Cultures That Abandon God’s Light Lose that Light, Then Hebrews 1:3 Textual Critical Discussion

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Well, greetings. Welcome to The Dividing Line. I'm coming to you sort of live via Skype once again from Evergreen, Colorado.

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It's a little bit of a darker, cloudier day than it's been.

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I guess the monsoon's starting to kick up down in Arizona, and we're getting some of that moisture up here.

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I know I got hit on Saturday. Last week,

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I mentioned I was up here to do the triple -bypass bike ride, and it got canceled right after the program.

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They had some forest fires, and some people still did it anyways because they actually didn't close the trail, but most of us did what we were told.

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I and a couple of the guys here locally decided to do something completely insane, and that was we did half of it and then came back.

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It ended up being significantly tougher than the actual ride would have been anyways, so we did 125 miles with 12 ,080 feet of vertical ascent at high altitude.

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It was my idea. I take the blame, but we made it, and I'm still sort of recovering, and I'm up here for one more week, so we're doing the program from up here like we've done the past few years, actually.

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I did have a great time at Littleton Bible Chapel yesterday. I spoke in the morning on 1

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Timothy 3 .15, the church as the pillar and foundation of the truth, and that is in specific reference to the local church as the pillar and foundation of the truth, so it sort of fit into a series they've been doing on the subject of the church.

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And so I had a great time there, and then last evening at the same place, we did

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Roman Catholicism. Do the differences still matter? And I don't think anyone who is a regular watching this program has any questions as to what our answer to that was, though I will point out that I emphasized the fact that we need to focus upon what the real issues are, what the real reasons for division are.

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I threw a little Lutheran for the fun of it, and not the side issues that unfortunately frequently become the primary things for so many people.

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There are so many today who are Protestants of taste, tradition, prejudice, and even bigotry, rather than Protestants of conviction, that is that they are convicted concerning the sufficiency of Scripture, justification by faith, the freedom of God's grace, things like that.

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That's a different issue. And so I think we need to oppose Roman Catholicism for the salvation of Roman Catholic people, not just simply because we're really in love with the most recent

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Jesuit conspiracy theory. There's plenty of those folks around. We don't need to be getting involved with that.

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But anyway, so we did that last evening. Sad report there.

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I think it's just going to be a reality for the rest of time. There were those who contacted the church, said they shouldn't have me speaking because I cooperate with radical jihadis, which means if you talk with them and present the gospel, you are now cooperating with them.

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The looniness, the zaniness, the season of slander, the season of simple slander or simplistic slander continues.

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Those who don't want to do the real work of actually engaging gospel issues in such a way as to really encounter what other people believe, well, they're just going to do what they're going to do, and we're going to continue doing the right thing in light of that.

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Some of you may have noticed the news. Now, I unfortunately have not seen multiples of this, so I'm hoping this is accurate.

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It looks like it is from the sources that were cited, and it doesn't seem completely out of range here, but what we have is from the

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Anglican Church, the Church of England. The General Synod of the Church of England has officially passed a motion welcoming and affirming transgender people to the

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Church. A top bishop also declared that being LGBT is not a sin, that this

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Synod recognizing the need for transgender people to be welcomed and affirmed in their parish church, called on the

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House of Bishops to consider whether some nationally commended liturgical materials might be prepared to mark a person's gender transition.

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The motion that passed on Sunday reads, as the official Church of England website points out, the vote went overwhelmingly in favor of welcoming the transgender people, with 30 having trouble seeing up here at high altitude, with 30 for the motion and two opposed in the

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House of Bishops, 30 to 2, my goodness, 127 who backed the motion, 28 against it in the

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House of Clergy, and 127 for and 48 against in the House of Laity.

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The Reverend Christopher Newlands of the Blackburn Diocesan Synod said at the beginning of the

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Assembly, I hope that we can make a powerful statement to say that we believe that trans people are cherished and loved by God, who created them and is in present through all the twists and turns of their lives.

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During the Synod's weekend session, the Church body also backed a motion calling for a ban on what critics have called conversion therapy for people with unwanted same -sex attractions.

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The Archbishop of York, the Most Reverend John Santamu, I'm not sure why anyone's Most Reverend and they do things like this, but who is one of the most senior officials in the

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C of E, declared, as the world listens to us, the world needs to hear us say that LGBT orientation and identity is not a crime.

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LGBT orientation identity is not a sickness and LGBT orientation identity is not a sin,

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Santamu added, according to BBC News. Well, BBC News. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the

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Most Reverend Justin Welby, said that he continues upholding the Church's definition of marriage as between one man and one woman.

