Wallace/Ehrman Debate

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. And good afternoon, welcome to the Dividing Line special program today,

Jumbo DL going until 5 o 'clock, so an hour and a half, that's only 45 minutes though, for each of the two debates we are going to be starting.

The Bart Ehrman -Dan Wallace debate from I believe it was October 1st and the Samuel Green -Dia

Mohammed debate, which would have been toward the end of October because it was within a week or so,

I think it was exactly a week after my debate with Abdullah Kunda. I had talked with Samuel Green about it and then

I want to make some comments about that. Just a heads up, keep your eyes on the blog for tomorrow.

We have a whole new website coming and when you change that, you have to change everything.

I don't have all the details, it will be on the blog tomorrow, but be watching for a special announcement about how we can continue providing you with the

Dividing Line and doing all the things we do and how you can help us to do that. And so please keep an eye out for that tomorrow.

Now before we just dive into the subject of the

Bart Ehrman debate, I want to provide some background and this is going to be a, there's a lot of information here.

There is a lot of depth we need to go into and that's what we do on this program very often.

Sometimes we just have fun, sometimes we go very in -depth in things and some of the things we're going into, not easily done.

Sometimes much easier done with a digital projector where you can see things or what I did on Tuesday, putting up the blog article and maybe

I'll need to do that and provide some of the manuscripts and things like that, but I think we'll be able to do most of it.

But so much of what Bart Ehrman has to say and the claims that he makes goes back to the fact that, let's face it, the vast majority of pastors in their training are not taught a great deal of this subject.

The textual criticism of the New Testament has always been a fascinating area of my study.

I went very in -depth in it in my education, but I knew that I was the only one in my class that had that level of interest in it.

Most people just want to learn to read the text and that stuff just is not overly interesting to them.

Obviously, in light of how often Bart Ehrman's material is used by Muslims and by unbelievers to attack the

New Testament, the time when we could just put this stuff aside and not worry about it is long past.

It's long, long past. In fact, I would say to the older folks in the audience, to parents, grandparents, one of the greatest things that you could do for your grandchildren, for those going into university or whatever it might be, is for you to be able to explain to them aspects of the history of the

Bible and to be able to recognize when unbelievers and others are misrepresenting the truth of the

New Testament. I've listened to the Wallace -Ehrman debate a number of times now, and I am absolutely convinced that from what he has said, that Bart Ehrman would have to confess.

I have heard him say, he said in the debate with me, the New Testament is the earliest attested document of antiquity by far.

He said in this debate, the New Testament is the most widely documented work of antiquity by far.

And so he would have to say, if he was honest, that the

New Testament is the most accurately transmitted document of antiquity.

That is his position. Now, his position is that doesn't mean nothing because we don't have any idea what anybody said back then.

It shows the radical nature of his skepticism. But if he was going to be honest, he would have to say that of all ancient documents, the

New Testament is by far the most accurate, the most widely attested, and the earliest attested of anything that's out there by factors of 10 in a hundred or thousand.

But you don't see that in any of his books. And you're not going to hear his publisher promoting those things.

So to be able to deal with these things, we need to know something about the history of ancient texts and how they're transmitted.

And let's face it, that's not stuff that most of us were taught when we were in high school or college or university.

And so before I just start playing Bart's statements and responding to them,

I wanted to do two things that will come up later on. I, the morning of my debate with Bart Ehrman, the night before I had seen

Bart Ehrman down in the bar at the hotel in Florida, and I had introduced myself and he was watching the

University of North Carolina play basketball. So I was obviously distracting him from what was much more important.

And I, in fact, I had invited him because we, you know, the conference was starting the next day. I was going to be speaking on his three favorite textual variants.

And of course he went to the gym instead. He didn't feel that I had anything worthwhile to say on stuff like that.

I'm a nobody. And that morning,

I, and I forget now how I had even found this. I was just doing research.

And I found an article in the Journal of Early Christian Studies. Bought it, still have it.

And the article was on early papyri found in Egypt on other issues, on other subjects.

And as I was reading through it, it was talking about the concealing of property by churches that were under persecution.

Now, if you know anything about the history of the church, you know that from about 260 to 313, that 50 some odd years, the lower 50 years, was the worst period of persecution in the history of the church.

Even worse than under Nero. It was much more empire wide.

Up till then, almost all persecution tended to be localized. And so come and go, come and go.

But toward the end of that period, the Roman Empire, just as an empire, really tried to get rid of Christianity.

And we know they specifically focused upon attempting to destroy the

Christian scriptures. Well, here is an article. And it was talking about, well, for example, what happened to this church,

Eusebius and Lactantius, both recount the destruction of churches during Diocletian's persecution.

Yet some scholars have suggested that not all churches were burnt or completely ruined during the Great Persecution, but only stripped of valuables and closed.

Stripped of valuables. Well, what would be valuable in a church? Which is an interesting question to ask.

Whether or not that was the case with other churches, at the Kissus Church, not only were its possessions confiscated, but the description, former church, implies the building was no longer in existence at the time the document was written.

Thus confirming the situation, Eusebius and Lactantius sketch. The papyrus gives an indication of what officials expected to find in a church.

It even seems that they were working from a standardized checklist signaling the government's systematic bureaucratic effort.

Now what's important here is that you're getting information here from outside the New Testament, obviously this is long after writing the

New Testament, of how the

Romans sought to destroy the Christian church and what they were looking for when they would find a church and go in to seize its property.

And this is a very thoroughly documented article that we're looking at here.

Their list was rather broadly defined. They checked for lands, building, cattle, money and precious metals, clothing and also slaves.

These all could be sold. Now then it gives the

Gesta Apud Xenophilum, trial proceedings from the year 320, incorporate an earlier document dated

May 19, 303. So 303 is 10 years before the end of the persecution in 313.

The Acta of Munatius Felix from Cirta in Numidia. This earlier document contemporaneous with our papyrus text serves as an interesting point of comparison.

The situation depicted in it is as follows. A delegation of government officials visits the church in Cirta in Numidia, present day

Constantine in Algeria, and requests books and other church property.

From the church are brought out a good amount of gold and silver objects, some clothes and a number of shoes that would make

Imelda Marcos jealous. Two gold chalices, six silver chalices, six silver urns, a silver cooking pot, seven silver lamps, two wafer holders, seven short bronze candlesticks with their own lights, 11 bronze lamps their own chains, 82 women's tunics, 38 capes, 16 men's tunics, 13 pairs of men's shoes, 47 pairs of women's shoes, and 19 peasant clasps.

Upon closer inspection, another silver lamp and silver box appear, and also four large jars and six barrels in the dining room as well as one large codex.

In addition, the officials visit the homes of seven readers. Now listen to this. This is why

I'm quoting this. Some of you are going, why are you doing this? This is just one example of secular history, and the impact of the persecution on the transmission of the text of the

Bible and the New Testament in particular. In addition, the officials visited the homes of seven readers, confiscating in total 37 manuscripts which the readers had hidden.

