The Dividing Line In Response to Chris Pinto

A special Dividing Line today. What we're going to do is I'm going to respond to an article posted this morning by Chris Pinto on the debate that we did on Wednesday evening, and then we are going to play the entirety of the debate.

A number of you obviously listen to the Dividing Line primarily through iTunes, through a subscription, you know, RSS feed, whatever it might be. And since the debate was not live-streamed through our facility, then you might not hear it.

And so we are going to provide that entire debate. It's just over an hour and a half in length. But I wanted to, the reason I wanted this, I thought about just starting the music and then putting the debate in, and you know, we could do that any time, not even break into the Wayback Machine or whatever.

But when I got up this morning and saw the article that Chris Pinto had placed on the web, I was amazed. I was disappointed. But I just had to respond to it because it is fairly amazing how you can go through something, you can experience something in reality, and then a little while later it's very different than what everybody else experienced.

And so I just wanted to respond to some of the things here that are just so far off-beam, so far outside of the reality of history or fact or just what happened a couple days ago, that it's very troubling.

Very troubling indeed that we would have this kind of spin being placed upon something. But I personally think it's damage control. I think most folks know what happened in that debate. But I want to take a debate summary provided by Chris Pinto, then we'll play the debate for your own listening pleasure.

You can make up your own mind if you did not hear it or click on over to Chris Rosebraugh's site either. Anyway, under the debate summary by Christian J Pinto, I'm just going to go through it. I've marked the things I want to discuss here briefly, and then we'll jump into the debate itself, and you can listen to how that went.

Second paragraph, in the immediate aftermath, it is interesting that most of White's followers have been very reluctant to claim victory on his behalf, something they are known for doing. I dispute this.

I'd like to have evidence of this. And in fact, I saw lots of stuff. First of all, I don't have control over who he thinks my followers are. I don't know who they are. There's no organization of James White followers or anything of the kind.

And so I think that's an unfair statement. While supportive of his effort, they seem to have generally cooled their typical insults against us. Sounds like poisoning the well and sounds like something I haven't seen.

Well, most of them anyways. But we discovered the following Twitter exchange where Jim D 'Addis tweeted James White. And then he gives an exchange that I had yesterday where I specifically, you know, here's what you get for trying to be a nice guy, you know.

I was told in Twitter, I think you did yourself a disservice arguing with that moron. He will declare victory and gain followers. To which I responded, brother and brother Pinto is no more of a moron than I am a Jesuit.

Let's hold ourselves to a proper standard, shall we? So I tried to, you know, I certainly had never used that type of terminology. And so what happens is Chris Pinto responds, I'm certainly glad to see Dr. White make the effort to compel his supporters towards greater civility.

But I can honestly say that after dealing with the critical text proponents of the past six months, they can be every bit as fanatical and unreasonable as any extremist in the Bible version issue. Now, I've never met somebody who actually, you know, had a t-shirt that said critical text proponent or something like that.

But the reality is, he doesn't seem to understand that it's the conspiratorial element of his material. Remember, you know, and what's sad about this is that Mr. Pinto wrote to me and he apologized for the attack he made upon me.

Interestingly enough, to my knowledge, he did not apologize to Alan Kirshner because his attack on him is significantly more personal. But he doesn't seem to realize that that kind of stuff is really out of bounds.

And when people respond to it, you know, the temperature is already extremely high. Anyways, he says, yet the above tweeter was concerned that our side would declare victory and gain followers. Why? Most likely because he realized that Dr. White simply had no salient arguments against the central issue, which was whether or not Constantine Simonides was telling the truth when he claimed to have authored Codex Sinaiticus in 1840.

Now, if you asked that tweeter what his reasons were, I think it was pretty clear in his original tweet what his reasons were. How do you get from, I think you do yourself a disservice arguing with that moron, to the idea that what he's actually saying is that, oh, you didn't have any good arguments and he won.

How do you do that? I mean, seriously, how does that happen? The only place that I'm used to spin on that level is from a guy named Carney, okay? And that's a daily thing, and it's gotten so tiring that no one even listens to it anymore.

