Star Gazing with Jason Lisle, Kamala the Marxist, Responding to Al Garza on Augustine and the LXX.

Well, greetings and welcome to the Dividing Line. My name is James White and we are coming to you live from Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Well, not technically, but nearby. A windy day today here in Colorado Springs.

Here to speak at, well, I've got a debate on Saturday morning speaking at a

Reformed Baptist church here. I'm pretty sure we've posted the graphic. I hope so. I apologize if I haven't, because I have it and I thought

I did, but I've also got the graphics and stuff for the next week and the next debate.

And, you know, I'm also connecting and disconnecting sewer hoses.

That's part of the RV life. So, a little tired this evening,

I will admit, and it's all Jason Lyle's fault. Okay. Jason Lyle, smartest man on the planet

Earth. A polymath. I mean, the guy's brilliant.

Excuse me. It's dry up here too. It's very dusty today and really windy.

So, yeah. Anyway, as soon as I got here to Colorado Springs, I got set up and like in half an hour,

I was at a little Mexican restaurant place with Jason and talking, talking, talking, talking.

I did more of the talking than I probably should have, but had a great time together. Then we went out and he has located a spot.

It's about half an hour drive, 35 minutes drive from here to the east at a cemetery.

And what you're looking for is a place to set up to do stargazing that's going to be super dark. And he did a lot of research to find some place that would be accessible after dark, but accessible to the public.

And so we went out there. I was going to try to set up a camera, do some photography, but we got out there too late for me to do that.

He has a real nice 14 -inch Dobsonian telescope. And he has white phosphorous goggles, night vision goggles.

And this guy, he has manufactured a way to attach his night vision goggles to his telescope.

They don't make stuff like that. He just figures things out.

I mean, he's a polymath. He's just brilliant. And so we were looking at like the

Lagoon Nebula. And when you look at that through white phosphorous night vision goggles,

I have green phosphorous night vision goggles, not as nice as his, but they still work. And, you know, we were out there and I'd be looking up with the night vision goggles.

Oh my goodness, you know, here comes two satellites right past each other. And sometimes two go in the same direction.

And Elon Musk has filled the sky with moving objects, even saw the space station.

And in fact, it was really neat because space station started off real bright. It's coming towards, I'm following it.

And then all of a sudden I can still see it, but it's barely visible.

And it's because they had just hit the shadow of the earth in relationship to the sun.

So they just hit sunset for them. And you can spend a few hours with someone who knows the night sky or everything up there the way that Jason Lyle does.

Just amazing stuff. So if you're not familiar with Jason Lyle, look him up, L -I -S -L -E, especially his video on fractals, his book on fractals.

I was listening to, he was on the Apologetic Dog webcast and was responding to David Pallman.

Remember David Pallman? I remember doing a program about David Pallman and responding to him from our first RV in Wilcox, Arizona.

I remember where I was. And that was a while back and so much fun.

And so David Pallman, remember David Pallman was the young fellow who had come out and said that he didn't think that Mantel and Greg Bonson were particularly original or deep thinkers.

And so he had written a rather negative review of Jason Lyle's book,

Ultimate Proof of God's Creation, Ultimate Proof of Creation, I think it was called. Excellent book.

I highly recommend you get it and pass it around like candy to folks. It's very, very good.

And so I was listening while driving down here to him and just kindly and gently taking

Mr. Pallman apart, which is not the first time that's happened. It happens rather regularly. So anyway, we were out till way past my bedtime, let me tell you.

Not for him, he's used to that. I mean, you know, he's an astronomer, so he's a night owl.

But I got to bed around 1am. And I've just sort of been pretty much out of it since then.

So I've gotten some good, some good work done on stuff today, but still.

So press appreciated debate Saturday morning, 10am. I, from what I'm seeing, it should be live stream.

And so normally how that works is, you know,

I get the link 10 -15 minutes beforehand. And I try to rush it off to Rich, who then, you know, posts on the website, puts it on the app, however we get the word out, puts it on Twitter.

And that way you can tune in too. This will be with Alex, Roman Catholic, on issues of authority.

It's not a long debate. So I don't expect it to go super in depth. But what

I hope it does is lay out what the issues are, especially about, quite simply, the fictional concept of apostolic tradition, because that's what it is.

As if you have this positive faith, not found in the apostolic documents, and never defined, and undefinable.

That's what we'll be talking about. And again, my hope is that will lead to other encounters.

Alex is from Albuquerque, and I go through Albuquerque all the time. So if we hit it off, we get along well enough.

Like I said, he's like six, seven years younger than my youngest child. So that'll be, yeah, this will definitely be the youngest individual that I've debated,

I think. But if it goes well, then hopefully we'll have future stuff. Then the next week on Open Theism, and the week after that, the

Wednesday of the week after that, Jared Longshore and I on the New Covenant. I'm making a prediction right now.

The background behind me will fall down sometime during the program. I was sitting here and I just had the standard white, you know, shade thing that I had last time.

And I just don't, I don't like it. It looks, and I look all washed out with it.

And so, you know, it's rolled up back there. I'm like, I'm going to try something.

So I literally used a butter knife. And I pushed it as far in on both ends of the thing that hides the rolls for the shades, you know.

And it gets tight enough over here that it may hold it in place. If it makes it through the program, yay.

You know, we're working on one that will sort of do what I just did, but do it purposefully,

I guess, for the future. And it looks better than this one anyways. And, but I just wanted to get it up there.

But y 'all ought to take some bets. If all of a sudden it's just right over top of you.

We wouldn't care. We don't take ourselves quite as seriously as some people do. I just realized something.

I'm sorry, Rich. This is funny. Actually, I look human today, because I forgot to turn the light on.

The light's sitting there. It's plugged in. I made sure it's the right temperature the whole nine yards. I didn't turn it on.