Clearly, the Christians at Cerda had unsuccessfully tried to conceal their possessions but succumbed to the pressures. Whereas this was the total inventory of the church, we will never know.

Compared to the long list of assets of the congregations at Cerda in North Africa, the inventory of the church at Kissis is meager.

There is just that bronze matter. These bronze materials could be bronze lamps, et cetera, et cetera. Now, the footnote to the 37 manuscripts, the readers could have brought the books home to practice reading aloud their passages.

However, given the fact that book cupboards, the armaria in the church library, were found empty, it seems fair to assume that most books, under normal circumstances, would have been stored in the church and that the readers had indeed concealed them in their houses because of the persecution.

Now, this is one standard size church. These documents talk about over 320 such churches being raided by the government.

Multiply that by 37. How many 4th century and 3rd century manuscripts were destroyed in this one locale?

This one locale. Now, this is secular history.

This is not a Christian source. They're talking about other stuff. But the reason that I bring this up is for you to keep in the back of your mind, because I believe one of the most effective and important aspects, one of the most effective and important arguments about the transmission of the text of the

New Testament that only came up tangentially in the

Ehrman -Wallace debate has to do with the fact that those primitive centuries, the centuries that Bart Ehrman will focus upon in his presentations, you need to understand something.

What Bart Ehrman says in this debate is the 1 % of textual variants that are viable and meaningful, that means they impact the translation of the text and they could be the original reading.

He says, that's not what I'm worried about. And you must remember that I asked

Bart Ehrman in our debate, and he seemed completely befuddled why I would ask this, but it's so obvious.

I asked him, is it not true, sir, that if you edited the

Greek New Testament and you got to make all the decisions about the variants yourself, that the resultant

Greek New Testament would differ less from the current edition of the Greek New Testament, the

Nessie -Aland 27th edition, than the Nessie -Aland differs from the Textus Receptus?

And he agreed with that. He agreed with that. So, he says in this debate, it's not the variants we know about that really matter.

His argument is, it's the variants we don't know about from the first few decades, from the end of the first century into the middle of the second century.

It's that time period he's saying, we just don't know. Maybe there were some major variants at that time, maybe there was some major messing with the manuscripts, and we just don't have any way of knowing.

What does that have to do with what I just read to you? It has a lot to do with it.

Because, you see, what I emphasized, and Dr. Ehrman did not dispute this, in fact, he did not even respond to it, to be perfectly honest with you, in our debate, is the concept of multifocality.

And what does that mean? That means the New Testament was written by multiple authors at multiple places at different times to different audiences.

It only came to exist as a single body over time. It was initially separate letters and separate documents,

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Revelation, I guess you could say, seven churches receiving that.

And what's important about that is, A, we don't have an Uthman who could have ever edited the text of the

New Testament and put in doctrines and taken doctrines out and things like that. But what's even more important is that what that means is that when we start getting manuscripts of the

New Testament earlier than any other work of antiquity, but Bart says, doesn't matter, because we don't know what any of them said.

But when we start getting those manuscripts, what do we find?

Do we get just one line of manuscripts? The answer clearly is no. I raised this with Dr.

Ehrman. He did not dispute it. Dan Wallace raised it, did not dispute it.

We get different lines of transmission. In fact, we get lines of transmission that most scholars recognize are already intertwined.

It's not the phone game. It's not Chinese whispers. It's not one line where if you've got a bunch of mistakes early on, you can never get back to find out.

It's multiple lines. And what did come up in this discussion was, well, how often do you think

Mark was copied? For Ehrman's theories to really get traction, there had to be very few copies of the originals.

But there's no reason to believe that. None. Just the opposite is the case. You would expect to have many different lines coming from the originals, even during the lifetime of the authors.

And so what you have when we start getting the papyri are independent lines of transmission.

Those independent lines of transmission, if there had been this kind of wild, uncontrolled, really bad copying with all sorts of textual variants in them, there would be evidence of this in these multiple lines that appear in history in our earliest manuscript copies of the

New Testament. But there is no evidence of this. And what

Bart Ehrman needs to be challenged on is that his constant say, we just don't know.

We just don't know. No, sir, you're making an accusation. You're making an assertion.

It might've happened. We don't know. We don't have the manuscript copies we need. I say to you, we do.

Because of the fact that Christians had to keep producing so many because of why?

The persecution of the church. Interestingly enough, even the

Muslims would have to agree with that. If they've ever read Sahih al -Bukhari, Volume 6, Pages 519 and 510.

Because Uthman was concerned about something very similar. But we won't go into that right now. That's why

I mention this. Now, I'm going to skip to the very end of the debate and play you something.

When I first heard it, I almost, again, rode off the road.

And I haven't heard back from Dan. I've written him a note today. And I'm looking forward to hearing back from him.

I think I hear Dan. You probably won't be able to hear it over the stream.

But right at the end of this, I hear just barely. And I'm going to listen real closely again.

I hear someone go, wow. And I think it's Dan. Because that was my response when

I heard what Bart Ehrman says here. This is one of the few places where an audience question brought something out that didn't come out with this much clarity in the conversation.

This normally doesn't happen. In fact, this is normally the type of question that isn't even allowed.

This is a follow -up question from an audience member. Listen to what

Bart Ehrman says in response to this audience question.

Listen carefully. Okay, so here's the question.

The guy's asking Ehrman, okay, if we don't have the autographs, what would it take?

What kind of evidence, Dr. Ehrman, would you need? What would you need?

Now, this is where, and I got the feeling that Bart did not like being called a radical skeptic.

But the fact of the matter is, he is a radical skeptic.

And this particular example proved it and proved it with clarity.

Listen to what Bart Ehrman would require to believe that the

New Testament is trustworthy. Well, if we had early copies, if we had copies of Mark, suppose next week there's an archaeological find in Egypt.

Say it's in Rome, an archaeological find in Rome. And we have reason to think that these ten manuscripts that are discovered were all copied within a week of the original copy of Mark.

And they disagree in 0 .001 % of their textual variation.

Then I would say that's good evidence. And that's precisely what we don't have.

Yes. Did you catch that? Did you hear it? Wow. That's got to be Dan. That's got to be

Dan. And I agree with him. Did you hear that? I mean, talk about substantiating what

I have said all along. What I have said all along, in fact, what was the date,

Probie, on the 2006? That's where we are in the thing right now?

January 2006. Okay, so January 2006, I was reviewing, I think,

Ehrman had been on the Issues Etc. program or something like that, and I was reviewing that. For years,

I have been saying that Bart Ehrman's standard for accuracy for the

New Testament would require that God did not give revelation prior to 1949.

I have been saying that. Have you ever heard me say that before? Why? Because 1949 was when the photocopier was invented.

I have noticed with even modern texts, before we went to digital printing, before it hits the printers, that even then you still do not have that kind of accuracy.

No, you don't. Even with some, I am a sci -fi reader, I have read a lot of Robert A.

