The Origins of Christianity

We have in studio today James R. White, who has been on the last two hours with Van Hale and is probably pretty tired at this point, drinking glasses of water trying to keep going on this. And I'd just like to, if I can, kind of change the mode and spirit a little bit of what we've been listening to and try and get into a discussion in certain areas.

We are going to, I'm sure, get down to biblical references and so forth, and we'll let you call in and ask questions in a little while. I want to talk a little bit, myself and James, before we get into that too much.

I just wanted to mention that James was kind enough to send me a copy or a letter before.

He came.

And I'm going right into this, by the way, because today, because we have a special guest and James is not able to be here all that much, and because there is going to be a lot of interest in what he has to say and what we both are going to be discussing, that we will not have the religion in the news or focus on doctrine issues or portions of the program today.

We're just going to go straight to the interview. James White, is it a Master in Arts, James?

M .A. in THM.

Right.

Okay, and the THM, that means Master of Theology. Theology.

Right.

And you are the head of Alpha and Omega Ministries, is that correct?

Alpha and Omega Ministries in Phoenix, Arizona.

Alpha and Omega Ministries and the Work of Apologetics

What is Alpha and Omega Ministries?

It's a Christian apologetics organization. We deal primarily in providing a defense of the faith in what we would call an interfaith context. I have dealt with atheism and things like that, but we primarily focus upon dealing with, for example, just to give you an idea, in less than three weeks, I'll be debating Father Mitchell Pacwa, a Jesuit scholar and priest on Long Island, on the subject of the.

Papacy.

I've done 22 moderated debates against the leading Roman Catholic apologists in the United States on the papacy, justification by faith, the Marian doctrines, issues like that. And a lot of our work is in that area.

In fact, one of my books is called The Roman Catholic Controversy, that deals with those issues in regards to the gospel with Roman Catholicism. We also deal with Jehovah's Witnesses, the Watchtower Bow and Track Society.

And every six months, we are here in Salt Lake City. This is my 28th consecutive general conference. 14 years I've been coming up here. And Van's hair was much darker. He had much more of it back when we first met, and he would tell you that I had much more of it back when we first met, too.

I had bushels of it back then, but the genetics caught up with me. So we've been coming up here for years now. We also track the Easter pageant of the LDS Church in Mesa, which starts next week. In fact, as soon as Josh and I get back, we'll be doing that Tuesday night through Saturday night of next week.

Do you ever listen to the conference?

Yes. In fact, we used to hear it more often than we do now, because we used to drive up. So on the way back on Sunday, we would listen to the conference on the way back. Now, of course, with the Internet and things like that, you can get synopses of the talks and so on and so forth.

It used to be you could hear it pretty well at the Westgate if you were passing out tracks over on that side. You can't hear it nearly as well on the Southgate anymore.

Oh, I guess we'll have to see if they can't pipe it out to you.

Well, that might be interesting, yeah.

Do you some good. That would be great. We'd welcome your being here if we could only get you to hear it. It says here. You're a critical consultant with the NASB update. What does that mean?

The New American Standard Bible was updated in 1995. If you've seen the updated edition, and I noticed that you used the NASB in your book, Biblical Mormonism, probably what you have there is, if that's the NASB, it's probably the 77.

I have the 88 edition.

Well, that's the Schofield.

But if you look inside that at the copyright of the NASB itself, the last date will probably be 1977, I would assume, at least for the Lachman Foundation.

Yes, that's correct, 1977.

That was the last revision that was done before the 1995 update. What we did with the update is, and my work was primarily after most of the work was done. I'm involved in explaining the textual bases of the translation.

One of my books, I don't know if you've seen it or not, is called The King James Only Controversy.

Yes, I'm familiar with that.

I became associated with the Lachman Foundation through doing a debate on the John Ankerberg show, which you may be familiar with.

Yes, I'm familiar with it. He wouldn't let me on his program.

Well, I was on his program.

I would imagine he would let you on, yes.

We debated some King James Only advocates, and one of the individuals there was Dr. Don Wilkins, who represented the Lachman Foundation. So I began working with the Lachman Foundation along those lines.

