, really have attempted to do that, and I hope you see that that is respectful toward you.

01:07:17

That is really what I want to have happening this evening. But I've also listened to your presentations to atheists and your presentations to Christians.

01:07:27

Dr. Price has talked about the freedom and the release that was his when he lost that need to be worried about whether these things are true or false, but now he can look at them as anachronisms and falsehoods.

01:07:40

And in the God who wasn't there, unless the editors were using your words against your intention, the intention that was presented there was clearly

01:07:49

Jesus is a mythological character, even to the point where Dr. Price had mentioned that there were some people, and he did mention this in The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, there were some

01:08:00

Christians, quote -unquote, that believed that Jesus was born 100 B .C., based upon some very late

01:08:05

Jewish material and one citation out of Epiphanias that I don't know that anyone could ever figure out what Epiphanias was ever saying, but that's the whole basis for this that then becomes an important part of the chronological story that is presented in this film.

01:08:19

And so the question might be, does Dr. Price agree with the utilization of his mythology theories by the various atheist groups or not?

01:08:29

Maybe we could address that, but it certainly has seemed to me, especially in the interviews that he's done with atheists, that he does agree that all of this is merely mythology, not just that, well, from a historical standpoint, we can't say anything more than that, but in reality, that Jesus' story is mythological, that he was created by the needs of the later church, that we can see the various groups in the later church fighting with one another, etc.,

01:08:56

etc., that Dr. Price has created some very interesting theories about the arguments that were going on in the early church.

01:09:03

The problem is, I sit back and go, well, if we don't have enough data to actually know that Jesus existed as a person, how do we get enough data to come up with meaningful theories about what was going on in the early church?

01:09:13

It seems to me that there's a bit of an inconsistency at that point and at numerous other points, especially in regards to the parallelism that Dr.

01:09:21

Price engages in. Hopefully, during cross -examination, we'll be able to look at some of the parallels that he believes provide the foundation and source for what we have in the

01:09:30

New Testament. Now, Dr. Price just stood before us and said, no, I don't know what goes on in the universe in the skeptical sense of, well, things are possible, but the historian can't say.

01:09:42

But once again, we recognize that we as individuals, if it were not for God having spoken, we would be in the exact position that Dr.

01:09:51

Price has presented this evening. But here's my question for Dr. Price and for the atheists who are with us this evening, and there's a number with us tonight.

01:10:02

What if God has spoken? What would that speech look like? Have you ever thought about that, or has it just always been, well, it just couldn't be whatever

01:10:11

Christians believe? What if God wanted to speak at a particular point in time?

01:10:16

What if He wanted to speak at that point in time in history? How would He have done so?

01:10:23

Could He have spoken in such a way that you would accept what

01:10:28

He said? If you cannot give us some kind of criteria to recognize whether God could or could not speak, then is your rejection of God's having spoken meaningful?

01:10:44

Does it really carry weight? Is it a real argument? That is the question that I would ask of you this evening.

01:10:53

Now, just one other, two other things very quickly. I only have three minutes left. Dr. Price very frequently mentions the

01:10:59

Hadith literature is parallel to the Gospels. There is very little parallel between the

01:11:06

Hadith, the sayings and actions of Muhammad that were collected by Sahih al -Bukhari.

01:11:13

Sahih al -Bukhari is the most famous of the collections, Sahih al -Muslim, Jami' al -Tirmidhi. These are the collections of the

01:11:19

Hadith. There are about 600 ,000 sayings. They've pared it down to a much smaller number, but this took place 250 to 270 years after the time of Muhammad.

01:11:28

Not contemporaneous with the documents that we have in the New Testament. Again, I would challenge

01:11:34

Dr. Price on his very late dating of the New Testament documents. But there is no parallel between the two because we don't have anything that comes from that first century

01:11:44

Hijrah, from 632 to 732. There's nothing that we can pull from that that provides the same kind of foundation that we have for the

01:11:54

New Testament Gospels. And finally, well, I might sneak one or more in here.

01:12:00

Dr. Price mentioned Matthew 10 versus Matthew 28. Was Jesus sent only to the Jews or was he sent to the whole world?

01:12:06

And he seemed to say, you see, this is a contradiction. If you just didn't believe in inerrancy, you would allow these to be contradictions.

01:12:14

I think if you just leave, let Matthew be Matthew, you're not going to believe it's a contradiction. If you're just allowing the flow of Matthew to develop, to recognize

01:12:21

Matthew 10 as a context in Jesus's ministry amongst the Jews, Matthew 28 post -crucifixion then becomes the

01:12:28

Gospel going out to all the world. There's all sorts of stuff in Matthew and Luke about the promises being to the entirety of the world.

01:12:35

If we just let Matthew be Matthew, we're not going to allow for a contradiction there. But he said, well, look at Acts 15, you know, they had this whole argument about this and no one ever quoted

01:12:44

Jesus. If they had known anything Jesus said about this, they would have quoted him. As if what we have in Acts chapter 15 is a verbatim report of all of the discussions the text itself says, that there was much talking that Luke does not record for us.

01:12:58

So to assume, well, they would have been quoting Jesus here, quoting, how do you know that they weren't? We aren't given that kind of information to come to these conclusions.

01:13:07

These, Dr. Price has come to a conclusion that those texts are contradictory.

01:13:14

But upon what basis? Are we being consistent, not only in the interpretation of the text itself, but in our use of history and are we being consistent in closing off any possibility that God is behind the acts of history?

01:13:30

Is a naturalistic, historical, critical methodology the only thing we have? And if it leads us with nothing to say, is that really what we're going to take away from this evening?

01:13:40

I say to you, God has spoken and if we will simply be open to allowing for the consistency of His Word, we will be able to see that consistency.

01:13:49

Thank you very much. Thank you,

01:13:57

James. We now move into an intense segment of our

01:14:02

Is the Bible True debate with 15 -minute cross examinations. Dr.

01:14:08

Price begins with a 15 -minute cross examination of Dr. White's remarks.

01:14:14

Please now acknowledge Dr. Robert Price. Thank you.

01:14:23

I will get one more dull thing out of the way. It seems to me you do have, in manuscript traditions where the long arm of Hellenistic, proto -Catholic orthodoxy did not reign, you have weird heretical readings in like old

01:14:42

Syriac and old Latin manuscripts, especially with the baptism and the infancy narratives.

01:14:47

It does seem to me there's evidence, but I am speculating about an

01:14:53

Uthmanic sort of a thing. It just seems to me to be a theory that would help explain some of the data, but I don't have a time machine.

01:15:01

It's admittedly speculative, as is everything I'm saying, right? I am not teaching dogma.

01:15:07

I'm trying to start a Bob Price cult, how ludicrous that would be, to jump to the

01:15:12

Christ myth thing. That was a long question. But it sounded like you were suggesting that any of those variant readings, for example, found the

01:15:23

Syriac, it sounded like you were suggesting that they could possibly be original or something like that.

01:15:32

But again, I would simply argue that the Greek manuscript tradition is first and foremost primary because all of those are translations from the

01:15:42

Greek. I think most people realize the Syriac comes from that. So if there's no evidence of a reading anywhere in the

01:15:48

Alexandrian, Byzantine, Caesarean, Western manuscript families, then that clearly becomes an idiosyncratic reading that has no basis for being considered original.

01:15:58

Well, you find it in several different copies, which could all stem from each other,

01:16:04

I suppose. But I don't see why you rule out there having been a standardization, especially since there's this tunnel period with no manuscripts at all.

01:16:14

We don't know that it happened, but why couldn't it have? I rule it out because, interestingly enough, this was one of the points that Bart Ehrman and I debated last year, and he would agree with me at this point because he would assert that the earliest papyri we have,

01:16:30

P72, P75, P46, P66, et cetera, they demonstrate the widest textual variation from one another of any point in the manuscript tradition.

01:16:41

Therefore, if there was a standardization process such as Uthman immediately prior to the production of this papyri, there is no reason why they would have such wide textual variation from one another.

01:16:51

We'd expect them to be like the early Uthmanic Qur 'anic manuscripts, which are very, very similar to one another.

01:16:58

So the evidence— Well, that didn't work either, though, you said. There still remain signs of early variations in the

01:17:05

Qur 'an. But those are from Ibn Masud and Ubaid ibn Ka 'b, and those are completely different traditions, even different numbers of suras and things like that.

01:17:15

So it just seems to me that there is a strong consensus—and I'm not using an authority argument here, but I think it's based on fact—that the idea of any type of wholesale radical

01:17:26

Uthmanic editing of those early manuscripts prior to the first ones, there's no evidence of it.

01:17:35

In fact, all the evidence is exactly opposite to it. Well, I look at textual evidence and say it appears we have an endless bunch of aporias and inconsistencies, like we see in the synoptic gospels, where there's no thread of continuity.

01:17:49

You look at various commentaries, and they're all exercises saying, if Paul was going to A and B and C, how'd he get from one to the other?

01:17:57

Or maybe he had this in mind. It seems to me it wouldn't be all harmonization all the time if it was just something directly written by one man.

01:18:04

Okay, I'm confused, because you just talked about, in looking at the text, I was assuming you were talking about the transmission of the text, the manuscripts, or are you talking about—

01:18:13

I mean, you know, it's called Intents and Purposes to me, and Walker and a bunch of others that say you seem to have a kind of broken lack of consistency all through the epistles, as well as the gospels, where it would sure make sense if you had, like, pronostic stuff in 1

01:18:31

Corinthians 2, but anti in 1 Corinthians 1. It seems like what he says about knowing the depths of God couldn't possibly come from the guy that just said,

01:18:40

I determined to know nothing among you, but Christ crucified. Is it possible we have, as we seem to have later, different views about women?

01:18:47

Can they speak in public in chapter 11? No. In chapter—yes. In chapter 14?