And I think I look a whole lot better than when I'm being blinded by that thing.

So hmm, hmm. I know. I know. You're not happy about it.

But I am. Hey, it might be less work for you.

You know, if we did it that way. Because I think it looks fine. You know,

I look like I'm healthy and have seen the sun once or twice recently and things like that.

So anyhow. So real quickly,

I'm waking up every morning to the realization that, now you got to realize, people from my generation, the first war that I experienced was the

Vietnam War. And I remember watching Walter Cronkite on the

CBS Evening News in the kitchen in a 105 -year -old farmhouse in Golden Valley, County Road 15.

So I think that's around Golden Valley, Minnesota, at the age of four.

And hearing about the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and seeing all these images of fighting in Vietnam, and asking my parents, why are we fighting in Vietnam?

It's against communism. We're fighting against communism. Communism is evil. Communism has killed hundreds of millions of people.

And I remember my mom, I have flat feet. And I remember my mom being so happy that I had flat feet.

Because she had been told they wouldn't let me in the army. Because the draft was going on.

You know, people today don't even have a concept of the draft. But that was a big thing back then.

And she was thinking that war was going to go on so long that her little boy might end up being pulled into the military.

And so being against communism, against Marxism, and the murderous system that it is, just part of my generation.

So I wake up every morning right now realizing that the leftists in our country have actually put forward a

Marxist as their presidential candidate. Kamala Harris is a

Marxist. Her father's a Marxist. Her father is an economist from Jamaica.

And he was heavily influenced by Karl Marx. He's actually had influence in Jamaican economic policy.

Hasn't helped Jamaica out very much, has it? No. She's never repudiated that.

She is a Marxist. She has said over and over again, our ultimate goal is to get everybody to the same point.

That's called communism. And it never happens. That's the big promise. Everybody is equal.

Doesn't work that way. First of all, God didn't make us all equal. And that is totally opposed to Scripture.

And that's why Stalin and Lenin and Mao were all opposed to the

Christian Church, because that's opposed to God's revelation in Scripture. So she has said over and over again that that's our goal, everybody at the same place.

And sadly, because of the utter degradation of the quote unquote, educational system, the younger generation doesn't realize this woman is a communist.

She's a Marxist. So all the other stuff, her baby killing and promotion of sexual depravity and hatred of marriage and all the rest of that stuff, that just flows from the

Marxism. And so the guy who runs

Netflix just donated $7 million to her campaign. This is a woman who could not could not even make it to Iowa in 2020 in the democratic primary system.

I don't believe we have in the United States any longer a meaningful electoral system.

I don't, I do not expect a fair election. I, I really don't. If, if Trump, if Trump survives till November, and if he wins in November, I have friends, ask them,

I've told them the only way that Trump could possibly win is if it was minimally 65 -35.

That's how much the left cheats. Minimum 15%. And I think this time around, it might have to be like 75 -25 for him to make it.

There is no way the cackling Kamala is going to get, but she'll probably get 90 million votes.

I decided, I know my vote isn't going to be counted. I live in Maricopa County. I know my vote's not going to count.

That's just, that's my, but mine won't.

That's my conclusion. But we live in a nation that has been so massively degraded that we have a

Marxist running for president. And Hollywood, tech, everybody throwing millions and millions of dollars.

And they know they have to because she is not an attractive candidate at all. But that's where we are.

So Calvin has been quoted far too many times, but when

God wants to judge a nation, he gives them evil rulers. And so there we are.

Um, before we look at, by the way, if you're hearing bells, you are hearing bells.

I doubt that the microphone's picking it up. But like I said, it's very windy outside.

And one of the things I do when I set up for a few days in a location, and I'll be here for like four or five days, is

I put wind chimes out. I've got a little spot on the right behind me here.

I've got some really beautiful, deep tone wind chimes

I put out there. And then I've got some smaller ones up front. And so they sort of contrast off each other.

I can actually hear them at night. It's really nice. So if you're if you think you're hearing things, you keep grabbing your phone, because I, I'll do that.

Not me. It's because the wind is is still blowing has been blowing all day long here in Colorado Springs.

So the wind chimes are doing their wind chime thing, which I guess is what they're supposed to do.

So anyway, lots of historical stuff today on the program.

I hope you will allow me to be Professor of Church History from Grace Bible Theological Seminary today.

Obviously, I'm also a professor of apologetics at Grace Bible Theological Seminary.

And on these subjects, they come together. I remember very clearly the debate with Jerry Madetik at City of the

Lord in Tempe, Arizona, in January, was it January? No, no,

December of 1990. December of 1990. And that would have been just before my what, 28th birthday, something like that.

I was still in my 20s. And when Jerry and I debated the papacy at a

Roman Catholic location, it was obvious I was the first person the

Catholic answers had debated that did history. And that through that type of stuff back at them.

And so I've been doing this for a long time, you have to deal with, you all have heard me say it 1000 times before.

When people ask me, what the most important classes you took Bible College Seminary to do apologetics work, church history,

Greek, church history and Greek, their foundation of those so many other things. And so many of the objections to the

Christian faith, not just in regards to Roman Catholicism, it's like that. Islam, you have to know church history, you know, you have to know who they're quoting, when that person lived, what their background context.

And so you have to deal with the early church fathers. So I've had the 38 volume Erdman set sitting on my shelf forever in a day.

It's a little dusty right now, because I also have it in accordance, it's a lot easier to grab stuff. Unless you want to read a whole section, then pull the volume down.

It looks really nice behind it. Anyway, been dealing with it. I've had, I had the

TLG CD ROM, right after it came out, Thesaurus, Lingua Grecca, pretty much all ancient

Greek literature, fully searchable. Now, this is a subscription thing, we have a subscription online to the

TLG databases back then it was a CD ROM that you because the net just wasn't, it just barely started.