The main difference is we updated the text to the 26th edition of the Nestial and Greek text. There's no more thee's and thou's in the NASB. You may remember in the Psalter, it used thee and thou. And then when it would quote from the Psalms of the New Testament, it would also use thee and thou.

Those are no longer there. So there's been an updating, and it's not quite as wooden a translation in some places.

I like wooden translations myself.

The Al Gore type translations.

I frequently go back to... One of the things I like about the NASB is that in spite of the translation it chooses, it will frequently put in the side notes a literal or alternative translation. And I almost always find that a preferable translation.

But I am interested in... I read an excellent defense of the King James Version. I'm just kind of curious what your response would be. I think it was Edward Hill, is it?

Edward F. Hills.

He pointed out that, for the sake of our listeners, one of the major differences between the NASB and the King James is the use of fairly recently discovered texts of the Bible. Oh, I'm trying to think of them.

Codas?

Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Alexandricus.

Right.

And one of them, I think Sinaiticus, was discovered in a wastebasket.

Actually, that's not correct.

Well, maybe that's what Hill said, and he said that it deserved to stay in the wastebasket.

That's a common misapprehension about Sinaiticus. Actually, what he's referring to is Count von Tischendorf was looking for ancient manuscripts in Palestine. He went to the monastery at St. Catherine's Monastery, and he saw some monks burning papyri and vellum fragments in the oven.

And he looked in one of the wastebaskets and found fragments of the Septuagint. And he became very agitated and excited, which is not a good thing to do amongst monks who live on a mountain. And so they wouldn't show him anything after that.

But years later, he was visiting again, and he gave a copy of the Septuagint that he had just printed to one of the monks. And he said, you know, I have this. And he took him to his cell, and he opened the closet area, and he took out of his cell, wrapped in red cloth, what today is known as Codex Sinaiticus.

So it was not in a trash can. It was wrapped in red cloth, which for a monk meant this was one of his most precious possessions. And it is a manuscript of both the Old and New Testaments that dates to about around the time of the Council of Nicaea.

It is not complete, though, of the Old and New Testaments.

It is very, very complete. There are some pages missing from beginning and end, but it is very, very complete text. And in reality, please realize the NASB, NIV, and other modern translations are not based solely upon Codex Sinaiticus or Vaticanus or Alexandrinus.

Oh, I know that. Let me just, before you go on, just let me point out, because I am curious your reaction to Hill's argument, which was that if this document was a good copy, it would have been used to the point that it would have deteriorated long since and had been replaced by, as they did when they came to a copy that was, you know, when the good copy wears out, they'd make a new copy.

And so the fact that it was so ancient suggested to Hill that people did not regard it as a good copy or a good usable text and therefore had not used it very much. And that would indicate that it was a poor copy of the text.

What do you think about that?

That argument actually goes back to Dean Burgon, but it's interesting. It's a two-edged argument. The arguments against Sinaiticus are that, and then the other argument they use is, well, but there are all these textual changes in it.

You can't have it both ways. The problem with Sinaiticus is it was used for centuries and centuries and centuries, and most of the scribal emendations took place about the 9th century when someone attempted to update its readings to what was then the current text, what is known as the Byzantine text.

It would be like taking your NASB and trying to scratch things out and make it read like the King James Version. You can imagine what that would end up looking like. Obviously, therefore, it was in use.

And the simple fact of the matter is the argument that you're presenting from Hill is assuming that the New Testament manuscripts were dealt with like the Old Testament Masoretic manuscripts were dealt with.

The simple fact of the matter is Christians never dealt with the manuscripts the way the Masoretic scribes did in the Jewish tradition.

Isn't it true that, now when did the Masoretic text start?

Well, that depends on how you date it. The Masoretes flourished around the 10th century. The Masoretic text itself, you can trace it earlier than that, but the Masoretes themselves flourished around that particular time in history.

It's just that Christians treated the scriptures differently than Jews did. The Christians wanted everybody to read about Jesus, so they let anybody and their uncle make a copy. Back in 93, when the Pope came to Denver for World Youth Day, I went up to Denver with some folks from our ministry.

I did some debates up there at Denver Seminary on the papacy. And we also passed out tracts amongst the youth. In fact, at one point, there was about 125 ,000 youth and two of us. It was really good odds.

