Unanticipated Discussion of CBGM and P45, Then Beginning of Ijaz Ahmad’s Video on OT/NT “Corruption”

And greetings welcome to the dividing line here We are again lots of stuff to get to today might even open the phones because I have been told

That there have been some people saying why do you take phone calls again? Well, I don't know But we'll we'll see

Might happen might not all depends on whether we can get everything done. We need to get done Topics got into I feel a little bit behind don't feel quite as prepared as I'd like to it's been a real busy morning and didn't get in here until just a little while ago and trying to cue stuff up and So we'll see want to make always want to make the program as as educational as possible and sometimes you want to address some subjects that are just Real deep.

I realized I left the Gnostic the Coptic Gnostic library over there. I wonder if there's some other

Story time with Uncle Jimmy things we could read there are lots of people who were who were really

Doing some funny things with the blank stuff on Twitter And in fact, there was a there was a classic this morning

Yeah Miller Brummett Did you hear about the new

Gnostic manuscript? They found it says quote in the future theological debate against pato -baptists and credo -baptists the blank

Understand the scriptures correctly End quote I Retweeted that one.

That was classic. That was very good. That was very very good. And So, yeah, we'll have to have to see what other heretical things we can read on on the air people seemed to like that I could just buy

Joel Osteen. It's pretty much same thing, but Not nearly as interesting and not nearly as old

I guess so there's there's that so Read it with a

Joel Osteen smile. That's Not really possible for me to do I've I've never been to a dentist for that long

And I don't have batteries attached to my teeth Couldn't do that really anyway while I was while I was in st.

Charles I saw an article on Facebook linking to this video and it was said you won't hear anybody talking about this and I sort of responded by saying well, what do you mean?

First of all, I normally don't talk about politics, but secondly I Had not even seen this and so I I said no,

I will talk about it because I this was troubling There is a a video

Popped up last week Of Judge Roy Moore Being interrupted in a in a well, it looks like a campaign.

He's talking about the campaign So it looks like it's a campaign appearance. It's not It's a church service

Now what's gonna happen is there's some protester. There's some guy it's gonna start yelling and eventually they're gonna get get rid of him and The pastor of the church comes up and I actually had just seen sorry about this

I I saw the name. It was a Baptist Church. It was in Alabama. What do you expect? Looked like some type of Southern Baptist Church looked like Southern Baptist pastor and I'm not interested in getting into the names of who it was.

I don't know anything about the guy whatever But what he said was very troubling to me

Because he basically said this is a worship service

This is a worship service and if you interrupt a worship service, you you'll be turned over to cops because that's illegal

Well, then why is Roy Moore up front talking about a political campaign in a worship service? That's not worship

We have for I have since as long as I can remember Recognize that people on the left have used liberal churches as platform for Absurd Campaigning and all the rest of this stuff and just you know could care less about The issues raised by them, but here's the right doing exactly the same thing exactly the same thing and With much less reason.

I mean liberal churches Are pretty much just focused on So Being social justice warriors in the first place because they got nothing else to do they don't have a gospel

They don't really believe the Bible. So why you know, but in a I Would assume

Southern Baptist Church, maybe somebody look it up and verify for me. There was a Southern Baptist Church. I Closed the the thing and don't have time to track it back down But assuming it was a

Southern Baptist Church or some type of a Baptist Church in the south how Do you call this worship?

How do you how do you identify having a political candidate behind the pulpit? speaking as part of the preaching of the service

That that is not worship. If you think that's worship then then we need to have a discussion of what?

Biblical worship is and the centrality of the presentation of God's Word the centrality of focus upon him

You can talk about how important all these other issues are if you want to but don't

Call that the worship of the Eternal God. It's gonna have It's just stunning so let's let's take a look at it and I'll be honest with you listening to his supporters was scary

He's a man's man. He's a man's man What is what does that have to do with what?

This was this was Well, it was it was troubling. So let's let's take a look.

You got it. Okay, let's take a look at it Never once has anyone stated anything like it has occurred in the last three and a half weeks

That's that's all Five statewide five statewide campaigns

And three countywide campaigns We can stop it and get them out

All right

Now that the plant is gone with the IQ of one I Would remind everyone again that this is a worship service and by the way, it is illegal to disturb a worship service

The next one who makes disturbance will be turned over to the police So as pastor of this church,

I'm saying we're going to do these things decently and in order Okay Now decently and in order in that context of a worship service

Would have to do with an actual Service to the church. This has come up a lot recently and I I want to I want to point it out yet again

Tried to have a conversation with an individual in Twitter had actually unblocked him because I had seen some comments he was making and and He actually made the argument some young fiery fire -breathing guy he actually made the comment that Christian conferences are church services and I said well

Excuse me, but isn't it rather obvious in the New Testament you have elders you have deacons

You have the ordinances the church baptism in the Lord's Supper. You have the seeing of Psalms you have prayers

You have the reading of Scripture you have church disciplines so you have organization These are all things that it's very easy to identify from the the epistles from Acts What what's what's what's the issue

How can you how can you identify a conference as a meeting of the church when you don't have?

Anything Even close to these there's no ordinances being there's this isn't a this is not a worship service of the church

There's a lot of confusion as to what the quote -unquote church is but very little discussion of exactly what the

Bible defines as meeting of the church So someone in channel is saying it was

Magnolia Springs Baptist Church Is that can someone find out if they are associated?

with The Southern Baptist Convention, I'm just Or if they're independent or whatever.