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That's nice. A number of Church bodies in the Anglican community have challenged that definition, including the

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Scottish Episcopal Church, shame on you Scots, which became the first mainstream Christian denomination in the

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UK to approve same -sex marriage in June. Concerns from Anglican conservatives over the pro -LGBT direction, they say the

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C of E has taken, has led groups such as a global Anglican future conference to put forth their own missionary bishop to oversee traditional

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Anglican parishes. GAFCON has said that the Western world is abandoning

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Christian heritage and warned that a number of UK churches are under pressure to compromise clear Christian teaching in the face of secular humanist philosophy.

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In some cases, the gospel appears to have been watered down or even denied. Even some faithful clergy do not feel free to give clear teaching on key topics such as sexual ethics or the uniqueness of Christ, GAFCON said earlier.

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Archbishop Nicholas Oko, the metropolitan and primate of all Nigeria and chairman of the GAFCON Primates Council, wrote following the

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Scottish Episcopal Church's decision to change its laws on marriage, quote, this attempt to redefine marriage is not a secondary issue about which we can agree to disagree and continue to walk together.

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It means that Jesus was mistaken when he taught that marriage was between a man and a woman, and that sex outside of marriage is a sin.

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Thank God for the African bishops. It is a radical rejection of the authority of Scripture. The Church claims that it can be—that it can consecrate behavior that God's Word clearly teaches to be sinful.

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According to the Bible, this behavior without repentance separates those who practice it from his kingdom. Folks, do you—have you thought about what we're seeing here?

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Have you thought about what it means? I mean, we have a situation here that demonstrates that God's blessing upon a culture can completely change in a very brief period of time.

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It was only 150 years ago that Scottish missionaries were being sent to Africa, and now it is

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African bishops that have to be reminding the Scottish bishops of what the basics of the

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Christian faith are. The foundational elements, the idea that, well, you know,

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Jesus is the one who rose from the dead. Maybe he's the one we should listen to when it comes to sexual ethics.

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He's the one who made us, and so, you know, he said one man, one woman, male, female, father, mother.

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It's this sexual binary, and it's God's design. And here you have the

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Nigerian bishop telling the Scottish Church, hey, remember the

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Bible? Remember what you all used to believe there? That is truly amazing.

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Refresh your video. Oh, well, okay. Oops, well, that's a problem.

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Here, well, let's get him back on here. Oops, hit the wrong button. One second, please stand by.

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I'm calling him. I guess I wasn't refreshing the video. There, that's much better.

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So I don't know where we were, but we were talking about something regarding the

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Nigerian bishops. We'll try again. If I'm reading something, I can't see that the video freezes, so maybe if I move this down here or something, it would be better if I had two screens, but I've only got one, so I just do what

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I can do here. Anyway, it is an important reminder for all of us that the gospel needs to be embraced with love and fidelity and zeal by each and every generation.

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It cannot be passed down. The gospel is not possessed by a culture, and a culture that rejects the gospel, a culture that rejects the authority of scripture, is a culture that may be able to look back and say, look at all of God's blessings.

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Look at how God blessed us in the past. It does not matter. Have we not learned anything from the example of Israel?

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Remember when Jeremiah, in the book of Jeremiah, he stands outside the temple, and he's preaching to the people as they're going in, and they're saying, the temple, the temple, the temple, and their whole idea is

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God's not going to let his house be destroyed, and Jeremiah is like, yes, he will.

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If his people who are called by his name will not follow him and reject his ways and his truth, you better believe he'll let his temple be destroyed, and he did.

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He let it be razed to the ground. I think there's a lot of people in Western culture that just go, well, our culture is just so better than everybody else's.

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We're just so much more enlightened and all the rest of that stuff. Really? How come cultures that are much less technologically advanced may not have all the toys that we have, can sit back and go, excuse me, but a man, woman, that's a man, and that's a woman, and you can't change the two, and if you confuse little kids about which one they are, that's called child abuse, and yet what do we have in the

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United States, Canada, Europe, all the Western nations? And by the way, for my

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Muslim friends, I keep seeing some of you post this on the see what happens for the

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Christians. You've got to understand, this has nothing to do. This has everything to do with the rejection of Christianity.

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Everything to do with the rejection of Christianity, not the embracing of it. And thankfully,

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I know a lot of Muslims that look at this and go, obviously, these people who are embracing these things, it's not really

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Christianity. You recognize that someone who would reject the existence of Muhammad's not really

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Muslim. So if you reject Jesus' authority to teach on male and female issues, you're not really a

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Christian. You can claim to be one, but how can anyone really recognize you if you won't follow

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Christ and his teachings? And believe me, I read your books. Well, you know, we need to contextualize

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Jesus' teachings. No, Jesus went all the way back from the beginning. In the beginning,

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God created the male and female. It doesn't matter what the social construct is or anything else. This is not one of those situations where you can argue about head coverings or eating of pork or something like that.