01:18:52

No. It would sure explain an awful lot of the phenomena of the text we read if it had been interpolated.

01:18:59

It's fascinating to me, Dr. Price, because every time I've listened to you addressing passage of Scripture, like you just said, it just does not seem that the same man would have said, knowing the depths of God, who had just said, we know nothing amongst you.

01:19:14

And yet clearly he's using the same terminology in two different ways in two different contexts. That's one of the reasons that I brought two of your books, is we have

01:19:24

The Incredible Strength of the Son of Man, and then we have Jesus's Debt. Now these are very, very different books.

01:19:30

You have footnotes and Scripture index in here, no footnotes, no Scripture index in here.

01:19:36

It seemed like you were writing to a different audience. I sensed a difference in style. In fact, if it was a hundred years from now, and you haven't lived to be a hundred in whatever age it might be, and there is a—

01:19:49

I'm already over a hundred. Okay. All right. And there is a Robert Price scholar doing his dissertation somewhere.

01:19:58

It would seem to me he'd have all the reason in the world to assume that those two books were not written by the same man.

01:20:03

Well, the one book is a collection of debate statements and reviews. I don't have footnotes in those, and it says that's what they are.

01:20:10

The other one is a continuous research thing, and I don't think anybody that has read anything of mine would have any trouble recognizing the same idiot wrote both.

01:20:21

But the point is, from my perspective, what you just did is you just harmonized by providing the context.

01:20:28

We don't always know what the context was of every New Testament book, but it seems to me that you don't allow the possibility that the

01:20:37

Corinthian correspondence, which you were just mentioning, clearly Paul is responding to questions that have been directed to him from Corinth.

01:20:44

There's problems in the church in Corinth. I don't even think that's true. Well, I don't think you believe Paul actually wrote 1

01:20:49

Corinthians anyways. But given the meaning of the text as it stands, it would make perfect sense.

01:20:56

You said, I can't see how it's possible. I think it's very possible. He'd give consistent answers, wouldn't he? Inconsistent answers to what?

01:21:02

I'm sorry. You're supposed to actually be asking me questions, but it's okay. We're doing fine. I'm sorry. I can't.

01:21:08

It's all right. Well, how do you think the supposed rejection of the supernatural has anything to do with authorship theories?

01:21:16

Well, I think it has a lot to do with it, first of all, because you start off with the assumption that the individuals that we're talking about here could not have been involved in the events they were involved with because they're supernatural.

01:21:30

I don't say that at all. Well, for example, you talk about Paul's conversion, and you say that that was clearly drawn from at least two ancient sources.

01:21:42

That's what I meant by saying, you're stating that Paul wasn't even the real author of these books, and therefore he could not have been alive at the time that he was alive.

01:21:52

He could not have had contact with the eyewitnesses of Jesus's life, etc., etc. So it's relevant to that aspect of the late dating that you make for the authors themselves.

01:22:03

But then it also has a lot to do with the sources that you believe that they were drawing from and that you would attribute to them.

01:22:09

I find that very contradictory. Well the conversion of Paul, I think, just screams literary origin, especially since no matter who wrote him and when, the epistles have no such story about the

01:22:21

Damascus Road. They have vague stuff about when God was pleased to reveal His Son in me or to me, etc.

01:22:27

There's nothing about the stories that we have in Acts. And the sources that I point to which just are amazingly similar in 1

01:22:35

Corinthians about the conversion of Heliodorus, and in the Bacchae about Pentheus, they're so similar, and they had been around a long time.

01:22:44

It's hard to imagine that someone like Luke, whoever he was, would not have been familiar with them. There's no stretch,

01:22:50

I think. It would be very useful for us in the debate, but we don't have time to.

01:22:56

I would highly recommend that the audience look up both of those references, because I did.

01:23:04

And you said you find it to be amazing. I find it to be amazing that you actually find a parallel there.

01:23:10

I find that astounding. You should look up them for yourself. I would suggest that, especially, for example, the kicking against the goads thing, which

01:23:16

I checked out and discovered there were at least four uses of that prior to Acts.

01:23:23

It was a standard term. I used the Thesaurus. You're just making my case for me. Well, the Thesaurus, Lingua Graecae, C .D.

01:23:29

Rom, listed four uses of that. So it would be sort of like if I were writing the story and I said something about, well, somebody was pulling my leg.

01:23:36

It was a standardized term. It doesn't mean that I'm borrowing from somebody else's story. So I guess the risen

01:23:42

Jesus was quoting these old Greek texts to Paul. Is that how we would know

01:23:47

God was speaking to us, if he quoted good literature? If I said, I think you're pulling my leg, Bob, does that mean

01:23:53

I'm quoting the original person who made up that phrase? Or has it not taken on a life of its own? Well, boy, there's so many things like the tongues of fire above the heads of the cultists of Dionysus, the don't watch out lest you be fought, fighting against God.

01:24:09

There's so many things in the Bacchae that are just like in Luke, almost word for word.

01:24:14

But the problem is, there isn't any conversion of Penthes. In fact, he's torn apart by the women.

01:24:20

After he's converted, he's hypnotically converted by the God and he's willing to go.

01:24:25

And just Jesus has the same kind of snide remark. He says, now he will find out how it feels to suffer for my name.

01:24:31

But even to call that a conversion strikes me as, again, from my perspective, it looks like you're really ignoring the context.

01:24:40

Did Paul stop and deliberate about it? I mean, he's just on the assembly line from unbeliever to apostle. I'm sorry,

01:24:47

I didn't understand. I mean, Paul is miraculously converted despite himself too. Paul, yes.

01:24:52

Is he? I mean, he's not like C .S. Lewis. But he's not, he's not, he's not put into some kind of a, of a, of a trance or something like that.

01:25:00

Isn't he? No. Pretty much. Those blindness. I don't, I'm sorry. I can't, I just can't see that the writer was actually borrowing from that and trying to, trying to create some kind of new thing.

01:25:12

And you had just said, why isn't there any discussion of this in any of the epistolary literature? My response every time that I've heard you say that is, why does there have to be?

01:25:21

I mean, you don't tell, you don't tell, you don't tell your story every time in every book in the same way.

01:25:29

You don't go back to Gordon Conwell and when you lost your faith and stuff like that, you wouldn't have to. You'd, especially if you wrote a series of books, you wouldn't always be going back over the same stuff.

01:25:39

That's why I've never understood why, why you push that so much. Why, why does there have to be a repetition of this?

01:25:45

Why does Paul, for example, have to quote Jesus constantly? Well, but he never does.

01:25:50

And he never mentions the Damascus thing, whoever wrote these epistles. Never. I, well, but as you said,

01:25:57

I think very clearly when he, for example, talks about God revealing himself to him, that, that he is talking to people with one exception, the church of Colossae, to individuals or to churches he himself founded.

01:26:08

Don't you think? No evidence is no evidence. You're just saying, I bet he would have. No, I'm just simply saying that it seems that there is a very biased reading that would force you to say that he would have to be repeating these things when the texts themselves say, he was the founder of those churches.

01:26:23

He had orally preached the gospel to them. Why would he repeat everything? Repeat? How do we know it would have been repeating? We have no evidence that he ever said it, unless we assume that the

01:26:31

Bible being inerrant, what Luke said must be, or we just simply, or we just simply allow the author to be accurate in his own statement that he had.

01:26:39

In never mentioning the conversion on the Damascus road. That he delivered the gospel to these individuals.

01:26:44

It has nothing to do with. Wouldn't you think he would have told them his own story? I just don't, I just see that as, as, as a requirement that just doesn't make any sense to me.

01:26:53

I'm just saying for whatever reason, no evidence is no evidence. He might have told them, but we don't know that he ever told such a story since it's not there.

01:27:00

How do we know? It's like some kind of a Kashuk records or Rudolf Steiner that we know what must have happened in the past for dogmatic reasons.

01:27:07

No evidence is no evidence. Well, I would respond to that as if it was a cross -examination question, um, by, by, by basically saying, well, are you being, are you being consistent here?

01:27:16

Because you have theorized all sorts of internal struggles in the early church as, as a very important foundation of your argument in regards to 1

01:27:25

Corinthians 15, 3 and following, and the parties that were fighting with one another. You've even said that, that clearly much of the, uh,

01:27:31

Pauline epistolary literature could not be early, uh, because, uh, it shows what you theorize to be a later ecclesiastical situation.

01:27:40

I just simply turn that back on you and say, well, wait a minute. How can you know what the early ecclesiastical situation was so as to come up with these conclusions?

01:27:47

When at the same time, we just simply look at Paul's letters. He claims to be the one who founded these churches to have proclaimed the gospel to them.

01:27:54

And then we turn around and say, well, but he has to repeat everything he said in person in writing or, or he didn't actually write these letters.

01:28:01

It just doesn't make any sense to me. I don't see consistency at that point. Assuming that he did write them. You just can't assume he had told anybody the

01:28:08

Damascus road experience if he doesn't ever mention it. We can't assume he said what Luke said, uh, and, uh, it, it just, uh, seems to me the same thing with, uh, with a lot of these claims for consistency.

01:28:19

You're just reading in the thing. It's like, how do we know what later institutional struggles were, uh, like the thing debating the, uh, the, uh,

01:28:28

Gentile mission in Acts 11 and Acts 15. My point is not that they surely would have quoted

01:28:33

Jesus and we find it in the minutes. They never would have had such a debate. If the parting words of the resurrected son of God was to get your butt out there at all the nations and preach, they're going to sit around and say, nah,

01:28:44

I don't think he meant it. Uh, Peter, what do you think? Well, I did have a vision once, maybe it's just impossible.