But that is spin and delusion. It's amazing. You can go from going, that guy was a moron too, but I think he won, all without any evidence whatsoever. Might give you an idea of how a lot of this film came into example.

Anyways, then he quotes somebody named Stephen Avery, who thinks he won. Well, that's great. I'm glad he's got somebody. Then he said, Dr. White's or lack thereof. I didn't have any arguments. Now, there were people that mentioned to me that they figure I probably said twice as much in my opening statement as he did.

He did not have a prepared opening statement. He sort of gave a little, well, you know, I was looking in the Bible and I read this stuff and I ran across the story of Simonides and, you know, and that's all there was to it.

I had a 15 minute prepared opening statement, biblical references, manuscript references, a whole nine yards, but I had no arguments. This is what's scary. Because when people get to the point of saying you had no arguments, you had nothing.

And you're just like, but you didn't even respond. For example, major portion of my argument, the different scribes in Codex Sinaiticus. Where'd they come from? If Simonides is the one who wrote this, Sinaiticus does not show us that there was a single hand, even with correctors, there were multiple hands in the actual manuscript itself.

So, how do you explain that? He never even tried. Didn't even try. It was, well, Dr. White, don't you think it's possible that maybe something like this could have happened or maybe? And thought that was argumentation.

So, Dr. White's arguments of lack thereof only confirmed the declaration of James Farrar in 1907, that the matter had never been settled and must continue to be considered an interesting, but unsolved mystery of literature.

Now, let me mention something. This is his big book. Here's Farrar from 1907. First of all, 1907, before papyri, before the full study of Sinaiticus, therefore on that level, irrelevant. Can't interact with Junkind or T .C. Skeet or any of those things like that because it's too old.

This man is not a textual critic. He can't interact with that stuff. He can only interact with the literary stuff. And remember, this was the very same guy who finished his entire chapter by saying, in literary ability, he surpassed all his contemporaries, but unhappily, the essential element of truth formed no part of his mental constitution.

Now, how can you take when someone, the conclusion of their entire study is this person who he is including in a book on literary forgeries, truthfulness was not an essential component of this man's character.

How can you take that source and then turn it into, oh, Simonides was truthful? How do you do that? How does that work? I really don't know. Well, I've got somebody in channel right now that is disappointed I'm not wearing a Coogee.

I will probably for the rest of the holiday season, make sure to bring my Coogees in and blind the entire audience. And if you all have any, oh, blind you, well, you're used to it. You lost your vision a long time ago.

And if you have any complaints, his Nick in channel is mmcglam1017. I don't know why he comes up. That's one of the weirdest Nicks in channel. But if you have any complaints, he's the one to bring it up to when I wear Coogees for the rest of the holiday season.

I just thought I'd mentioned that in passing. So anyways, we go back to the serious topic here. So he asserts, and now my, I hate when this happens. Now my cursor will not go back up to that screen. That just bugs me.

Anyways, so he quotes Farrar. That's his big thing. As I pointed out in my opening statement, he never bothered to quote the conclusion of Farrar on Simonides. Did I say Simonides? Simonides. I'm trying to do the modern Greek pronunciation, trying to, and that's, that's not how I do Greek, but I'm just, I'm trying because he lived in the modern period.

So he didn't live back then. Simonides. He doesn't even quote the concluding statement of his favorite author on the untruthfulness of Simonides. And keep that in mind because his entire theory on the sources the Simonides use comes from Simonides.

But we can't trust Simonides according to his favorite source. You know, there you go. Okay, so Matthew McGlamory is the person to go after. Look him up on the web if you don't like my Coogees. Just blame will be all over.

Yes. So yeah, I know the connection failed. Oh, now it works. Thank you. There we go. Anyways, he says, this has been my position all along. Here's the next thing I've got a real problem with Chris Pinto about.

When you produce a three-hour video, movie, okay, two hours and 57 minutes. We want to be really, really, really exact. That goes on and on and on about the Jesuits. And then you try to defend that movie without ever mentioning the Jesuits.

You are dodging. You are backing off. And I really, how many of his followers really think that his position is just that, oh, it's just an unsolved piece of mystery. Yeah. That's why you spent a three-hour movie building up to the idea that Tischendorf was a secret Jesuit and he was working with the Jesuits and people were making the manuscript look older and it took them 15 years to do it.