Heinlein, and I have read some stuff about his earlier works that have gone through three or four different editions where they still end up getting errors inserted from the printer.

Right, printer errors are a long, long, long history. So, this guy asks a question.

What would it take? Ten manuscripts copied within ten days of the writing of Mark that agree 99 .991%.

Could anyone, could any human being at all, could any group of human beings do ten handwritten copies of Mark that would have a 99 .991

% accuracy rate to it? I sort of doubt it. I sort of doubt it.

And how in the world would you prove that these have been copied within ten days of the original?

There aren't any dates on these things. And I think that's why Dan went, wow.

Because what he just said is, there is no evidence that could convince me outside of having a photocopy of the original.

There is none. It's not possible. And that is why Bart Ehrman is a radical skeptic.

Radical skeptic. Not a balanced skeptic. But a radical skeptic.

And it's influencing so many other people in the same direction. And the result is a complete destruction of any trust in the text of any ancient manuscript.

Because he goes on, the next lady, a lady asks a question after this about classical works and he says, yeah, we don't know what they said.

At least he's consistent. At least he's consistent. So there's the standard.

There's the standard that he gives. And it is an impossible standard to meet.

And so when you hear Bart Ehrman saying, well, we can't trust that, this is why. Because what Bart Ehrman is saying is, if I don't have a photocopy of the originals, who knows what could have happened.

Well, what evidence do you have in light of the widespread distribution of the New Testament that any of these changes took place?

We'll have more to say about that as we get into his presentation. But those two things,

I want to start there. So that you would have that background. It's extremely, extremely important.

And by the way, if you want the reference, the Journal of Early Christian Studies, it's from John Hopkins University Press.

And that was page 351 was the citation of volume 16, number 3.

Journal of Early Christian Studies, 16 .3, page 351. If you would like to look that up for yourself at a library or something along those lines.

It was available in January of 2009 online. I would assume that it still is.

But just so you have the reference there. All right. So we try to be thorough here.

And so unfortunately, to cue up that one thing, I sort of lost my spot as to where Bart started talking.

So given that this is live webcasting, I'm going to have to go searching for his opening here.

There have been numerous... Ah, we're close. Now, before this debate took place,

Dr. Wallace and I exchanged a few emails. And he said, so, James, what do you think he's going to do?

I said, well, Dan, I expect him to be Bart Ehrman. I expect him to probably use the same presentation used last time.

When he debated me, he used the exact same PowerPoint presentation used with Dan Wallace, including the errors that he had to apologize for in both of them.

He hadn't even fixed them. Hadn't even fixed them. He used the same jokes.

He starts off by saying, how many of you believe that the Bible is the word of God? And how many of you want to see me get creamed?

And he's trying to get little chuckles going. And somewhere through the debate, he's going to insult his students and say that the vast majority of scribal errors in the

New Testament prove that ancient scribes could not spell any better than my students at Chapel Hill.

And, you know, it's this set thing. And Dan was like, do you really think he's just going to do the same thing?

And I said, I've never seen him do anything else. And given the fact that Dan himself has documented in his talks that Barth's not involved with textual criticism anymore.

Hasn't been for 10 years. It's really not what he's, he's quite busy with other things.

He doesn't really deal with this field anymore. How would his presentation change?

Why would he even, honestly, given his perspective, why would he even feel the necessity to improve it?

That's the question you have to ask. And so as I started listening to his presentation, and he started going through, well,

P45 and the Gospel of Mark and everything, right down to the jokes all over again, it might cause some people in the audience to go, well, why are you reviewing this guy?

Well, because he's still the biggest game in town, unfortunately. He's still the person being quoted as the expert by everybody who wants to destroy someone's faith and belief in the

New Testament. And that's a shame. But that's the way that it is.

And so let me find the exact start here, and we're just going to listen to Bart Ehrman, and stop and start and make comments.

Written on papyrus, which was the ancient equivalent of paper. We're getting close.

Unfortunately, it's so overmodulated, there's no break in anything, so I can't see where it starts. We're doing some musical background.

Ah, yes, there he is. He's talking about his... Here's the introduction, so we'll go.

Here we go. Well, thank you very much for that generous introduction,

Mark. And thank you all for coming out. So, just to get things started, let me ask, how many of you would consider yourselves

Bible -believing Christians? Right, okay.

How many of you are here to see me get creamed? Okay. All right, so all

I ask is that you approach it with an open mind. Okay, if you've listened to my debate with him, this all sounds very, very familiar.

I have long thought about these issues, as Mark was pointing out. I did my PhD with Bruce Metzger, who was the world's leading scholar in text criticism.

I was his final PhD student. I did both a master's thesis and a

PhD dissertation under him. And then when I graduated from Princeton Seminary, I wrote for several years nothing except for books on textual criticism.

I decided a number of years ago, five or six years ago, to try and write a book for popular audiences to explain what it is scholars have said about this field, and that was the book,

Misquoting Jesus, that Mark mentioned. I should say that when I wrote Misquoting Jesus, that's not the title that I wanted to give it.

You may not know this, but scholars who write books for popular audiences usually don't give the titles to the book.

They're not allowed to give the titles to the book, and it's not a title that I wanted, actually. Which I find rather interesting for one particular reason, and that is some of you may remember that when we arranged the debate with Bart Ehrman in 2009, for six months beforehand, we were advertising the debate as being on the subject, does

New Testament textual variation preclude the possibility of inspiration? And then we get a month out, and he says, no, no, no, no,

I never agreed to debate that. He had, but I never agreed. And he insisted that the title of the debate be

Misquoting Jesus. Now, he could have said to use the title he's about to give us here, but he didn't.

He forced us to use the title Misquoting Jesus, which is very vague and doesn't really have much to do with what we really wanted to discuss.

But I find that odd. Since the book deals with how the New Testament had been transmitted over the centuries by scribes who sometimes changed the text, my preferred title for the book was

Lost in Transmission, which I thought was a pretty good title.

My publisher, though, decided against it because they thought that in places like Texas, if we called it

Lost in Transmission, and somebody went to the Barnes & Noble and saw it on the shelf, they would assume that it was a book about NASCAR.

Okay, I will admit, that's a new joke. That's a new one. I suggested that might improve sales. Can we trust the text of the

New Testament? To get to this question, I need to give a little bit of background about how we got the

New Testaments. When you read the New Testament today, you pick up the Gospel of Mark, and you read the words, and you assume you're reading the words that Mark wrote.

Of course you assume that. But you're reading them in English, and Mark wrote in Greek. And are you reading the words that Mark himself actually wrote, even if they are correctly translated from Greek into English?

First, we have to think about the original Mark. We don't know who Mark was. We don't know where he lived.

We don't know when he was writing. It's usually thought that he was a Greek -speaking Christian, living, writing sometime around the year 70, so about 40 years after Jesus' death.

And some people think he was writing in Rome. I don't know where he was writing. Let's say he was writing in Rome. Let's say he was writing in Rome around the year 70.

