Dr. Drew Show, Jordan Cooper on the ESV, A Bit More Anjem Choudary

Well, greetings. Welcome. It's an unusual day to do the Dividing Line. It's a Monday, but we've completely changed the schedule for this week. We'll start off with that. I suppose I announced over the weekend that I'm going back into the lion's den on Tuesday afternoon.

At noon, 4 .30, we will be recording another edition of the Dr. Drew show on CNN's HLN network. When they called, the first thought that crossed my mind was, nah. But then I had written and said, if I have enough lead time, if someone will tell me ahead of time, I can get over there.

I've sort of had a rule for a long, long time. I remember once Norman Geisser was going to be on a local radio program and we were going to, you know, people contact me. Hey, you should call in. You should call in.

And look, I've been on radio many, many times. I've sat here many, many times. When you call in here and I have the phones up, I don't have the phones up today for some reason. I may get to them later on.

If I do, I'll bring the phones up. But I have control. I can mute you. I can put you on hold. I can dump you. I know how it works. So I sort of have a rule. Why go into a battle with your right arm cut off?

Just don't even bother. Well, Skype is a wonderful thing and it allows us to do some great things. We've had some guests on the program via Skype and Google Hangouts and stuff like that. It's wonderful, but you're really at a disadvantage.

And when I was on two weeks ago, that was a real disadvantage. Because even as I've watched the video, recorded it, watched it, I couldn't hear what was being said back to me. If you've been on Skype, you know that you might get half a word.

What was that? And you have to stop. And it's just not an ideal situation to be in at all. And so I thought, well, if it's on Skype again, there's no reason to do it. Now, the reason they were calling is I had sent the link to the dividing line where I responded to the after video, the hour-long program, to the producer and said, please share it with the crew.

And so that's what got this going. And so I threw him a curve and said, well, how about if I'm in studio? Well, we really don't have a budget for that kind of thing. I wasn't asking for any money. I'll get over there myself.

I'll take care of myself. Oh, well, let me ask and call back, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes later, said, sure, that that'd be fine. That'd be fine. I'll send you the details as to where to go, when to be there, stuff like that.

And so that's when I told everybody about that. And I appreciate everybody that made it possible for us to not have to be borrowing from the South Africa trip to pay for this and so on and so forth. So, you know, I've seen all sorts of comments on Twitter and Facebook and stuff.

I do not expect to be treated fairly. I do not expect to be given a great deal of time. I think just simply by being there, I'll get more time than I got last time. I, you know, it's a lot harder to shut somebody down who is sitting there.

Now, I won't be up with the with the cool folks. I'll be sitting where the on the front row where the transgender guy was or gal or whatever. I don't know. Last time around. And but I'll be there. And at the very least, I figure I'm going to have probably twice as much time as I did before because of that.

Won't be as easy to when I when I'll be able to hear what people are saying to me and respond to them in a more efficient manner. And, you know, look, I don't just don't think the time's quite quite there yet where we just need to retreat into our Christian ghettos.

When you have the chance. I would not suggest this for the vast majority of Christians, but it's not my first time into a situation like this. I've been in situations similar to this where I know I'm in the minority.

I know I'm going to be shouted down. The reality is I sort of thrive in situations like that. I can respond to people. I can I can handle things like that a little bit better than your normal Christian can.

So why not take the opportunity when it's offered? So it also gives me the opportunity to invite them to be on this program. There has been some mention of showing some clips from that dividing line. Mm hmm.

That's a that's a transparent aha. Mm hmm. But the very least, at least if there are some serious minded people in the audience and if there aren't, why are we bothering at all? They might want to go see that for themselves, get to listen to the whole thing, might get some new listeners that way.

Who knows? Why not take the opportunity? So getting up real early in the morning and heading for for for it's in town. I don't like everybody keeps saying it's in Atlanta because I guess they figure everything with CNN is in Atlanta.

But no, it's in it's in Southern California. And so, you know, it's a quick hop over and I'll be staying there over over the evening and coming back on Wednesday. And teaching Wednesday night was a long day.

I'm running into a really, really, really, really busy period here with a lot of traveling. I'm going to be speaking in Tucson this coming Sunday in Flagstaff the Sunday after that. Salt Lake City at the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City the weekend after that.

And Denver the weekend after that. So four weeks in a row away from my church. That's really weird. And I'm missing Wednesday nights, too, because I'm teaching right now at Phoenix Seminary. So I figure I'll be fired by the time I get back.

And then I'm in church one week and then the next week I'm speaking in Boulder. And the next two weeks I'm preaching at our church. So there I've got one week where I'm not preaching over the next seven, I think, or eight.

I don't know. I've lost track. I've lost track. So that also means, by the way, that the dividing line schedule is going to be exceptionally hit and miss. We're going to try to maybe do some Google Hangout stuff.

But, you know, when you're traveling, you can't guarantee the quality of your connection and stuff like that. So we'll just see. We'll just see. It's going to be this summer. Summer finally got here in Phoenix, by the way.

No temperature starting tomorrow below 110 for the high. And so long to the 70s. Yeah. And Rich is the... See, the key to harmony in a ministry is Rich's office is on that side. That side of our offices and mine's on this side of the offices.

And literally we could not be any farther apart than we are. And so, yeah, his AC croaked. And so, yeah, it's hot. This morning's ride, I did a 6 -7 miler this morning, and it was toasty. I was getting pretty toasty by the time I got back.

I haven't really acclimated to the heat yet, and it finally got here. But no complaints. It took its time getting here, to be certain. So anyways, for everybody who's been going on, I'm really concerned about that, you know, they may not be fair to you.