But when the Pope came to town, the Vatican Library sent certain things for an exhibit. One of the things I got to see while the Pope was in town was a papyri manuscript. The papyri manuscripts go as much as 150 years prior to the time of Sinaiticus.

That's where a lot of these arguments have fallen apart and why most scholars don't accept them anymore. It's because they go back to a time when Sinaiticus was the earliest. We've now found new papyri manuscripts that go a century or more earlier, and guess who they agree with?

They agree with Sinaiticus. So we've been able to demonstrate that text did exist even more primitively.

What are some of the differences within the King James text, which is taken primarily from the Byzantine?

It's the Byzantine textual tradition, and primarily the Byzantine textual tradition is what I call the expansion of piety. That is, whereas the most ancient text might say the Lord Jesus, the Byzantines could say the Lord Jesus Christ.

Whereas an earlier text might say the Lord, the Byzantines could say the Lord Jesus. In other words, there's an expansion of piety that is evident. It's a fuller text in the sense of expanding titles and names of deity and things like that.

I did say, and I think you'd find it very interesting because it is being used as a textbook all across the United States, in my book, The King James Only Controversy, I did point out that I have with me, for example, the Textus Receptus, which is the Greek text that underlies the King James.

I also have with me here, in this particular edition, the modern edition of the Greek New Testament. This happens to be the UBS 3rd corrected. It's become the UBS 4th edition. Now, if you apply the same rules of interpretation of exegesis to the Textus Receptus that you apply to the United Bible Society or the Nessie-Aland text, you will not come up with any different beliefs.

There's really not that much difference between these texts. I think that this should be of interest to the Latter-day Saint audience that we have, and this is why I've gone on this long on this issue because most of the time, we don't really always, as members of the Church, realize the great care over the centuries that has been taken in trying to provide us today with a really fine, excellent text.

The translation varies to some degree from various reasons, but we do have a good text, I think. And it has always been interesting to me that the article of faith that says, we believe in the Bible as far as it's translated correctly, doesn't mention anything about being transcribed correctly.

But most Mormons that I know of, and maybe you've had the same experience, in fact, I noted in your book that you address the alleged contradiction in Acts 9 -7, Acts 22 -9, as I do, in letters to a Mormon elder.

And you had said, this is not a valid contradiction. And yet, of all the passages in speaking with over 1 ,500 LDS missionaries over the past 14 years, that is the single most repeated alleged contradiction that I have encountered.

That's unfortunate.

Well, I'm not holding you accountable, but I'm also saying most LDS people whom I know believe that translated correctly means transmitted correctly.

Yes, I know. And one of the reasons that I spent so much time in the first chapter of my book on the text was to try and get Latter-day Saints acquainted with the fact that a great deal of effort has been made to give us a good text.

Where we run into trouble is with the translation. I find Hebrew to be especially challenging.

And so do I. I'll be teaching it this fall for Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, and it's a very difficult thing to present to people.

Well, I've never taught it. I'm just self-taught in it. But I do use an interlinear Bible, Greek, Hebrew, English, by J .P. Green. Are you familiar with that one?

Yes, and probably that will then use the TR, the Texas Receptive.

Yes, I'm sure it does.

In fact, I have the same thing that you have there, and it does definitely use the Texas Receptive.

Yeah, it's quite good.

He's not King James only, but he's Byzantine only, basically.

Is he only Byzantine only?

Primarily, yes.

Well, I don't know whether Sinaiticus would have a difference on this, but while you were talking with Van Hale, I was looking up a few things, and one of the things that I thought was interesting in the NASB, it says on Isaiah 29 .16 that you were talking about, it says that the error was in, you owe your perversion, it says in the original Hebrew, as far as I get the translation from here, that you have, as I read it in this version, it's you have counted the creator equal to the clay.

No, you've accounted him as not equal to, not equal, equals not in there. In fact, the Hebrew symbol or letter that would make it be as equal to is notably absent from this text. I don't know if you have that.

Do you notice that, any difference?

No, I don't believe there's anything. There's nothing indicated in the text where there's a variation.

