King James Only Straw Manism: Kent Brandenburg

Greetings and welcome to a Friday edition, third edition, of The Dividing Line this week. We're about 30 seconds late there because Rich is getting old. So it's just a little delay, moving.

A little slow to the clicker. There is no dispute, none whatsoever.

Pretty soon, we're just going to sort of put up some time between these time periods. We'll eventually, you know.

I plead guilty and then appeal to age discrimination. Thank you.

There you go. So anyway, third program this week. But as you know, on the last program, I began responding to an article titled, What is Truth? More James White on the version issue. Either he doesn't know what he's talking about or he's lying by Kent Brandenburg.

And we started taking it apart because it needs to be taken apart. I consider the King James onlyest movement, and Brandenburg is a King James onlyest, at least he was back in 2009. Again, there is this spectrum.

And when you push on some people, they'll get a little wobbly, weaselly, and go back to at least a somewhat more defensible position than they would otherwise. But I discuss the spectrum of belief in the King James only controversy a long time ago.

And as I said, up until this article, we had only, there were only, I had made one reference, I guess on a program or something, and then Alan Kirshner had responded to this gentleman's mishandling of Psalm 12, I think in two articles, if I recall correctly.

Anyway, I really consider this an important issue. I'm obviously attempting to be consistent. I discuss textual issues with Muslims, with atheists, with Mormons, et cetera, et cetera. So when I see blatant inconsistency and error, even amongst those who would identify at least broadly in the realm in which I myself minister, need to address that.

And of course, as I've explained, from my perspective, as I'm seeing, I don't know if it's just a little blip in social media or just what it is, but as I'm seeing people starting to promote this form of traditionalism.

Well, we have a tradition, we have a traditional text. It's sort of the, well, obviously, the eclectic text or modern translations, let's associate that with the modern collapsing evangelicalism, and let's go back to something greater.

I understand the attraction that it has for some people, but what I'm trying to do is explain and sound the warning how it is a complete capitulation in regards to, well, first of all, it's inconsistent for people who believe in Sola Scriptura to have an externally derived theory that then determines what scripture is.

And secondly, it is absolutely the end of meaningful apologetic interaction, the part of those people who embrace these positions. Whether it's a vague ecclesiastical text position where you can't really say what the text is, you can't really give an actual theory as to how you drive the text.

Even if you push on the Byzantine position, it becomes presuppositional in the sense that, well, we start with this. Well, I suppose everybody has their presuppositions, but that has to be examined very, very, very carefully as to exactly what those presuppositions are.

There are also confusions about categories, difference between canon and the actual text, things like that. We've addressed some of that. Well, we've addressed all of it at times in the past to greater or lesser extents.

Anyways, it just seems to me that adopting this position will put anyone who has embraced it in a completely non-functional position as far as doing any meaningful apologetics, providing a defense of the New Testament text, anything like that at all.

And so it's a shame for me to see young Reformed men who want to get out there and do something, and yet they're falling into this, and as a result, don't even seem to realize what the problem really is.

And so I started responding to the many, many straw men, gross misrepresentations. It is the standard element of King James only-ism to misrepresent the other side. I mean, anybody who's read Ruckman and Ripplinger and Gip and all these people knows that that's just the way it is.

And over the years, and it's, oh, the book came out in 1994, so we're talking 21 years now. We've had that book out. Well, it actually came out in 95, and I think about early 95, I wrote it in 94. It would have come out earlier, but Gail Ripplinger was threatening to sue Bethany House, so it took a little while longer to make sure it was safe.

But it's been out a little while. I've got a little experience dealing with these folks, and there is no nastier group. I've said this many times. The Mormons, atheists, Muslims, none of them can hold a candle to King James only Baptist.

Pretty much every single one of the street screechers that ended our work in Salt Lake City and I came out to Mace, Arizona and things like that, pretty much every single one of them was King James only.

And so they really, they set the standard, they really do. And it seems that Mr. Brandenburg is right along with them. And so we had, yeah, we have a straw mentality. We were sent a couple links. There was one that I got yesterday on Twitter, very creepy looking.

That was R-rated slasher movie, creepy looking. I mean, I was like, oh, no, I'm not, no. But there was one on eBay. It was a set of three, but you could separate them. And that would work. I mean, I really, I could just see a little thing over there, you know, with this little button and it comes a little.

We're thinking along the same lines here. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. I didn't buy it. It wasn't expensive, but I'll have to look and see if that's still at eBay. Cause that would be a little straw man indicator thing would be really good.