Mark wrote down... Of course, I would have a much earlier date for the Gospel of Mark than that, but we press on.

...on an account of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. This book that he wrote was put into circulation the way books are typically put in circulation in the ancient world.

It got handed around. If somebody wanted a copy of the book, they couldn't simply go to the

Barnes & Noble. There wasn't a Barnes & Noble, and the book had not been mass -produced. It had been written either by Mark himself or by a scribe by hand.

If somebody wanted to have a copy of their own, they had to make a copy, or to have somebody else make a copy for them.

And so Mark was eventually copied. Maybe Mark was copied many times.

Maybe he was copied only a couple of times. But once it was copied, more copies were needed, and so some people copied the copies.

And then some people copied the copies of the copies. And some people copied the copies of the copies of the copies of the copies.

Now, I don't know if you've ever... And some people would have had the originals available to them, and a copy.

And the originals would have been continuing to be copied even when other copies of copies were being made, see?

And then you would have had copies of copies that went to another place, and they'd be copied there, and then they might compare two copies that they have there.

See, it's not just a single line. He always gives this phone game idea, and that is a very simplistic, unrealistic way of looking at how it would have been taking place, especially given what?

How many manuscripts were found in that church? 37. Do you think some of them had

Mark more than once? Do you think if there were differences, that people wouldn't notice that and compare them?

See, all of his is about... All you've got is just the one, and you don't know about any others. But the historical evidence is that's not the way it was.

But he just doesn't take that into consideration. I've never tried to write out a copy of one of the books of the

New Testament, like the Gospel of Mark, but I can guarantee you, if you do that, you're going to make a mistake.

You might make lots of mistakes. And you are much more highly educated and literate than the vast majority of early

Christians. Mistakes happen when people copy texts. And the problem is, when somebody copies a text and makes a mistake, the next person who copies the copy replicates the mistakes of his predecessor.

And he makes mistakes of his own. And then somebody comes along and copies that copy. And when they copy that copy, they replicate the mistakes of both of their predecessors, and they make their own mistakes.

Or they have access to more than one, and you've got churches, and you've...

See, I know this is his standard spiel. You know, he doesn't invest time in coming up with anything new, but it would be nice if he would listen to what people are saying, and saying, excuse me, but what about the historical fact?

You know, like Christians got together, and if you had two readers in a congregation, they've got two different manuscripts of Mark, and they discover a difference between them, do you think they're just going to leave it there?

Do you think... Did they have ways in those early decades of finding out what the actual original reading was?

Do you think they would care what the actual original reading was? I mean, these are questions the inquiring mind wants to know.

And then somebody copies that copy. And it goes on like that for year, after year, after year.

The only time mistakes get corrected is when a scribe is copying a text, and they realize, oh, this copy has a mistake.

And they try to correct the mistake. But they don't know what the original said, they're just trying to make it right.

It's possible that when somebody tries to correct the mistake, that they correct it incorrectly. In which case, you've got the original copy, you've got the mistake, and you've got the mistake and correction of the mistake.

Three forms of the text, and then somebody copies that form of the text. And it goes on like that.

Month after month, year after year, decade after decade. And so you get copies of the copies of the copies.

We don't have the original version of Mark. We don't have the book he wrote. We don't have the first copy made of Mark, or any of the first copies, or copies of the copies.

And we don't have copies of the copies of the copies of Mark. I'm not sure how he knows this.

I really don't. P52, for example, he's talking about Mark, and all we have is

P45. So that's probably at least third, fourth generation. But still, when he says we don't even have a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of any of the original

New Testament books, I have to go, man, even if John was written, say in the 90s, if you take the late date for John, and P52 is 125 or earlier, why couldn't that be a copy of the original?

How long do you think they lasted? I mean, did they just, was it one of those Mission Impossible things where this original will self -destruct in 10 seconds?

I don't really think that's how it worked. So how does he know that? Mark's book was copied for very many years before we have any copy.

The first copy we have of Mark is a manuscript that scholars have called P45. Now, they call it

P45 because it's written on papyrus, which was the ancient equivalent of paper.

It was the writing material people used to use. And it's called P45 because this happens to be the 45th papyrus manuscript of the

New Testament that was cataloged. And so it's called P45. This is what it looks like.

This is one page of P45. You can see that it is not a complete page.

As you can see, there are holes in the manuscript here and here, and some of the margin is missing here. But this is actually one of the best preserved pages of this manuscript,

P45. P45 is not a complete manuscript of Mark. Obviously, there's some things missing on this particular page.

It doesn't have anything from the first three chapters. It starts with Chapter 4, this surviving fragment we have.

It's not entire. It's just fragmentary. This copy has only five verses from Mark Chapter 4, and then it has verses from the following several eight chapters.

It goes from basically Chapter 4 to Chapter 12. So it doesn't have the last four chapters. It doesn't have the first three chapters.

So it's missing the first three, the last four, and it has some bits of the stuff in between. This is our first copy of the

Gospel of Mark that survived, except for small fragments. We have a small scrap or two here or there, but this is basically the first copy of any use to us.

So it's our oldest copy, and it's usually dated to around the year 220, 220 CE or AD 220.

Now, if Mark was written in the year 70, that means this copy was made 150 years after the original, and it's our first copy.

This kind of time gap is not unusual in the New Testament. This is the kind of time gap we're talking about for most of the books of the

New Testament, not just the Gospel of Mark, for most of them. I'm just using Mark as an illustration. We don't have...

Now, let's keep in mind, we need to keep in mind here, that time gap is multiple factors smaller than for any other work of antiquity.

Do you think that that would be relevant? Why is it that only the opponents of Bart Ehrman have to bring that up?

Why doesn't Bart Ehrman say, now, of course, we should, for the sake of completeness, point out that no other work of antiquity comes even close, and that there are entire works that are quoted regularly, that it's 1 ,000 years, it's 1 ,400 years between the original writing and our first copy.

And we're talking 150 here. So 1 ,400, 150, that's a big difference, 10 times.

But he doesn't say that, and I think it's because there's a reason. ...of a complete copy of the

Gospel of Mark until the middle of the 4th century. Until about the middle of the 4th century, 300 years of copying before we have a complete copy that survives.

But when we have something like P45, and we compare it to the first complete copies that we have in Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, is

Bart Ehrman going to assume that it's the same line of transmission that produced P45 as well as those?

The chances of that are next to none, especially in light of what? Per -se -cution, and the destruction of manuscripts.

And yet, the text we have in P45, is it the same text as what we have in Vaticanus and Sinaiticus?

Well, in the sense that it's the same book, and it reads the same, there are going to be some textual variants, copying variants, but yes, it's the same thing.

So if there was, at the same time as P45, some manuscript that reads very differently, where's the evidence of its existence?

Why don't we find copies of it? Because see, what comes into light in history as these manuscripts are discovered comes from many different lines.

If there had been these major changes, where's the evidence? There would be evidence! But it's not there.

It's not there. Alright, that's where we'll pick up with the Ehrman -Wallace debate next time around.