Anyway, so these days with Francis, and what's going on there, and, you know,

Roman Catholicism doing the everyone's converting to us type thing when that's not really true at all.

And then the Orthodox going, actually, everybody's converting to us now. And that's not really true at all either. But both of them really, honestly, like I've said a million times before, when people come to Christ, out of Roman Catholicism, what they say to me is,

I had never heard the gospel. I had never heard anything about how to have peace with God. I had heard everything about sacraments and things like that.

But I had never actually heard the gospel. And that's what changed my heart and mind.

And so they talk about conversion to Christ. And when people come Roman Catholics, they talk about conversion to the church.

And it's all about the church, it's all about the church. And hey, the church is important. The church is vital. I have a very high view of the church.

I just don't think that Rome's perverted view of the church is the body of Christ. By any stretch of the imagination.

So what I wanted to do is, I think it was on the last program, may have been right before that.

I, look, Dr. Al Garza and Jason Bretta, remember?

Was that February this year? No. Was it February last year? No, it was February this year.

No. We did that debate with Jason Bretta on particular redemption.

And he got Al Garza to come on, they started talking about Hebrews 7 .25. I had actually invited

Dr. Garza to come on the program to discuss it. And then stuff happened in his life. His dad passed away.

And I just dropped it. But I was prepared to do it. And I listened to literally hours of Dr.

Garza talking about Hebrews 7, Calvinism. He's very, very strongly anti -reform.

Okay. And there were times I remember I was driving because I was on the trip. I was just,

I just hit the steering wheel going, that's not what I said for crying out loud.

And it would be the same issue that I would come on the program, and I'd correct him. It's like, I'm just wasting my time.

Very frustrating. And they're just simply times, I just felt like, man, the guy's just purposely obtuse.

So why am I wasting my time? Um, you know, we agree on certain things. We're both cat guys.

That's nice. But that's not enough to give you a meaningful foundation of unity,

I'm afraid. So anyway, a few weeks ago, he comes out and says that he after 10 years of research, because he had mentioned, and I was wondering about this months ago, he had mentioned that he was studying newly discovered medieval manuscripts of the

New Testament in Hebrew. And I was like, okay, what value are medieval manuscripts?

Well, a medieval Greek manuscript is valuable, because you can see what textual connections it has to those manuscripts that came before it that aren't medieval, in other words, to primitive manuscripts.

So the big unsealed texts, like Washingtonianus, the first of the, sorry, the first Byzantine manuscripts,

Codex Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and then, even more importantly, especially apologetically, to the papyri.

They take us far closer to the original

New Testament than any other work of antiquity, than any other work of antiquity.

There is no work of antiquity that has an earlier testimony to its text than the

New Testament. Apologetically, that's very important. If you'd like to see how that's important, see my debate with Bart Ehrman, see how often it comes up in the debates with Muslims.

It's a really important issue. And so a few weeks ago, he comes out and says that after all this study and the study of these medieval

Hebrew New Testament manuscripts, so they're being copied after 1000

AD. And there are lots of Greek manuscripts that are copied after 1000 AD. Their value is in being able to trace their text before them into the manuscripts that were written before 1000

AD, or 500 AD. I mean, that's where the real value of those manuscripts comes in.

And he had come to the conclusion that the New Testament was actually originally written. Now, as I said last time, there have been various people down through the years that have promoted the

Hebrew original of Matthew. There is an early writer named

Pappius. We don't have almost anything Pappius wrote. Almost everything we have in Pappius is secondhand.

Eusebius quotes from him. We don't have everything Eusebius was quoting from. And Eusebius is writing after the

Council of Nicaea. So he's writing, you And Eusebius, very, very important.

But it's not like he has the same historiographical standards of accuracy that we have today.

So you have to be careful. But anyway, so there have been people who said there was a

Matthew. Matthew is originally written in Hebrew. We don't have a Hebrew Matthew. So people speculate.

And so Roman Catholics, they say, well, in Matthew 16, 18, it would have been Kepha. And Peter, Cephas, and Kepha, and you know, and all this stuff.

And then other people along say, well, actually, it would have been Minra, wouldn't have been Kepha. And so you're left without an original text.

You just have speculation. You can't, you can't tell what Matthew originally wrote, if you accept the idea that he wrote in Hebrew, because we don't have any

Hebrew Matthew. So Matthew is lost to us. It's only available to us in translation, which moves it an entire major step.

So whoever did that first translation that becomes our canonical Matthew in Greek, they have to be inspired or we don't know.

We can't tell. We just, no way of knowing. And then there's others who have said

Hebrews must have been written in Hebrew. Even though the the grammar and syntax of the book of Hebrews is classical

Greek. It's Luke. It's just it's Luke. And again, we don't have any

Hebrew Hebrews. Every manuscript we have is

Greek, just like every manuscript of Matthew we have in the primitive period, the first, you know, 500 years is

Greek, or plainly translations from Greek into other languages.

But what's really, really way out on the fringe, super duper, fringe of any mainstream

New Testament scholarship is the idea that the entire New Testament was written in Greek. Now, I responded to this, like I said, on the program, and Dr.

Garza did a video, I listened to it. He accused me of using King James only style argumentation.

It's just absurdly silly. He didn't give any examples because he can't because I'm not obviously, it's just just really talk about destroying your credibility.

But anyway. So he responded to what

I was saying. And there's there's a there's two major areas. The second I asked.

Oh, see, now we have. Yes, I had asked.

You know, I have I have resources to. And we have one particularly sharp gentleman who is now vice president of the ministry who has pretty much read all of Augusta, unlike certain other people who got

PhDs. Um, yes, I'm Yeah. Um, and maybe something will pop up here in case he's tuned in to listen.