And that's why it took so long. Yeah. You're really coming to the same conclusion Farrar did. Let's be honest. This is a conspiracy theory. The Jesuits created Sinaiticus to attack Sola Scriptura. That's what he's saying.

Come on. Defend what you're really saying. Go watch the film. Anybody questions it. During the debate, White continued to argue that Simonides and his uncle could not have collated manuscripts in the time allowed and mired himself down in speculations, which he has no way of proving.

Now, this is the thing that really caught me. I'm the one being accused of getting mired down in speculations. When the common comment of almost everybody that I have seen who has listened to the thing has been, that guy had nothing.

All he had was speculation. Well, is it possible that maybe, listen to the cross-examination, listen to the questions. Is it possible? Could it all be? Who is presenting facts and who is presenting, well, you never know.

It might be this, might be that. You don't know. It's an amazing, amazing thing to see this, to say that I'm the one who gets mired down in speculations, which he has no way of proving. Excuse me. His entire case is based upon speculating that these ancient manuscripts, other than the three ancient manuscripts, which we only know of the Simonides, contain all these wild readings that differ from the Byzantine text type that are found in Codex Sinaiticus.

Now, let me read the section. Again, this is fascinating. I'm going to read you the very quote that he read during cross-examination. This is from J .K. Eliot's Codex Sinaiticus and the Simonides affair.

Listen to what's said here. All right. Let's see. Dionysius, a professional calligrapher of the monastery, was requested to undertake the work, but he declined, saying that he could not accomplish the task assigned to him, which he considered very difficult and quite beyond his capabilities.

Hmm. Boy, it sounds like a big task. When he objected to perform what had been allowed to him for the reasons which he gave, I myself yielded to the entreaties of my venerable uncle and undertook the performance of work, for I had been proved and approved in time past.

This is a 19-year-old. And my hand was very well practiced from childhood in the ancient writing. And so we straightway inspected the oldest manuscripts preserved in Mount Athos of the sacred writings referred to.

Now, notice, and so we straightway inspected the oldest. This is Simonides and his uncle. Remember what he said during the debate? He said, well, maybe his uncle had been working on this for a long time.

But he says, we straightway inspected the oldest manuscript preserved in Mount Athos of the sacred writings referred to. I, for my part, carefully considered the questions connected with the best possible performance of the penmanship, and the Lord Benedict, taking his hands a copy of the Moscow edition of the Old and New Testaments, published at the expense of the Leicester brothers Zosimas, and by them presented to the Greeks, collated it with my assistance with three only of the ancient copies.

There is his three copies. Not done by Benedict way before. Okay, which, what had he done with him? Which he had long before annotated, so the collation later is during the time of Simonides. So that initial argument didn't work.

Which he had long before annotated and corrected for another purpose, and cleared their text by this collation from remarkable clerical errors, and again collated them with the edition of Codex Alexandrinus, printed with unsealed letters, and still further with another very old Syriac codex, and gave me in the first instance Genesis to copy.

So these three manuscripts, now think what's being said here by, and again, this is from a man who, according to his own favorite source, is an untruthful man. All right, what's this saying? So he added three manuscripts, and they are collated against what?

Alexandrinus. But wait a minute, there are all sorts of readings in Sinaiticus that are not in Alexandrinus, and would not be in the Moscow Bible. So are these three supposedly constantly overriding Sinaiticus and the Moscow Bible?

Which, by the way, would have much more represented the text that would have been the ecclesiastical text of the Orthodox Church of that day. And of course, we have to ask ourselves the question, where are these manuscripts?

When can we see them? Oh well, there's at least a hundred manuscripts of Mount Athos that haven't been seen yet, and maybe a thousand others, and isn't that called speculation? Aren't you speculating as to what would be in manuscripts we've never seen before?

So who's miring himself down in speculations? I think you'll see that it's Christopher J Pinto, actually. Continue on, he refused to recognize that attempting to figure out how long it might take these men, whose entire lives revolved around manuscripts, is something he simply cannot know.