It doesn't matter. I just want to be accurate in in the description because like I said,

I saw it and then I went and closed that as I was I Went upgraded my

OS and every time I do that. I Have my favorite Quran program is called

Zecher It just works well for me, but it runs on the old Java stuff so every time you upgrade your

OS you have to reinstall a legacy version of Java just to run it and So I had to close everything and so I lost

I lost that and like yeah I didn't have time to put back together again. Like I said, I was feeling a little rushed to try to get everything put together

So I Look at this and this is this is very very concerning for me

And it should be I think concerning for for Christians That you would have

I you know, I don't care how strongly You feel about Judge Roy Moore one way or the other or about the issues

We need to have I mean look at the Supreme Court we need to have another Republican senator and and it's all about the

Supreme Court and and all about this type of stuff and Okay, fine, whatever Someone's saying not listed as an

SBC Church, so Okay, so it's probably just a

Independent Baptist Church. There's there's plenty of those. So just your standard down -south

Baptist Church without being part of the Southern Baptist Church, so There you go. Anyway If anyone's wondering

I am offended that you would call a political rally even for a conservative a worship service

I'm offended when I see that being done on the left. I'm offended when I see that being done on the right

It's not a worship service that's a political gathering and it needs to be identified for for what it is and I'm not getting into I Will say this the

Roy Moore situation has Reminded me once again of how little modern people tend to think in a

Well tend to think the way that my generation did Why a couple things here first of all, there's there's something called the statute of limitations and there's something called innocent until proven guilty and Those are not covers for bad behavior in the past They are foundations for justice and liberty

Because when you bring something up from 40 years ago There are no witnesses left memories have become

Corrupted over time. There's no way to do justice and you see Modern people go but there has to be there has to be we have to do justice.

That's why people are tearing down Statues and all the rest of why didn't people do that in the past was because they didn't care because they were just weren't as Smart as modern people.

No, it's because they had a Christian worldview and they realized you won't always get justice in this life

But there is a day of justice coming and So they knew we can make mistakes in this life

Therefore it is vitally important to have rules evidentiary rules

Innocent until proven guilty the the proper process have judges for example

Who have a proper worldview to be able to function that that's where I think our system is

When I say are I'm sorry for those of you listening outside the United States. That's why where I think the United States system is virtually in a state of collapse is

Because the judiciary that is supposed to be protecting these things no longer believes in a worldview that makes sense out of these things and so Have we not known for a long time that guilty men might get away in this life

We've always felt that that was better than the imprisoning of an innocent man That you have to we can do the best we can with the evidence and the situation we have here

But we always recognized we always recognized there is a day of justice coming

That's why you'd put that hand on that Bible and you would swear and you might lie through your teeth

But the point was you're not gonna get away with it forever. You might get away with it for now

You might fool us you might undercut justice in this life But you're not gonna undercut justice in eternity.

There's gonna be a greater judge and he knows And you will be judged. I can see why secularists have to throw liberty and Evidentiary rules and justice in that sense out the door to get instant feelings based justice

I want feelings based justice. Who is that woman? I don't remember the name was But that woman who came straight out you know when the when the accusations the

Matt Lauer stuff and the Weinstein and all those stuff and Kevin Spacey and I don't know much about Hollywood other than it's burning down right now all that kind of stuff

When there was a woman who came out and she just directly said I would rather have dozens of innocent men's

Lives and careers ruined than a single perpetrator to get away with it. You know why they say that Because it all has to be done in this life

There is no afterlife in which there's gonna be justice because they don't have a God who's created this world and who sits upon a throne

That's based upon justice So you you get better do it now and if and if innocent people got to get trashed in the process.

Well, hey, you know My priorities say that's just fine Wow So I do look at that situation

I do not have time right now to be reading all the stuff and going into the

Stuff about this woman said that I ain't no interest be no time. I don't live in Alabama maybe if I did

I'd have to spend more time on it, but I don't and so I just But it's been scary to see how people will just Not let the process go they will did and and part of it's their worldview and part of it's the fact the process is falling apart because if you do not have a

Unbiased constitutionally bound Honest judiciary What's left,

I don't know I don't know what's coming But Great will be its fall.

Great will be its fall. No two ways about it if we if we are not Exceptionally exceptionally careful.

Well exceptionally careful. We're being exceptionally careful doesn't matter. There's a lot going on here. So anyways,

I Don't have I can't even name the principles and the accusers and there's something about a yearbook and I I don't know all

I know is Roy Moore should not have been standing in front of a Baptist Church Talking about his politics and calling it worship.

It's not worship Don't call it worship Just don't even just don't even go there.

So I Knew as soon as somebody said that you shouldn't be running that on your computer because it's it's terrible

It's only way that program works And it's the best. It's the best Quran program

I I've I've ever run across I don't use it in in my browsers, but it's Absolutely necessary for that that particular program.

That's good program I just haven't found any others Maybe they've come up with one now

Maybe my Muslim friends will tell me about what's what's new on the horizon as far as an accordance level type program, but still the best the best

Quran program I have is on my iPad called my Quran. That's still the best one

I've found I would like to think that there are some better ones out there Anyways, okay. So there's that we talked about that I'll mention this just real quickly since they're sitting over here

It came into the office like I said just a while ago and two more volumes that arrived so there's total of three there

You're looking at some really expensive books really Really expensive books there.

I won't even bother to tell you what they what they cost but they're very expensive Why in the world would

I have really super expensive books that have Basically no

English in them whatsoever. All you've gotten here is Chart chart chart page after page of nothing, but charts, oh

Wow, fancy fancy schmancy with a little zoom zoom thing there and then here's

Resultate der collation Result of the collation this is called text und

Textwert this set is sort of the pre -computer work of the

Institute in Munster where they are collating a certain number of Manuscripts at particular points of textual variation

It's the printed precursor To what is now the online?

databases and tools That Munster is making available to New Testament scholars to do

New Testament textual study in what's called the coherence based genealogical method Obviously computers are much faster

Than we are and the database is much larger now than what you have here.

The problem is That so far. We only have access to the databases and tools for the general epistles and for acts and I can't be in this program forever.

So I In looking at p45, it's great to have acts now And it's great to have the online tools for acts because a major portion of p45 is acts

But the most important portion of p45 that I need to look at is Mark and John is important as well

Matthew and Luke are super fragmentary in p45 So what

I have here are the text and textvert volumes for John and Mark and What that will allow me to do very slowly is to do manual

CBGM type studies of key textual variants in p45

To utilize this very new technology To Shed some light on the textual background of p45, which was which is my subject to begin with and So those just came today

For the vast majority of the human population they would have no meaning whatsoever. I understand that and I'm going to have to be really utilizing my best reading glasses because that font is really small and It's just page after page after page of tables and collation of manuscripts at particular points, but it's a

It's extremely useful extremely helpful along those lines and who knows what it will help us to dig up but it's a whole new field its whole new area and So that's just I realized for most people that's like really boring

But in light of what we're about to look at It's very very relevant and that is

Y 'all can y 'all can stop with the computer stuff. I don't care if you want if you want to get if you want to get

Muted or something on Twitter. I don't care Just yeah, I know you're geeks and you just got to do your geek thing

But just try to try to try to control yourself on the geek thing uh -huh

Well, you see I'm not I'm not I'm not even ready to go there

CBGM coherence -based genealogical method Maybe in a year.