Or we could, you could probably find a video of a straw man being lit up on the internet someplace. And I could just, I could just hit a button and it just, you know, play it or something.

No, that would be kind of fun. We can like do a little, you know, straw man voice. Hi, I'm straw man. How are you?

Let's see what happens. Yep, that would be. I make all kinds of people look bad. That's, that's, that's how we should do it. That's good. That's good. Anyway, before we go completely off the rails there the last sentence that I had read was White's position is that a percentage of the words of scripture have been lost in our need of restoring.

It isn't a settled book to him. More work needs to be done in post-enlightenment textual criticism. A rationalistic exercise is the means. And this new video and others, the new video was just simply the dividing line episode from last week.

He implies that Calvin is an example of someone from the applicable era that was doing this. He's the historical go-to guy to establish that some of these, those men were doing the same thing. This is called a spin.

He is spinning Calvin. Now there are just so many, like I said it's a target rich environment here. There are just so many errors that Brandenburg can pile into into a very short number of words. My position as anyone who's actually read the book honestly, anyways, is that no words of scripture have ever been lost.

And I would be interested in knowing, again, it's the real King James only us. Who will at least stick with, you know, will it identify some version of the King James or some version of the TR or something will at least come out and say, well, here it is.

Now, most of them won't do that because they know that you can just far too easily punch holes to anyone who takes that position because well, which King James are we talking about? Which printing are we talking about?

Are we talking about Oxford? Are we talking about Cambridge? Which edition are you talking about? Are we talking about the 1769 Blaney revision? Which one are we talking about? Most of the time, they just wanna be very vague on that.

They don't wanna get nailed down. They'll nail you for allegedly telling people it isn't a settled book to him. And so I just wanna go, okay, you've settled on the book. Then give us, tell us what it is.

And all of a sudden, even though they just wanna hammer away on us, they don't wanna answer that question. So which one is it? We aren't told here. We aren't told, is it a particular manuscript? Is it a particular printed text?

Is it the 1525 Bomberg in the Old Testament? Is it the 1633? What is it? We need to know. If you're gonna make this type of criticism, then we need to know. But beyond that, anyone who has read this knows that I do not believe anything has ever been lost.

And if they take the position that they do, then I would want to ask, has your position always been true throughout church history? In other words, if you say that nothing has ever been lost, then do you support the Communion?

You support 1 John 5, 7? Because that was lost from the Greek text up until when? So was it not, was it lost in the Greek but not lost in the Latin and therefore the Latin corrects the Greek? These are one of the reasons we don't get a lot of serious answers to from King James only.

But they are the questions that need to be answered. So when it says it isn't a settled book to him, what part of we possess all the original readings do you not understand? Oh, well, you say you still have to do text criticism at difficult places.

Yes, so do you. You can ignore that. You can pretend that you're not doing that, but it's all pretense. And that's why you can't go out and debate Bart Ehrman's or John Dominic Crossan's or Marcus Borg's.

You can't go out there and do that because your position is empty when it comes to providing actual answers to what would be the real issues. Issues of such debates. You have to avoid those folks. You can mock them from afar.

You can write articles against them, but you can never face them because you couldn't answer the questions that would be asked that would require you to identify a specific text. If your theory can't produce the text, then your theory is worthless.

And whatever text you've quote unquote settled on is the process of some type of historical reality. So I've said for decades now, King James only ism as a system cannot apply the standards that it applies to others to itself.

It cannot do it. It has to. It has to do what Islam does. Use one set of standards for the King James and a completely different set of standards for everybody else, just as they have to do with the Quran.

Two sets of standards. And once you admit openly in front of everybody, yep, I've got, I have two sets of standards. What you're saying is I cannot engage in meaningful conversation, dialogue, or debate or defense in my position.

And I know it and I don't care. Okay, so there's the problem. When it says it isn't a settled book to him, what does that mean? Again, without a position on the other side to respond to, I can only go, okay, so when you compare the Cambridge and Oxford editions of the King James and you have a difference, does that mean it's not a settled book to you?

Or do you just do the mindless thing that a Rachmanite does and say, it's the Oxford edition, Schofield reference edition, that's the completion of God's purification process. Just sort of pick one out of the air, here's my standard and that's it.

See, I believe in a settled word. Well, that's nice, but it makes you stand in a position that no one in church history has ever stood in. And don't you dare say that the reformers did that. Don't you dare say that, it's a lie.

No, no, no, no, no, no serious person who knows anything about church history would ever say anything like that. It's just absurd. Absolutely absurd they did not do that. So, phrase is like a rationalistic exercise.