Now here's a man, cannot read Greek, cannot read unsealed Greek, has never collated a manuscript in his life, but he knows that Simonides can be trusted on this. That's why I asked him, can you read those things?

And he'd be, oh you're being arrogant, that's not fair. No, he's the one that produced the film, he's the one producing and promulgating a conspiracy theory, and using it to attack believing Bible scholars.

That's what he's doing. And in the process, undercutting the strongest foundations we have for the defense of New Testament text. It's not Chris Pinto who's debating Bart Ehrman, or John Dominic Crossan, or John Shelby Spong, or any of these individuals.

He's not out there doing that, nor could he given his, he says he's not King James only, but he sure argued it at the end, the position that he takes. So it's an important issue. He says White also refused to acknowledge that other scholars like James Farr have completely dismissed this view, which had been argued in the 19th century.

I've already just read to you what James Farr said. He was not a textual critical scholar, he's writing before the discovery of the papyri, he does not interact with the key issues of what, well he couldn't interact with the key issues of the scribes of Sinaiticus, because a lot of the study, Skeet and then modern studies with Junkin and others, simply weren't in existence at that time, wasn't there.

So like so many of this group of people, they like to stick with old sources that do not take any consideration whatsoever, cannot take any consideration for the modern finds, especially the papyri. They just dismiss them.

At the end of it all, White's overwhelming tendency to confuse historic facts with the opinions of the filmmaker proved to be the demise of his ambition, which was to remove the question mark placed upon the controversy in 1907.

Well again, right there, it shows you, 1907. That was 106 years ago. You don't think there's been more study since then? He doesn't interact with any of it. Though he quotes from Junkin, he quotes from him, but I honestly do not believe he could understand Junkin.

You have to be able to read Greek, you have to be able to read unsealed Greek to follow that book, and he can't. So that's why he may quote from it, but I don't think he understands what he's saying. But then this White's overwhelming tendency to confuse historic facts with the opinions of the filmmaker.

Mr. Pinto, to my knowledge, has never taught history. I could be wrong about that, I don't know. If I'm wrong about that, please correct me. I started teaching church history in 1990. It's been a little while, and what I've pointed out, which he just doesn't seem to understand, it's he who is confused here, is he seems to think if he can find a quote in a book, that makes it a documented fact.

So for example, he says elsewhere he dismissed the history of J .A. Wiley as mere opinion. I did not dismiss anything. I said that expressed his opinion that the Jesuits were in control of the media. That's an opinion.

That's not a documented fact. There are many other people who would say the exact opposite of that. Just because someone expressed something in a book, which may not be the most widely respected book as far as its fairness and accuracy goes, but still that doesn't make it a documented fact.

And Mr. Pinto thinks as long as you can find in a book, it's a documented fact. It's a documented fact. But it's not. It's not. So I haven't confused anything in any way, shape, or form. Then he talks about, yet his opposition was not just concerning Codex Sinaiticus, but against my entire film, Terrorism Among the Weak.

And why? Because it also documents the history of the Oxford Movement, which was the aggressive effort of Rome to reclaim England for the Pope. The efforts of Rome and her counter-reformation precede the 19th century for hundreds of years, and lead right up to the events that happened all the way through the work of the Revision Committee of 1881.

Actually, they continue on. The story of Simonides and Tischendorf unfolds during an era of what was called the Age of Jesuitism by one of the leading historians at the time. Okay, now listen to this.

But White wants to hear nothing about this, because it does not agree with the world as he had imagined it, as he had imagined before he saw the film. Now, I'm sorry. Sorry. But I cannot help but laughing.

It is so amazingly insulting that Chris Pinto thinks that I learned something about the Oxford Movement from watching his film. Yeah, I don't know what I was doing teaching church history back in 1990.

And how was it that I was debating Tim Staples, a Catholic apologist on papal infallibility, and provide all those quotes from, oh, that was John Henry Cardinal Newman. Oh, you mean I read Newman's work on the development of doctrine?

Oh, that means I would have to know something about the Oxford Movement. Huh. Long before Pinto made his first movie, let alone his second movie. Wow. So Chris thinks he can get into your mind and go, White wants to hear nothing about this.