There's nothing in there that actually would justify the NASB's translation of as equal to.

Well, actually, if you look at the NIV and all the others, there's a whole host of translations of it, but the literal translation would be, have counted it as the clay.

Right, right.

And so the question then becomes, well, if you translate it as clay,.

What do you mean? Exactly.

I mean, is it equal, is it like, what is it talking about? My point is that I just kind of feel like, as members of the church, we do not, we certainly acknowledge that God is our creator, and we are as the clay to the potter in that respect.

Absolutely, with respect to our bodies, certainly, we're created by God and are strictly the clay. But as to whether or not that denies equality with God, I would say it's not clear, and that we may be stretching the analogy a bit much.

I mean, it just seemed to me that you were stretching the analogy a bit far.

Well, and we went over it, but I believe that the fundamental point of that passage, Psalm 50 and numerous others I didn't even get to, is that Isaiah, or God actually, could remonstrate with these people and could rebuke them because it was a fundamental article of their belief concerning God, that they were thinking of God as if he was like man, and he is not.

Now, you say that he is not.

Right.

And I understand that that's kind of a fundamental precept in your mind, that you have, and I would say Christianity, Orthodox Christianity, has had that opinion since approximately 150, no, let's see, no, no, no, Justin Martyr said it first in Dialogue with Trifle a Jew.

That was about 159 A .D. Prior to that, it appears nowhere in any writing that I'm familiar with except possibly some of the versions of Ignatius, which are so numerous that nobody can tell what was the original thing he said.

I would not agree with that statement.

Well, I'm familiar with three different versions. I'm familiar with 15 letters that are supposed to be by him, seven of which are clearly not written by him, three of which appear in the Syriac and are believed to be accurate because they're also in the Syriac as well.

But you compare the Syriac and you compare the long and the Greek versions, and they are just vastly different with respect to their description of God.

I wouldn't agree with that either, but I would go with the Greek edition of the seven genuine epistles of Ignatius, not using the pseudo-Ignatian epistles at all, and what they present concerning God is...

Which versions, long or short Greek?

Well, there's only one. The Greek, if you're referring to the longer version, that's primarily based on Latin, not on Greek.

Yeah, I think you're right.

It's a much older version.

I mean, it was older and therefore more likely suspect to having been fiddled with by people who were trying to make... Are you familiar with the history of the second century?

Yes, I teach church history.

Yeah, good, but what about Roman history?

Well, not Roman history outside of its relevance to the interaction between the Roman leaders and the Christian church.

Right, so you're familiar with the fact that there was a long peace following the death of Trajan from 117 AD to approximately, well, 163, no, probably 161, that's when...

There was only local persecution during that time.

Right, and there was criticism, extensive criticism, on three principal points, the most important of which was atheism.

Denied the existence of the Roman gods.

Right, well, not just the Roman gods, do you know...

Well, any gods, but the one true god.

Right, right, in other words, what was the problem was that the Christians were worshipping a god that just did not fit in with the Roman idea of what gods should be, or the ideas or views of the Greek philosophers, which were accepted generally by the pagan culture at the time.

In fact, those were the opinions of the intellectual elite at the time. And they taught a god that basically was completely different from man. And in fact, I submit to you that that is the source of your view on that.

Actually, the Greeks had gods who were plurality of gods. They believed that these gods had physical bodies.

You're talking about the pagans. Oh, no, no, I'm not talking about the pagans. I'm talking about the prevailing Hellenistic view.

I'm talking about the Greeks.

Yes, I'm talking about the prevailing Hellenistic view of the Greeks at the time of Christ. It was the intellectuals, I mean, yes, the majority of the masses that had no really strong influence on thought, frankly.

At that time, they did not. Most were pagans, but their ideas of what God was like were very much criticized by the...

There were all sorts of different views at the time. I would not say, however, you say there's nothing before that. That's why I presented in Is the Mormon My Brother and in Letters to a Mormon Elder the testimony of the scriptures in regards to the nature of God.

I recognize that in your book, you assert and basically make it a mantra a number of times, Hellenistic Christians, Hellenistic Christians. I do not believe for a second that what divides us is due to Greek philosophy.

