Abdullah of the UK on Textual Claims, Part 3

So you're saying it was corrupted, but it's not now, we hope. See, the reality of it is that it's proven that the

Bible can be corrupted, and that it was corrupted. So if it is proven that it can be corrupted, and that it was corrupted, and all we've managed to find out are just the corruptions which were obvious from manuscripts that we weren't lucky enough to stumble upon, then what about the rest of the text?

What next? In a hundred years, they'll uncover new manuscripts, and then we'll say, oh, the Bibles, the

NIV, or the new edition of the KJV now that Christians are following now, these are corrupted versions, but we've got now the pure version in the next hundred years, because we found new manuscripts which are even older, and so on, and so on, and so forth.

No. The Bible's corrupted. Let's face it. Now, there's still a lot of confusion being expressed here, because first of all, the

NIV and the New King James version are translated from different textual platforms. The New King James is translated from the

TR. The NIV is translated from the Nestle -Aland platform. But again, what they're translated from is irrelevant.

If you really wanted to be seriously addressing the issue of the New Testament, you would be addressing the

Nestle -Aland platform or something along these lines. And, yes, more manuscripts are being found all the time.

There was just stories about some new manuscripts being found, and we're now up to 5 ,400, 5 ,500

Greek manuscripts, and there needs to be work done on more of the Latin manuscripts that exist, and things like that, and that's all wonderful.

I think it's great. Only if you've done the, oh, I have my one text, this is it, and I don't want to know about anything other than this, only if you've done that, do you think that the discovery of more manuscripts is a bad thing.

But, Abdullah, the discovery of the papyri only solidified and verified our knowledge of the

New Testament text. The papyri, which go sometimes 1 ,000 years earlier than some of the main manuscripts are being used before that, the papyri have verified that the transmission of the text has been an accurate transmission.

It's the same New Testament. And so, again, I just, maybe

I'm wrong. Please feel free to correct me, but I don't get the feeling that if I met you at Speaker's Corner with my

Nessie Olin text, and I opened it up, and I placed it in front of you, that you couldn't read the text, but you couldn't read the textual footnotes either.

You haven't seemingly taken the time to really be able to verify the things that you're saying.

And that's one of the differences that I see between myself and a lot of those that I respond to from the

Islamic side is I've got manuscripts of the Quran back there that I'm examining, that I'm looking at.

I wish there was a critical edition of the Quran like this, but as you know, there isn't.

I think some, I was doing some reading. There's some folks in Turkey trying to collate some things like this.

There's some beginnings here, there, and everywhere. There was work back in the 12, 1300s on issues like this.

But you know as well as I know that in many Islamic countries and amongst many

Muslims, the idea of critically examining the current edition of the

Quran would be much less warmly greeted than King James Only advocates greet the examination of the textus receptus, that we're going to look at a little bit later on.

But wouldn't you agree that the TR needed to be examined? You accuse it of containing textual corruptions, and I would agree that it did.

But if you don't examine these things, then how do you ever make a serious claim that we have been able to recreate the original text?

Again, I sense a real double standard here. One standard for the Quran, the other standard for the

New Testament. And double standards are a demonstration of a lost position.

Wouldn't you agree? Wouldn't you agree that you should use the same standards that you would ask me to use and vice versa?

And so when you make these statements, you're demonstrating some real confusion as to how the

New Testament has come to us and what we possess today and how we are to deal with it today.

Now, if some manuscript was found in Egypt that was from, let's say, 100

A .D., it's sort of like, well, a good example. Let's look at manuscript

P52. I'll insert a graphic of P52 here. This is the earliest manuscript that we have.

And it's very small, but it contains the text of the

Gospel of John and scholarship for about 80 years.

What was considered cutting -edge scholarship in Europe and in England had come to the conclusion, especially in Germany, had come to the conclusion that the

Gospel of John was written about 170, maybe even later in some people's opinions. And then along comes

P52, which is dated around 12125. And what's it of?

The 18th chapter, portions of the 18th chapter of the Gospel of John. Oh, that sort of ruined the theories.

That's a good thing. That's not a bad thing. That's a good thing. Now, if some manuscript is found that's 20 years earlier, upon what basis would you even begin to allege that it could be radically different than what has already been found in the

New Testament manuscript tradition? What P52 has in John 18 is exactly what you'd find in P66, what you'd find in P75.

It's what you're going to find in the Byzantine manuscripts of 1 ,000 years later. You're not going to find some different story.

There might be a spelling or word order difference, which generally doesn't even show up in English, but upon what basis would you ever say, oh, it's just going to be a radically different thing?

What manuscripts have done that in the past? If you can't answer that question, then my next question is why even raise the subject?

Because if I did that, if I speculated wildly about the

Quran that way, wouldn't you object? Once again, just asking that you use the same standards.

Now, while I sort of like the background music, I'm really not sure what's being said here.

First, we're told the oldest manuscript of the Bible today dates no earlier than 400 years after Jesus.

What do you mean? You mean the whole Bible? You mean the Greek and Hebrew? All Greek? I mean

Codex Sinaiticus, which we're looking at right here, comes from about 325, so that's not 400 years after Jesus, and that's the whole

Bible, but it's only in Greek. It doesn't include the Hebrew. So, again, there's just not a lot of accuracy in what's being said here.

And then we have the oldest fragments of small manuscripts are no earlier than 200 years after Jesus.

Again, I'm not sure what that means. What's a small manuscript? Isn't a fragment a small manuscript?

So this is a fragment of a fragment? It's hard to say, but again, here's the manuscript

I mentioned earlier, P52, and this is generally dated to 125.

It could be as late as 150 or as early as 100. So this is certainly earlier than 200 years after Jesus.

So I don't know what's being said here. All I can say is it's not very accurate. That's for certain.