01:28:51

This could have continued or the food offered to idols thing. You know, if, if this had been settled by the Jerusalem decree, why is

01:28:57

Justin Martyrs debating at a hundred years later? So, so notice you just said it is impossible that that could have happened or I'd like to point out to you there is, would you agree with me that the, that the old

01:29:07

Testament text contains numerous statements saying there is only one true God, that Yahweh is the creator of all things. Uh, there are a few enough to know that somebody believed it in the time of exile.

01:29:15

And yet the Mormons believe that Jehovah is the son of Elohim, but they're picking up on other passages.

01:29:21

We'll pick up on this in just a moment. We will pick up on this in just a moment.

01:29:27

If you have endured sterile debates in the past, you'll appreciate the lively, very real interaction between Robert Price and James White.

01:29:49

Thank you, Robert. We now reverse roles. Dr. White begins a 15 -minute cross -examination of Dr.

01:29:57

Price's remarks. Dr. White, you now have the lead. Thank you, sir.

01:30:02

Dr. Price, could you explain to us, please, what kind of evidence you would need to believe that a miracle of any type took place in first century

01:30:11

Palestine? It's too late. There's no way to know. I can tell you what I would accept as very likely a miracle now, a healing miracle or something.

01:30:20

If I, if somebody could show, look, there's just no medical way, I'd say, well, then that's great to you. It's a miracle.

01:30:26

I don't know where to put it, but I have no reason to deny it. So there could not possibly be any kind of evidence from antiquity that you would find to be convincing that a miracle took place in the first century.

01:30:38

Well, I don't know how it would be, given the nature of ancient documentation. Tell me what you'd have in mind that would.

01:30:45

Well, I just, I think it has to do with the presuppositional issue. No, no. Well, okay.

01:30:51

If it is not a presupposition, well, here, let me read you another quote and then let you answer that.

01:31:00

You wrote at the end of your essay in the Historical Jesus Five Views book, quote, might there still have been a historical

01:31:05

Jesus who, however, has been irretrievably lost behind the stained glass curtain of his own glorification?

01:31:10

Indeed. But I should think the burden of proof lies with the one who would affirm such a Jesus, end quote.

01:31:16

Now, given your use of the principle of analogy, how could any evidence be offered that would fit your own criteria for the biblical presentation of Jesus to be true?

01:31:27

For Jesus to exist or Jesus to have done all the things in the Gospels? Well, let's start with, let's start at the bottom and move up from there.

01:31:35

Let's start with existence and then go from there. Well, I would be instantly persuaded if there were so much as a papyrus letter from somebody that said,

01:31:44

I saw the famous Jesus of Nazareth and I heard the wisdom that he spoke. We have stuff like that for Apollonius of Tyana and Peregrinus.

01:31:52

It might be sheer accident that we don't, but no evidence is no evidence. If somebody came up with a humble thing like that, that would solve the case for me right there that there was a historical

01:32:02

Jesus. Okay, so for existence. And yet, for how many people of antiquity, comparatively speaking, do we have that kind of evidence?

01:32:09

Oh, I agree. I agree. It's just that so much of the Gospels strike me as being so much like ancient myths or Old Testament stuff that there's nothing left over as there is like with Caesar Augustus who has many of the same biographical legends and so on.

01:32:27

It might just, that's why I say it may be irretrievable behind all the legends. And I do not dogmatize,

01:32:34

I don't tell atheists or anybody else, Jesus didn't exist, hallelujah, we know it. I always say, there have been dogmatists like that, but I say,

01:32:43

I'm pursuing this paradigm and I lean toward this, but no one can know it and I don't claim to.

01:32:49

Okay, so the second step then is given that you said that the burden of proof lies in one who would affirm such a

01:32:55

Jesus, so beyond mere existence, you said a single papyri letter would be enough.

01:33:01

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, but the Jesus of the New Testament who does the things that Jesus did, that's beyond the realm of history in your opinion.

01:33:12

Even if it happened, there's just no way to catch it so far back in the past. I don't know what

01:33:17

I would make of a guy walking on water, but if I saw somebody, well,

01:33:22

I have to admit if I saw somebody do it now, I'd suspect that it's a magician's trick. I don't know how any of those work either.

01:33:28

I'd have to be suspicious of it, but somebody rising from the dead after days of rotting,

01:33:34

I mean, I'm not going to deny that if I were to see it happen, but all the cases we, all the stories we know of are either medical cases of premature burials or legends, and so by analogy,

01:33:46

I have to say I don't know what happened, I wasn't there, but most probably this fits into this category.

01:33:51

So if God had broken into history in the past in such a way as to accomplish these things but was not doing them with regularity in our day, your methodology would preclude your acceptance on a historical level.

01:34:07

Yeah, we'd be screwed. That's right, we'd be screwed, and the idea similarly about how would you know

01:34:12

God had spoken, could you define what it is that you atheists are denying,

01:34:18

I've never really thought about that, but thinking about it now, I think this backfires. Atheists often say since we can't show how a

01:34:27

God could supposedly reveal Himself without us thinking it's just one more utterance from Reverend Moon or Shirley MacLaine, you just can't know, and if He's holding us responsible for that, we're screwed, and they say therefore probably a fair God didn't do it.

01:34:41

A fair God, okay, we'll pick up on that. You mentioned your quote to Cameron Riley down in Australia, and I loved the fact that not only did

01:34:52

I read your stuff, but you actually took time to Google my name, that was good, I appreciate that, most of my opponents don't, but you had heard me mention that particular citation.

01:35:03

It seems like you felt that I was misconstruing what you had said. The specific quote was, so it wouldn't matter if the

01:35:09

Gospels had been written ten minutes after the events, you wouldn't know what to think, legends grow up in no time.

01:35:14

Now does it not fall from this kind of statement that there could not be anything short of multiply attested video recordings of an event that would be sufficient for you to believe in anything supernatural that is narrated as a historical event like you just said?

01:35:27

I'm afraid so. Just think of these eyewitness tests they have now, with just some odd thing, some clown bursting into the psych classroom, and he runs out and says, okay everybody write down what you saw.

01:35:39

They can't agree on anything that just happened, all the more when it was surprising. I just don't think you can trust, if we knew we had any eyewitnesses, which is all speculation in the

01:35:49

Gospels, we just couldn't trust it this far back, we can no longer interview the people and all that, so we are stuck there, and it's frustrating.

01:35:58

But I'm afraid we'll never know. And so from your perspective there is no possibility that even if God had broken into history, that he could do anything that would cause anyone in the future to have certainty about what he did in the past?

01:36:12

I suppose he could hypnotize them like Pentheus was, and you just say, oh jeez I get it now, I believe it.

01:36:18

But to me that's Rudolf Steiner again, that's just subjectivity, you can feel certitude about it without having adequate grounds.

01:36:26

You had mentioned that you've written a response to the Jesus Legend book, which responds to a lot of your claims.

01:36:33

You had just mentioned that you couldn't trust an eyewitness account because of students, someone running in in a clown suit, and then students can't describe him, etc.,

01:36:42

etc. Very briefly, because it would probably take you quite some time, but very briefly, how did you respond to the presentation of modern orality studies that was presented by Boyd and Eddy?

01:36:55

They're digging their own grave, they're making my case. The people they're referring to in no way are arguing the kind of accuracy they want.

01:37:03

These Balkan storytellers in Starbucks over there, Starbuckski or whatever it is, they will have these half lines and keep varying everything and change the order of everything to the point where Parry and Lorde, who they're referring to, said every recitation is a new performance and it's meaningless to seek after an original.

01:37:24

They're talking about the kind of thing Bultmann was talking about. I don't think they understand the people they're quoting.

01:37:30

So you don't see anything to the argumentation that those cultures were significantly less writing -oriented and orally -oriented as far as their memorization process is concerned?

01:37:41

Well, at least this doesn't show it, this Balkan singer of tales thing. I think,

01:37:46

I don't know why they're even quoting this. I try to argue that it just grossly undermines their whole approach.

01:37:52

Okay, all right. I mean, tell me if, you know, when you see it, tell me what you think, but I just am amazed they think that's an argument for them.

01:37:59

Dr. Price, you have asserted that, even in our cost examination, that Paul wrote none of the letters attributed to him in the

01:38:05

New Testament. So could you explain why a forger or, I don't know, do you believe it was multiple people wrote the verses?

01:38:12

Yeah. Okay, multiple people. So a group of forgers around what time period would you say?

01:38:17

Late first, early second, that whole period. So 90 to 120 -ish?

01:38:23

Probably. Okay. Why would a group of forgers write those letters in the name of someone who never wrote anything and hence would have had no meaningful standing amongst the churches of Christ in the earlier mid -part of the second century?

01:38:36

Why forge something in the name of someone who had left no mark in history at all? Well, I think he did.

01:38:42

I think the Apostle Paul is another version of the character called Simon Magus, as F .C.

01:38:48

Bauer pointed out, and various other people have made interesting arguments. Any way you cut it, there seems to be some sort of polemical caricature going on.

01:38:55

And this is totally speculative. I have a book coming out about a year from now called

01:39:01

The Amazing Colossal Apostle. And it's just speculation. I've been looking for it, because you kept saying it was coming out earlier.

01:39:07

Oh, they kept delaying it. But it's just an interesting thought experiment. But I think that this guy, and a lot of it comes from Herman Dettering and Robert Eisenman and so on.

01:39:19

That's right. To me, you do have the guy that the Church Fathers said was the fountainhead of all heresy.

01:39:24

Simon had been a disciple of John the Baptist, and he became the successor after a dispute with Menander and so on.

01:39:32

And that he was the father of all heresy. Well, the Gnostics all claim that the

01:39:37

Apostle Paul was the father of Gnosticism. Maybe they're both right. And the fact that there are no known

01:39:44

Paulinist Christians until the Marcionites and Gnostics. Nobody knows a thing about Paul.