My new book that's coming out shortly, I think, will demonstrate. Unfortunately, I wish it was out now.

I wish this was out right now. That's my book, The Forgotten Truth.

I appreciate the chapters you gave me. By the way, I must say that your exegesis of John 1 was superb.

Which we need to discuss concerning your book.

I think we need to discuss it concerning what the truth is.

You made some direct assertions in biblical Mormonism that John 1 teaches that Jesus is created. I think we need to look at the text and see if that's the case, as well as in Colossians 1.

We'll get to that.

Do you want to focus on this? One special thing that we do need to get into is defining the doctrine of the Trinity correctly.

Absolutely. I'm very anxious to get to that, and I will do that. I'm leaning into that. Are you familiar with the idea of strict monotheism that characterized... In fact, monotheism, for example, is not a word that appears in the Bible, is it?

No, it's not.

No inspired writer used monotheism to describe the Jewish...

Or polytheism, or henotheism, or panentheism, or anything like that. No, they said, Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad. Israel, Yahweh our Elohim, Yahweh is one.

Right. Exactly. They believed in one God.

Yahweh Elohim.

Yahweh Elohim.

Right.

Well, see, because if you were listening in the previous...

I was listening.

Okay, so you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Yeah, we don't need to go over the old stuff. We're going to get to that.

What I meant was when I presented the distinction between Elohim and Yahweh, and the identification of Jesus as Yahweh, which you do present plainly.

Yes.

I was told that that's not exactly the view, so I just want to make sure we're going on the same road.

Well, I can't speak for every Mormon in the...

I understand. I'm not asking you to. I just want to make sure we get yours.

I think my view on this is the prevailing view amongst Mormons.

I would agree that it is. I would agree that it is. It's just that some will argue that it's a 20th century identification, and not a 19th century identification, because Joseph Smith did identify the Father as Jehovah, which he did.

But I would say that today, the 1916 statement of the doctrinal exposition of the first presidency on the relationship of the Father and the Son, should be the doctrinal norm by which we go in describing quote-unquote Mormonism.

I don't believe Joseph Smith identified the Father as Jehovah. There were some statements he made early on, though. Very, very early on, before, I would say, before his understanding of God became more complete.

That can be confusing to you, but I think there's very little that is in that area. Now, my point, though, is this. Are you familiar with the writings, say, of Pythagoras? Good. So you know that Pythagoras started a group called the Pythagoreans, and he observed in the mathematics by which he calculated the orbits of planets and stars and so forth, that there was this perfect order in the heavens, which convinced all the Greek philosophers after him that there was absolutely one being who was God.

And, yeah, that's right, isn't it?

Well, I think that would be a very simplistic view of what would be presented by someone like Philo, someone who would be presented by any of the great Greek philosophers.

Philo never disagreed with Pythagoras as far as the number of gods.

You've got Plato's view, you've got Neoplatonism, the view of the Logos. I mean, there's all sorts of issues that go in here.

There's a lot of interesting issues, yeah.

You can't just simply... Now, interestingly enough, someone like Justin, who was more of a philosopher than he was a theologian, by far. He wore the polyam his entire life, saw in these Greek teachers elements of God's truth.

Look, they've found God's truth by just simple reference to looking at the world around them.

No, he and Clement of Alexandria both claimed that the Greek philosophers had stolen a number of their views from the Hebrew prophets who, as he pointed out, wrote before the Greek philosophers.

But they also felt that just by the observation like Pythagoras did of mathematics, the world around them, so on and so forth, they could see this perfection.

Right.

But the issue is...

It is interesting to me that Pythagoras, in around 600 B .C., was living right around the time Isaiah prophesied that the time of the Gentiles would come in, that basically the Messiah would be rejected and the gospel would be taken over by the Gentiles.

You'll find me to agree primarily with Tertullian when he said, what does Jerusalem have to do with Athens, personally?

Yeah.

That's much more my perspective. You and James Sheel are in the same bed on that.

I find there to be a number of interesting doctrines taught by the ancient Greeks that correlate so closely with LDS beliefs in certain ways that I cannot help but believe that they did in fact take some of their ideas from the Jews, the ancient Jews.