But, um, there are two elements that I want to respond to Dr.

Garza on. First, he criticized me. So it's two things. I read from Augusta.

And he continues to hold to his indefensible reading of Augusta.

It's, it's indefensible. No one's ever read it that way. He's just decided that he can read

Augusta in any way he wants to because he's studying medieval Hebrew manuscripts. And by the way, I'll just I'm gonna be blunt here.

Dr. Garza is not the first person that I've seen over my career, who is all of a sudden because of their extremely narrow area of focus, decided that that extremely narrow area, medieval

Hebrew versions of the New Testament is the issue for everybody else.

Everybody else is wrong. I'm the one I'm the guy. I know all this stuff. All the rest of scholarship has been deceived by German liberalism and all the rest of he was accusing me of that.

And I'm like, Yeah, I'm a German liberal. Right? Okay. Um, just silly.

But, uh, he's got this focus, and he's lost his balance. It's very, very clear.

It's same with how he deals with reformed theology as there's no balance. There is no fair reading.

It's just he grabs globs onto something. And there's just no reasoning with him at that point.

And so, um, he read a little bit from Augustine. I want to read some more so you can actually hear what

Augustine said for yourself. And then the other thing he big thing he jumped on me about was,

Well, you're all wrong about the Greek Septuagint. The Greek Septuagint was just the Pentateuch. Well, it wasn't just the

Greek. It wasn't just the Pentateuch. It's just wrong. It's just it's completely wrong.

Um, if you hear a little I forgot to move. I've got I've got a watch.

That, um, um, yeah,

I'm reading some stuff being sent to me here, um, from the city of God, actually.

And, uh, we're I'll be reading from on Christian doctrine. But this says the same thing.

Um, yeah. And it's very obvious that Augustine is using the entire

Septuagint. Dr. Garza said the Septuagint is only the Pentateuch.

It's only the first five books. That's just silly. That's silly. Wrong. Um, is it clear that historically the, um, the

Pentateuch was done first and is very high quality? Yes, that's true. Uh, there are some parts of the prophets that are just some parts of the writings.

But by the time of Augustine, the

Septuagint is the entire not just not just the entire

Hebrew canon. The Septuagint is one of the main reasons that Augustine and Jerome fought with one another because the

Greek manuscripts of the Septuagint that Augustine had included the apocryphal books.

So he thought they're part of the Hebrew canon. Jerome knew better, knew that they were not, and they're fighting over it.

If, if Augustine thought that the Septuagint was just the Torah, the first, the Pentateuch, the first five books of the

Old Testament, they wouldn't be having that argument. It's painfully obvious that Dr.

Garza doesn't know Augustine at all and the sources that he used.

Um, yeah, yeah. Okay. I was just sent, uh, this is from, um, excuse me.

I'm going to do my Jim Kirk impersonation. There's only a few of you that got that.

That's perfectly fine. From, uh, and I'll get to the reading. Don't worry. Don't worry.

Everybody chill. Um, so much stuff here from the city of God.

Uh, but I'm just gonna give you one real quick example, example here. This utterly refutes

Garza. He's going to have to either take that last video down or put an apology one up on it.

This is from city of God. Certainly the words, which the Septuagint have translated, they shall look upon me because they insulted me stand in the

Hebrew. They shall look upon me whom they pierce. Where's that found Dr. Garza? Is that found in the

Pentateuch? No, found in the Psalter, right? Yeah. But he says in the

Septuagint. And by this word, the crucifixion of Christ is certainly more plainly indicated, but the

Septuagint translators prefer to allude to the insult, which was involved in his whole passion for in point of fact, they insulted him both when he was arrested and when he was found, when he was judged, when he was mocked by the road they put on him, the homage they did on the bended knee, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So here you have Augustine defending what's actually a bad

Septuagint rendering, but it's from the

Psalter and he identifies it as such. So you go, go look at it.

You go, go look at the video we put up. Half of the criticism is that I just need to get up to speed on the fact that Septuagint is only the

Pentateuch. No, sir. Um, I've been reading on this stuff for decades and dealing with textual criticism in the history of the

Bible for decades. And Augustine used the Septuagint and it was the entire

Old Testament. Plus, plus that was part of the problem. That was part of the problem.

Um, so there you go. But the key issue is, um,

Corrie Messerschmitt corrected him. I've corrected him. He won't accept correction as to what

Augustine was saying in on Christian doctrine book two. So I want to read you, we're going to read some

Augustine today. I know not as exciting as throwing rocks at people or something like that, but that's what we do on the dividing line.

We try to educate widely on all sorts of things. Um, so chapter 10 from book two on Christian doctrine.

Um, I have the font big enough. I don't have to put these things back on. Um, now there are two causes which prevent what is written from being understood.

It's being veiled either under unknown or under ambiguous signs. Signs are either proper or figurative.

They're called proper when they're used to point out the objects which they were designed to point out. And so we say both when we mean an ox, because all men who with us use the

Latin tongue, call it by this name. Signs are figurative when the things themselves, which we indicate by the proper names are used to signify something else.

As we say both and understand by that syllable, the ox, which is ordinarily called by the set by that name.

But then further by that ox understood a preacher of the gospel as scripture signifies, according to the apostles explanation when it says, thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.

He continues the great remedy for ignorance of proper signs is knowledge of languages and men who speak the

Latin tongue. I remember Latin didn't become the language of the West theologically until Tertullian.

At the late second and early third century. And men who speak the

Latin tongue, of whom are those I have undertaken to instruct, need two other languages, the knowledge of scripture,

Hebrew and Greek. But they may have recourse to the original text if the endless diversity of the

Latin translators throw them into doubt. Although indeed we often find

Hebrew words untranslated in the books. Now this is where Dr. Garza picked up.