01:39:51

Justin Martyr never mentions him. It's only the late 2nd century apologists that are against him. And so I begin to wonder, is

01:39:57

Paulinism a very late development? But what you just said also requires you to radically re -date both

01:40:06

Ignatius and the First Epistle of Clement. Does it not? Oh, yeah. There, that's a whole different issue.

01:40:11

But you're right. First Clement, it's not even pseudonymous. There's no name on it.

01:40:17

And it's 60 Latin chapters. Nobody wrote letters like that. Just read the thing.

01:40:22

You can stay awake. It seems to me that where it does touch on Peter and Paul, it's partaking of a 2nd century apocryphal acts tradition that they were killed because of jealousy.

01:40:34

And with Ignatius' epistles, Calvin thought they were all spurious. There was a corpus of 14 of them, one from the

01:40:41

Virgin Mary and so on. And in Lightfoot's day, they said, Westcott and Horton, all these guys said, well, maybe there's a defensible core of seven of them.

01:40:50

But if you look at those, to me, they seem to be a literary creation all to be read together and supposedly written by a man who was constantly under the snarling supervision of brutal

01:41:02

Roman guards that, you know, get out of here, the whip, the manacles, let me finish this epistle with you.

01:41:09

It just seems totally artificial. And so I think, yeah, Calvin was right. Those are spurious and late.

01:41:14

So the fact that I would say, and I'm not trying to use an argument from authority here, but I think

01:41:21

I do need to enter this into the record, the fact that the vast majority of patristic scholars would date

01:41:29

Clement at the end of the first century, despite how Leaden you might think it is, believe me, it was one church writing to another.

01:41:35

And sometimes when churches write to other churches, it can be Leaden. You've got to grant that point.

01:41:41

But that Ignatius doesn't mention anything about how nasty his guards is, but that's written around 107 -108.

01:41:51

Both show evidence of Paul's writings, right? Yeah, but he seems to think there were several epistles to the

01:41:58

Philippians. He says that Paul mentions the Ephesians in all of his letters. I don't think he does.

01:42:04

He refers to there being Pauline letters, and it doesn't sound like he had the same batch we do. It's very strange.

01:42:11

There's no question that Ignatius in Ad Romanus 8 quotes directly from 1 Corinthians 15, verses 8 and 9.

01:42:17

I'm sorry. You're right. Romans and 1 Corinthians, he does indeed. I'm sorry. I'm thinking of Clement, whether it's not. Yeah, you're right.

01:42:23

But I think on totally different grounds that this is late stuff. Schoedl, I think

01:42:28

Wilhelm Schoedl, who did the Hermeneia commentary on the Ignatian epistles, he says it's time for a reexamination of these things.

01:42:36

The Tubingian critics are probably right. He doesn't think Ignatius wrote them either. Okay, the insertion of the gospel narrative in 1

01:42:46

Corinthians 15, verses 3 through 11. You've mentioned that you don't know who wrote 1

01:42:52

Corinthians, but there was a group of people. Somebody wrote 1 Corinthians about when, would you say?

01:42:58

Well, I think Schmitt also is right that the issues all through the book sound like what we have attested from Marcionites and Valentinian Gnostics and fit there.

01:43:07

That puts it well into the second section. Yeah, oh yeah. Okay, well into the second century, and it still doesn't have that, so this is put in after that. This text is inserted after that.

01:43:15

You've taken long. I'm just saying there were stages. I don't know how one would gauge how long they took. Okay, could you explain, in light of the fact that the

01:43:21

New Testament manuscript tradition appears in history already bifurcated into many interconnected streams of transmission, how the streams that would reflect the older text, without the interpolation of verses 3 through 11, could be completely lost to history?

01:43:34

Let me give you a second question, because it sort of piggybacks on this, and it'll make it easier, I think, for you to answer fully.

01:43:41

Although you only have a minute and 20 seconds. Okay, so answer that one, and I'll get to the rest of the information on my next round.

01:43:48

Well, I just go with the internal evidence. It seems to me this doesn't fit the context of the resurrection treatise and the rest of the chapter.

01:43:57

It even goes against the idea of faith in the resurrection, that it tries to prove it using material that was originally a bunch of credentials for apostles, as R.

01:44:08

H. Fuller pointed out. I've seen the Lord, and so this guy and that guy has, so we're all apostles. It seems to be a compromise statement welding together, as Harnack said, partisan slogans for Peter and the

01:44:23

Twelve, James and all the apostles. These were originally competitors, and now they appear with the redundancy.

01:44:30

Well, who are the apostles if they're not the Twelve? So it's filled with internal indications that it's late material.

01:44:35

But isn't it also an internal indication that 1 Corinthians 15 says, now I will declare to you the gospel which

01:44:41

I preached to you, and if you take verses 3 through 11 out, he never does that. Yes, he does. Where? He goes on to say that if he was wrong about the resurrection, they're all men, the most miserable of wretches.

01:44:51

That was a proclamation of the gospel? That may not be the first verse after it, I don't know, but he does immediately say that he preached the resurrection.

01:45:00

And we're going to have to leave it at that. The plot continues to thicken. Once again, we reverse roles,

01:45:06

Dr. Price has the floor with another 15 -minute cross -examination of Dr.

01:45:13

White. Dr. Price. Would you mind if I skipped it and just went on to questions?

01:45:19

You mean just one? Yeah, I still want to do my cross -examination. Well, how about I just let you do it?

01:45:25

Okay, well, I'll do my cross -examination, and then we can move on from there.

01:45:30

That's fine. That's okay. Is that okay, Hank? It is absolutely fine with me if it is fine with the audience.

01:45:37

All right. I can't keep my mouth shut anyway, so. But I want my full 15 minutes down there, so thank you very much.

01:45:44

Amen. Dr. White, you are now free to cross -examine Dr. Price, 15 minutes.

01:45:53

Let's continue on with that. Ryland's Five, better known as P32, has been dated the second half of the second century by Skeet, Bell, and Kenyon.

01:46:04

It comes from Titus. P87 from Philemon is likewise late second century.

01:46:10

Now, you have suggested a second century date for Paul's writings, and in fact, if we're talking about Martianite influences, that would push you as late as at least 145 to 150, because that's when he flourishes in Rome, right?

01:46:24

I think he's been somewhat late dated. I kind of go with Joe Hoffman in his book on Marcion and the restitution of whatever the heck, it's a long title, second century

01:46:33

Christianity. There were stories about how Marcion had been Papius, in fact, not a completely credible witness, but he at least knew of some tradition that made

01:46:43

Marcion the amanuensis of the apostle John as a way to explain odd Marcionite sounding passages in John.

01:46:51

Well, nobody could have done that if there weren't some opinion floating around that he was nearly an apostolic figure.

01:46:58

So we don't know for sure when Marcion was, but he may have been a bit earlier than that. Okay, so we have the

01:47:04

Gospels going real late and Gnosticism coming even earlier. Well, I think the myth of the

01:47:11

Christ Redeemer is based on the Gnostic myth of the Christ Ion destroyed by the archons and giving life to the inert creation of the

01:47:21

Demiurge. Once this was attached to Jesus, it had to be historicized so that though we still read in Colossians that Jesus was put to death by the principalities and powers, and it seems to me that it becomes historical characters once they decide to historicize the mythic

01:47:41

Christ into a recent contemporary. So from your perspective, the Gnostic Christ comes first and then the historicized

01:47:50

Jesus comes after Gnosticism. Yes, that's right. Okay. Admittedly speculative. There's no way ever to prove such a thing.

01:47:56

Okay, so going back to those two manuscripts that I mentioned that are late second century, aren't you sort of running out of time to keep pushing these documents farther and farther back away from the time of Jesus or Paul, especially since most liberal scholarship sees something like Titus as being well after the rest of the

01:48:14

Pauline corpus. Aren't you sort of running out of time given the early date of these papyri or do you disagree with the papyrologists that have dated these manuscripts?

01:48:24

Oh, I wouldn't presume to rule on that. I really don't know enough about that, but I do tend to think that it's more of a matter of relative chronology.

01:48:33

For instance, Winsome Monroe in her book Authority in Paul and Peter, she talks about the pastoral stratum of additions into the

01:48:46

Pauline epistles, which she thinks actually do go back to Paul generally. She said they come from the same pen of whoever the ecclesiastics were that wrote the pastorals to try to give the church a non -Marcionite, non -Gnostic domesticated reading of Paul.

01:49:02

I think, yeah, that is correct. That is the last gasp and stage of the

01:49:07

Pauline epistles, a catholicizing set of pastoral epistles. I'm not married to any particular date for any of them.

01:49:15

It just seems to me that they're probably in the second half of the first century on into the second century.

01:49:21

So we've got papyri evidence pretty much right from the point where they came into existence from your perspective. That wouldn't be surprising.

01:49:27

In fact, that kind of fits the theory. All right. You've often pointed to the discovery of a synagogue in Cyphera with pagan or Hellenized frescoes as evidence of a deep

01:49:36

Hellenization of Galilean Jews, and on this basis assert a divine man myth could arise from there.

01:49:41

Could you comment, please, on the fact that all such evidence comes from at the very earliest 100 years after the time of Christ and more probably a couple of centuries later, as well as the fact that a

01:49:51

New Testament presentation of the Jewish background of Jesus's ministry is plainly the Pharisaic, conservative, deeply anti -pagan

01:49:58

Judaism seen in the later historical books of the Tanakh? Well, two things there. The later you go into Rabbinic Judaism, the more—I mean, if you find evidence of Jewish syncretism even there, how much easier must it have been 100 years earlier or even in the time of the

01:50:16

Maccabees where, again, you don't have a zealous revitalization movement to stamp out syncretism unless it's rampant.

01:50:25

You don't tell people to stop doing what they're already not doing, and 2 Maccabees tells us that against the

01:50:31

Seleucids who were such Hellenizers, they found some of the bodies of Jewish freedom fighters were wearing protective amulets of the gods of Jaffa.