Next time around. Because I realize sometimes textual critical stuff can start wearing on the soul.

And so we're going to shift gears. Put the clutch in, make the shift over, shift gears, and move over to the debate that took place,

I believe, in Sydney between Samuel Green and Diya Mohamed.

Diya Mohamed. And part of me says, well, you know, there are better debates we could review.

Because Diya Mohamed's arguments, honestly, it sounded to me,

I'll be perfectly honest with you, it sounded to me like Diya Mohamed listened to way too many

Ahmad Didat videotapes. He repeats the same arguments that Ahmad Didat did.

And I hope you all saw that I posted a link, or I posted the actual debate between Ahmad Didat and Josh McDowell on the blog yesterday.

It was so wonderful to get to hear Ahmad Didat schooled. Because he was so careful in picking his opponents.

It was really surprising he debated McDowell because he specifically did avoid ever taking on anybody who could expose him for what he was.

And in this instance, he took on somebody who could respond to him and respond to him well.

But it sounded to me like Diya Mohamed was just repeating uncritically many of the things that Ahmad Didat said.

May I say something to the Muslim apologists of the world? Ahmad Didat was not a scholar.

He was a bad, untrustworthy, dishonest storyteller.

Nothing more. Nothing more. And if you repeat his errors, you will be refuted.

Because his material is just that bad. I mean,

I could not believe. I had not heard this. I had not heard the McDowell debate until just a couple days ago.

I listened to it a couple days ago. And I'll just tell you this one before we get started, just to give you an idea.

He actually argued that when Mary was coming to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus, to finish the process of preparing the body for final burial, and they had already put some of the stuff, but evidently they hadn't put as much as they had wanted or had run out or something.

But she's going to anoint the body. He says, well, that word anoint is the root from which we get

Messiah, because Messiah means the anointed one. But then he says, and it also means to massage.

And so what Mary was coming to do was to massage

Jesus, because she must have seen signs of life when he was taken down from the cross.

She knew he was alive, so she was coming to massage Jesus. I could not believe my ears that someone could seriously stand in public and suggest it should be

Jesus, the massaged one. Yeah, right. There you go. Brilliant. Just brilliant.

Talk about, oh, I just, just unbelievable. Unbelievable.

But I'll talk him a deed up for you. And just the one thing that I wish

I had had the opportunity of doing was debating that man. Oh, my. Talk about a target rich environment.

Oh, yeah. That would have been like shooting fish in a barrel.

Unbelievable. Anyhow. So we go to Diya Muhammad, and the subject is on the deity of Christ.

And given what we did on Tuesday, where we're going in depth into the use of ego,

I mean, on a who and the doubled ego, I mean, we're and we're going into all this depth and seeing the

Shema and first Corinthians, 8, 6, and all this stuff. Some of this is going to sound really simplistic.

I mean, for example, Diya Muhammad says the Trinity was removed from the Bible from John 5, 7.

It's first John 5, 7, which is a different book than John 5, 7. And, of course, the

Trinity has never been based upon the Kami Ohanian, which is in first John 5, 7. And but you got to you got to realize something, folks.

There are only a few people out there like the Patrick novices and the

Dave Barron's and the Greg Stafford's and the and the Anthony buzzards of the world. But there are literally hundreds of millions of Muslims that think and reason like Diya Muhammad.

So sometimes we can become so focused upon how to deal with the best that we lose sight of how to respond to this kind of stuff.

And so there there is a need to be prepared to deal with the less well -researched.

And sometimes that's harder to do because you cannot assume a level of knowledge on the part of the other person that you can assume with the others.

It's sort of like it's easy to sit around in seminary and have theology talks because everybody has an advanced vocabulary that you can share with one another.

But I've often said if you can't take what you're studying in seminary and teach it in your

Sunday school class, then you probably don't know it very well. And a lot of people don't like when

I point that out, but it's true. You probably don't know it very well. So keep that in mind.

So let's let's dive into this. It's going to be interesting for me to listen to it because I I've only listened to this at high speed.

And in fact, I just I want to thank two certain people specifically. I destroyed one of my iPods accidentally.

And those of you who listen to this program know I use those things. If you like this program, you got to keep me you got to keep me in iPods if you want this program to go.

And that's all there is to it. Because every program I was listening to this while I was writing here and I was listening to this while I was writing there.

And that's this is that's where I do all my preparation for this program. So if you like this program, well, I put up on the ministry resource yesterday.

I destroyed my iPod. And I already have the replacements.

They're sitting on my desk. One of them is charging up. But the new ones, I haven't checked them out yet.

I've got stuff loaded, but I haven't checked it out yet. The one I had played at 120 percent.

That's the high speed. This says double speed. I'm a little worried about that.

Because if it really is double speed, that could be really, really that could be really the new one.

But yeah, two times. Yeah, that's that's what I'm that's what I'm concerned about. Two times could be could be tough.

We'll see. I may have to record stuff at 120 percent and play it at normal speed.

It's just just to make that work. Because believe me, I started listening to Ahmad Didat at high speed.

And I had to stop and rewind and put on because his accent is so thick. There just was no way I could

I could follow it. So anyways, D .M. Muhammad is very easy to understand. Thankfully, speaks very clearly. So let's let's dive into what

D .M. Muhammad had to say. I'd now like to invite D .M. up for his opening statement. By the way, did you recognize that?

I am very proud of you, Proby. What was it? Do you remember? It was the he is not.

Was it creator begotten? Right. You heard let me let him you would. You got it. That's right, sir.

Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir.

Sir. Sir. The topic of tonight, the I thought was the identity of Jesus.

But I think it's changed before I got to his Jesus God, which is sort of the same thing.

But I'll speak a little bit quickly about the identity of Jesus. with his identity, what are we really talking about?

Is it his prophecy? His supposed divinity? Or is it the mental image that you get of Jesus Christ?

The nice white pale skin, the blonde hair, blue eyes, very thin beard, not too long or big,

I'd be an extremist if he had that. That's not what we think

Jesus looked like. Jesus was a Palestinian Jew and so he would have looked like other

Palestinian Jews and none of them had blonde hair or blue eyes actually.

But what are we talking about? And I've got a bigger challenge. I have to talk to my

Christian brothers and explain who we say Jesus is. The challenge is we believe in the

Holy Quran and Allah has told us through his glorious book, the final testament, the Holy Quran, who Jesus is.

But the problem is you don't believe in my Quran. You say, I don't know your Quran, I know my Bible. Okay, so we think.

Now the Quran gives us an answer to that. It says, tell them, O people of the book, bring forth your proof.

And the Christian has brought his proof which is the Holy Bible. So we look and say, okay what does the

Bible say about Jesus Christ? Because as Muslims we believe in Jesus Christ. As Muslims we believe in his miraculous birth.

As Muslims we believe that he healed the sick, gave sight back to the blind and brought people back from the dead all from God's permission.

So we all believe. So the Muslim and the Christian, we're together in believing in Jesus Christ. So where do we part?