No, Mr. Pinto, I've been dealing with the results of the Oxford Movement for a long time. In fact, I probably have read far more books on the subject than you even know exist. And I've been quoting them for years before you came along.

One of the best responses, for example, to—well, and you would have known this, Mr. Pinto. This would have kept you from making the amazing blunder at the beginning of your film, where you grant to the Roman Catholics, you give to the Roman Catholics, Sermon 131 from Augustine, where you present it as if, in Sermon 131, Augustine was saying, Rome has spoken, the case is closed.

You actually believe that lie from Rome. And it's a lie from Rome. We documented that it's a lie from Rome. That documentation's been on the website since, oh man, 99, 2000, somewhere around in there, because I quoted it specifically to Peter Stravinskis in 2001, and he had no response to it.

So it's been there for, what, 15 years, around that time period? You have fallen into the trance of Rome. Maybe there's something Jesuitical about this. See, it'd be real easy to do this. If you had taken the time to do some study in these areas, you would know that to say that I somehow didn't know about this stuff until I watched your film is just laughable.

And it involves you in trying to do mind reading, which, my friend, you shouldn't be trying to do. Then we have this next one. I love this one. Oh my. At one point, he even threw John Calvin under the bus.

When a quote from the renowned reformer disagreed with him, this is remarkable, considering that White calls himself a Calvinist. I love that. I'm also a Reformed Baptist. How many times have I said that Calvin would have driven me out of Geneva?

To be a Calvinist does not mean that you agree 100 with everything John Calvin ever said. My goodness. I mean, what is the mindset here? I didn't throw John Calvin under the bus. I pointed out that when you quote something, John Calvin was in conflict with the Bishop of Rome, and so he said strong things.

In fact, all the Reformers said imbalanced things about Rome. They all did, because that was the world they lived in. Look, the school at Geneva was producing men who went from that school straight south into Italy and died for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

They died there. I have sat in Italy and talked with a man who edited a book on the martyrs who came from Geneva to Italy. I know about these things, Mr. Pinto. It doesn't require me to think that John Calvin was infallible to recognize that because of the conflict they were in, Rome became the big evil.

They didn't have a global perspective. They couldn't have. They couldn't see the evil that was being performed by Islam. They couldn't see that the inhumanity of Hinduism in India wasn't a part of their experience.

They couldn't see that the deadening of the human spirit that comes from many forms of Buddhism wasn't part of their experience. So all I said was, I disagree. He was a man of his age. That's what he saw.

I'm still a Calvinist. I believe what he taught on the sovereignty of God and salvation. And the funny thing is, I think you've defended elements of Calvinism, but Calvin would have driven you out of Geneva too, just by the way.

He says, as I have said many times in our radio program, the neo-reformers of America today are but a shadow of the original Reformation. The modern reform movement has been subverted by historically Romish teachings about both the Bible and history.

I can guess what almost all of that is about, but I just point that out to you and let you make the decision from there. Then he talks about, I was polite to him. He says, despite whatever was said months ago, words that no doubt gave the impression that he would spend his time in sarcasm rather than sober discussion, he was, it seemed to me, committed to making the best argument he could.

Well, I appreciate the pat on the back. I did my best. Golf clap, yeah. My concern, of course, was at that time raised by his own program, where he did the homosexual Jesuit thing, and that was what that context was.

And finally, one thing here, yet under the leadership net, now this is where, again, Chris Pinto eschews being a King James onlyist. But the reality is, his arguments are King James only arguments. They are King James only arguments.

What he said in the debate at the end, James White and Dan Wallace, they're questioning traditional readings of the Bible. Yeah, I want to know what John wrote, not what someone a thousand years after John thought he should have written.

They're casting doubt on the Bible. No, I'm not casting any doubt on the Bible. You're the one casting doubt on the Bible when you insist that readings that cannot be traced back to the time of the apostles should be what we accept as the authoritative Word of God.

You're the one casting doubt on the Bible, not me. I'm actually doing the work that's necessary. And see, that's why Chris Pinto could never go to South Africa and debate Shabir Ali in a mosque, or at Pretoria University, or debate Yusuf Ismail at Northwest University, or the University of Johannesburg, or all the places I went to, because those people would shred him.