What was Erasmus doing when he was comparing his manuscripts creating the first printed editions of the TR? What were the King James translators doing when one committee would use one text and another committee would use another text?

How do you deal with the realities that there are differences between the underlying text used by the different committees in the production of the New Testament, of the King James version of the Bible?

How do you deal with this? Now, some people say this is not fair. I remember the look of my King James only opponent in London when I dragged this out. You could just tell the Jack Mormon did not believe that it was fair that I was holding in my hand a 1550 Stephanus text, a real 1550 Stephanus text, not a facsimile.

This is the real thing. And this, this, that smell.

Is that the ancient dust smell? This isn't an ancient text. It's an old text.

Well, it's older than me, so anyway. Anything over 400 years is an old text, but that smell, multiply it by tens of thousands and you know what it is to walk into the reading room at Trinity Library in Dublin.

Oh my goodness. If you have not seen the reading room at Trinity, the Trinity Library in Dublin, at Trinity College, go Google an image of it. The image will not even begin to explain what it's like to come out of the gift shop and come up the stairs and I turned, I think it was left, and I'm looking down on each side.

I don't know how many floors it goes up, but just that smell. Oh my goodness. Just amazing. Anyway, this is a 1550 Stephanus text. And I just opened up to the Gospel of John and now this text was basically what we would call the received text in England from its publication in 1550 until really, you know, the Stephanus brothers, 1633, they're publishing their TR type thing.

And that's a pretty important period of time. Lots of important development, creedal development in reformed theology. This text was used, this very text I'm holding. And interestingly enough, as I look at this, there are notes in the margins, not handwritten notes, published notes.

The font that was used for this was designed by a Frenchman by the name of Garamond. You've heard of Garamond font? Well, that's where it came from. That was his name. And he designed this font specifically for Robert Estienne for the publication of this edition.

And in the margins, Robert Estienne compared other manuscripts and he included variant readings. Yep, they're right there. You can see them. There's the notes right there. Oh, there's some more. Look at that.

Well, I wonder how anyone's faith survived that. Because I mean, if you note variant readings, you know, D .A. Waite went after the New King James version because it had textual notes because that will destroy people's faith.

Well, hmm, somehow this got used by literate Christian believers in England and across the European continent for decades on end during a very important period of theological development, especially amongst the reformed churches.

And somehow they didn't lose their faith. Hmm, that's strange. And how do you explain the differences between this text and the five editions of Erasmus and then the edition of Beza? Because those are the seven editions.

This is the sixth of the seven editions that was used by the King James translator. Aren't you gonna have to engage in some kind of, well, rationalistic exercise? Because Erasmus did it and Robert Estienne did it and Beza did it.

Why is it a rationalistic exercise for me to examine textual variants in light of what? What? Hundreds, maybe thousands of times as much evidence that we have today. And it wasn't a rationalistic exercise by them.

See, this is where we ask these questions and we almost never get answers to these questions other than you're trying to destroy people's faith in the Bible, rah, type of response. Um, now, John, I mentioned specifically, and it's interesting, I derived my information from Edward F. Hills and Edward F. Hills, Presbyterian scholar, ecclesiastical text, almost King James, but not quite.

He was a real scholar, open about his presuppositions and that it was all presuppositional. This is on page 114 of the current modern edition of my book. Presbyterian scholar, Edward F. Hills, even in defending the KJV had to admit that Calvin made comments demonstrating a willingness to engage in the same kind of textual critical thought that Hills identifies as humanistic.

Hmm, sounds like rationalistic exercise, same thing. He observes that in five places, Calvin noted variant readings suggested by Erasmus and that in three of those, Calvin sided with the non-TR reading.

He cited as an example, John 8 .59, where Calvin agreed with Erasmus' contention that going through the midst of them and so passed by was borrowed from Luke 4 .30, modern texts and translations concur.

So here you have Erasmus and Calvin agreeing with the modern textual conclusion that that phrase at Luke 4 .30, I'm sorry, John 8 .59 had been borrowed from Luke 4 .30. Now King James only as we'll say, you're deleting God's word, you don't trust God's word.

So Calvin didn't trust God's word, Erasmus didn't trust God's word. The ones, Erasmus, you know, the guy who compiled the TR. Hmm, Hills also noted that Calvin went beyond Erasmus, adding 18 other places where he rejected TR readings in favor of others.

Calvin also made two conjectural emendations at James 4 .2 and reading envy instead of kill and deleting 1 John 2 .14, seeming to him a repetitious interpolation. So how is that spin? This is called spin.