Well, Samuel is going to, I think, rightly point out that this particular approach by Muslims, which is very, very common, is not helpful, honestly, in dialogue.

Because the Jesus we believe in is not the Jesus that Muslims believe in. We do not believe in a mere

Rasul. We do not believe in one who is in the second level of heaven and not the seventh level of heaven.

Just look at the Hadith for that. We believe that Jesus is the

God -Man and that he came for the purpose of providing redemption for the entirety of the world.

And to say that, well, we all believe in Jesus is the same thing as when Mormons say, well, we all believe in Jesus.

You believe Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer, one God amongst many gods. That's not the same thing, because it robs the specificity of our confession of faith of any meaning.

And that's very common amongst post -moderns, but it really shouldn't be something that is brought up in a Muslim -Christian dialogue.

And I'll get to the theory of who God is in a second. But at least we're believing in Jesus Christ. So where is the real parting of the ways?

The real parting is this. You say he's God, Son, and Holy Ghost. We say, no, he's a prophet of God.

Did you catch that? God, Son, and Holy Ghost. Mr. Muhammad, we do not believe that Jesus is

God, Son, and Holy Ghost. We don't believe he's Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

We believe he is the Son. He is not the Holy Spirit. He is not the Father. And if you were familiar with our faith from our own writings, then you would know this.

This is the first of many pieces of evidence that you will provide to us that your knowledge of Christianity is secondary.

That is, you haven't listened to what we have to say. You've only listened to what other people have to say about Christianity.

Now, there are many Christians who are in the exact same boat when it comes to Muslims.

We do our best, here on The Dividing Line and with Alpha and Omega Ministries, to fight against that kind of stereotyping and, quite honestly, that kind of bigotry.

And we have demonstrated over the past number of years that we can go to the Muslim sources. And we can go to the

Quran, and we can go to the Hadith. And we actually know the difference between Sahih al -Bukhari and Sahih al -Muslim and Jamia Termini and Sunan Abu Dawood and so on and so forth.

Unlike certain people who claim to be experts on Islam, but aren't. But as it may, we do our best to allow

Islam to define Islam, not Christianity to define Islam. But unfortunately,

Dio Muhammad allows Islam to define Christianity, and as a result, misdefines it a number of times.

A messenger of God, sent by God, like God sent all the other prophets. Moses, Jesus, Abraham, Noah, John the

Baptist, Solomon, and the 124 ,000 prophets that God Almighty has sent, with the five messengers that I've just mentioned.

Now, there's a theory, the trilemma, not the dilemma, the trilemma, where it was used to work out who is

Jesus Christ. And the parameters they put around this trilemma is this. He was either

Lord, a liar, or a lunatic. Well, the trilemma is interesting, but it has very little to do with what the difference between Christians and Muslims actually is.

Now, he is actually going to make the statement, more than once, that Jesus never said he was Lord, if you can believe that.

You call me Lord, and thus, do you do so rightly. But he never said he was

Lord. I did not get the feeling that Mr. Muhammad has ever actually read the New Testament, all the way through, in any meaningful way, trying to understand it anyways.

But, the trilemma is normally dealing with unbelievers who deny that there is anything special about Jesus at all.

Not this type of a context between Muslims and Christians. He's either

Lord, a liar, or a lunatic. I'm asking, why does it have to be one, two, or three? Why does it have to be black and white?

Between black and white, there's endless shades of grey. Which we'll get into the shades of grey. I'll ask a very, very simple question that I'm sure all my

Christian brothers here have heard before. Simple question. Has Jesus ever, once, once, ever claimed that he was

God Almighty, that he was God incarnate, that he and the

Father are one and the same thing, or did he ever once tell us to worship him?

Now, what you're hearing is just warmed over Achmed Didat, and the answer to the question is, yes,

Mr. Muhammad, he did, in many different ways, ways that are so very clear, that you really should take the time to listen to what he had to say.

I mean, he did say, I and the Father are one, in providing life to God's people.

He was not saying that he and the Father are one person, but when someone says that he gives life, even as he wills, and when someone says that the very eternal life of God's people is dependent upon being in his hand, and that he and the

Father are one in the provision of life to God's people, yeah, that's a claim to deity. And he did identify himself with that phrase, ego,

I am, and you're going to hear Mr. Muhammad's destruction of that.

It's not nearly as nuanced as what we heard from our Unitarian friends, but you're going to hear at least the attempt to get around that.

And he was worshipped, and when Thomas said to him, my

Lord and my God, Jesus' response was not what you'd expect from the

Muslim Jesus. The Muslim Jesus would have rebuked Thomas, and identified

Thomas' action as an action of shirk and unbelief, association. But Jesus' response was to commend it as an act of faith.

And so, there are so many places where, now of course, Mr. Muhammad will say, well, but you see,

I want where Jesus, I want where Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, well, of course, that's an absurd thing.

That'd be like me stating that we don't have any idea what Muhammad actually said. Because clearly,

Uthman is the one who wrote down everything in the Quran, and Muslim and Bukhari and the others wrote down the

Hadith, so don't tell me what's in the Quran or in the Hadith, I want to know what Muhammad said. Well, you don't have anything like that, so it's an absurd statement to make, it's an absurd argument to make, and yet Muslims will make it all the time.

I don't care what Matthew said, I just want to know what Jesus said. Well, we don't have a book of Jesus, just like you don't have a book of Muhammad.

And so, you know, let's just, let's be fair, let's use the same standards, and not engage in that kind of argumentation.

Because if he's God Almighty, in fact, and he only had three and a half years walking this earth, he didn't have that, you know, in his ministry it was three and a half years.

You would think he would have spent that three and a half years telling mankind to worship him. Why? Just a little question, why?

If he was God Almighty, Mr. Muhammad, and he knew he was going to send the

Holy Spirit, as promised in John 14 and 16, not Muhammad, the Holy Spirit, and he knew he was going to establish his church, and he knew he was going to raise up the

Apostles, and he knew he was going to use the Holy Spirit to bring the

New Testament into existence through them, why do you demand that he should be running around just telling people to worship him?

Rather than doing the teaching, and the ministry, and the prophetic fulfillment, leading to what even he said it was absolutely necessary for him to accomplish, and that was the crucifixion and resurrection, which you deny against all historical fact, and all historical reasoning.

So, I just, why? That's a question that has to be asked. Telling mankind,

I am God Almighty, this is how you worship me, I am Lord, and this is how you recognize me. But he didn't, not once.

Not once in the Bible did he ever say, I am God, or worship me. No, he just accepted worship, and used the prerogatives of God, and used language that no creature could ever use of himself without committing blasphemy.

I mean, if you want Jesus to walk up to you and present his deity

ID card, and you're not going to worship him unless he does that, that's a pretty silly argument to make.