But that's not the point that I'm trying to get to. The point is that as philosophy progressed, by the time of Christ, the Platonists were teaching, basically, that God is matter, God is mind, and everything else that is matter is created and is distinct from that which is mind.

This is dualism, as I'm sure you're familiar with. I noticed your use of it. I wouldn't agree with this. There were some groups who identified the mind as the only good thing and the matter as evil, but that wasn't the general vein of it.

Dualism is basically the belief in a distinction between mind and matter.

Gnostic dualism included the specific identification.

Gnostic dualism definitely did that.

And it's proto-Gnostic dualism that Paul is dealing with, I believe, in Colossians, which is where I presented that in the chapters.

Yes, and we can get into that. But my point is that it's my position, and you'll need to read my book for this, that these views became the founding assumptions of the apologists which they brought in to early Christianity and changed in very many subtle ways that became very important distinctions.

The way that they looked at the Scriptures, the way that classical theism to this day interprets Scripture. So when we go through this, I want to try and identify, if I can, the areas where I think that your interpretation is coming from Greek philosophy as opposed to a Greek assumption that I can easily trace and do in my book to extensive statements by the Greek philosophers of the time and earlier that agree with it, whereas there's nothing in the Bible that says anything about that.

And to me that leads to a clear conclusion that what you're assuming when you think about the Scriptures from a Greek perspective is not accurate. I mean, the Greek Scriptures were not given to Greeks.

The Greek Scriptures were given to Hebrews. You've got to think like a Hebrew.

In fact, that's the very point I make, and it's more my brother, is that I rebut Dr. Robinson's assertion that the differences between us do come from Greek philosophy. I'm pointing out the difference isn't Greek philosophy, it's the Shema.

It is the Old Testament presentation of the supremacy of Yahweh, the nature of Yahweh, and the relationship of Yahweh to the creation.

Let's get to that, because I think that's an important place to start. Let's talk about the Trinity. You've given me, in the letter you sent, a very excellent three foundations to the Trinity. I think we ought to go over those, because I will tell you something amazing that you will find, and that is that Mormonism actually does not disagree with you on any of those foundations.

Actually, Mormonism fundamentally disagrees with me on the first.

Let's go over it.

But before I do that, I just have to point out, and I hope we have the time to do this, is that I hope in your new book, I've listed here about eight places where your work very clearly, and I mention this in the letter.

Do we need to go to a break right now?

I think we're having to go to a break. My engineer is indicating we need to go to a break.

Well, the engineer is always in control. He has all power.

We're going to have to do that. Let's get back to what you were going to say as soon as we do that. Hello, this is Richard Hopkins. We're returning with Religion Today. In studio, we have James White and his son, who, by the way, is here with him.

A young man, looks like a fine young fellow. What's his name?

Joshua.

Joshua? Nice to have you, Joshua.

This is actually his third general conference to come up here.

Oh, how nice. Joshua, you should listen to them sometime. Okay, I have my son in studio, too. He's the engineer, by the way, who was telling us we have to go. All right, you know, this is really the toughest thing for me to get across to evangelical or orthodox Christians, that Mormons do, in fact, believe in one God.

And I'm hoping that when you read my book, you'll understand just how exactly true that is and how much we really do believe in one God. The reason, the thing that gets you guys mistaken is the exact same thing that got the Aryans off and going crazy, is that the New Testament talks about more than one God.

So how do you figure, you know, Old Testament, one God, whatever, it talks about more than one individual whose title is God.

That's where, Mr. Hopkins, with all due respect, you do not understand the doctrine of the Trinity as taught by the Nicene Creed, as you cite it is. And let me give you an example on page 69. You say, he is not three gods in one essence, a trinity.

We don't believe he's three gods in one essence. On page 79, the New Testament is always clear in treating the Father, Son, Holy Ghost as separate persons. How could Christ also be God the Father in the Nicene sense?

The Nicene Creed and Trinitarians deny, vehemently, that the Father is the Son. They would never say that. In fact, they anathematized anyone who would say that. So everything on 79 is incorrect. Page 81, if the Father and the Son are the same in the way the Nicene Creed describes, why did one raise the other from the dead?