He is spinning Calvin. He goes on to say, everyone knows that errors were made in hand copies. Really? How do you know that? Without engaging in textual criticism. How you know that Mr. Brandenburg? Everybody knows.

That's all Calvin was writing. No, it's not. Even Edward F. Hills recognized that Calvin was willing to not only recognize textual variants, but to adopt a textual variant other than what was provided in Erasmus' text.

That's what he did. How's that spin? That's that spin. But it does demonstrate that it is an utter canard to say, well, this is the text of the Reformation. What is the text? Which one? Which of the five editions of Erasmus?

Was it Stephanos? I mean, Stephanos, after he published this, this was published in Paris. That's the year he then went to Geneva and became Calvin's printer. So when he does a 1551, that's from Geneva.

So is that the Reformation text? So it didn't exist in Luther's day? Because Luther's dead by then. See, history just has this nasty way of getting in the way of these wonderful little theories that sound great, again, in internet chat rooms and old BBS forums and things like that, but don't handle the reality of research very well.

Anyway, everyone knows that errors are made in hand copies. That's all Calvin was writing. The position of the day was that an error made in one was corrected in another, which is why he had two conjectural inundations, right?

Is this, you know, it's not like I just dug up this stuff. This book's been in print for 20 years. So when someone comes along criticizing me and then they write stuff like this that has been refuted in my own book for 20 years and in Edward F. Hill's book for longer than that, I figure it's okay to take that and just, you know, think you missed that there, you know?

Yes, they compared manuscripts. That's called textual criticism. Once you start comparing manuscripts, once you recognize there's textual variation, that's called textual criticism. No way around it, man, no way around it.

Yes, they compared manuscripts, but it is a lie to say that's the same as textual criticism and also ignore what they believed and taught. What? So you get to redefine textual criticism? Or are you defining textual criticism as the unbelieving examination of biblical manuscripts?

Yeah, that's really what's going on. That's really what's going on. There aren't any believing textual critics. Of course, there are all sorts of believing textual critics. Thank God there have been. Thank God there are still people who trust in God's having provided this tremendous foundation for belief in his word.

And we just recognize that this kind of stuff is circular pablum. And it's indefensible. But it's a lie to say that that's the same as textual criticism. No, that's the truth. That's the truth. And also ignore what they believed and taught, which I guess means, well, they believed and taught what I believe.

Well, Calvin clearly didn't, did he? If he engages in textual criticism, and if he introduces conjectural emendation, then I think that pretty much proves you're wrong in regards to Calvin, doesn't it?

I guess you could dismiss him if you wanted to. To equate what they believed with textual criticism is a lie that in published form started with Benjamin Warfield. And we've talked so much, that we've talked so much about here.

I'm not sure, I guess here is his blog. Oh, Warfield's a bad guy. Bad guy. I'm hearing, I'm not sure if that's, I don't think it is. Nope. I'm getting some sort of a weird mm-mm in my thing here, but I will ignore it.

So B .B. Warfield, bad man. I'll skip over that for the moment. The authors of the confessions did not believe that providential preservation was textual criticism. Neither do I. This is just complete redefinition of terms, complete ignoring of meaningful categories, just to come up with some basis for self-promotion, to be perfectly honest with you.

I believe in providential preservation. He says that's a lie. Fine. I leave it to you to examine who is consistent and who gives you the facts and who doesn't. I think that's painfully obvious. It is the mechanism of preservation and what that looks like that is the issue.

That's why I asked earlier, this providential preservation that Mr. Brandenburg promotes needs to provide a text, because I need to know where that text was throughout church history. Because given what he's saying and given what he's forcing the authors of the confession to say is that there has been one fixed, inalterable, unquestionable text.

So that means one manuscript, one, well, it couldn't be printed edition. It has to be a manuscript. Because, I mean, we're only living in the last quarter of the periods that the New Testament was written.

So three quarters of that period of time, there wasn't any printing. So what was this perfectly preserved text in that preceding point in time? Now, the Byzantine text advocate will say, well, it was the Byzantine manuscript tradition, but that's not a defined thing either in this sense that he's using it where you're attacking the examination of textual variance and so on and so forth.

So which one was it? Because if there was one manuscript in that time period, well, we know that the modern day TR and the King James doesn't match any single one of the manuscripts that existed before that.

So the whole position just falls apart. It's indefensible, easily preached, but indefensible, which I guess is true about a lot of evangelical preaching today. Preaches well, but it's not overly defensible.