It would be an embarrassment. He can't do it. Why? Because he's in the same boat as the Muslim who opposes the scholarly study of the history of the Quran. We don't need anybody casting doubt on anything.

We know it's the Word of God. Let's not look at those early manuscripts. Exact same mindset. Exact same mindset. We've got our traditions. Remember London, in the debates in London? Remember when Adnan Rashid got up?

He said, well, hey, if what he's admitted is we can go back to Uthman, that's good enough for me. And not realizing what he was saying. That, yeah, I've established a text, and that's my text, and I don't care about where it came from or anything else.

Same thing with the TR, evidently, for Mr. Pinto. So he says, yet under the leadership of modern textual scholars who have embraced ecumenical apostates like Bruce Metzger, Kurt Aland, and the Jesuit Carlo Martini, our nation has gone steadily downhill, and society has been brought to the point where they no longer believe the Bible has any true authority.

Now, first of all, I was going to get Metzger's testimony out, but I didn't get around to doing that. I will let Mr. Pinto answer to God for what he says, should people like that be Christians. And of course, if I was ever in a room with Jesuit Carlo Martini, I would seek to present the gospel to him, obviously.

But what worries me here is the mindset that is found plainly expressed by Gail Ripplinger, where she connects every social evil, the decline of Western society, to a differing view of hers of the textual traditions of the Bible.

99 .99 of the people who are promoting some kind of wild-eyed leftist immorality today have never heard of Codex Sinaiticus or anything of the kind. And their disbelief in the Bible has zippity-doo-dah to do with modern translations or anything else.

They just don't believe in supernaturalism, period. And if Mr. Pinto thinks this is a matter of, well, if they all just had the King James Version of the Bible, all would be well, then he is not prepared to even begin to engage, begin to engage in a meaningful defense of the faith today.

I submit to you that the mindset that says, well, you know, if we just didn't have those footnotes down at the bottom of the page that says some manuscripts say this, you mean like the ones that there are thousands of them in the King James Version of the Bible in 1611?

Or not my King James Version of the Bible? Well, they were in the original. If we just didn't have those notes, then everybody would believe the Bible, see? But the reason people don't believe the Bible is because they don't know, they don't think we know what it means.

We can't figure out what it says. In fact, Codex Sinaiticus, I'm sorry if you think, well, you're being mocking now. I don't know how to even present such thinking without pointing out that it's just vacuous.

It has no foundation. It can only exist in these little enclaves and pockets where there is no interaction with the world around us. And that's a waste of time. It's a waste of time. It truly is. So I was just amazed.

You know, I got mired down in speculations. Well, is it possible? Who was saying that? Well, you're about to find out because we are going to play for you the entirety of the debate from the opening music all the way through to the end that took place on December 11th, two days ago, between myself and Mr. Pinto.

Now, listen carefully. You will note that Mr. Pinto's opening statement, he has 15 minutes, just sort of rambles on, you know, well, this is what I did, and I started reading this, and I looked into that, and you know, and it's just sort of, and mine is rather focused, and I move a little bit faster than he does.

And then as we get into the cross-examination, and then the Q &A, listen to how many times, is it possible? Could it be? Might this have happened? And ask yourself, who had speculation and who presented facts?

That's really the issue that we need to listen to. So it's sad for me to see, honestly, this kind of, this level of spin from anybody. It just, it strikes me as massive damage control. That's the only way I can explain it.

But can't let him get away with that. Sorry, Mr. Pinto, but don't spin it. Just put the debate out there. Let people listen. Let them watch the film. I'm the one. I, how many people, Mr. Pinto, has posted your film on their block?

Said, go ahead and watch it. Have the background. Have the background. Watch film if you want to. Listen to it like I did while writing. Now, I will say one thing. It is sort of like the Nixon-Kennedy thing.

The visual film is worse than the audio. What I mean is, once you get to see the portrayal of Tischendorf as this buffoon, as this, and Simonides as this dashing young man, that really bogged me. The bias and prejudice there on Pinto's part is amazing.

But he eschewed that during the debate. I don't know. I think I was just perfectly fair there. Pretty amazing. So here is the edition of Fighting for the Faith, December 11th, the debate between myself and Chris Pinto on the Simonides theory.