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This is creation mandate. This is from the very beginning. Every society, no matter what direction it goes, it has to have a foundation in what

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God has made in this world. And it is just, we need to open our eyes and see that what we have here is we have

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God is building his church in other places, and those other places are now turning around and saying to, in this instance, the churches of Scotland and the church of England, you're abandoning faith.

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You need to be reminded that Jesus taught certain things, and if you're going to call yourself a Christian, you have to be in submission to what he taught.

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And you're not. You're clearly following other sources of authority other than Christ, so why do you call yourself a

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Christian? It's incredibly sad to see what's happening in the church of England.

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And believe me, I know there are faithful Anglicans. I know some of them by name and by face and they're dear brothers, but they've seen this coming.

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You've seen this coming. And the question that we all have to answer is, at what point do you simply say, we just can't go here anymore?

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We can't walk together with this. We have to make a distinction. That really becomes the question.

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So pray for the faithful Anglicans that believe the gospel, believe the word of God, the children of Bishop Ryle that are still there struggling valiantly, but it seems losing that struggle.

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Pray for them that they'll have wisdom as to what to do, but also learn from this. Learn from this continued defection, this continued apostasy, that just because Knox once thundered in Edinburgh, now there is tremendous apostasy in Edinburgh.

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And you might say, yeah, it was hundreds of years ago. Yeah, things are changing faster now. Everything moves faster now because of communication and everything else, but doesn't change the fact that God can and will remove his hand of blessing from any society that turns around, takes his gifts, and spits in his face.

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And if our reading of Romans 1 is correct, then when you have it getting to the point where the very definition of man, the very nature of man's being as human, as male, as female, sexual desire, sexual relationship, when that level of rebellion is demonstrated not just by some people in a society, but by the leadership in a society, when the society as a whole—and look, there are still a very small number of people who call themselves homosexuals, a very small number of people who engage in this type of activity, but the culture as a whole is clearly embracing the rebellious worldview that says it's okay for our culture to be this way.

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It's okay for us as a people to engage in this kind of rebellion.

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That's what we're seeing going on, and I can't read the

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Bible in any other way than to see a long history of God's judgment upon those societies,

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God's judgment upon that culture, that has—has any society ever had more light available to it than this

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Western society has right now? Has the Bible ever been more available? Every person can put the

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Bible right here, and original languages, and background materials, and archaeology, and just all sorts of stuff.

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Doesn't seem to make any difference. Most light will result in what?

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Most judgment. Most judgment. And you see this.

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You see this right here. It is truly, truly an amazing thing. Moving on from there, let me just—oh,

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I'm sorry, one other announcement to make. I forgot. This evening, I will be speaking on—you know, someone needs to send me the address for this evening, because I'm not sure where I have it here.

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You can send that to me on text. Thank you. The rest of you can't hear that.

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I can hear voices, yes. Special voices from places you can't see.

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But I think we put up on the website a list of where I'm going to be this week.

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I know that I'm going to be at South Boulder Bible Church on Sunday morning, speaking about the

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Reformation. And then I'll be at Central Baptist Church in Aurora on Wednesday evening, speaking on Islam.

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That will be interesting. And tonight, looking here,

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I'm going to be speaking on atheism and the Christian worldview, and I'll be at a

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Grace Place Church at 7462 South Everett Street in Littleton.

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Once again, that's where I was over the weekend. Littleton, Colorado. That'll be at 7 o 'clock tonight.

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And so what will I be talking about? Thank you very much. Oh, obviously, the presuppositions that we bring to the issue of worldview, epistemology, how we know what we know.

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If I can hook up my computer to a projection device, I'll do some more things beyond those lines.

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But we'll be doing that this evening at 7 o 'clock at Grace Place Church, 7462

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South Everett Street in Littleton. So got lots going on this week while we are up here as well, and I forgot to mention that.

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One other thing, before we look to a textual critical issue that hopefully you all will find interesting that I've wanted to address for a while,

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I do just want to make reference to the fact that I have been extremely blessed over the years by the ministry of Dr.

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Jason Lyle. I think Dr. Lyle is just one of the brightest minds we've got going anywhere.

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He's just a brilliant, humble guy, and he started striking out on his own, and he is going to have a ministry called

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Biblical Science Institute, BSI, and you can find it on Facebook.

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And this Friday, the website will go live, so if you want to assist

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Dr. Lyle in his work, be watching for that. You can follow on Facebook and stuff like that.