I might be able to put together a You know the the type of slides and and graphics to try to Bring a general audience along in understanding such terms as pre genealogical coherence coherence local stomata global stomata

Principles of parsimony And everything else goes along with it. A book was published just about three weeks ago came out

I think it was dr. Wasserman and dr. Gurry. I know it's dr. Curry, but I think it was

Tommy Wasserman was the co -author which is meant to be a

Introduction to The the whole concept of CBGM and it is

Just simply Extremely difficult Even to follow what is meant to be the most simplified possible presentation of CBGM.

In fact the primary Reason that CBGM is struggling for Acceptance amongst many

New Testament scholars and textual critics is most people just don't understand it It is it is not what

I was taught in the 1980s It does require a fair amount of mathematical

Analysis the computer does a lot of it, but you still need to understand what in the world the computer is doing

And It goes against the the the grain of where most of us are

For example CBGM has For those who are using it only established the existence of one

Textual group the Byzantine it basically says there is no such thing as Alexandrian Western Caesarean Doesn't exist it basically undercuts and I'm pretty certain now by the way

That my initial My initial thinking on the

Tyndale House Greek New Testament Was correct.

Yeah, the primary editor that the man who did almost all this work is Dirk Junkind and One of the strongest

Published criticisms of CBGM is from Dr. Junkin. So I I'm Pretty confident that the

Tyndale House Greek New Testament sort of represents a pushback against CBGM, but if I don't don't have it in here, but if the

Editio Critica Mayor the ECM ECM to specifically but the the currently being published

Major edition of the Greek New Testament with massive amounts of collation, which is using

CBGM which when it's finished will probably be That that big easily size -wise

Since it's using CBGM and it looks like all the English Bible translators translations, I'm sorry are

Utilizing ECM and it's in it's and it's going to determine what's in the NA 28 29

Well any 28s are out. So NA 29 NA 30 is all going to reflect

What's in what's coming out in ECM? you I Don't know how you can do serious textual critical scholarship in the

New Testament and not at least Minimally interact with CBGM and if you don't accept its principles or its application

Say why So that's why I'm having to to do what I'm doing with the study that I'm doing

What CBGM seems to be able to help us to do is to identify? The Purest streams of transmission of a text.

The question is how far back does that go? and Those are a lot of there's still a lot of questions.

There's a lot of questions. Dr. Mink at in Munster is the primary individual who's developed this and I'll just I'll just explain this one thing and I'm sorry.

I've most most folks have probably fallen asleep already, but Let me just explain this one thing

One of the elements one of the elements of CBGM is You look if you have a simple variant where you have two possibilities and You ask the computer to look through the witnesses that you have available for that reading and When you look at the manuscripts that have reading a

And then you look at the manuscripts to have reading B and you ask yourself the question the manuscripts that have reading a

How coherent are they? in having the similar readings elsewhere in other words you're

You're you're looking and by the way part of CBGM is you you have to stop thinking of manuscripts

And I was even using the wrong terminology. You don't think of manuscripts you think of witnesses and you go

What's the difference how do

I explain this? We've known for a long time and when I've done my presentation on New Testament Textual Reliability I've pointed to two minuscule manuscripts 1739 1881 that we know are from the 9th 10th centuries and Yet we know they're copying 2nd or 3rd century documents so that somebody hundreds and hundreds of years later is

Copying a there their exemplar is very very old so there's not a bunch of generations in between and so the witness of the text in 1739 can be much older than a

Then the manuscript itself is and you might have manuscripts that are 500 years younger, so another another word 500 years closer to the original than 1739 and yet their witness the text they witness is actually much farther down the road from the originals and So one of the things you've got to try to do is stop thinking

Manuscript and start thinking witness What does the what is the the text that it that it gives us and how far back does that go?

so the point is When you when you look at the manuscripts that have reading a in them and reading

B if the largest portion of Manuscripts that have reading a if their closest possible parent parent text not manuscript but parent text that they could be related to likewise has a

Looks like the copyists were being very faithful and when you compare them at other places these manuscripts

Have what's called high coherence say 95 97 percent, but then you look over at B and You have to start searching up the line to the fourth fifth sixth possible progenitor before you find somebody else that has the same reading that the majority of the ones that these manuscripts related to have

Reading a rather than reading B What that tells you is in all likelihood the scribe made a mistake here or add an edit here but There's if there's lower coherence here and higher coherence here

Then that's part of the information that you want to take into making your textual critical decision

It's it's it's information. We've never had before We've when looking, you know, if you've been sitting there with your with your

Nessie Allen text You know and you're you're looking at a particular variant, you know And you're you're you're looking at just a just a couple lines of information.

You're basically just going Well, okay Looks like Vaticanus a few miniscules here have this and Then it's just the

Byzantines and he got D out there doing its thing. And so we go with Vaticanus. That's You know,

I mean, hopefully you've translated it and you might go. Oh, maybe there's some homo I tell you time going on there similar endings.

There's some things you can look at but we've never had this type of information before and In the general epistles and in Acts there's been about I Don't know significantly, maybe 70

Places I'd have to look up the numbers. I've got them around someplace where you've had a

You know fairly significant change. What's interesting is even the application of CBGM. It's all the same text and I can assure you once again once ECM is done

The big thing like that that you can't really carry around though, obviously it'll be

Digitized eventually and we'll all carry it around our iPhones, though. I imagine it'll be pretty expensive for a while If you exegete that the same way you exegete the

Tyndale house Same teaching and in fact you get down to I think it's it's 85 or 87 percent is

The number at CBGM says it's not as statistically irrelevant now Because all manuscripts are gonna agree that much

That's just that's just the base number And so the idea that you know The New Testament once used to teach something different to all the rest of stuff

CBGM really does From an apologetic perspective. It really does have some interesting application.

It ain't it ain't ready for primetime yet Just like that alleged first century thing a mark wasn't ready for primetime a few years ago

There's a lot of work that needs to be done and one of the one of the big questions that That I'm working on is how does this relate to the earliest manuscripts because it doesn't really care too much about how old your

Manuscript is it cares about how consistent your text is in being consistent with what you think the original the

Ausgang's text the original text is and What has happened?