He's saying, see, they're leaving Hebrew words untranslated in the books. And so that means, and then again, he said, because he errantly assumes that Augustine is only limiting the

Septuagint to the Pentateuch. He says these words don't appear in the Pentateuch, they do appear in the

Psalter, but they don't appear in the Pentateuch. And therefore he can only be talking about the New Testament, which again, just isn't not dealing with the history properly here.

In the books, as for example, Amen, Hallelujah, Rachah, Hosanna, and others of the same kind.

Now, Rachah is in Sermon on the Mount, Amen, Hallelujah, Hosanna, all through the

Psalter. And what he's saying is, translations will just leave those words as they are, which is true.

I mean, you find them in English translations and in all sorts of other languages as well.

Some of these, although they could have been translated, have been preserved in their original form on account of the more sacred authority that attaches to it, as for example,

Amen, Amen, and Hallelujah. They sort of become used by the people of God, and so they sort of take on a meaning even though they haven't actually been translated.

But again, his whole argument was, well, since the Septuagint was only those first five books, then this must mean that he's talking about the

New Testament. That's where he is completely wrong. I've already read to you where Augustine identified quotes from the

Psalter and identifies that as the Septuagint. So that's just a fundamental error on his part that he will need to address and correct.

Some of them, again, are said to be untranslatable into another tongue, of which the other two I have mentioned are examples.

For in some languages, there are words that cannot be translated into the idiom of another language. And this happens chiefly in the case of interjections, which are words that express rather an emotion of the mind than any part of the thought we have in our mind.

And the two given above are said to be of this kind. But the knowledge of these languages is necessary, not for the sake of a few words like these, which it is very easy to mark and ask about, but, as has been said, on account of the diversities among translators.

For the translations of the Scriptures from Hebrew into Greek can be counted. So that's from Hebrew into Greek.

Old Testament. Because remember, what Garth is trying to do is, oh no, there were

Hebrew manuscripts that are being translated into Greek. We don't have a single one.

It's pure speculation. And he kept acting with you. Why are you a

Greek only? Because we have papyri that date within the first generation after the early

Christians. And we got nada for a thousand years. It's in Hebrew. And that's just so obvious.

It's so plain. That only someone who's spending too much time reading medieval Hebrew manuscripts would miss it.

So it continues on. So the translations of Scriptures from Hebrew into Greek can be counted.

The Greek Septuagint. But the Latin translators are out of all numbers. So what brought this up, and I explained it last time, was

Bruce Metzger, in talking about early translations, quotes this section where Augustine is lamenting the fact that there are so many

Latin versions. So many Latin translations. That they all disagree with one another, and it's creating confusion.

They don't have confusion in Augustine's day on the Greek of the Old Testament, the

Septuagint, because by then it has become standardized in the

Greek Septuagint, which does not just include the five books of Moses, and not just the 39 books as we count them, of the

Hebrew canon. The Hebrews counted that as either 22 or 24. Again, minor prophets are all counted as one, and some smaller books would be included with major prophets and stuff like that.

If you want to look into that, read Roger Bechle's monumental work, The Old Testament Canon of the

New Testament Church. Anyway, so there had been a standardization by the time of Augustine, because you're talking, you know, almost 600 years have passed since the

Septuagint was originally translated, about 200 years before Christ. And so you've got stability there, in essence.

And remember, when Jerome came out with the Vulgate, Augustine didn't want to use it.

Remember, there was a riot when Jerome's Vulgate was read. In Carthage.

From the book of Jonah. Because he changed the Septuagint reading. So again,

Jonah's not in the book of Moses, so yeah, the Septuagint was much bigger than just the five books.

I don't know where he got that. Silly idea, but anyways. So he says...

Oh, I lost it. For the translations, the scriptures from Hebrew and Greek can be counted, but the

Latin translators are out of all number. For in the early days of the faith, every man who happened to get his hands upon a

Greek manuscript... A Greek manuscript of what? The New Testament. Not a Hebrew manuscript.

Never mentions Hebrew manuscripts in the New Testament. Not once. That's a total read -in.

That's called eisegesis. That's taking something I want to commit. Nope, not there. He says, for in the early days of the faith, every man who happened to get his hands upon a

Greek manuscript, and who thought he had any knowledge, were it ever so little, of the two languages ventured upon the work of translation.

So what he's doing, he's lamenting that in his day, you have all these different Latin versions.

Now, it's not going to be long after Augustine that the Vulgate becomes the standardized version, and all those translations, the old

Latin, all that stuff, goes away. And there won't be any reason to lament that anymore.

Except that now you have to really put a lot of weight upon Jerome's translation.

And he getting it right. He goes on to say, and this circumstance would assist rather than hinder the understanding of Scripture, if only readers were not careless.

For the examination of a number of texts is often thrown light upon some of the more obscure passages. For example, in that passage of the prophet

Isaiah, one translator reads, and do not despise the domestics of thy seed, another reads, and do not despise thine own flesh.

So he's talking about different translations, this is from an Old Testament example, and he goes through,

I'm not going to read all this because it would take us the rest of the program, but he goes through and he's basically saying, it's good to be able to compare translations, and that's true today.

Compare the ESV with the CSB or whatever, New King James, compare them, and frequently that will cast light upon a text.

That's quite true. That's very true. He does choose some rather interesting examples at times, and anybody who's read

Augustine knows, sometimes you're going along, yeah, yeah, yeah, and then also he'll say something, and you go, where did that come from?

And very often a translator to whom the meaning is not well known is deceived by an ambiguity in the original language, and puts upon the passage construction that is wholly alien to the sense of the writer.

For example, some text reads, their feet are sharp to shed blood, for the word oxus amongst the

Greeks means both sharp and swift, and so he saw the true meaning who translated their feet are swift to shed blood.