The authors of the confessions did not believe the providential preservation was textual criticism. They believe they possess the words in the apographa, the hand copies in identical form as the autographa, the original.

That was their belief. What we might call a presupposition. That is also their point in the confessions that the original language text was kept pure in all ages. White denies all of that. It was not kept pure in all ages to him.

There hasn't been an age to white that it has been pure since shortly after its inspiration. That age is off in the future that is unless we redefine pure, which is something less than tied detergent.

I don't get that part either. I'm not even gonna bother to try to. All right. So the apographa of let's say the Byzantine manuscript tradition is an identical form as the autographa. So that means all Byzantine manuscripts are the same, right?

No, look, for example, at the difficult task and this is in the real world. This isn't in the make-believe world of reform forums online. This is in the real world. Let me throw out a challenge to any King quote unquote reformed King James onlyist or ecclesiastical textist, whatever.

I would like to see you produce based upon your principles, consistent application of your principles. The apographic slash autographic text of the book of revelation based on your principles. Now, even my Byzantine priority friends are chuckling right now because they know what I know and what everybody else who's studied New Testament textual criticism to any depth at all knows.

And that is the history of the transmission of the text the book of revelation is to put it mildly unique, very unique. We have the fewest manuscripts of the book of revelation. It struggled for inclusion in the canon.

That's probably why we have the fewest manuscripts from the ancient period, but it's readings split the Byzantine manuscripts tradition up into, well, basically you have unique families of transmission for the book of revelation that you find no place else.

You just, it's just, it's very, very, it's challenging. It's unique and it demonstrates fundamental divisions even within the Byzantine family. The point is that it is impossible to create that text without engaging in meaningful, consistent textual criticism, which of course is what believing men have done for a long time and never saw a contradiction until the oddity of King James only as him came along.

So when Brandenburg says, I deny all of that, I don't even know what he's talking about. Given that I have made it very clear that the apographa contain all the readings of the autographa that I focus upon the tenacity of the text that literally thousands of people across the United States and in other lands have heard me lecture on this in my new test of reliability presentation.

A lot of people are left going, what planet does this guy live on? What is the color of the sky in Kent Brandenburg's world? That's the question. But you see what I actually teach, what I actually believe doesn't fit into the paradigm of these folks because it really wouldn't give them any meaningful basis for attacking me.

And so you gotta, it's the King James only way. You come up with another way. So again, I want to ask the question, when you say language text was kept pure in all ages, what do you mean by that? Because this is the same paragraph that started with the line, everyone knows that errors were made in hand copies.

Well, for the first 1500 years of the history of the New Testament text, it was transmitted by hand copies. So what do you mean when you say it was kept pure? Do you mean that God protected it in the way that I say that he protected it?

And it is by its multifacality, its distribution all across the known world, there is no possible way for doctrines to be inserted, doctrines to be taken out, for any kind of wholesale editing or changing to take place?

Yeah, exactly. But that the side effect of that explosion of the distribution of the text was textual variation and that we have to examine that, that seems to be what you're denying. So again, he'll complain for paragraphs that I asked for specifics, but that's because we have to have them.

If you're gonna make these claims, you can't then turn around and say, no, it's just all, you can't expect us to provide you with a single manuscript or this just is. So you get to criticize our side, but you don't apply those criticisms to your side?

How does actually that work? Well, it doesn't work, which is why it doesn't end up in debate anyway. What is the presupposition of white? Well, this should be interesting. You don't hear it. He doesn't refer to scripture one time to reveal what believers should expect for preservation.

Why did, how many pages is this thing? I don't know. What's that? Yeah, this one's up to 364 pages. That's getting pretty long. And I do talk about a lot regarding the issue of the nature of, but you see, once you embrace this system, this way of thought, you really can't hear what people are saying on the other side.

It just, I've seen this over and over and over and over again. It functions to just remove your ability to enter into what somebody else is actually saying. What should believers expect for preservation?

Well, they should expect that they can trust not only the original language text, but the translations of it as well. And this is where it gets really sticky because you have to ask the King James only-ist really where they're coming down on this.

What is the locus of inspiration? King James only-ists don't believe what the King James translators themselves believe. We've established that many, many times before. Read the preface to the readers by the King James translators, and you'll see that it utterly refutes King James only-ism itself.

So they have to sort of, in an embarrassed fashion, promote the great scholarship of the King James translators, unless they have to do away with all that and just direct inspiration, while at the same time dismissing what the King James translators said about translations themselves.