It's interesting the the Byzantine text guys aren't really sure what to do with this because on the one hand

It's it's really positive to them Because there are a number of readings that CBGM says hey guess what?

Byzantine text has it here over against all the earliest manuscripts. There's a couple places I'll I wasn't prepared to do this, but since someone asked

I could give you one particular example in the general epistles where I Mean Up until this point.

I haven't looked but I imagine the UBS text probably gave this an A or B rating and CBM CBGM comes along and says nope

The can the can The coherence is found in the Byzantine reading and it's not found the earliest manuscripts so on so there's a there's a number of Let's see here

Did you do do do There's a number of Particularly Byzantine later

Byzantine readings the CBGM says that's that's got the best chance of being the original and So a lot of the changes have come up Along those lines, so you'd think the

Byzantine guys are like Yeah, we're getting vindicated

Probably not Because obviously there's a lot of other places where it goes.

No, that's a secondary reading and Here's the reason why there's you know, it doesn't go back far enough and The grounds that it gives are not the same grounds that the

Byzantine text priority guys have been arguing for a very very long time so, you know it gives and it takes and so I'm not sure exactly what the final results gonna be axe was interesting, but axe has its own

History now, they're getting into the Gospels and so I think mark is next once mark comes out now we're gonna really start seeing what kind of impact

CBGM is gonna have and It'll get a lot more interesting at that point.

It was there a I Was just gonna remark that I'm sitting here following the YouTube chat

And it is interesting to me that as you're going through this how many people are commenting on?

Suddenly it's all clicking in their heads. It's coming together. We got one guy who's talking about he's in the middle of studying for a nursing degree in the finals and he

He his inclination is to drop what he's doing and look at p45 And Need to do well on your finals there, bro

But the point of all of it is is that for all of these people? They're remarking about how it's suddenly clicking into place as to why these acronyms why these terms why these studies become so Important and I haven't even and I haven't even started.

Let me tell you something See, I don't I didn't want to do this. I'm not and I'm not doing this.

Please. No one say Oh James Why was explaining CBGM? No, I'm just You Have to have real clarity in your own thinking to be able to explain something to other people and There are only a few people that have real clarity in their own thinking on this subject in the world right now to be honest with you and I'm not there yet.

It's it's extremely complicated That's what's turning a lot of people off to it

But we've we've been saying for a long time Is that it could be neat when we can get computers involved in helping us?

Analyze the manuscripts. Well Did you really expect that it was just simply gonna do the same thing we've been doing all along What we what we need what we can't see is the interrelationship

Between manuscripts that a computer can see Because you know when we were trying to identify text types

That was basically that the general rule was a 70 % Agreement in particular variants.

Well now the computer can start saying. Oh, no. Well this manuscript agrees with this manuscript 97 .5

% of the time and with this manuscript 95, but this one only 82 % of the time and Then it can track that through all the various variants where those

Manuscripts happen to contain the same material and can start popping this stuff out for you in tables

So you can actually go online you can go to Munster and you can start using these online

Sources and you can put in you can go to a particular variant and there's now a specific

Nomenclature by which you identify Variants now you can't you can't just simply say well you see there in Nessie Island where you've got the little

Circle if that doesn't work anymore computers don't like that. They want to be a whole lot more specific than that and so Now what you've got to do is you've got to each word is assigned a even number and the space between it is an odd number and So you have to identify the variant based on Giving the computer the proper information and then what you can do and you see

CBGM still requires editors to input based on textual critical principles

That's why some of the Byzantine guys will still say I did it but You can put in I think the original was this

Let's see what that does to the coherence of the witnesses and then you can flip it and go okay, let's see what happens when we put this as the original and Then you see what happens with the witnesses and the computer spits all this stuff out

We couldn't do that before and that's a good thing. It's a positive thing. I mean CBGM is basically telling us

Here's the sort of the baseline Agreement of all these manuscripts and at least on that level from an apologetic perspective

It's like all those people who think these manuscripts are just all over the planet Sorry, the computers even tell us you're wrong about that but beyond that Part of the argumentation is how much light can be shed upon the history of the text by CBGM and Right now we don't know

That's something I want to work on. That's what I have to work on because see my my initial goal was to ask the question why is

The text of Mark in p45 Why does it show a different textual orientation than you have in the rest of this manuscript and can this cast a light?

Upon the period of time immediately before p45 hence going into the 2nd century once I had to address that question now all of a sudden

I've got to deal with CBGM because Well, you can't avoid it now it is part and parcel of the

New Testament textual critical area and at first I'm like And see this is

I was gonna I even had the book in here last time I was gonna read you these and And And I'm gonna resist the temptation

I'm gonna resist temptation because it's just I'm just not ready but One of the principles upon which

CBGM is based is that scribes Did their best to reproduce their manuscripts without editing?

That's what's what it's but it's based on and since it can work and establish familiar familial patterns

Then that seems to be part of the part of the outcome of all this but p40 that the scribe p45

Has a lot of singular readings if you've read Royce's work on it. It's that big of a book There are places where the scribe of p45

Engaged not in editing in the sense of changing words, but dropping what he considered to be excessive words repetitive words

Well, does that make p45 irrelevant in a CBGM world and I started thinking

Dr. Gurry actually suggests dropping singular readings from CBGM analysis if we dropped singular readings from p45 would

CBGM allow us to identify the textual orientation and connection of p45 and extend by that means

Those lines back into the 2nd century and hence do exactly what I want to do and as cast light into that quote -unquote dark period

Those will help with that it's gonna take a lot of time and and Be honest with you.

We're looking at debates next year and I don't know how

I'm gonna do that and that Because I don't I don't got anybody to help me with this. I don't have

I don't have research assistants Nothing. This is all me myself and I and As Rich will tell you pretty much most of my

DL preparation is me myself and I on a bike with an iPod But you can't do this on a bike with an iPod.