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But certainly, prayers in order for Dr. Lyle and for the work he's going to be doing there with the

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Biblical Science Institute. Some of you may have—if you attended, for example, the premiere of Unpopular, the movie.

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Emilia Ramos and myself were joined by Jason Lyle in the question -and -answer period afterwards, and stuff like that was really neat.

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So pray for Jason Lyle and for what he's going to be doing there with Biblical Science Institute.

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Now I mentioned that what I wanted to do today on the program was sort of tackle something that's a little bit complicated, a little bit difficult.

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Let me see if I can set my computer up here to make it a little bit easier to see by getting the fonts a little bit larger, so this will be visible for folks once I put it up there.

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And basically, basically what drew my attention to this was just a couple weeks ago.

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In the initial flurry of attacks and accusations and stuff like that, one of the things that was said was, well, you know, white's being used by the

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Muslims because the Muslims are quoting things he's saying about this person, that person, the other person. Well, the reality is all of us,

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Muslims or not, make reference to, you know, we link to things and then make comments on stuff.

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I just made a comment on something that the Church of England did, and I was, you know, drawing out a lesson from that or something like that.

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It's extremely common. And I've done the same thing in linking to talks that Muslims have given and then raised issues as a

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That's how a lot of communication takes place. There's a lot of give and take, and that's a good thing on most levels.

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That's actually a very good thing. An article was posted by James Snapp, and James Snapp is a textual critical scholar.

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He's frequently very critical of me, but he's a very sharp guy. And his material is posted by a

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Christian who's a critic of mine, but was picked up by the Muslims. And the thought crossed my mind, I wonder if he's going to criticize himself for his own stuff being picked up by Muslims.

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Probably not. But what was interesting was what was said and how what was said could be interpreted.

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And so I grabbed the article, and it's on Hebrews chapter 1, and Hebrews chapter 1, such a vitally important Christological text.

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You have Hebrews chapter 1, Colossians chapter 1, John chapter 1, Philippians chapter 2. These are some of the most important Christological texts in all of Scripture.

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And Hebrews 1, especially in providing the matrix, the context through which so much of the book of Hebrews needs to be read and so very often isn't read, unfortunately, especially, well, chapter 2.

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You would think chapter 2 would be read in light of what was said in chapter 1, but that very often isn't the case.

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And so Hebrews chapter 1 contains some incredible material, and the article mentions the fact that there is a note in Codex Vaticanus, as I recall, where someone basically made the comment, fool and knave, do not mess with the ancient readings.

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And it was about Pharaon versus Phaneron, and it's just a sort of famous colophon.

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A colophon is a statement made in the margins or the end of the manuscript, depending on where it is, but a famous statement by a later scribe saying, you know, don't play with the original, don't mess with the text.

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Sometimes the person who made that comment was actually the one who mistakenly was messing with the original because the previous scribe had gotten it right.

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That's one of the issues that you always have to wonder about. But there are some rather interesting notations that are found in some manuscripts, most manuscripts don't have anything like that, but there are some.

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But the specific issue had to do with Hebrews chapter 1, verse 3.

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And let me just read, you know, I wonder if there is a way, let's see, view and let me see, let me see, let me see.

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There we go. Zoom in. Yeah, that made a little bit better. Zoom in again.

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Yes, much better. Okay, now we're, a few years, most of the dividing lines could be me trying to read what's on the screen.

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Anyway, here is what was found in the original article by,

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I believe it's Dr. Snapp, it may not be, but I don't want to disrespect him if it is, so we'll give him a doctorate today, just for fun of it, whether he has one or not.

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I would assume he does. The 12th point in his article was this. Somewhere in the transmission stream of Codex Vaticanus' text, a copyist removed the words to Ionos, probably because he considered them superfluous.

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There seems to be nothing that would make these words vulnerable to accidental loss, and the difference between the inclusion or omission of the words is the difference between forever and ever and forever.

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So I stop at that point and say, Dr. Snapp is a

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Byzantine priority -type textual critical scholar, and so other people would respond to that by saying, well, while that's possible, and certainly there is something to be said about Alexandrian scribes desiring a concise, tight -type text, it's also just as possible and probable that there is this opposite tendency amongst the

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Byzantines to have a more flowing text, and to have fuller titles, and especially in worship contexts, liturgical contexts, things like that, it could go the other direction.

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So both of those have to be balanced, but I just mentioned that in passing. Then here, now here's where what

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I wanted to do, is I wanted to not only talk about the textual variant, because for some reason we have people in our audience, we have a very strange audience, and congratulations,

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I obviously attract strange people, who like to talk about the text of the

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New Testament at a pretty deep level, and hence look at the text, understand why the notes say what they say, what the original manuscript said, well, the original, obviously, in the sense of the manuscript tradition itself, and deal with textual critical issues.