01:50:42

I mean, these guys weren't monotheists, and, I mean, are many Christians today with all the saints and all this stuff?

01:50:51

And I—it seems to me there's no problem. The whole Sebasian religion, which seems to equate

01:50:56

Jehovah with Dionysus, various classical authors thought they were the same. The Epistle of Aristeas says that Yahweh and Zeus are the same god, and there's—so

01:51:07

I just don't see any problem in this whole period, and, in fact, are the Pharisees that popular in the Gospels?

01:51:12

I'm not surprised that Christians not being Pharisaic. Well, and yet, the—wouldn't you agree, though, that the differences between Jesus and the

01:51:21

Pharisees have nothing to do with who God is and what His Word is, but the actual fact that they were undoing

01:51:28

God's commandments by their traditions and not living in accordance with that, wouldn't you agree? Well, yeah, but a lot of the debates seem to be anachronistic, like Jesus is condemned for healing on the

01:51:38

Sabbath, but everything we know from the mission has said if you're doing it not for money and without medicine, it's okay.

01:51:43

Jesus condemns the Korban thing, but we have no instance of a rabbi that was for that.

01:51:48

We have several where they express the same view. It seems to me the Gospel writers didn't really know what the Pharisees thought.

01:51:54

Why was the first about the Sabbath anachronistic? You said that we don't have—because the

01:52:00

Mishnah, which comes 270 years later, said something? I mean, I don't think Newsom would agree with that reading.

01:52:07

The healing on the Sabbath thing? Right. It's just that we don't know of any Pharisaic Jews that thought that.

01:52:13

I mean, did Jesus carry the day? That just seems odd to me. And the same thing with the healing on the

01:52:21

Sabbath thing. Jesus assumes, oh yeah, you would certainly take the sheep out of the ditch, would you? Not according to the

01:52:26

Dead Sea Scrolls. That was not something you could take for granted among Jews. But then you just mentioned the

01:52:32

Korban rule, which is clearly stated to be a tradition going back to Moses in the

01:52:41

Mishnah. Well the Mishnah contains several rabbis who have the same view Jesus does, that if you haven't second thoughts about a gift where you should be supporting your parents, forget the vow.

01:52:53

We don't have anybody, say, on record saying, I'm sorry, your parents are—tough luck, you know, you've got to give it to the temple.

01:53:01

Jesus is made to be Robin Hood against the bad guy Pharisees, but we don't know of any Pharisees or Mishnahic sages that held view he's attacking.

01:53:08

I guess there could have been some, but again, the evidence doesn't say some things and it does others.

01:53:14

So it seems to me— So when the New Testament presents the Jews having a certain belief, if we don't have external evidence, then the

01:53:21

New Testament view of the Jews holding that belief should be rejected. It should be questioned. It should be questioned.

01:53:26

Like when Muslims say things about Christianity. But how much external evidence actually exists for Jewish beliefs outside of the

01:53:34

New Testament from the first century? The Mishnah is not. Yeah, but all you can—like I said with Neusner, you can never really be sure about this.

01:53:42

And there's this huge debate, him versus Sanders. It's very difficult to tell what the Pharisees thought. But I'm just saying, based on what scant evidence we have, plus some of the time

01:53:53

Jesus has shown making fools out of these guys with arguments that would have impressed no one.

01:53:59

Like, who is it lawful to kill on the Sabbath or to give life? That's preposterous.

01:54:04

Who would say it's right to kill or to do evil on the Sabbath? And—or the guy that comes in to say, hey, couldn't you have come tomorrow to be healed?

01:54:13

I mean, your life's in no danger. Your hand is lame. Couldn't you come tomorrow? Well, yeah. Why couldn't he?

01:54:19

I mean, there's a bunch of—or the Jesus defense of the resurrection. Because I—not I was the

01:54:24

God of Abraham, but I am—come on. Would this—would this have impressed anybody?

01:54:31

It just seems to me you've got Christians writing for Christians. So would this have impressed anybody?

01:54:37

You don't see that that argumentation in regards to the resurrection fits very well with the kind of argumentation that we do find in later

01:54:48

Jewish sources? They have some pretty silly stuff, too, but again, we're reading it from the people that liked it. It seems to me if you were trying to win your point in the face of hostile colleagues, that would never have gotten you home.

01:55:01

It just seems like the standards that you're using shift depending on what you're looking at. In other words, history seems to be clear enough to provide us evidence that whatever the

01:55:11

New Testament's talking about couldn't possibly be true. Like what? What are you— Well, Jesus saying these things, it's just such an anachronism.

01:55:20

Oh, well, can I address that? Well, yeah, because my question is when I read these texts,

01:55:25

Dr. Price, I see tremendous consistency not only with the Old Testament witness, but across the

01:55:32

Gospels. And it seems that when you read any of these—let's just put it this way. You don't seem to read the

01:55:38

Gospels with the—I don't want to use the term friendliness because that sounds like an aggressive thing, but you don't read the

01:55:46

Gospels the way I tried to read your books. In other words, I've tried over the past number of months to enter into your way of thought because that's the only way to have a meaningful discussion with you, not what someone else has said about you.

01:56:01

It just seems to me—this is—and if all this means is you learn something about someone from the outside your perspective looking at your writings, it seems to me that when you look at any

01:56:13

New Testament writing, you almost fear the possibility of harmonization.

01:56:19

You almost fear giving to it any kind of freedom to have a different context than the one you assign to it.

01:56:27

That's how I've heard you. I understand how, but like on the Bible, if someone proposes something that they think is a contradiction,

01:56:34

I'll say, wait just a second, no, it's not. I've often said that things that people think are problems in the

01:56:39

Gospels just aren't. I would love to hear one because I've never heard that. One guy said, hey, look at this problem that took the disciples the whole of the

01:56:49

Sabbath day to get back from the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem. No, you idiot. The Sabbath day's journey meant a small amount.

01:56:56

And I love pointing out stuff like that or Jesus saying, oh, it's a contradiction that you should not do your acts of piety before men, but let your light so shine before others.

01:57:07

No, no, the point is you just live in such a way that people say, thank God for people like that.

01:57:13

But you shouldn't say, okay, everybody, since you're not praying for your food here in McDonald's, I'll say a prayer for you, which

01:57:19

I have heard. I mean, if there's no contradiction there. You've heard someone do that? Yeah, or close to it.

01:57:25

And I know people that have. It's just that's, I mean, surely that's what he's talking about. There's no contradiction there at all.

01:57:31

So I like to do that. I'm glad to hear that because I had not heard that because it did seem to me the

01:57:37

Mark 8 thing. Could you comment on what I said about Mark 8, take up the cross?

01:57:44

Because you have used very strong language in your statement that this is a glowing anachronism that could not possibly have been said by the pre -crucifixion

01:57:55

Jesus. And I just simply go, wait a minute. They knew what crucifixion was darn well. But was Jesus already some sort of an outlaw and says, hey, everybody,

01:58:04

I'm starting a new religion and we're going to get persecuted. So you'd better sign up for the death mark. He doesn't say that.

01:58:10

I mean, there's no such teaching about that. And he's just teaching moral sophisms and so on that are real good.

01:58:17

What could they have taken him to mean? What did he mean by deny yourself? Oh, well, take up your cross and follow me.

01:58:24

Clearly saying you Christians, you know what Jesus did. It's time for you to step up too. But these people didn't know what he did because he hadn't done it.

01:58:31

It certainly has to be aimed at people that otherwise you just are truncating the meaning of the story and reducing it to some kind of zealot recruiting poster or whichever.

01:58:40

But that's just travesty. But aren't you actually truncating the meaning of the text by saying Jesus could not have made this kind of a call and said to if you remember

01:58:50

Mark 8 says this is not the crowd that came to him. He summoned the crowd unto himself and he gives them a message that they are not going to like.

01:59:00

He doesn't want them to know about the son of man or his crucifixion in the same passage. What could what sense could it have made?

01:59:07

I'm not saying he didn't ask for costly discipleship. It's just that this surely implies, you know, it's about Jesus, our

01:59:13

Lord and Savior, crucified on the cross. He went to the cross for you. So and surely it means that.

01:59:18

And you say, well, no, it doesn't. He just meant you could get into trouble. Oh, no. I would rather say this glows in all of its profound meaning.

01:59:26

If you realize it's a prophecy from the ascended Christ. So Jesus could not have said if the

01:59:33

Jesus of the New Testament existed, he could never have said or done anything that reflected his his own nature.

01:59:40

They just wouldn't. It would have gone. It's like the old joke where Jesus goes to a modern seminary thing and he asked the students, who do you say that I am?

01:59:47

Oh, you're the ground of being. You're the man for others. You're the ontological. Listen, that Jesus said to them, what would he like?

01:59:54

They only their worlds are reversed. What are they? What what do you mean? Take up your cross, father. You know what?

01:59:59

What's the issue here? You just love one another. We're going to get crucified for that. So the words that he spoke at that time, though, they could have had clear application in denial and even in self -sacrifice.

02:00:12

The reason that we think that they're anachronistic and hence could not have been spoken by Jesus is because they have an even greater fulfillment later.

02:00:19

Well, because the obvious meaning, I think, of the text is be like the Christ who went to the cross and they couldn't have made that association.

02:00:29

So, but is there not a an assumption on your part at that point that Jesus's words could not have a meaning to those people that was fully understandable that becomes even greater when he fulfills his.

02:00:41

It just seems to me a hair splitting. All right. Well, thank you very much,

02:00:48

Dr. White and Dr. Price. You are both testimonies of giving an answer with gentleness and with respect.

02:01:00

And for that, you're deeply appreciated. Thank you. Next up, 10 minute closing statements.