I Can do a lot of my debate preparation, but we've already got Adnan Rashid before g3 I can tell you now that The INC folks have agreed to a debate on whether the

INC is the one true church Probably in San Diego I am well aware of the fact that Jimmy Akin has says he's be willing to debate in San Diego as well

Michael Brown and I are Working right now to arrange a debate the two of us together against two black

Hebrew Israelites and In the midst of all that Yasser Qadi and I are definitely doing round number two

And we might have a really interesting place to do it now too that will just drive certain people Right over the cliff

But more on that later Put that together with the

Swiss Reformation and the global trip around the world and I Don't know when you sleep

To be honest with you But I you know, I love that stuff

I love all of that and it's hard to say no to any of it But obviously your prayers and support are very much needed to be able to continue to do that kind of that kind of stuff

But that's what we're looking at. So in answer to Matthew's question on Twitter, which forced me to do stuff

I wasn't going to do. Thank you very much Will CBGM allow us to determine the original autographs of the

Bible? Well, no because we don't have them the entire principle of textual criticism is reconstructing that text to the best of our abilities in light of what we have and so if CBGM becomes and is functioning already, but becomes generally accepted as a very important tool in the textual critics bag, so to speak

Then yes, it will assist us in increasing our confidence in The establishment of what's called that Ausgang's text that original that original text

There's a lot of discussion by the way Eldon Epp and other people as to exactly what that means. I won't get into that right now

Or Will there still be work new theories methods that are that need to be done all there will always need to be

Textual critical studies being done. I know that Bart Ehrman says we're just tinkering with the original right now but For us it's extremely important.

There will always be new discoveries. I Would imagine fewer as time goes on the farther we get from that time period of course

But there will always be a need for textual critical studies will textual critics be able to do this without more earlier manuscripts

There is more to be learned from the extant manuscripts. It's one thing the CBGM.

I Will say the one thing that CBGM does seem to do is to increase the value of Older manuscripts that were just sort of all lumped together in the past In fact in NA28 there are a couple minuscule manuscripts now that are being cited

Regularly that were just lumped into all miniscules in NA27 Because the computers have said hey, you know this manuscript here

Every time we make a decision as to what the original text is it seems to be tracking right along there.

So this seems to be a pretty important witness and so Along those lines.

Yeah, it has increased our knowledge of what we already had

You get more manuscripts you get and look the CBGM Databases will continue to get larger and larger as we get more and more collation in and for a lot of folks

They don't like any of this. I mean, I can't imagine that Doug Wilson would like this in light of our our debate book

I want I want something firm right here right now. I don't want any of this stuff

I Just can't imagine. I know that someone like Erasmus could not even begin to conceive of What CBGM is about and things like that?

There's just weren't enough manuscripts available to him to even contemplate such things let alone the computer technology But I just have to think that if those early great scholars had you know

If we could somehow bring them up into up to speed in the modern period would just be ecstatic absolutely ecstatic that we are bringing every bit of our of our

Ability to think To bear on this issue. I really think they would be really excited.

So So there you go, man, I just totally blew the entire program all over the place.

So there you go But yeah Much more on that in the future,

I would assume What I eventually want to do is for example

Gurry and Wasserman Give an example of how

CBGM can shed light on the textual variant at Mark 1 1 Whether the

Son of God is in Mark 1 1 and you go back to 2006

My debate with Shabir Ali at Baylor University Shabir brought that textual variant up Well, it's fascinating when you apply

CBGM to Mark 1 1 and you have to use That volume right there to do it

Because the mark isn't out yet in in the ECM When you apply

CBGM methodology What's interesting is the manuscripts that contain the longer reading

Son of God Have a higher genealogical coherence than the ones that do not Which suggests does not prove but suggests that the deletion

Happened more often by accident in the past than any kind of addition did So that's is that significant?

Yeah, it's a whole new Element of data that we've not had before and Is it going to be apologetically relevant?

It will be But could it be abused and misused?

Yeah So I would I would highly recommend to you young guys coming up Oh Someone in channel asked a very good question.

Is it limited Greek manuscripts? Totally totally one of the limitations is

It does not take into any consideration Latin, Sahitic, Boheric anything like that nothing about Early Church Fathers citations all that Has to be done the old -fashioned way.

It has to be collated as a One witness over against these things this is solely focused upon the

Greek Manuscripts themselves and does not take in into consideration any versional

Information. Will someone come up with a way of adding that in or factoring that in the future?

I'd assume so. I'm not sure how it would work. I Had a the

Latin database to work with or if you had a Boheric lat Sahitic Coptic Syriac, whatever.

I mean, I would assume with all of those languages you could eventually create a

CBGM Style database Thank you, thank you very much, thank you very very much so CBGM became

GM So I just got a report on GM stock prices because I forgot to turn my iPhone upside down.

Haha. I Think that's funny Anyway, so yes, it is only

Greek New Testament manuscripts there Yeah, someone else in well

That's the same guy so one guy asked on Twitter and then asked the same thing in channel and I saw it in channel and then it came up in the other and then someone asks me

I guess I'm not watching the Marcus Rogers Steven Bankarts debate. Nope. I'm not am I?

Nor do I have a whole lot of interest in in doing so so anyway, there we go.

That's great lots of stuff we covered there and I will

I will blame certain people for for that, but let's

I'm gonna have to change this The There we go should have a video coming to you now that was pretty deep stuff, so we'll take him drink of water and let

Siri have interrupted things and move us on from there This is directly relevant and well, it's gonna be continuing the same topic but not quite on the same depth thankfully

I I Wanted to address Presentation That was posted about I don't know two weeks ago

Called the corruption of the Old and New Testaments explained simply in 15 minutes with examples by Ijaz Ahmed and Obviously now having

Taken a left turn We won't get very far in this but there are so many basic fundamental issues to deal with here

That it could be very very educational again in helping us to understand

The transmission of the text the relationship of the Old and New Testaments the Greek Septuagint all the things that go with that and again

Lots of stuff here that You're supposed to get in In seminary

But a lot of people don't and and that means that even if you go to your pastor and ask a lot of this stuff

Many there's there's there's just such an emphasis in In most seminaries today on Promotional concepts, which is normally called evangelism

Leadership classes stuff like that that the the old core of Material in regards to biblical history and where the

Bible came from If you if you can take a Greek class and and get your

Greek credit in 13 days you sort of get the idea of what's what's going on today and So we do want to address these things and hopefully can assist folks

I Have had folks tell me in the past that they they did get more information watching the divine line they and they got in Bible College or seminary on certain aspects of these things and so Some of the rest of you are just bored out of your minds, but there will be another program and I'm sure there will be something

Calvinistically inclined To talk about somewhere down somewhere down the road,

I suppose But I do want to at least get into this today and probably go to Four o 'clock our time.