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We've done this for many, many years if you are new to the program. I want to get into text, but there's also,

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I think, a lesson here of how easy it would be, if I wanted to, and I don't want to,

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I could misrepresent Dr. Snapp and his comments by just simply not reading the last portion of his article.

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You say, who would do anything like that? Everybody these days, it seems. It doesn't matter what somebody says, for some people.

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Misrepresentation just seems to be, you know, it's okay. So here's what

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Dr. Snapp has to say. It is sometimes claimed that no textual variants that are closely contested have an impact on Christian doctrine.

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Now let me just stop right there. Have you heard someone say that? Have you heard anyone say that textual variants do not impact cardinal

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Christian teaching? Well, yes and no. You've heard me say that there is no doctrine of the

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Christian faith that is dependent upon a disputed textual basis.

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I've also said that if you apply the same standards of hermeneutics and exegesis to the most

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Alexandrian text and the most Byzantine text, you're not going to come up with a different Christian faith.

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There just isn't that much differentiation between the two. But I think

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I've been very careful to say that what you do have is you do have many textual variants that occur within important theological texts, and we've talked about them.

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Probably the most common example I've used—well, it might be the most common example—well, maybe the second most common example that I've used would be

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Romans 5 .1. And in Romans 5 .1, you have a one -letter difference between ecumen and ecumen, so it's between the indicative and the subjunctive.

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We have or let us have or enjoy the peace we have with God, depending on how you interpret the subjunctive at that point.

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And so that's a, you know, that's a theologically significant textual variant. Now what's interesting is there aren't too many people who take the subjunctive, even amongst those who would find the subjunctive more theologically pleasing or helpful or something along the lines.

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But it's pretty much unanimity along those lines, even though there are a lot of textual critics who say, no, the external evidence is too strong here.

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We need to use subjunctive. Anyways, that's one example. The other example I've used most often has been the fact that if you use a primarily

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Alexandrian text type for the New Testament, you will have, as a reference to the

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Deity of Christ, John 1, verse 18. And there,

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Jesus is called God. Hamanaganes theos, or just managanes theos, depending on which early papyri reading, but the unique God.

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But you only have managanes theos in the Byzantine manuscripts. So, if you're looking at the

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Byzantine witness of the Alexandrian witness to the Deity of Christ, the

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Alexandrian would have John 1, verse 18. In comparison to that, if you look at 1

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Timothy 3, verse 16, the Byzantine manuscripts have God was manifest in the flesh, whereas the

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Alexandrian manuscripts would primarily have He who was manifest in the flesh.

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And so, if you're making a list of verses that are supportive of and teach various aspects of the

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Deity of Christ, then that's what you're going to see. You're going to see a difference in the list of verses, but not a difference in the underlying doctrine itself.

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So, that certainly has been my assertion, but when he writes here, it is sometimes claimed that no sexual variants that are closely contested have an impact on Christian doctrine.

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Well, that's not how I would put that. That's not how I would express that.

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So, he goes on, he says, in Hebrews 1, 3, however, most Greek manuscripts affirm that Jesus, by himself, di -altu or di -healtu.

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So, di -altu and di -healtu. Healtu is the reflexive, and so the middle voice is used in this context in regards to cleansing.

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So, healtu would probably fit a little bit closer with it. But when he says most

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Greek manuscripts, what he's saying is the Byzantine Greek manuscripts. The vast majority of manuscripts after 1000

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AD have di -altu or di -healtu. So, he, by himself, cleansed our haemon sins.

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Now, we're going to look at the material in just a moment. So, I'll show you the various manuscripts and things like that.

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We'll switch over to the screen. This unquestionably—going back to reading the article—this unquestionably impacts the interpretation of the verse.

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Is there room for any other source of purification of sins? For instance, is it valid to seek purification through one's own works or through the intercession of Mary or of other saints, or was purification from sins fully obtained by Christ and by Him alone?

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And did Jesus achieve the forgiveness of the sins of all people as the American Bible Society's 1976

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Good News translation says, quote, after achieving forgiveness for the sins of all human beings, end quote, or forgiveness of the sins of believers as the

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New Living Translation says when He had cleansed us from our sins? Does this verse teach that atonement was provided solely by Christ, and does it affirm that the atonement covers believers, or does it allow the belief that the atonement covers all people in general?

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Now, stopping the reading at that point. Well, I was a little surprised by this, because yes, if you have the fullest

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Byzantine reading at that particular point in time, you can try,

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I suppose, on the basis of a text like this to push it in a way that I certainly wouldn't push it.