Of course that's from Romans 3. And he's, again, just simply talking about Greek as the original there, he doesn't talk about any

Hebrew original, anything like that. He talks about calf, again, only

Greek words, he never, ever, ever talks about Hebrew words with the New Testament, it's just not happening.

Goes on, but since we do not clearly see what the actual thought in which the several translators endeavor to express, each according to his own ability and judgment, lest we examine it in the language which they translate.

And since the translator, if he be not a very learned man, often departs from the meaning of his author, we must either endeavor to get a knowledge of those languages from which the scriptures are translated into Latin, or we must get hold of the translations of those who keep rather close to the letter of the original.

I guess he probably wouldn't have liked paraphrases. Not because these are sufficient, but because we may use them to correct the freedom or the error of others, who in their translations have chosen to follow the sense quite as much as the words.

So here's Augustine having a discussion of formal equivalency and dynamic equivalency long before the

NIV came along. There's nothing new about a lot of this argumentation at all.

He goes on, talking about Latin idioms, things like that, but let me keep going here.

But men are easily offended in a matter of this kind, just in the proportions they are weak. And they are weak just in the proportions they wish to seem learned, but not in the knowledge of things which tend to edification, but in that of signs by which it is hard not to be puffed up, seeing that the knowledge of things even would often set up our neck if it were not held down by the yoke of our master.

I want to get down to his description here. It's in the same section. How the meaning of unknown words and idioms be discovered.

About ambiguous signs, however, I shall speak afterwards. I am treating it present of unknown signs of which, as far as the words are concerned, there are two kinds.

For either a word or an idiom of which the reader is ignorant brings him to a stop. Now if these belong to foreign tongues, we must either make inquiry about them from men who speak those tongues, or if we have leisure, we must learn the tongues ourselves.

Or we must consult and compare several translators. If, however, that's the same thing today.

They're having the same discussion back then that we're having today. If, however, there are words or idioms in our own tongue that we are unacquainted with, we gradually come to know them through being accustomed to read or to hear them.

There is nothing that is better to commit to memory than those kinds of words and phrases whose meanings we do not know, so that where we happen to meet either with a more learned man of whom we can inquire, or with a passage that shows, either by the preceding or succeedinging context, or by both the force and significance of the phrase we are ignorant of, we can easily, by the help of our memory, turn our attention to the matter and learn all about it.

He's a widely read man. Um, and so on and so forth. So, here.

Chapter 15. Among versions, a preference is given to the Septuagint and the

Italo. Now, among translations themselves, the Italian is to be preferred to the others, for it keeps closer to the words without prejudice to clearness of expression.

Words of what? And to correct the Latin, we must use the

Greek versions among which the authority of the Septuagint is preeminent as far as the

Old Testament is concerned. For it is reported through all the more learned churches.

Here's where he describes what he believed about the Septuagint. That the 70 translators, he was, kept saying 72, even the stories differ at that point, between 72 and 70.

That the 70 translators enjoyed so much of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in their work of translation that among that number of men there was but one voice.

And if, as is reported, and as many not unworthy of confidence assert, they were separated during the work of translation, each man being in a cell by himself.

And yet nothing was found in the manuscript of any of them that was not found in the same words and in the same order of words and all the rest.

Who dares put anything in comparison with an authority like this, not to speak of preferring anything to it?

And even if they conferred together with the result that a unanimous agreement sprang out of the common labor and judgment of them all, even so it would not be right or becoming for any one man, whatever his experience, to aspire to correct the unanimous opinion of many venerable and learned men.

Wherefore, even if anything is found in the original Hebrew..." Now listen to this. This is Augustine. "...Wherefore, even if anything is found in the original

Hebrew in a different form from that in which these men have expressed it..." Who are these men?

Septuagint translators. Not New Testament manuscripts. That's not what's being discussed here.

"...I think we must give way to the dispensation of providence which used these men to bring it about that books which the

Jewish race were unwilling, either from religious scruple or from jealousy, to make known to other nations, were, with the assistance of the power of King Ptolemy, made known so long beforehand to the nations which in the future were to believe in the

Lord." He's talking about the Septuagint. "...And that is possible and thus it is possible that they translate in such a way as the

Holy Spirit who worked in them and had given them all one voice thought most suitable for the

Gentiles. But nevertheless, as I said above, a comparison of those translators also who have kept much closely to the words is often not without value as they help the clearing up of the meaning.

The Latin texts, therefore, of the Old Testament are, as I was about to say, to be corrected if necessary by the authority of the

Greeks, and especially by that of those who though they were 70 in number, are said to have translated as with one voice.

As to the books of the New Testament, again, if any perplexity arises from the diversity of the

Latin texts, we must, of course, yield to the Hebrew?

No. To the Greek. Especially those who are found in the churches of greater learning and research.

At that point, if Augustine believed that the original language of the

New Testament was Hebrew, he'd have to say it there. He didn't say it there. He said Greek.

He said Greek. He did not believe the New Testament was written in Hebrew. He did not believe the

Greek manuscripts were translations from the Hebrew. It is an abuse of Augustine.

Dr. Garza, you are wrong, sir. Admit it. Just come out and say, yeah, you know,

I've really gotten focused on this. When you're coming up with a theory on your own, sometimes you lose your balance.

You're right. Augustine is not supporting me here. Because he's not. That's not how you read

Augustine here. You're in error. That's what I understood. Now, it's interesting.

And when it comes out, I'm going to have to have money. I'm not totally shifting gears here.

I'm just making a comment on what I just said. Jason shared with me last night, while we were stargazing, he feels he has made a real discovery.

Now, he's made discoveries like planets and stuff like that because that's the kind of guy he is. But he feels that he's made a very important cosmological discovery in regards to is space expanding to certain cosmological assumptions that have been held in the scientific community for 100 years.