So we'll go for jumbo edition today at least get it started on Responding to to this this material.

So let's let's get it started. I guess

I could have cued past that Yeah, this is an excerpt from a Christian and Muslim dialogue so I have a short statement to say before we begin timing and this would be to our

I Would like to begin by saying that as a Muslim it is my duty and responsibility to engage with our

Jewish and Christian brethren in a respectful kind and responsible manner

Tonight you may hear me disagree with the Old Testament and the New Testament But please

I ask that you do not confuse these disagreements with hatred We are gathered here today to examine and understand

Relationships between the Old Testament the New Testament and the Quran so I will begin now inshallah

Okay, so to begin with just so we can get this rolling Old Testament does not mean

Torah New Testament does not mean in jail now. I I want to stop right there Because this is this has come up recently with other

Muslims who have accused me of being inconsistent pulling the wool over people's eyes, you know, all the rest is kind of stuff

Ijaz didn't do that, but but others have When we try to explain to non

Muslims What the Quran means when it talks about the

Torah and the Injil? Because the Quran does not use the term

Old Testament or New Testament Hebrew scriptures versus Greek scriptures and I believe we are on very firm ground to in light of the fact that Islam comes after Judaism and after Christianity Historically speaking you can argue that the people before them were all

Muslims all you want Historically The first people in history come out of Arabia In the mid to late 7th century in our reckoning first century in yours, but and and they're the first Muslims and the

Quran is not known by anyone until Same time period and so What that means is that You will assume

That the author of the Quran gets everything correct gets everything, right? Obviously, it's your ultimate authority.

That's your presupposition that's not our presupposition and If you're since you come last and Since your text does make reference to Christians and Jews and specifically addresses them.

I Believe that is absolutely necessary That you establish some kind of meaningful foundation for what

The words of the Quran were supposed to mean to the people to whom they were originally

Addressed not how they've been interpreted in light of the Sunnah and in light of development of Islamic theology for hundreds of years down the road

What did those words mean to the original people to whom they were addressed?

and so if you are positing a prophet living in Mecca or Medina depending on which surah we're talking about Addressing the people of the gospel as Christians because it says do not say three who else would that be addressing you're talking to Christians What did they understand by the word in Jill or Are you saying that the

Quran is going to use language that would not have had any meaning?

Whatsoever To the people to whom was addressed that they were just empty words Empty words not meant to actually communicate anything at all

Same thing with the Jews. Is it possible?

Can you can you? understand Why it would appear to those of us who do not share your pre commitment

To the infallibility and authority of the Quran it seems that it'd be appropriate thing to ask the question what level of accurate knowledge did the author of the

Quran have of the Hebrew scriptures and of the

Christian scriptures and When you ask that question

Immediately When you see the Quran addressing The stories of the

Hebrew scriptures. There is a mixture Between what is canonical?

What was actually a part of the Hebrew scriptures and what was not? There are numerous stories

Taken as fact by the author of the Quran that are a part of Jewish lore and Jewish mysticism and and and that are not historical by any stretch of the imagination but the

Quran takes them in that way and So how good was the author of the

Quran's knowledge you may say Allah's the author of the Quran therefore. It was perfect knowledge.

Okay, then you should be able to demonstrate that We shouldn't be able to point to the

Quran confusing different sources There should be an accuracy in the use of language.

But what I'm hearing from a lot of Muslims is Allah chose not to do any of that. He Didn't care enough to do to do those things.

That's irrelevant to his purposes. It would seem to be a really strong argument, wouldn't it?

Wouldn't it be a sort of like a foundational argument for your establishment of the authority of the Quran to be able to demonstrate how an unlearned man

Could accurately represent the beliefs of religions that he had

He barely had any exposure to in any serious fashion Wouldn't that be a great apologetic argument, but you don't make that apologetic argument because it's just not the case.

And so If you say to the Alal Injil, the people of the

Injil, the gospel Judge, you should judge amongst yourselves by what's contained in your sacred scriptures, the

Injil Just as you said to the people of Moses, they should judge by what's in the Torah. How are they gonna understand those words?

Because if you anachronistically go, well But the author of the Quran says that the Injil was given to Jesus not to his apostles

And so the gospel of Matthew, the gospel of John, that can't be what the Injil actually is

You're assuming knowledge on the part of the author of the Quran that you've never even tried to establish

If the author of the Quran Distinguished between those things then you've got a point.

He doesn't Because when he when the author of the Quran speaks about Jesus he draws from all sorts of non -canonical sources about Jesus too that are utterly ahistorical and I'll be honest with you when

I see you guys trying to say well Sure. Yeah, this story is also found in these

Gospels that were written Three four hundred years later and I see y 'all trying to push the date back as far as possible

But look for a bunch of that stuff, you can't push it back far enough It is clearly

Before Muhammad, but it doesn't go back to Jesus It isn't it's it's apocryphal or Gnostic or semi

Gnostic or whatever, you know, we'd have to look at the specific citation to to get real specific but In both instances in talking about Jesus's life in talking about Moses or talking about what we would call the

Old Testament the Tanakh the Torah the Nevi 'im and Ketuvim the Author of the

Quran shows great confusion or utter carelessness. I Mean you're gonna say oh, we knew all about that stuff.

Well, it shows utter carelessness in The sources that are being cited I Think that indicates ignorance on the part of a prophet in Mecca and Medina Who was unlettered and hence erred in his understanding?

that's what it says to me and so When you when you criticize me by saying oh, we don't see

Old Testament New Testament does not mean Torah and in Jill you are Anachronistically taking modern definitions that have been developed within the the evolution of Islamic dawah today and reading them back into The Quran in such a way that what you fundamentally have to say is the people to whom these things were addressed and there's all sorts of Places where the al -kitab the people the book sometimes it's

Jews. Sometimes it's Christians sometimes it's both are addressed by the author of the Quran and Evidently, they weren't supposed to have a clue no idea whatsoever as To what it actually meant

That turns your text into mishmash And so That's probably not the best way to interpret your text but something

I need to address not so much I mean it's brought up right here. So I needed to address it, but it was presented by Some other people in Facebook over the past couple weeks.