It's quite an amazing thing. I'll quickly, if I may, read to you what the

Quran says about Jesus. But before I do, just, all those preconceived conclusions, those, you know, that in you where you just block it, just for a moment, put aside a fact, it's the

Quran. Put aside the fact that it's a Muslim or a Christian. Listen to the words, and I want you to be sincere and tell me the source, or if you disagree with it.

And the brother that recited the Quran, this is some of the translation of what he recited.

It's from chapter Mary. And it's mentioned in the book, the

Quran, the story of Mary, when she withdrew to a seclusion to a place facing east. She placed a screen from them, then we sent her our angel

Gabriel, who appeared before her in all forms of a man. Meaning that he appeared to her looking like a man.

She said, fairy, I seek refuge from the most beneficent, Allah. If you fear Allah. So she was scared.

She thought there was a man in front of her. He was about to do something that she wouldn't be doing. The angel said, I am only a messenger from your lord to announce to you the birth of a holy son.

She said, how should I marry and have a son when no man has touched me? The angel said, so it will be.

Your lord said, that is easy for me, and we have to appoint him a sign as to mankind, and a mercy from us.

Us is a royal plural. It's a plural of respect, not a plural of numbers. And it's a matter already decreed.

Later on she brings the baby to the people. So you can imagine. She brought the baby and the crowd surrounded her.

They said, oh Mary, what a disaster thing they have brought. Because they know she's not married. It's not like here where it's almost a norm to have children out of wedlock.

She brought the baby and they know she's not married. And they said, oh Mary, what a disaster thing you have brought. And they said, oh sister of Aaron, you're not an unchaste one.

Your father was not a man who used to commit adultery, nor was your mother unchaste. So they're insinuating now she's committed fornication.

Then she pointed to the baby, Jesus. And this is the first miracle of Jesus in the Koran. She's pointed to the babies and asked him.

And may I point out this particular story seems to be based upon the 5th century Arabic infancy gospel, which has no historical connection to the actual events of Jesus' life.

And in the original that clearly Muhammad is drawing from, Jesus actually says,

I am the son of God. Which I find interesting. But that has been edited as it has appeared in the text of the

Koran. And remember, and I would love to expand upon this sometime in the future, Abdullah Kunda said in our debate, that any place where the

Koran looks like it's borrowing from earlier sources is completely fortuitous.

Could not possibly happen. Which I find very, very, very interesting.

Came where he's come from. And I said, how shall we speak to a baby in the mother's arms? And then

Jesus in the very first miracle, his very first miracle, was defending his mother's honor as a baby, as an infant in her arms.

He said verily, I am a slave of God Almighty, Allah. Allah is not the

Muslim God, it's the Arabic word used for God exclusively for God Almighty. In case you didn't know.

He has given me scripture and made me a prophet. And he has made me blessed wherever I be.

And he has enjoyed on me prayer and charity as long as I live. And peace be on me the day that I was born, and the day that I die, and the day

I'll be raised to life again. The day I was born, and the day that I die.

Check that out, Mr. Muhammad, that's the exact same language that John the Baptist used in the very same Surah Talmudium, Surah 19.

Now we know that John the Baptist died. He was beheaded. So when did

Jesus die? The natural language of the Quran, excluding Surah 4, 157, is that Jesus died.

Surah 355, same thing. And yet, because of Surah 4, 157, that is given a very unnatural reading by most

Muslims. Interesting observation. Such is Jesus the son of Mary, a statement of truth, about which they doubt.

Referring to the Christians where they doubt whether they have made Jesus into a God. There's nothing in the

Quran about where they have made Jesus into a God. That was the NIV rendering of the

Quran there, I think. So we ask, did Jesus ever claim to be God?

Did he ever say worship me? Now I said I'm not going to bring the Quran to prove the point because you don't believe in the

Quran. We'll use the Bible and see what Jesus says in the Bible. Alright, so here we go. We're going to use the

Bible to prove that Jesus is not truly deity. Now, do you think we're going to get a fair examination of the

Bible, an in -depth one that takes the Bible in its own context and is in -depth and bends over backwards to be fair?

Well, anyway. Not what the disciples say, not what Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, who wrote 14 out of the 27 books.

13, you're assuming Hebrews. What Jesus says. Again, there is no book of Jesus.

We have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. That was the Injil that the

Quran commands the Alal Injil to judge by,

Mr. Muhammad. And if you're going to use Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, use all of them.

Don't pick and choose. Don't do what people sometimes do to the Quran and ignore context and things like that.

Do your best to accurately represent the original intention of the authors themselves.

Even though you're going to say the Bible's been corrupted, you don't know when, you don't know how, you'll quote from it and evidently think there are parts that aren't corrupted and other parts that are.

And I guess you can tell by looking at the Quran which ones are which, that I assume would be your argument.

In John 14, 28, Jesus says, my father is greater than I. That immediately does away with the

Christian theology that, see, in John chapter 5, verse 7. Let me stop because he doesn't go back to it.

Mr. Muhammad, could I suggest something to you? You might want to assume that Christians read the

Bible and as such, we may have read

John 14, 28. In fact, there are people called Christian scholars that have translated

John 14, 28 from the original languages that I can assure you, you don't read. And do you think maybe, possibly, we've thought about these things?

And before you go out and publicly make comments like this, do you think it might be a good idea to ask yourself the question,

I wonder what the other side thinks about this.

I wonder how they've responded to this over the years. Maybe go find a believing

Christian book that addresses John 14, 28, something along those lines.

Now, I've met a lot of Muslims that actually haven't read the Quran, had very little knowledge of it whatsoever.

And you'll encounter people who call themselves Christians that have never read the

Bible. But let's leave the nominal folks out. And unless you're only trying to win nominal

Christians that don't really have much faith, may I suggest that the respectful approach is to actually deal with the best the other side has to offer rather than the worst?

It might help. I mean, it just seems you know, John 14, 28,

Mr. Muhammad, does not destroy our doctrine of God or the doctrine of the

Trinity. Because you seem to think that we think Jesus is the Father. We don't. We believe that Jesus was sent by the

Father. We believe that the Father did not become incarnate. The Father takes a different role in salvation than the

Son does. Yet both are identified as Yahweh. The Spirit is the Spirit of Yahweh.

And the reality is that Jesus said, I told you

I would go away. If you had loved me, you would have rejoiced.

Because I'm going back to the Father, for the Father is greater than I am. You see, Jesus is in his state of humiliation.

He has taken on human nature. He is walking the dusty roads of Galilee and Jerusalem.

He is constantly being tempted by his enemies, being mocked by his enemies, attacked by his enemies.

And Jesus has told him he's going back into the presence of the Father, and if their biggest concern was Him, they would have rejoiced.

Why? Because the Father is in a greater position than the Son. The Son, we know, was seen by Isaiah in Isaiah 6, 1, lofty and lifted up, sitting upon the throne.

He was the object of worship of angels. And he's going to go back to that position, that position of exaltation that was his.

And so if they had loved him, they would have rejoiced, but they were thinking more of themselves. And so he says, the Father is greater than I am.