02:01:14

Please welcome back to the microphone Dr. Robert Price. You know,

02:01:24

I found that it was the love of the Bible inculcated in me when, as the movie title says,

02:01:31

I was a teenage fundamentalist. And I love the Bible and wanted to plumb the depths of it and unravel the riddles of it.

02:01:41

And that curiosity has never left me. But I must say that I found the belief in the infallibility of the

02:01:50

Bible a barrier to understanding it. After a certain point,

02:01:55

I began to find that, you know, I could make sense of this and that if I didn't have to maintain that there can be no contradictions or errors.

02:02:04

This and that would make a lot more sense. I think I could understand it better if I had these possibilities on the table.

02:02:12

And eventually, I wound up not becoming a, I should say, no longer being a theist, but it had nothing to do with the

02:02:19

Bible. It was really a philosophical thing I went back and forth on. Can I believe in idealist metaphysics?

02:02:25

It had more to do with that. But I never became the kind of atheist where I felt that required a

02:02:33

Dracula -like shunning of the cross in Christianity. That's neurotic.

02:02:39

And I never could believe that the Bible, despite the Bronze Age barbarism that is in various parts of it, is equivalent to Mein Kampf, as some friends of mine seem to think.

02:02:52

It is obvious to me that much of the Bible contains great profundities of spirituality and morality, etc.

02:03:01

But I still reject the notion of inspiration, independent of whether there's a

02:03:07

God or not, because I think, oddly enough, that is insulting to the Bible as an unintended consequence.

02:03:15

Do you need to be convinced that a God inspired the oracles of Isaiah or the

02:03:22

Sermon on the Mount before you're going to recognize the value of them? Does your recognition of the compelling nature of that material hinge upon whether it came about through divine inspiration?

02:03:37

And if it did or didn't, what would that add to it? And on the other hand, if you feel that everything in the boundaries of that book must partake of the same inspiration, you seem to be stuck having to say that 2

02:03:51

Chronicles is on the same level as Jeremiah. You know it's not.

02:03:56

You have to make the distinctions, as Jesus says, and Luke, why don't you judge for yourselves what is right?

02:04:03

I began to find that the inspiration of the Bible simply hindered the understanding of it and insulted the greatness of it.

02:04:13

As if you were to, would you take a New York phone book as any more than a phone book?

02:04:18

If somebody could persuade you that it was inerrantly dictated by a God, even if it was, there's nothing there, not even all the numbers are right.

02:04:28

And so it seemed to me that the inerrancy thing was not only a bad model for reading and it didn't square with the facts, it was detrimental to the greatness of the

02:04:37

Bible. And that is the standpoint from which I dissent respectfully,

02:04:43

I hope you can see, against this kind of thing. Because I believe the most pious thing with regard to the

02:04:49

Bible is understanding it and making sense of it, not walling off things that I am afraid it can't mean or my theology is done for.

02:05:00

Ultimately, I guess I'm kind of with Martin Luther on this, I'm not going to read the Bible according to what dogma tells me it has to mean and cannot mean, and that includes the infallibility stuff.

02:05:13

Now, all of my weird little theories don't really especially come out, these authorship things, dates of the

02:05:20

Gospels, Reconstructions of Paul and all that stuff, they're simply attempts to make some new sense of some old data, and I offer them only in that spirit.

02:05:31

My whole approach to teaching the Bible is Socratic, I have never become an unquestioning disciple of anyone

02:05:41

I have read or studied, and I hope none of you will either, and the greatest horror would be if somebody were stupid enough just to believe what

02:05:48

I say without question. I hope merely to provide data and perspectives that perhaps are unfamiliar to you so that you can decide what to do with them as you evaluate them in your own synthesis, and wherever you come out,

02:06:04

I wish you well, I have no interest in pushing you in one direction or another, so bon voyage on the critical journey with the

02:06:14

Bible. Thank you,

02:06:21

Dr. Price, and now for his 10 -minute closing statement, please show your appreciation to Dr.

02:06:31

James White. I'll begin my final closing statement by talking about my tie.

02:06:58

Yes, my tie is a picture from Codex Sinaiticus.

02:07:04

It is 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verses 3 through 11. The text that Dr.

02:07:10

Price believes is a later interpolation, and I believe it would be extremely appropriate for me to give

02:07:17

Dr. Price his own version of this tie. And since I'm in a very giving mood tonight,

02:07:31

I would like to thank our moderator, Hank Hanegraaff. I don't know if he'll ever wear it, but at least he'll remember where he got it.

02:07:46

Now, I do not want to in any way diminish the importance of our topic. I do try to demonstrate in my debates the fact that we can debate very vigorously.

02:07:56

James, Dr. Price and I are both going to join the cult immediately. I also believe that what we're talking about are very, very, very important issues.

02:08:37

Dr. Price just expressed to us the fact that, you know, he wishes us well on our journeys, and a lot of his statements are thought experiments, but I think

02:08:47

Dr. Price well knows that there are many atheists who utilize his thought experiments as reason to deny the truthfulness of Christianity.

02:08:57

And Dr. Price recognized that I had heard this particular radio program he had done, and he came to me,

02:09:03

I want to say this before I read this quote, he came to me and said, I don't want you to take that in the wrong way. I'm not saying that you people are just a bunch of bozos.

02:09:10

But I think it was very instructive that when Dr. Price was interviewing Robert J.

02:09:16

Miller recently, he asked him, what do you think about debates? And Dr. Miller said that he felt that such debates as we do this evening are improper because they lend legitimacy to fundamentalist scholars, because it looks like we are taking them seriously as colleagues and peers, whereas in fact their assumptions are so fundamentally different from what

02:09:36

I would think of as true and honest critical scholarship. Now that should echo something that we've touched on over and over again this evening, the fundamental differences of presuppositions that we have brought to this discussion this evening.

02:09:50

Dr. Price responded by saying, well I believe you're correct, but on the other hand, it enhances their credibility in the eyes of their own constituency anyway.

02:09:57

They are believing the same thing they would about the legitimacy of their scholars and their viewpoint, no matter what I might say.

02:10:03

And I feel like there probably is a thin edge of questioning or unconvinced people that may hope the apologetics are true and fear they are not.

02:10:12

And if I have a chance to get in there and say, well, you know, your fears are well -founded, these people sadly do not know whereof they speak,

02:10:19

I think I might be doing a favor to those people. And the other ones, if it is just entertainment for them, well, so be it.

02:10:25

And you are right though, the one bad byproduct, like Dawkins says about evolution, there is the risk of making people think we are taking them more seriously than we are, the last portion said with some bit of laughter.

02:10:38

Now, I recognize that from Dr. Price's perspective, what

02:10:43

I've done this evening is I've just demonstrated my pre -commitment to the authority and consistency of Scripture.

02:10:50

But I think we've also seen that Dr. Price has a commitment to the lack of authority and commitment of the

02:10:57

Christian Scriptures as well. And this has come out in the conversation we've had. But remember what

02:11:03

I said at the beginning. What did I say at the beginning? Test us for consistency.

02:11:10

The only way you can define truth is by its internal consistency.

02:11:17

And that's what I hope you have been doing this evening. That has been your job. You had a job here this evening.

02:11:23

I believe especially Christians, you had a job here this evening to be engaged, to be listening, to listening to what

02:11:29

Dr. Price has to say. I hope there was no Christian here this evening that just turned him off and said, I'm just not going to listen, I'm just not going to listen.

02:11:35

You have to listen to be able to understand and to give a response. And that's why

02:11:41

I've emphasized to Dr. Price, that's why I spent so much time in studying his particular position.

02:11:47

I didn't just attribute to him just a standard atheistic position. I had to engage his perspective because it's the only way that I can meaningfully engage him and show respect to him and respect to you as the audience in a debate like we had this evening.

02:12:03

But as I said before, this is the beginning of a process. You've been challenged to think about a lot of things that, to be honest with you, a lot of Christians are never challenged to think about.

02:12:13

You have assumed a lot of things about the background of the Bible. There is every reason to believe those things.

02:12:20

I believe there is every reason to believe that God has spoken. And I believe that Dr. Price has a problem.

02:12:26

He has admitted that his historical system could not possibly in any way detect

02:12:31

God having spoken in the past. There's no way to know. And it seems he has a great fear that if we open the door here, it's just a whole flood of mythology.

02:12:42

We have to accept everything as being the same. I don't think so at all. One of Dr. Price's favorite people from the past is

02:12:50

Apollonius of Tyana. Well, I knew that. And so I crunched through the deserts of Phoenix, Arizona and listened to all of Philostratus' story of Apollonius of Tyana.

02:13:01

And there are fundamental differences between the claims that are made that Dr. Price says, oh, but there's so many different parallels.

02:13:09

But there are fundamental differences as well in regards to worldview. There's no consistency in that story.

02:13:17

The consistency that I find and that I find to be tremendously beautiful. Now, let me become subjective here for just a moment.

02:13:26

We've been very objective. Let me be somewhat subjective. I believe, and I'm going to have to do another count, but I believe tonight amounts to about my 96th public moderated debate.

02:13:38

I have debated Bart Ehrman, John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, John Shelby Spong, Barry Lynn.

02:13:44

That was fun. Mormon scholars, Greg Stafford, a

02:13:50

Jehovah's Witness. I'll be debating two Shiite sheiks in Dearborn, Michigan in just over a month.

02:13:59

And in all of those encounters and all of those challenges to my faith, I have tried to listen seriously and soberly to what the person was saying and why they were saying it.

02:14:13

Now, my experience over 20 years of defending the faith now,

02:14:19

I cannot communicate that to you in any particular way. I can only announce it to you. But what

02:14:26

I can tell you is this, and I'm sure that others who are involved in apologetics as long as I have can tell you the same thing.

02:14:33

There is a beauty to the harmony of God's Word that you only discover when you are challenged to dig deeply by people like Robert Price and John Dominic Crossan.