We will explain that in a bit So when we speak of corruption

We first need to understand and identify the stages of textual development

We need to distinguish between the different forms of a text because corruption does not merely start at one stage

Now I think it's very important that we identify what the word corruption means Every written text until the photocopier experienced corruption

Is the Old Testament corrupted, of course, it has textual variance New Testament, of course

Quran Of course, and Ijaz has this book. He's read it.

I've seen him comment on it on Facebook. So textual variance Yeah, yeah, they're listed right here

Right there in the book You know, this is he knows this is this on a palimpsest transmission of the

Quran in the first centuries AH Numerous other books that we could address it's it's it's well known that there are textual variance in the manuscripts of the

Quran Even even if you don't use the palimpsests, there are textual variance.

We know that every written document every printed document undergoes corruption the problem is people hear the term corruption and many

Many both Christians and Muslims do this and they assume that the word corruption means loss of the original no longer usable as a

Means of communicating divine truth, etc, etc. That's not what it means Corruption simply means that there is some kind of interruption at Some point in the transmission of a text as long as you remember that Texts are transmitted via many different avenues and channels then you know,

I mean there were literally thousands of Manuscripts destroyed by the

Romans during the persecution of Christians up till the peace of the church in 83 13

Does that mean the New Testament got lost there? No, we had thousands of manuscripts that survived but thousands were destroyed

Those that would be a form of corruption when a when a Roman soldier chucked

Someone's manuscript of the Gospel of John into a fire That's textual corruption.

That's the destruction of a witness when Uthman Ordered that anything but his version of the

Quran be destroyed. That's textual corruption. No question about it Which one's more important Depends on how successful Uthman is and this takes us back to the difference between the free transmission of the text we have in the

New Testament and the controlled transmission of The Quran and it's also important to keep something else in mind when you compare the

Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im, and the Ketuvim with the

Gospel with the Quran You are comparing apples and oranges amongst all three there is a different methodology in the transmission of the

Old Testament text than there is the New Testament text and Very different when it comes to the Quran and you also have a massive age difference massive age difference let alone

There isn't anything for the Quran that even comes close to a little

Text like the Nasi 'alan 28 let alone the ECM So there's there's

Unfortunately in a lot of Christian Muslim dialogues, there's this glib comparison of These texts as if they're the same different sizes different ages different languages multiple authors versus single authors

Far more information that we possess today about the manuscripts of the New Testament and even the

Old Testament than you have of the Quran Lots of differences lots of differences and unfortunately that normally gets lost and hence a lot of the

Examples that are given and things like that just aren't aren't good examples at all so things to things to keep in mind

I almost feel like clapping or jumping up and down or something to wake everybody else up right now because I know that there are exactly four people in the audience that are glued to this and everybody else is like Can happen throughout a documents lifetime there does not need to be an intentional

Malicious act of corruption good people can corrupt text without realizing it So generally there are three stages of development for any text you have the initial writing

Which we call the autographic text. This is when the text is first being developed Then you have the archetypal text that is the text where the author intends to be published

And lastly you have the codified and canonized text better understood as the text that is known to readers and the public

So what now this is sort of drawing from there's been a lot of discussion over the past well for a long time

But especially just over the past a number of decades You heard me when

I was talking about CBGM talking about the Ausgang's text It's appropriate to to make these distinctions, but you have to realize in 99 %

Of Any work even today? The only thing that is ever

Available to us is that last is the published text. I Mean I've written over 20 books

And Probably some of the earlier ones on a 1 .44

floppy in the other room someplace I might have some of the earlier forms of Those books in old

Ventura publisher files or something like that Yeah, probably no way no way of ever reading them again but for the

Especially when it comes the New Testament, you know, you'll read a lot of liberals and what they'll do is they will hypothesize about Stages of development and John's Gospels.

They have no manuscripts. They have they have no hard data It's all theory.

It's all theoretical and You can do anything you want with it. And the problem is that's how you get published

I mean you gotta come up with something new to get published and so It's a it's a concept that unfortunately has been greatly abused and And frequently just elevates pure speculation to some level of something else, but anyways it is a

Something that's discussed But when it comes to actual documentation Now you do get some insights for example in the

Hadith I Reproduced a citation In the

Hadith about a section that Where it was said that it was caused to be forgotten

Certain verses the Quran caused to be forgotten. Well, that would that would come in this area of Initial text and archetypal text and unpublished text this would be what between initial text and archetypal text and A a supernatural intervention to remove something that was once there.

That would be one way of Bringing data in to look at that from that perspective.

There is another religious book Where You we do actually get we do because it's so new we do get an insight into this

It's a Book of Mormon Book of Mormon we have the 1830

Book of Mormon, but now we've got printers manuscripts and We actually have a way of really shining a lot of light on Initial text archetypal published changes

You know those lost 116 pages was 116 pages. I think it's 116 sounds right

I think it was 116 pages and like that But that's obviously so modern so recent

That it's Explains why we have that kind of information but Yeah, it's it's out there.

It's it's it's interesting stuff. Um See a question before I get back to It jaws here,

I'm sure James talked about it somewhere. If anyone knows where links are appreciated, but how do

Muslims address the Uthman issue? They've addressed it in numerous different ways

I've gotten all sorts of different answers over the years as to Uthman and What he did and why he did it and and so on so forth

So there's actually numerous responses to that. Let us press forward here. His time is short

I learned today is that each that at each of these stages of textual development Both the old and New Testaments have experienced significant and meaningful changes so He's gonna point out something now

It'll be interesting to look at what he jaws means by changes Because what he's basically gonna do is he's going to point to Something well known to seminary students and people things that we've addressed in the past here there wasn't anything new here, but it is an area that is

Useful for Muslims because the vast majority of Christians including Christian apologists

Do not deal with this and that is specifically citations of the

Old Testament in the new and the issue of the difference between the Hebrew Masoretic stream the stream of witnesses in the

Greek Septuagint and the utilization of the Greek Septuagint where it differs from the

Hebrew Masoretic in the citation between When the New Testament writers are citing the

Old Testament And so those of you who've listened to this program for a long time, you know that we've addressed this many many times but it is not the kind of thing that you're gonna get normally and And When when

I preach through Hebrews we had to deal with a couple Major examples of this and If if in five to ten percent of Christian sermons on those same texts there was any reference to this

I'd be shocked Because There are a few things more difficult to try to deal with in the context of a sermon

Than this kind of subject and it's much much better for a classroom. It's much better for a

Bible study. It's much better for a webcast it's Really really tough in a 40 -minute sermon.