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I mean, the fact that Christ affects this cleansing is found in the verb itself.

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You don't need the di -altu or di -healtu, and it seems to me to be really stretching it to say, well, maybe it's

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Mary, maybe it's the saints, maybe you can do self -purification. No, it's specifically stating when

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He had made purification of sins, and so I don't see how any of the rest of this stuff is even slightly relevant, and what we're going to see here in a moment, of course, is no

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Christian truth should be discussed by just one verse, going, well, maybe this, or maybe that. There is clearly a—and

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I have the same problem I have here with Bart Ehrman, who tries to use Hebrews 2 .9

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to say, well, maybe the teaching of the book of Hebrews is that Jesus, apart from God, did such -and -so rather than by the grace of God, and the chorus -chorus variant that he emphasized in Hebrews 2 .9.

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All of this seems extremely simplistic to me. In reality, the book of Hebrews has a repetitive, strong, full, clear theology of the atoning work of Christ, and whether di -altu is found here, or whether hamon is found here, that does not begin to impact the teaching of the book of Hebrews on these issues.

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And so I found that just to be somewhat unnecessarily expansive in saying, well, see, there's theological issues here.

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He has a paragraph about something else about the UBS at that point that I won't get into.

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But then, and see, if I had stopped there, then I could say, see, even

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Christian scholars like James Knapp are saying that we really can't know, and, you know, that the text is so unclear, and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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That's what a lot of people are doing to me every single day. Every single day, I get up, and that's what people are doing.

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But you can't do that honestly, because Dr. Knapp didn't stop there.

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He said this, it is possible, of course, to find answers to questions about the sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice and about the range of His Atonement's effectiveness elsewhere in the

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New Testament. And that is what is meant, or what should be meant, by those who say that closely contested textual variants do not have an impact on doctrine.

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If one were to simply ignore the verse in which the textual contest takes place, the doctrine which one might or might not find in that verse is affirmed elsewhere in the

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New Testament. However, the fact remains that some textual variants do have an impact on the interpretation of specific passages of the

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New Testament. And as far as I can tell, and as I said, this gentleman has been a critic of mine for a long, long time.

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As far as I can tell, we're saying the same thing. And he is accurately pointing out that the question about the author of the book of Hebrews' view of Atonement is not to be determined on the basis of a textual variant.

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That there are plenty of texts in the of Hebrews. There's plenty of argument.

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The very flow of the entire book is very clear in what it presents concerning the nature of Christ's high priestly sacrifice and the perfection of that sacrifice.

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And it's going to go right into Hebrews chapter 2 and talk about those who are His friends and those who He calls brothers, and it's going to talk about the elect, and it's a compelling case.

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And you have to atomize the text. You have to cut it up into pieces to come to the point where you have confusion over what the writer of the

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Hebrews is actually stating. And so not only is Hebrews more than sufficient—Hebrews is a big book.

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Hebrews is a long book. You can do a lot of contextual work with Hebrews. You know, if this was

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Jude or something, or 3rd John, okay, maybe Mike does not have enough there. But the reality is that not only can

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Hebrews answer this question, but the New Testament as a whole is more than sufficient to answer these questions.

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And so those who would cite His words as saying, well, see, here's a

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Christian scholar saying that we can't really know what the answers to these things are. That's exactly the kind of misrepresentation that you would think we'd all be unified on saying shouldn't be being practiced, which is being practiced every single day on the internet, not just about me, but over the past month, especially about me, by just simply ignoring those plain statements that are there.

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So let's see if we can make this work. And boom.

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And oh, I got to hit start. Bing! There.

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Now, you should have, and if you let me know, please, in channel if it's working, but you should have my

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Accordance screen there. And people are always asking me, what program are you using?

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This is Accordance Bible software, and you can see all the different tabs

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I have up here. This is my New Testament textual criticism tab, textual interlinear,

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New Testament manuscripts, my work on P45, P45 alone, Old Testament texts, my regular studies stuff here, synoptics, so on and so forth.

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Lots and lots and lots of cool stuff. But I've actually taken some of this out so I could blow the font up, so hopefully it would be big enough to be seen.

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Thank you for everybody in channel letting me know, since AOMN didn't let me know. Anyway, a little shout out there.

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Here's, by the way, here is the first variant

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I sort of mentioned in passing, where you have the comment, fool and knave, don't mess with things.

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Pharaon versus Phanaron, bearing all things by the word of his power, versus manifesting all things by the word of his power.

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So you see that in Codex Vaticanus, the original is Phanaron, and then it's changed back to Phanaron after being

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Pharaon at a certain point, and stuff like that. So that's the first one that I was talking about.