And here we go.

Debate Introduction and the Question of Codex Sinaiticus

It's time. Wednesday, December 11th, 2013. If you're joining us live today, we have a very different program. We are doing a live debate. That's right. A live debate between Dr. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries and Chris Pinto of Noise of Thunder Radio.

Thank you for tuning in. You're listening to Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseborough. I am your servant in Jesus Christ, and this is the program that dishes up a daily dose of biblical discernment, the goal of which, help you to think biblically, help you to think critically, and help you compare what people are saying in the name of God to the Word of God.

No shortage of crazy things being said out there. We take the time to slow down and stop and compare with an open Bible. Now, like I said at the beginning of the program, we're doing something a little bit different today.

We're doing a live episode, and I've invited on the air Dr. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries, as well as Chris Pinto, and they're going to be debating a topic regarding Codex Sinaticus. Is it a modern forgery and all of the implications that go with that?

The format for the debate is pretty straightforward, with opening arguments, rebuttals. There will be a cross-examination portion in there. I am going to be serving as the moderator of the debate, and let me introduce the gentleman that I've invited in studio, actually via the phone, and that's Dr. James White and Chris Pinto.

Gentlemen, are you there? Yes, sir. All right. Yes, we're here. All right, good. Let me introduce Chris Pinto. Chris Pinto is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, founder of Agilum Films, which is a Christian film ministry dedicated to defending the Gospel of Jesus Christ through film and video production.

He has written and directed some 10 documentaries, and is also the host of the Noise of Thunder radio program dedicated to exploring history and prophecy from a biblical worldview. Christian Pinto, thanks for coming on, Fighting for the Faith.

Well, thank you, Chris. It's good to be here. Okay, and Dr. James White, we, you know, I don't think he needs an introduction. He's in the debating world, known as an ultimate cage fighter, things like that, but Dr. James White is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, host of the radio program The Dividing Line, as well as Radio Free Geneva, and Dr. White, thank you for coming on, Fighting for the Faith.

I should have expected an introduction like that from you, Chris, but thank you very much.

And did I say he was a Calvinist? And, you know, we can go on. Anyway. Yeah, no mystery to that. Yeah, what we will be doing shortly here, in fact, we're going to go ahead and get into the debate. Now, again, I am not a participant in this debate.

I am simply going to moderate, and we will go ahead and get started with our 15-minute opening arguments, and so I think without any further ado, we can just get right to it. Christian Pinot, are you ready to get going?

I'm ready. All right. Then without any further ado, we will go ahead and you will be defending, well, actually, the question on the table is, is Konex Sinaiticus a modern forgery? And your position is that that's still an open question.

You know, that it hasn't been determined as to whether or not that it really is authentic or not, and so that will be the position that you will be taking. Dr. White will, of course, be arguing that it is an authentic fourth-century codex, and with that, we will get right into it, and your 15 minutes begins now.

Simonides, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Unsolved Mystery of Literature

Okay, praise the Lord. Well, I must confess that I am not familiar with doing formal debates of this sort. However, I've seen a few, and I've always found most endearing the fact that those who debate will often begin by stating what they agree upon before entering into the subject matter.

In this case, I am pleased to consider that this is an in-house debate among fellow believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that where the gospel of eternal life is concerned about this, Dr. James White and I certainly agree.

While we may be part of a family that does not always get along, does not always agree, nevertheless, we acknowledge that we are a family together in Christ. We also acknowledge that the Lord has told us to take heed that no man deceive you, and that we are to prove all things, and in truth, that's what this discussion is about.

So that brings us to Codex Sinaticus. Is it an ancient Bible created sometime in the 1840s by a Greek paleographer named Constantine Simonides, which is what he said in the 19th century? This very question was explored by 19th-century scholar F. H. A. Scrivener in his full collation to the Codex Sinaticus.

He dedicated a whole chapter to the question. Needless to say, Scrivener did not believe Simonides. He thought he was a forger and a liar. But then, in 1907, nearly half a century later, another scholar named James Farrar, after re-examining the story of Simonides in depth, came to the conclusion that the matter had never been truly settled.