And he showed me a graph where he demonstrates that what's predicted by the current theory in comparison to his understanding, and then he shows where these various galaxies fall in his graph, and they all fall in his line, not on the line that people would expect there to be.

So, I'm really looking forward to when his article is published because I want to have him on the program to explain it.

We'll put it on the screen. You'll see it. And it, again, has really important long -term meaning to it.

So, you might say, well, you're being unfair to Dr. Garza because here's your buddy Jason Lyle, and he's going against consensus.

But he's going against consensus as a creationist. So, in other words, he's going against people who have an anti -biblical assumption of naturalistic materialism.

And he's demonstrating, and he has been demonstrating ever since the Webb telescope began functioning.

One of the things he does on his website is he keeps going over new stuff that's come out from Webb that goes, yep, we predicted this on the creation model.

Here it is in Webb. Why are they so surprised by this? Because they had this assumption because of evolutionary naturalistic materialism, but we had said this, and Webb's showing that to me.

So, he's been doing this for a long time. And this could be a big major thing, and I'm excited for him, and I'm really looking forward to having him on to talk about it at some point in the future.

So, no, I'm not contradicting myself. Dr. Garza is focused on this one thing, and I don't know any practicing textual critics who think that medieval

Hebrew manuscripts can overthrow the entire consensus of...

You see, because you've got to understand something, and I'm sorry if some of this is somewhat complicated, but there are programs like this, and there are some people out there that are just geeking out, love it.

You've got to understand, we have translations into numerous other languages long before the medieval period.

Coptic, Sahitic, Boheric, and these are languages that the reason to study them is that you can come to certain conclusions regarding the nature of the

Greek manuscripts that they were translating, so they can be relevant to textual critical studies.

But you also are able to demonstrate, you're also able to see something about the language, not only that it's being translated into, but translated out of.

And the consensus of everybody who studies these things is that these early translations are from Greek manuscripts, not

Hebrew manuscripts. So if you're going to say that the New Testament was originally written in Hebrew, you've got to explain why do we have no manuscripts?

Not a fragment for a thousand years. The Romans were destroying our manuscripts right, left, and center and yet we have more manuscripts in that time period of the

Greek New Testament than any other work of antiquity. The Romans were trying to destroy. You don't think a single manuscript was going to survive?

Not even a fragment? None? That's absurd. That's absolutely absurd.

What's more is the translations, those early primitive translations in languages are from Greek.

They're not from Hebrew. They're not from Hebrew. So it's the overwhelming mass of evidence.

I mean, he was talking about, well, you know, the scholar over here said this, and this scholar, and there was a note in a manuscript over on the side, and that...

Don't worry. This type of theory is never going to become predominant because unless a treasure trove of dateable

Hebrew manuscripts to the first three centuries all of a sudden appears someplace, this theory is going to go absolutely nowhere, as it deserves to go absolutely nowhere.

So I'm not worried about that. But I am concerned because when you're willing, when you lose your balance like this to where you don't even recognize that, yeah, you know, if this is true, we don't have any way whatsoever to have any idea of what the

New Testament originally said. None. We can't know.

And if you want to say, well, yes, we can. We will put together a critical text of Hebrew manuscripts, none of which are earlier than 1000 years after Christ.

And we cannot demonstrate that any of the early Church Fathers possessed these. You've totally misrepresented

Augustine here. We can't prove any of that. We've got no manuscripts. We can't explain how that is.

But we'll put together a critical edition of medieval Hebrew New Testament manuscripts, and that'll be exciting.

Well, it won't be exciting because it'll be worthless apologetically, have no benefit to the

Church, nothing like that at all. It's a waste of time. Sadly. I wish people would spend their time on some more important things.

So, anyways, that's the most, no, no, no, I was going to say that's the most Augustine we've read in a single, that's not true.

Back when we were doing the Ken Wilson stuff in 2020, we read a lot more

Augustine back then. Thank you, Chris, for the quote. He said the same thing there.

And by the way, just for your benefit, and I mean all of you, the story that Augustine relates, and I at least appreciated that in the one that I read, he sort of goes, and even if that's not true, because the story was you had 70 scholars, some said 72, and they were given the

Hebrew Old Testament. I think there were some versions that said only the Septuagint, and then others that didn't say that, and by the days of Augustine, that was not the view any longer.

But the point is they all went into these caves, their cells, and they translated the material, and when they came back out and they compared their translations, they were identical.

Which could only happen, obviously, if this is a supernatural, well, an inspired translation.

And many Christians bought into the idea that the Greek Septuagint was inspired, and there is no question the

Greek Septuagint was the Bible of the early church. There is no question about it. I mean, someone pointed this out, and I can see how a

Garzaite, Garzaite? I don't know what you would call this position, would find a way around this, but 90 % of the time, more than 90 % of the time, when the

New Testament authors are quoting from the Old Testament, they're quoting from the Septuagint. Especially from the

Psalter, because the Psalter existed in the Septuagint, they're quoting from the

Greek, they're not quoting from the Hebrew. Why would that be if they're writing in Hebrew? If you're writing in Hebrew, every translation should be from the

Proto -Masoretic text. It wasn't just one Hebrew text, there were variants even in the

Hebrew at that time in history, we know that. But why would you do that?

And so I guess the only answer would be, well when they translated from the Hebrew into the

Greek, 90 % of the time they decided to use well, they didn't have the

Greek Septuagint for the outside of the Pentateuch, according to Garza, so that doesn't make any sense.

But they did, historically, we know that. So they used the Septuagint for those renderings, even though they were that means they had to be changing when they translated.

Well, here's a good example. Hebrews chapter 8. Hadn't thought about this.

Hebrews chapter 8. Why does Hebrews 8 read the way it does today?

Because it's a quotation from Jeremiah 31. It should be worded for word identical to the Hebrew text, right? If it was originally written in Hebrew.