And so a lot of folks just never get Actually exposed to it and that's why it's useful from an

Islamic perspective But of course by us talking about it We're gonna try to reduce its usefulness by shining more light on it.

So you see what's really going on Yeah, when Alex brought the argument about a similarity he's focusing on the last part of a

Texas development So he skipped two -thirds of the way and jumped right to the end To now just looking at this though.

The only place that you're gonna have actual Documentable evidence is over here

You're not gonna you know outside of something like that You know applying this to the

Quran the hadith about the section of the Quran that was caused to be forgotten or some witness from an early writer that said

I used to hear Muhammad and He would recite this verse differently

And that's the only way you can get back into this area at all You certainly can't back get back here at all.

But when it comes to the New Testament I can't imagine how you can even address these things from a documentable perspective theoretical perspective

I suppose but but not from a documentary perspective This this is a quick chart.

You have the initial text you have the middle part and then you have the published text What Alex focuses on in his opening

Dialogue is just those three things at the end He skipped 90 % of what we should be examining and today

I'm going to be demonstrating that now this is interesting because there is a

There is an appropriate distinction to be made between examining textual variation in manuscripts and the

Transmission of the text as It was distributed. So so getting back to the outskirts text anything else again is going to be theoretical

It's going to be well And in this case what he really ends up coming up with is

Well, these corruptions are things where you could argue that The New Testament writers are misunderstanding the

Old Testament text and not being fair with the Old Testament text That's not the same thing as corruption The we have to be very careful with the terminology as we're using it here and use it specifically

And I think sometimes it got Some terms got used in in context.

They might not be best to be used in so This is another way to understand it a much more elaborate form of the text

So that's going to jump ahead here a bit quickly So what you will learn today so at present there is a 1 ,000 year or more difference in time between the age of Moses and the

Old Testament that we have today However, we do not need to argue that corruption took 1 ,000 years

In fact as the Old Testament itself testifies whatever was given to Moses could have been corrupted the moment the commandments were given to the

Israelites in Exodus chapter 28 verses 3 to 4 we read that right after the

Israelites were saved by God From the Egyptians that they were taught what God told

Moses and they affirmed that they would believe in what God said and commanded So it says

Moses came and told the people all the told the people all the Lord's words and all the decisions

All the people answered together We are willing to do all the words that the Lord has said and Moses wrote down all the words of the

Lord So what happened next they knew not to worship false gods or idols. That's the end of the story

There is not there's no need for this dialogue then but that's not the case The Old Testament testifies that when

Moses went to receive the commandments from God and he took too long to return to them the

Israelites Immediately decided to worship a golden calf and this is what Exodus chapter 32 verse 1 indicates when the people saw that Moses Delayed in coming down from the mountain they gathered around Aaron and said to him get up make us gods

That will go before us. So as you can see you don't need 1 ,000 years for corruption of God's words for the

Israelites now Running out of time, but I'll stop right there I'm a little confused and he's gonna continue on and and to basically point to the sinfulness of mankind and say

Mankind can be so sinful that it's obvious that he could have corrupted the scriptures. Well, I I don't see that as much of an argument to be perfectly honest with you

Muslims are just as sinful as anybody else Doesn't that mean that the Quran could have been corrupted?

I mean Muslims believe that Allah can protect the text of the Quran Why couldn't you protect the text given to Moses?

And in fact, it would seem to me that's what the author of the Quran thought in surah 5 again, you know

Torah to Moses and Jill to Jesus Quran to Muhammad. It's a chain It's sort of sort of an exegetical thing but but just because the people entered into idolatry, why does that mean that God would allow his

Word to be corrupted you accept Jesus as a rasool of Allah and Jesus quoted from Moses and even to the point of holding men accountable for what was said 1 ,400 years later as if 1 ,400 years earlier as if God has spoken to them and based his argument upon the tense of a verb seems that Jesus felt that There had been an appropriate transmission of that text sufficient to hold men accountable

So I don't see the connection I mean men have been sinful. What does that have to do with?

the corruption of the Word of God That's that's not an argument.

I mean I can point to terrible things that were done In the early years after the giving of the

Quran. Does that mean? That does that mean I would have a basis for saying the

Quran has been corrupted Just looking for some consistency at that particular point you have raised the microphone, which means you want to say something

Before the end of the show. Well, I'm I'm wrapping up. So what do you need to say? Okay. Well, I just want to remind folks a few weeks ago.

I mentioned that those of you who have donated as we get near year end and you've been donating by check if you have not

Received emails from me with your donation receipts in them on a monthly basis

That means I don't have your email address a number of you have reached out and given me that information

But there's still a number that I do not have and so I just want to remind folks that as we near Year end and I start having to wrap up Get receipts out and get the donation record sent out

That it certainly makes life easier on me if I have your email let alone the fact that I can send you receipts when

I do receive your your checks and your donations on a regular basis and certainly

At the same time it gives you the ability to have my email address If you have questions if you have things going on and and at the same time as we your near end

Or you're near your end easy for me to say Please keep in mind that We we are a ministry that does have needs and we have big things as you've mentioned in the beginning of the show big things

On the horizon those things cost money. There's things that don't come about free No and there's also some things that I would really like to see happen next year that We don't have any kind of a budget to do and so they may not happen at all

But certainly as you folks support this ministry We try very very hard to make every cent count and I hope you consider us a worthy cause

Now you do realize that that making that comment after the kind of program.

I just did Means that there are only four people that heard it Because most of them didn't survive to this point

I'm seeing chatter their feet. There are people there's more than four listening. There's at least ten All right, well

I will mark that I am four minutes and 30 seconds into and got 11 minutes 22 seconds left to go

And we'll get back to it. But obvious I'd intended to get farther but got completely sidetracked with this big stack of data over there and The questions about it.

So anyways, thanks for watching the dividing line Lord will and we'll be back next week