02:14:48

There is a beauty to that harmony. It's not just spin doctoring. It is allowing the text to speak for itself and to speak over the course of 1500 years and 40 different authors.

02:15:01

And it absolutely amazes me. Now, that's my testimony.

02:15:07

You have to take it for what it's worth. You have to take that and listen to what you listened to this evening and ask yourself the question, who has been consistent in their worldview, in their questions, in their presentation?

02:15:22

But I do have one advantage here. Dr. Price said, well, you know, there might be those questioning people, those doubting people, and I might be doing them a favor.

02:15:31

But you see, when I engage in a debate like this, I have the ultimate confidence that the

02:15:38

Spirit of God will bless His people with His truth. And that's why I've come here this evening.

02:15:44

That's why I thank you for coming here this evening and listening to this. And I hope indeed that God's people have been blessed.

02:15:53

And if you are here this evening and you're not one of those people, I hope and pray that you have heard something that would cause you to give serious consideration to the presentation of the

02:16:02

Christian gospel. Thank you for being here this evening. God bless. And I must say,

02:16:23

Hank, you look dashing. It actually goes with your suit pretty well. I'm very pleased.

02:16:30

Providential. Yes, indeed. It actually goes well with Dr. Price's outfit as well.

02:16:38

Well, and now for the grand finale, 30 minutes of questions and answers.

02:16:45

The format will be a one -minute answer, and check this out, a 30 -second rebuttal.

02:16:56

Think you can do that? You guys are good. That'll be a miracle, but we'll see if they have it.

02:17:02

This will prove that the Bible is true. Well, I hardly know who to start with, so I'm just going to pick the one on my left.

02:17:15

This question is for Dr. White. Given the high stakes of eternity, why would a loving, omnipotent

02:17:26

God with infinite knowledge and resources not do a much better job of revealing himself than the obviously highly debatable text found in the

02:17:40

Bible? Obviously, I do not agree with the question's presupposition that this is a highly debatable and non -understandable text.

02:17:51

I have seen old women and young people understand exactly what the text was saying and exactly why it was saying it.

02:17:58

But I do believe that there is a purpose that God has had in revealing himself in the way that he has done so.

02:18:05

He hasn't revealed a systematic theology text. He hasn't revealed a mere computer manual.

02:18:11

He has revealed himself in his interaction with his people, and most especially in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

02:18:18

And so, it is the mechanism that God has chosen to bring about his own glory, and I reject the kind of presupposition that was inherent in the question itself.

02:18:33

Well, I tend to sympathize with the questioner. I think the very fact that you have to have all of these apologetics arguments to try to show how reasonable it is means that it is far from clear, and if we're held to have to believe in something for which there is not pretty decisive evidence in my view of myself and many others, there isn't, no matter how honestly we try to look at it.

02:18:58

Again, we're screwed, and I can't believe a fair God would do that. The next question directed to Dr.

02:19:09

Price. Both participants have engaged in a highly esoteric academic debate.

02:19:17

How would a providential God who loves us all require that we have such sophisticated understanding of this subject in order to believe in him?

02:19:29

Same problem over again, and it certainly goes against the New Testament idea that God has revealed these things unto babes and hidden them from the wise and so on.

02:19:40

But I think the questioner is right. It is not a simple matter, and if we have to pretend that it is and just acquiesce to the will to believe, that's just intellectual dishonesty, and we're selling our souls in order to save them.

02:19:55

Well, in only 30 seconds, it's difficult to address too much of that, but again, I completely reject the idea that because we have gone into depth and detail in the defense of the

02:20:05

Bible, that that means somehow that that is a mark against it. How is it that our ability to engage these subjects is somehow a mark against the gospel?

02:20:15

No one has ever said you need to know about the synagogue and syphora to be a Christian, but isn't it nice to be able to look at those things and see that Christianity is consistent there?

02:20:27

The next question directed to Dr. White. How has the vote taken for canonization at Nicaea not a harmonization, especially since it did away with all the disagreeable texts?

02:20:45

Well, that's a common myth, and if Elliot Miller is hiding someplace, there is a wonderful article in the

02:20:51

CRI Journal called What Really Happened to the Council of Nicaea that explodes that myth. There was no vote, by the way,

02:20:58

I wrote the article, but be that as it may. That explodes the myth that the Council of Nicaea had anything whatsoever to do with the canonization of Scripture.

02:21:07

There is no historical evidence of that whatsoever. In fact, the first listing of the

02:21:12

New Testament books as we have them today is in Athanasius' 39th Festal Letter in 367, long after the

02:21:18

Council of Nicaea. Nicaea didn't do anything about other gospels or anything like that.

02:21:23

That is a common myth that has been promulgated by people like Dan Brown and others that has absolutely no basis in history whatsoever.

02:21:34

That's correct. It's like the thing where they say the early church cut out references to reincarnation in the

02:21:41

Bible. Boy, that would be fascinating, but there's just no evidence for that. The reason I called my collection of the 54 early

02:21:48

Christian texts the pre -Nicene New Testament was to take advantage of the myth but to explain, now

02:21:56

I'm just saying pre -Nicene Christianity was very diverse and that here's what we might have had if people had gone for an inclusive canon.

02:22:04

But you're certainly right, there was no attempt to define the canon at the Council of Nicaea.

02:22:10

I wonder where that came from. Dr. Price, you're next.

02:22:18

How can you say you love the Bible if you don't believe it is true? Do you believe in eternal life?

02:22:26

And if so, where will you spend eternity? If not, what happens when we die?

02:22:34

Remember what TV preacher R. W. Schambach said on the radio?

02:22:39

You higher critics out there, I know you're listening to me. What good's that higher criticism going to do you in hell?

02:22:46

But in fact, I cannot believe in a hell even if there is a God. But I don't believe it all.

02:22:55

Some of it I love as myth and as literature but some of it I love as moral reproof that I need to hear and I'm glad to hear.

02:23:02

Moral challenge and enlightening ethics. Even the stuff I think is silly,

02:23:08

I love. I don't excoriate it and hate it and want to get rid of it. The silly things about the axe head float.

02:23:16

That's just great. It's just not a fact. Who cares? Haven't you ever heard of fiction?

02:23:22

There's a lot of fiction that's great too. So I love it even when I don't believe it and I doubt that there is eternal life.

02:23:29

I cannot know it but it just seems to me real unlikely there's any music without the harp to play it.

02:23:36

I'm not trying to ridicule it. How would I know? But based on what I know, it just seems unlikely to me.

02:23:44

Well, obviously there's a fundamental difference between us. We believe that God has revealed that He is a holy

02:23:49

God and that we have a need before Him and that He has provided for the means of having righteousness before Him in Jesus Christ.

02:23:57

When I look at Jesus Christ, when I hear someone say, Oh, I really like the things Jesus Christ said, I look at how He viewed the

02:24:02

Bible and I honestly think that I'm viewing the Bible the same way that the Lord Jesus did.

02:24:08

Now, of course, people say, Well, then He must not have viewed it that way. That's where the naturalistic presuppositions come in and we're just not allowing for the text to define how

02:24:16

Jesus Himself viewed Scripture. I want to view it the way He did. Could you explain what you mean if a rejoinder says,

02:24:26

Well, then He must not have believed it that way? I just didn't quite understand. I said

02:24:31

I want to believe the Bible the way that Jesus believed the Bible. And they come back and say, Well, then He never said those things that indicate that He believed the

02:24:38

Scriptures in those ways. That's odd, yeah. Thanks. Dr.

02:24:44

White, according to you, there are no first -person eyewitness reports of anything

02:24:51

Jesus did and said. Therefore, what justification is there for believing that Jesus came back to life after three days when this is so improbable based on our observations today?

02:25:10

Well, there you have a classic example, two -pronged. First of all, to say that the resurrection is improbable and to say that no one is arguing the resurrection is probable because probable is a naturalistic chance type thing.

02:25:26

We're saying that the resurrection was a miracle. It's not just improbable. It violates all the laws of nature because God did it.

02:25:34

That's the whole point of what a miracle is. And a naturalist just can't handle that kind of information.

02:25:40

But to say that there are no eyewitnesses, again, I think if you'd like to read Richard Baucom's work that came out just a couple of years ago called

02:25:52

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, I think is an excellent romp through the evidence in regards to the continuing existence of eyewitnesses of Jesus' ministry throughout the early informative periods of the

02:26:05

Christian faith. I think it's a real good refutation of Baucom's book and I think the most recent issue of the forum published by the

02:26:14

Westar Institute Jesus Seminar. But as to the earlier issue of improbability, this is what

02:26:25

I mean about Karl Barth. He said, I think it happened, but of course it's improbable.

02:26:30

It's a miracle. But Barth saw that meant that means you can't show it's likely it happened.

02:26:37

It's like the people that try to every Christmas show you that you see, they did see that star over Bethlehem because it was the conjunction of two stars, which is the only way

02:26:49

I could prove it scientifically. Will you believe it then? Well, yeah, but what's the point? It's no longer a miracle.

02:26:56

Well, that's what the swoon theory people were trying to do. I bet I can get you to believe in the Eastern narratives if we just say, okay, he didn't actually die and then he was seen again on Easter morning.

02:27:05

Won't you accept that? I guess I could, but then you got no miracle and that's always the problem with trying to prove that a miracle is probable.

02:27:15

The very attempt cannot transcend natural causation even if there was a supernatural event.

02:27:24

It just cannot be known and the will to believe that it happened is not knowing it.

02:27:32

Robert, the next question for you. If absolute evidence is all that is palatable for you to accept, would not every atheist, if they were to adopt the same view, be forced to become agnostics like yourself since they do not know for certain either?

02:27:51

My guess is that most atheists are not believers in atheism, which to me would be a strange and fanatical view.