In the book of Hebrews. But it's not, is it? No. Jeremiah 31 says, even though I was a husband to them,

Baal. But the book of Hebrews says, even though I did not care for them.

That's a translation of Gaal. So, the Septuagint has,

I did not care for them. That's in Jeremiah. So there's the prophet, we've had the

Psalter, we've got the prophet, all in the Septuagint. Clearly the Septuagint is not just the Pentateuch.

I think we've pretty much buried that one now. But yeah, that doesn't make a lick of sense.

If this theory were true. Which it clearly and plainly is not. So, there you go.

I sit here on the road getting ready to debate

Roman Catholicism in like, what, 36 hours? Something like that. And we just did an entire you know,

I talked about some other stuff. We talked about Kamala Harris and Marxism. We talked about Jason Lyle and the beauty of the heavens and the

Lagoon Nebula and things like that. So we did cover a few other things. But I spent the vast majority of my time on Augustine, early translations,

Septuagint, Hebrew, Latin, things like that. Someone might be tempted to say, the world's falling apart.

Who cares? And I get that. I get that. I understand that.

I ask myself that question. The world may be falling apart. And a large portion of the people alive today may not be alive 20 years from now.

I understand that. That was a true statement in Europe in 1340.

Yeah, 1340. You could have said 50 years from now, half the people alive today would be gone.

Black Death, for those of you who are wondering. 1347 following. So yeah, things happen.

Judgment comes. There may be times of judgment ahead of us.

Famine, disease, war. We have left -wing moronic idiots with their fingers on the nuclear codes.

But despite all of that, here, I'll make this connection and we'll wrap things up.

I'm sitting out in pitch darkness. Now, it's interesting. The moon started coming up around 11 -something, and immediately everything changed.

It was so pitch black you could see the Milky Way and we could see

Nebula and all this type of stuff. And the moon was only like 3 quarters. As soon as that moon started coming up, all disappeared.

I could start seeing the ground. I was tripping over stuff. Wow, it changed quickly.

It was really, really interesting to notice. Because the full moon is 275 ,000 times brighter than anything else in the heavens.

So once it comes out, it just washes everybody out. It's time to pack up and go home, which we did.

But I'm out there with Jason and I'm looking up. And you know, those stars...

Jason introduced me to Albireo. And Albireo is...

it's a gem in the night sky. When he showed that to me the first time in Texas, we had spoken at a conference together.

And we did stargazing afterwards. And it was the last thing he showed. And that's what got me hooked. I saw

Albireo. Albireo is probably not a gravitational double. Actually, it's a quad.

I can't go into it. I've discussed it before in the past. I've shown you the pictures. They are absolutely...

I did, thankfully, get a gorgeous, beautiful picture of Albireo at 8000 feet in Flagstaff, Arizona.

There's Albireo. That is my own picture. And you'll see a beautiful, bright golden star right next to a beautiful...

less bright, but still brighter than our sun, by the way. They're both much, much, much brighter than our sun. A blue star.

Which are optical opposites, by the way. And that's my picture unfiltered.

That's what I took with a Sony A6300 through an 8 -inch telescope out at 8000 feet, about 25 miles outside of Flagstaff, Arizona, a few years ago.

And I've shown it to you before. That's Albireo. That just grabbed me. It's so beautiful. But here's what

I'm saying. Mankind did not know that that was a double star until the invention of the telescope.

It just looked like a single star. You look up at it, you can see it. By the way, if you can find the Northern Cross, it's the bottom star of the

Northern Cross. But until relatively recent in human history, we didn't know what it actually looked like.

We did not know it was at least an optical binary, because to our eye, the human eye can't differentiate those two stars, given how far away they are.

But here's the point. Those two stars have been up there, shining down on us through every war, every famine, every disease, and they're going to stay there because God put them there for a purpose.

And horrible things, absolutely horrible things could happen on this planet, and God's still going to accomplish

His purpose. That's what the empty tomb tells us. That's what the empty tomb tells us.

And so history can continue on, and history will continue on.

And I am convinced that one of the main things I want to accomplish with the rest of my life, and hopefully

I've accomplished with what's come before, is to lay a foundation, create a body of work that will encourage the next generation, the next generation, the next generation, the generation after that.

No matter what they have to go through, no matter how many fewer of them there are than there are today, five generations down the road, they're still going to need to know where the

Bible came from. That the Old Testament was written in Hebrew with a few chapters in Aramaic, the

New Testament was written in Greek. And here are the manuscripts. And here's the evidence.

Christ is King. The tomb is empty. His word is true. And he has provided for us the light that we will need to, yes, reconstruct, rebuild after the disaster of naturalistic materialism and secularism leaves its mark.

And so, yeah, we still need to talk about these things. We should not be sitting here on the dividing line constantly for the whole program, talking about the political events of the current day.

I know it's taking up a lot of our thought, but just think of the things that have happened in the past.

And we're still here today. And what was important then is what's important now. So that's why we do it.

And that's why we're going to continue doing it. And, yeah, I hope you enjoyed

Alberio. I should post that picture and everybody can... I've had it as my screensaver and, you know, my background on my phone and stuff like that.

You can't copyright stars, but that was a good shot. And by the way, that was one shot out of, like, 300 that I took.

Because you've got to keep adjusting focus and you've got to do all this stuff. And you can take hundreds of pictures and you end up with five that are really good.

That's just how it works. anyhow. All right. Well, thank you for tuning in to the program today.

I know it may not have been the subject that you were expecting it to be, but that's okay.

Hopefully it will be a blessing to you. Anyways, Rich, I love the way I look without a light in my eyes.

Sorry. I did not do it intentionally. It's plugged in. It's ready to go. I didn't do it. Anyways, bait this weekend.