He is just simply making the statement that at that point in time, during his incarnation, the

Father's position is greater than his position. He said, my zone, not

Crito, not the Father is of a different being or a different kind of being or something like that.

He's in a different position. So again, if you just bothered to even ask in quoting

John 14, 20, did you read all of John 14? Mr. Muhammad? And try to follow it?

I mean, when I quote the third ayah of Surah Tali Klas, I try to understand what all of Surah Tali Klas is about.

That's why I've read what Ibn Kathir says about Surah Tali Klas. And I read books on Shirk.

And I try to understand and understand the context.

Why is it that so many Muslims will stand in public and make comments about what Christians believe and about their scriptures, but don't really actually read them?

I mean, is that kind of dawah respectful? Do you really expect that to draw people to your position?

I don't understand that. He's the only place in the Bible where they mention the Trinity. Where it says, for the three that bear record in heaven, the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. Now, I stopped that and I apologize.

I can roll it back on here. But he says this is John 5, 7. Mr. Ahmed, this is 1

John 5, 7. Now, maybe you're not familiar with this, but 1 John is a small epistle with five chapters.

And the Gospel of John is the full -size Gospel that has 21 chapters.

And so, John 5, 7 is a completely different text than 1

John 5, 7, which is known as the Comma Johannium. The Comma Johannium, sir, is not the

Trinity in the Bible. The Comma Johannium is a gloss that first appears in Latin manuscripts of the

New Testament. It does not appear in any

Greek manuscript of the New Testament for over 1 ,000 years, closer to 1 ,300 years after the writing of the

New Testament. In fact, if you want to put it in Quranic terms, the first appearance of the

Comma Johannium in a Greek manuscript of the New Testament would be like having the first appearance of an entire verse in the

Arabic Quran coming about only within the past 50 years. Now, if you had someone try to insert a verse into the

Quran, let's say they say, oh, but we can find ancient, well, not ancient because it's a medieval work, but we can find old translations of the

Quran in let's use

Syriac. How's that? We can find translations of the

Quran from about 350

Hijra in Syriac that have this phrase in it.

Hijra, you're not familiar with that term or are you just stretching your neck? Both. After Hijra, that's their calendar.

350 years in the Islamic calendar, we can find some

Syriac manuscripts that contain this, but the first Arabic comes only 50 years ago.

Would you accept that as being original? Well, that's the situation with the Comma Johannium.

And Mr. Muhammad has the idea that there are people who can put stuff in and take stuff out of the

New Testament just willy -nilly. So if the NIV translators decide that it shouldn't be there, they can just take it out.

The reality is, Mr. Muhammad, that the NIV, NASB, ESV, Holman Christian Study Bible, all the modern

English translations of the Bible, and they are just English translations, sir. You seem to confuse

English translations with the Bible itself. You wouldn't do that with the Qur 'an. You wouldn't say that Yusuf Ali is the

Qur 'an, would you? And yet you seem very confused about this subject. But all of these modern

English translations are based upon the modern eclectic Greek text, which is known as the

Nestle -Aland or the United Bible Societies text, which differs in certain specific instances from the text that underlies the

King James Version because, well, that text was based upon about half -dozen to a dozen manuscripts, and we have over 6 ,700 manuscripts today, just in Greek, not including

Latin and Syriac and Coptic and all the rest of that stuff. And the

Greek text that the NIV is translating, or that the NASB is translating, or the ESV is translating, does not contain the

Kamiohonium at 1 John 5 -7. And in fact, interestingly enough, there is an interesting story as to how that ended up in the

King James Version of the Bible. The first two editions of the printed Greek New Testament produced by Desiderius Erasmus starting in 1516 did not contain the

Kamiohonium. It appears in the third edition, and that because of controversy, because in those days in Europe, the

Latin Vulgate reigned supreme because of the Roman Catholic Church, and the Latin Vulgate contained it based upon those older Latin manuscripts.

And so people were attacking Erasmus as if he was trying to undercut the doctrine of the Trinity. And so he put it in with a long note in his book called

The Annotations, explaining why he felt it was not original, and he had been deceived, and so on and so forth.

And the primary text that was used to force him to do this was Codex Monfortianus, which is in the

Trinity Library in Dublin. I got to examine Codex Monfortianus earlier this year, in fact, and even transcribed this particular section.

And so that is how it came to be in the King James Version of the Bible. But to say that the

Trinity is based on this one verse is just beyond the level of absurd.

It's just not the same. And it is offensive to me for someone to take information that they've gotten secondhand, ignore the clear presentations.

Don't worry about my book. I'd be happy, by the way, Mr. Muhammad, and I've tried to write to him. I haven't heard back from him yet.

I'm going to try again. I'd be happy to send you a copy of the Forgotten Trinity. You can ask

Abdullah Kunda. I sent it to him. I'll follow through with my promise. I'll be happy to send it to you. But ignore mine.

There are any other book that you want to get in the Doctrine of the Trinity will not be based upon 1

John 5 -7. So to say that the

Trinity was removed from the Bible based upon a single text that did not appear in any

Greek manuscript for at least 1 ,300 years makes absolutely positively no sense at all.

That's early. I thought I still had about two minutes there. Okay. All right. The probie's trying to freak me out there.

So, Mr. Muhammad, the Doctrine of the Trinity is based on three biblical teachings. In fact, there's only one true

God. There are three persons described in Scripture who are distinct from one another, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And each of those three persons are described in ways that can only be used of God.

They're described as Yahweh. The Father is described as Yahweh. He lays the sins of God's people upon the

Messiah. And yet the Messiah is described as Yahweh in John 12 -41, Hebrews 1 -10 -12.

So, the reality is that the Doctrine of the

Trinity is based upon three widely established and widely witnessed biblical teachings.

Not one verse. And so, the idea of taking the

Trinity out of the Bible because you are more accurately representing the original text of 1

John 5. No Christian reading a Greek text of the New Testament had ever read the

Kamiohanion for the first 1 ,300 years of church history.

So, how do you think the Greek church came to believe in the Doctrine of the Trinity if it wasn't in any of their manuscripts?

So, it just makes absolutely positively no sense to come from that perspective,

Mr. Muhammad. So, we will pick up at that point with the debate with Dia Muhammad and with Bart Ehrman and Dan Wallace when we get back together again.

Hey, looking forward to seeing all my friends in St. Charles. We're going to be talking about a lot of this stuff this weekend.

We're dealing with the King James Only Controversy, but we're going to be talking about Erasmus, and I'm bringing my 1550

Stephanus text. I've already got it in the car. And we're going to be talking about the canon and all sorts of fun stuff.

We'll talk about the Kamiohanion, all that stuff at the Covenant of Grace Church in St. Charles. This will be the 11th consecutive first weekend in December that I've been there.

I am now an official part of the church staff. Looking forward to seeing you all then. Thanks a lot. God bless. ...

... ...

... ... ... The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona 85069. You can also find us on the

World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.

us again next Tuesday morning at 11 a .m. for The Dividing Line. ... ... ...