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But here is the little symbol right here that gives us the variant that was being referred to.

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And we see Catharismon ton hamartion poiesaminus, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

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So having made cleansing of sins.

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And here's the little mark right over here that is this one here.

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And so you remember we talked about de healtu, which is the reflexive, by himself.

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Then others say de altu, which just doesn't have the reflexive, but given that it's being used for the passive would still have the same basic meaning or interpretation.

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Then you have text, txt, and so the manuscripts that simply have

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Catharismon without either de healtu or de altu, which is what is in the text.

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So Sinaiticus, Alexandrius, Vaticanus, the first corrector of Bese, Canterburgientius, original of H, P, Psi, 33, so on and so forth,

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Lecture 249, so on and so forth. Then you have the second hand of Sinaiticus has somewhat has inserted haemon between hamartion and poiesaminus.

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And then you have a majority of manuscripts have haemon, our sins.

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And then you have P46, which just as a reminder is the earliest collection we have of Paul's major epistles.

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It doesn't have the pastorals, but Romans, Hebrews is included within it, that's why it's listed here, right after Romans.

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The original Sinaiticus, A, B, the original D, so on and so forth. And so this whole section right here is the textual data, and you basically have the same thing down here from the

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UBS 5th edition, except what is added here is especially the materials from early

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Church Fathers and from translations. Let me just mention something about that real quickly.

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Yesterday at Littleton Bible Chapel, they had a sending -off ceremony after the

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Lord's Supper for a young couple, five -week -old, precious little baby, very young couple.

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I mean, I can tell I'm getting old when I look at couples like this and go, they look like babies!

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But they're going to the Language Institute with Wycliffe to look at going to the mission field to do

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Bible translation work. And it was precious to see that we pray for all those people upon whose hearts

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God places that desire to be used in that way. I mean, these are people that are just never going to have a lot of the world's goods, but may end up having a whole lot of glory in heaven and rewards at the judgment seat of Christ.

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But anyway, he came over for lunch, and one of the things during the conversation at lunch, the couple came over, was about various kinds of Greek texts, because I was talking about, and since Doug Wilson has made this public on his own blog,

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I mentioned to you the fact that I'm doing a written debate this summer, and the written debate is with Doug Wilson.

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And the subject is the ecclesiastical text, and Doug Wilson is defending the textus receptus as the text that should be used by the

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Church, and should underlie our translational work and our preaching work, and so on and so forth. And so we were discussing that, and the great irony here, by the way, is that when

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I asked Doug to identify the specific textus receptus that he would identify as being the inspired text, even use the term inerrant, he chose the 1550

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Stephanus. Yeah, the very one that's in the background at the studio, at the dividing line.

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We have one. So that was very ironic and very interesting that that happened.

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Anyway, so we were talking about texts, and I mentioned to this gentleman the

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UBS 5th edition, because that's probably what he'd be using. Because you'll notice in the screen here, down here—sorry,

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I didn't switch back, but that's all right—in the screen down here, the

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UBS is designed specifically for translators. So it has fewer variants noted, but it goes into more depth than the

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Nessie -Aland text does. And it also lists the early

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Church writers. And it's interesting, by the end of this week,

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I have to answer a set of questions that were sent to me by Doug Wilson, and one of them is on this very issue of the relevance of early

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Church patristic citations, whether it's from Irenaeus or, you know, like right here, Chrysostom, John Damascus, Augustine, Cyril, Didymus.

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And these—there's much more emphasis upon the other translations into early languages.

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For example, you have Latin here, but you have different kinds of Latin that are noted here, or the

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Syriac, the Peshitta, the Heraclean, the Coptic, Sahitic, Boheric. All of these symbols down here at the bottom of the screen talk about what these translations contain, and that may or may not be relevant.

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It might tell you what the earliest manuscripts that they were using specifically said, but sometimes you can't tell because of linguistic issues exactly how that plays out.

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But here's the information that we have in front of us, and so it is interesting to note that P46 is listed up here, and it deletes this first autu, but then it has

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D -autu down here, which may indicate some kind of confusion on the part of the scribe of P46, having autu repeated twice in a short period of time, you know, all sorts of things like that.

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And so it's a rather complex variant. There's no question about the reality of how complex it is, but what is really most important is a recognition of the fact that what is being taught in this text is not changed.

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It might be a little more specific if you have both, for example,

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D -heautu, which would just strengthen the verb that's used here, and if you had haemon, but that wouldn't be the only place.

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It wouldn't be like our traditionalist Southern Baptist friends would go, oh, well, if haemon's there, there you've got particular redemption, so we agree with you all.