Anyway, when you deal with how the New Testament writers handled the texts that were before them, for example, the citation of the Greek Septuagint, even when it varies with the Hebrew Masoretic text, all sorts of issues are raised as to what we should expect.

And I have yet, I have yet to encounter a King James only-ist, maybe some ecclesiastical text, folks, maybe, but a King James only-ist who had ever even given serious thought. Remember, man, I can't believe how fast the time's going today, but remember, when was it?

When did Stephen Anderson finally release that video of our conversation? Because briefly at some point, he made some comment in the comment section on YouTube, and I've talked about this on the program, I'm just trying to remember when it was, about something that had come up in our conversation, which was about Hebrews chapter eight, and the fact that the writer to the Hebrews quoted the textual variant, it's specifically between ba 'al and ga 'al in the Hebrew, which comes across in the citation of Jeremiah chapter 31, even though I was a husband to them, ba 'al, or as it comes across in the Greek Septuagint, though I did not care for them, ga 'al.

Now, the bet and the gimel look a lot alike and easy to see where the variant arose from, but there's two different streams that existed at the time of the writing of the New Testament, and the writer to the Hebrews shows one of those two streams.

Did you?

Yeah, according to this, almost one year ago, August 11th. Oh, okay.

So right at one year ago. Okay. So it was sometime after that, there was a, I made note, so probably September, October, November, somewhere around there, I made note of Anderson just going ballistic.

See, he doesn't believe that the Bible's pure. Why? Because I noted the reality, the fact of the difference of the citation of Jeremiah 31 in Hebrews 8 from what's in the Hebrew Masoretic text. Now, if you just sit there and go, oh, it's terrible, then you're not dealing with the reality of what the text actually is.

You're engaging in wishful thinking. I wish it was different. Well, it's not. It's like this, you gotta deal with it. And the serious person will buckle down and do some serious thinking and ask some questions and so on and so forth.

But the zealot will just get upset and angry and accuse you of things and so on and so forth. What should we see in the preservation of scripture? Well, there's all sorts of stuff that goes into that.

And I have discussed it. It's just obvious that Kent Brandenburg doesn't even know what those issues are. Because King James onlyism is a way of avoiding the tough stuff. It really is. It's for people who don't want to have to deal with the tough stuff.

That's what it is. Tough stuff's out there. Now, it's fascinating because remember another point that has come up many times before. For years, we have been reviewing Bart Ehrman. And we have played his debates and we've debated him.

When he has new books to come out, we review the books when they come out, all sorts of stuff like that. When I go to South Africa, I'm gonna be doing a series of lectures on his book on the deity of Christ.

And don't know when I'm gonna get the work done on that, but that's just another one of the millions of things I'm trying to get done. But he mentions Ehrman. And what we've pointed out is that Ehrman's simplistic, almost childish understanding, it has its closest parallel in what?

King James onlyism. King James onlyism. Because remember what Ehrman says? If God inspired it, then he wouldn't allow any textual variations to exist. And so since textual variation exists, then it must not be inspired.

And you see, Ehrman takes that and runs off into atheism. And the King James onlyist takes that and runs off into a cave where all the lights are out and you just spin in circles. The presupposition is wrong.

And the presupposition flies right in the face of the reality of the text that Jesus the Messiah himself would have had access to and would have utilized in his own ministry and what his own apostles utilized in the writing of the New Testament.

So it's the presupposition that's wrong, but he quotes it. He doesn't do this. His kind do not do this. The only one I hear do this is Ehrman. And Ehrman reports it and then says God didn't do it, explaining why he's an apostate.

White just won't say, it's painful. Now again, you know, Brandenburg could just be extremely ignorant. That could explain all of his straw men and his misrepresentations. But those of you who've actually listened to this program are sitting there going, what is this guy talking about?

Because we have plowed right through that over and over and over again in the past, especially when reviewing Bart Ehrman and his comment. You know, I assume Brandenburg doesn't figure his audience is gonna be listening to me or checking things out.

So that's why they think they can get away with this kind of stuff, this kind of stuff. But Bart Ehrman, what would that look like? You know, I remember the first time I realized when I was preparing to debate Bart Ehrman, the first time I really realized what in the world he was saying about this, I was listening to issues, et cetera.

And it was when he was interviewed on issues, et cetera. I remember I was on South Mountain, just like yesterday. To remember where I was on South Mountain, when it hit me, oh my goodness, Bart Ehrman is actually saying, and this is what was good about being interviewed by someone who wasn't just, you know, throwing him softballs.