02:28:01

Oh God, hallelujah! That strikes me as very strange and the ones

02:28:06

I know generally are saying look, there could be a God but I just don't see enough reason to take it seriously.

02:28:12

There could be little men in the moon for all I know but I just don't see any reason to take it seriously. In other words,

02:28:18

I don't mean to ridicule any religious belief simply to say that most atheists I know are not claiming it's a faith statement or that they know it absolutely.

02:28:25

They're just saying I just can't take it seriously based on the state of the evidence. Perhaps they're wrong but I would agree with that but in any rate it's technically agnosticism.

02:28:38

It's not some fideistic belief that hallelujah, there's no God. So yes,

02:28:44

I agree with you the questioner. Well, I think the new atheists do take it exactly that far and they do make that kind of a very strong assertion even the point of questioning whether raising a child in religious belief is child abuse but we have here again the issue of presuppositions because when the atheist says well,

02:29:03

I see no evidence you immediately have to ask what would you accept as evidence and if they can't give you an answer of what evidence would be other than well,

02:29:10

Jesus coming down here and walking across the stage would be good evidence there is a clear indication of the presuppositional nature of that commitment and that's what has to be challenged.

02:29:22

Next question for Dr. White it has some grammatical errors but I will read it as presented.

02:29:29

As a believer I believe the Bible is inerrant at the time it was written but due to men we have lost the originals in some parts such as long ending of Mark are lost it is said we have it reconstructed and we have 110 % or so of the

02:29:47

Bible for the Bible to be inerrant as we have it today shouldn't it be free of grammar mistakes even if the doctrine isn't in question.

02:30:04

Right after Mark 16 9 through 20 there was something about something else that was lost? It is said that we have it reconstructed we have 110 % or so of the

02:30:13

Bible. Well first of all I'm sort of wondering upon what standard the individual decides to make allegation of a grammatical error but again anyone who reads the

02:30:27

New Testament recognizes that there are all sorts of different styles used in the New Testament I mean

02:30:33

I'm preaching through Hebrews right now and anyone who reads Hebrews knows that whoever wrote

02:30:39

John didn't write that so there's fundamentally different styles that are used and so what kind of standard can you create to say well there's a grammatical error some place

02:30:48

I don't see what that has to do with the examination of the text and the rightful recognition on our part that such texts as John 7 .53

02:30:57

through 8 .11 and Mark 16 .9 through 20 are highly questionable as to their being a part of the original writing itself the manuscript tradition is rich enough and full enough for us to make those kinds of decisions and I think it's fully appropriate to do so because I want to know what the authors wrote not what someone long afterwards thought the authors should have written

02:31:20

So the problem here is grammatical mistakes or the preservation of the original text

02:31:26

I wasn't 100 % certain so I addressed both Yeah yeah the grammatical thing is interesting to me that's like the business about what's the smallest seed on the earth and Jesus is shown to say well it's a mustard seed and in fact it's not does anybody lose any sleep over that?

02:31:49

I mean is it really possible that distinction is important? and and the same thing here

02:31:55

I heard that the book of Revelation shows a poor grasp of Greek the guy was more of a dyed in the wool

02:32:03

Aramaic speaker yeah to me that just doesn't doesn't that's not a problem interesting to know about it about the text but maybe

02:32:15

I should think more about it but I don't see a problem there Dr.

02:32:20

Price next question for you what would be the purpose of studying the

02:32:26

Bible if it can't be trusted to contain any truth whatsoever? well

02:32:32

I don't think it is absent of any truth whatsoever I think there's a lot of great stuff in there but even if it weren't

02:32:39

I'd say because it's there I mean people that study the Iliad and the Odyssey don't think it's factual or inspired or that all of it is you know profitable for doctrine and reproof and all of that but it's fascinating and I personally believe whatever is fascinating that's good enough you don't have to justify it in the canons of some utilitarian schoolmarm somewhere you know if it tickles your fancy go to it unlike the

02:33:07

Bible well that's that's one of the fundamental differences as well is because obviously when you when you look at what the text says it is saying that God has revealed certain truths that are vital for life itself and we really do believe that that our life not just in the sense of of judgment in the future but life now

02:33:30

Jesus said I've come that I might have life now there's a difference between thinking that's true and thinking that something in the

02:33:36

Book of Mormon or the Bhagavad Gita or Apollonius of Tyana is is true there's we need to know whether what we're studying is true in itself last two questions one for Dr.

02:33:52

White and one for Dr. Price Dr. White you asked everyone to be open to the idea that God has spoken to us how does one know whether God has really spoken to him or whether this connection to God is a subjective interpretation resulting from brain activity well

02:34:17

God designed us to have brain activity so brain activity is certainly going to be part of it in fact the

02:34:22

Christian message is that God reveals his son to us there is a impartation of knowledge there is a an object of belief and faith that we have so our our minds are a part of that but what did

02:34:35

I say in my opening statement and this is this is how I would respond to I think what Robert's concern is about opening the floodgate to all supernaturalism at all and that is the issue of consistency is there a consistent revelation a consistent message and I believe that there is and that's what

02:34:53

I was talking about when I speak of the the beauty of that harmony that we find in the inspired scriptures and so how do you know well if God is truth then

02:35:03

God is going to speak truthfully not not in the sense of our adopting presuppositions that will cause him to close his mouth but there is going to be a consistency in the revelation that is given to us in scripture and that's exactly why

02:35:17

I'm a Christian and not a Buddhist or a Muslim or anything else I think that the consistency you see in the whole 66 books of the

02:35:27

Bible is an optical illusion and that though there are some themes as you'd expect and given the religious cultural continuity there are loads of important contradictions including like Dallas Seminary I believe was in great debate of whether you had to accept

02:35:43

Jesus as your Lord only Lord and Savior or just your Savior we can't agree on that I think that there isn't any miraculous consistency in this any more than there is in the

02:35:56

Book of Mormon but you can find some consistency in Christian theology but you can find that in Buddhism, Islam and so on they also have great systems of thought that are pretty consistent with one another and you're finally reduced to what

02:36:10

Walter Kaufman said in The Faith of a Heretic that it's eeny meeny miney moe no matter which choice which direction you chose to jump in with a leap of faith it would seem like you'd picked the right one after you were in the bubble you'd look back and say what a sinner

02:36:26

I was now I'm enlightened and everybody does that there are too many choices to make Pascal's wager work and that's what you're stuck with again, we're screwed if that's the situation one of your favorite words well, it comes up quite a bit in certain characters certain subject matter

02:36:46

Dr. Price you have the last question do you have a soul?

02:36:53

I did a sermon once called there's more oh, I'm sorry do you have a soul?

02:37:00

what will if you have a soul happen to it when you die? thank you I did a sermon called if I only had a soul based on The Wizard of Oz and my view is that the soul is if you ask what they're talking about when they say you don't want to gain the whole world but lose your soul and things like that I think soul really means your integrity that you can sell your soul and you become less and less of a person the more integrity you sacrifice as to whether there is some sort of material refined essence of you that survives the death of the body that I doubt from my limited understanding

02:37:42

I can't see how that could be but again I am a mortal pipsqueak and scarcely in possession of all the deep things of metaphysics so I don't know but it would seem to me you're just out like a light unfortunately well

02:38:00

I have one and by God's grace it has been redeemed and I can simply say this evening my deepest hope and desire and prayer is that the kind gentleman next to me will likewise receive of God's grace a revelation of that same truth and experience what

02:38:21

I have as well as Dr.

02:38:33

Robert Price and Dr. James White make it back to the book table where they'll be signing books in just a few moments

02:38:42

I'd like to have you show your appreciation to this very lively engaging debate once again thank you very much very much appreciated do you have books here?

02:38:57

nah I got a couple my wife has a couple a couple of comments as they make their way back to the book table

02:39:06

I want to close the debate tonight by reading something that has always been a treasure to me it was written by Dr.

02:39:17

Simon Greenleaf he was the Rao Professor of Legal Evidences at Harvard responsible in large part for making

02:39:26

Harvard what it is he was the greatest authority on common law evidence in the 19th century and this is what he said the great truths which the apostles declared were that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead and that only through repentance from sin and faith in him could men hope for salvation this doctrine they asserted with one voice in face of the most appalling terrors that can be presented to the mind of men the laws of every country were against the teachings of his disciples the interests and passions of all the rulers and great men were against them the fashion of the world was against them propagating this new faith even in the most inoffensive and peaceful manner they could expect nothing but contempt opposition, revilings bitter persecution, stripes imprisonments, torments and cruel deaths yet this faith they zealously did propagate and all these miseries they endured undismayed nay rejoicing as one after another was put to a miserable death the survivors only prosecuted their work with engreased vigor and resolution they had every possible motive to review carefully the grounds of their faith and the evidences of the great facts and truths they asserted and these motives were pressed upon their attention with the most melancholy and terrific frequency it was therefore says

02:41:35

Dr. Greenleaf impossible that they could have persisted in affirming the truths that they had narrated had not

02:41:44

Jesus Christ actually risen from the dead and had they not known this fact as certainly as they knew any other fact if it were morally possible for them to have been deceived in this matter every human motive operated to lead them to discover and avow their error if then their testimony was not true there is no possible motive for this fabrication is the bible true one thing we can say for certain the bible is the

02:42:28

DNA of western civilization it is my prayer tonight that you like I will recognize that the bible is indeed true not through blind faith but rather through faith in irrefutable fact when

02:42:52

I was 29 years of age I looked at the evidences for the notion that God created the universe that Jesus Christ is

02:43:01

God and demonstrated that he is God through the immutable fact of the resurrection and that the bible is divine as opposed to merely human in origin

02:43:10

I can tell you today at the age of almost 60 Jesus Christ is more real to me today than the very flesh upon my bones thank you so much for your participation and your attendance