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No, that's not going to happen. You have similar, you have, for example, in the book of Revelation chapter 5, the song that is sung in Revelation chapter 5, the

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Lamb, and it's really clear, and it's saying the same thing. You have made us to be, there's a textual variant there too, kings and priests to God, and by your death, and it's this extended teaching segment there upon which you can make the exact same argument.

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And even from a traditionalist perspective, they would probably say, even if the haemon was there, our sins.

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Yeah, well, of course, anyone who's redeemed says our sins. It doesn't mean it was only our sins.

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That's generally the argumentation they would use to try to get around it. The important part, especially for my

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Muslim friends, is, you know what? You, I know some of you, and you have this type of software, and you're aware of these types of variants, and you know that we're wide open about it.

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We're not hiding anything. Once again, we just can't do this with some key texts in the

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Qur 'an. We don't have, I can't put up a Qur 'anic software. And so, the reality is, you all are not yet to the point that we are with the collation and examination of the manuscripts of the

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Qur 'an. You're in the infancy at that point. And so, I would think the more careful of your folks that engage in dawah would be to recognize that we are still in the position of comparing apples and oranges when we compare the state of the text of the

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Qur 'an with the state of the text of the New Testament, on many levels. As you know, the text of the

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New Testament was transmitted initially as individual letters, and only over time brought together into groups like, you know,

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P46 being of Paul's epistles, P45 gospel epistles, P75, P66, so on and so forth.

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So, you have the difference in what the original is. Multiple authors writing to multiple places at multiple times in the

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New Testament, versus, from your perspective, a single author in the text of the

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Qur 'an. The Qur 'an is a much smaller document, and the Qur 'an, by your own sources, is a controlled transmission document, versus a free transmission document with the

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New Testament. And if—I'm trying to think.

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I may have missed it, and I probably have. There's got to be some who have pointed this out.

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But off the top of my head, of the popular people speaking on the subject, I normally don't hear Muslims raising the issue of controlled versus free transmission, though you'd have to.

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I mean, if you accept what Sahih al -Bukhari 6509510 means, you have to recognize the controlled nature of the transmission of the text of the

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Qur 'an, and that impacts the comparison of the Qur 'an with the New Testament. You can't compare apples and oranges.

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And so, I'd like to hear more often. I'd like to hear some of our

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Muslim friends being a little more careful in telling their own people. You can't really compare the two, because one's much younger than the other.

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I mean, as far as just the amount of time it's transmitted to the modern day, one's much younger, much smaller, and had a completely different origination.

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So trying to compare the two in that sense is highly problematic, highly problematic indeed.

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So there's some stuff about Hebrews chapter 1 and the text at Hebrews 1 -3.

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Whether you have Diyal 2, Dihayal 2, or Haymon, the message is not changed. It's only the specificity that would be changed by adopting the

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Byzantine reading, but the theology simply is not changed.

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And I hope everyone can see that it could have been real easy to misrepresent

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Dr. Snapp's comments if I just hadn't—let's just ignore that last paragraph. I mean, it was down there someplace, you know.

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I mean, if people can write entire articles about me that get shared by Christians hundreds of thousands of times by a writer who didn't even bother to contact me or read anything by me, but just simply repeated what somebody else said, eh, who needs to worry about accuracy, right?

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Eh, I don't need to worry about that truthfulness stuff. We can just put it out there and fill our quota.

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It doesn't get us anywhere when things like that happen, and people who love truth on any side of a controversy need to these days especially, especially in a day with the ease of hitting retweet, share on my timeline, send to my group, whatever it might be.

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We really need to be more careful about the accuracy of the sources we're using. And we all fall into it.

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We all—none of us could be sitting around and checking out everything, but you know, when it comes to asking, well, could

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I have gotten hold of James White to find out, you know, his view of this? Yeah, you think could have done that?

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Yeah, you think they want to? No, no, that's what's going on. So anyway, there's our material from Hebrews chapter 1.

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I don't know what the rest of the week's looking like, but we'll, you know, we'll see if we can sneak something in, maybe on Friday, possibly.

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We'll see how that works out, but I appreciate your watching The Dividing Line today. I hope we had a pretty strong connection after the initial whoops.

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All this seems to be at least one whoops, and then seems to sort of settle down. So, hey, that's good.

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And if you're in the Denver area, like I said, tonight on Atheism, Wednesday night,

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Islam, Sunday on the Reformation down at South Boulder Bible Church, and I think we have that stuff on the website if you want to get the addresses and things like that.

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But tonight, 7 o 'clock, Place of Grace Church. Gave you the address earlier on. Like to come out, be good, great to see you.