I know. I know. I'm well aware of it. I'm fully expecting it. In fact, I'll be off my game if they're not coming after me with fork and tong. Now, one thing, though, I did discover today is other than Dr. Drew and the Mike Cathcart, whatever the name is, who really wasn't overly active in the last one, the ladies are going to be completely different.

For some reason, the lady who decided that I'm insane and the lady who decided that I'm unloving and mean and terrible and all the rest of that stuff, they're not going to be on for some reason. I don't know why that is.

It's strange. But anyway, so I don't know what to expect, honestly, in that context. But we'll see. We'll see. I'll tell you right now, I want to get into what it means to be loving as a Christian, to be able to explain to folks that if you want to see what loving looks like from a Christian perspective, you don't look at Bruce Jenner, you look at the cross, and that to be loving towards someone is not to encourage them in self-destruction.

I hope to get to some of those things, but we'll see. We'll see. I mean, I don't have any control over that. I've got to go with what I'm asked and try to do the best with that that I possibly can. And so there you go.

So I know. I know. I know what's coming. And we'll just pray that I'll be ready and be able to give a good testimony. And who knows where that'll lead. I don't know. We'll see. So pray for that, and that's also why we're on on Monday.

And then the plan right now anyways, and of course this could change if there is any interruption in travel, I get back on Wednesday and I teach Wednesday night. Right now my thinking is I land here in Phoenix, drive straight here, and we just do an hour program.

It may start at 147 or whatever, but we just get the second program the weekend, coming straight back, and then I continue on to home, get changed, stuff, head off to teach for four hours at Phoenix Seminary.

So that's sort of the plan right now. If there's any interruptions in travel and stuff, that could go right out the window and we'll see. If I absolutely had to go straight from the airport to teach, I could pull it off.

So we'll see how that works. So that's that. Pray for that opportunity. I had a bunch of people ask me to comment on an article that was posted on Pathos, which is normally not my favorite place to go.

But no, no, no, no, not yet. What are you doing? No, no, not yet. I'm just looking for names here. Jordan Cooper's article, We Shouldn't Exclusively Use the ESV, which was posted two days ago, the 13th.

And, you know, at first I was like, nah, not really interested because we've, in fact, we had him on briefly, didn't we? Did we call in once? We talked about atonement once and, you know. But there were a number of people and it's an issue related to the subject of textual criticism and modern translations.

And there remains not only a lot of confusion on that subject, but there's a lot of tradition there, too. And Jordan throws some of that in here. So I thought I'd comment on it before we finish up. We finish up with our last few moments of the debate between Sam Shamoon and Anjum Chowdhury.

Basically, what Jordan Cooper was talking about is in regards to the history of the ESV. He says the ESV is largely a revision of the earlier RSV. And basically what he's saying is we shouldn't just use this.

He's got some criticisms of the ESV. Well, ESV has undoubtedly demonstrated that marketing works. I certainly believe we have all of the English translations that we need. There is absolutely no need for any further English translations.

And 90 of what we have could definitely be retired without causing any problems. The reason that we have the number of English translations we have is simply business. It's business and it's money. Basically, the large Christian publishing firms all now have their own English translation.

Zondervan's got the NIV. Word got bought by Thomas Nelson as the New King James. And Crossway has the ESV. And Holman has the Holman Christian Study Bible. Holman Christian translation. And so the point was that there came a point in time where if you wanted to put out a study Bible, you didn't want to have to pay royalties to someone else because that would cut your margin of profit on each of those study Bibles.

And so, let's be honest, the origin of the ESV comes from business. And almost all the modern translations, that's the case. I don't think it was so much so back like NASB in the sense of publishing houses and things like that.

Lachman's not some big publisher of books and stuff like that. Anyway, that's where they came from. And we don't need any more NLTs, which I don't even consider to be a T in the first place. We don't need any more, you know, super simplified first grade level translations of the New Testament.

We've got a glut of them and most of them are not really worth the paper they're printed on in the first place. So ESV came along and man, I'll tell you, Crossway knew how to market the thing. I mean, they, they, Lachman could have learned something from them because, you know, the ESV isn't all that different from the NASB.

I've frequently called it the NASB without semicolons. And but, but Lachman held way too tight to the NASB. They held way too closely to it and kept it too tightly licensed and stuff like that. And the ESV guys come along and man, they're hand them out on college campuses and at Bible colleges.

And, you know, they they locked John Piper in a room and so he sang his praises and and they just did it right. And it has just exploded and taken over the market. I suppose that's what Jordan Cooper is talking about here is the the nigh unto ubiquitous nature.

That's sort of funny with being a Lutheran ubiquity. Anyway, a little pun there that only a few people get anyways. But it has taken over and it has just beaten the NIV to death. Of course, the NIV ends up being purchased by, you know, a big secular corporation that didn't know how to handle it and has blundered along those lines, too.

So it's really become the big boy out there. There's no question about it. So he gives some of the background, says the ESV is largely a revision of the earlier RSV. Generally conservative denominations rejected the use of the RSV due to its translation of the Hebrew term Alma and Isaiah 7 as young woman rather than virgin.

Yeah, I I remember when I was a kid, you know, my dad was was death on the RSV. I mean, not only what he doesn't mention here is the world. It was associated with World Council of Churches, which to any conservative denomination was, you know, Gail Riplinger-esque.

OK, as far as as you can't have anything associated with that liberal denomination, that liberal group. And and it was an extremely liberal ecumenical group and things like that. So, yeah, there there and there was the translation of Alma as young woman and things like that.

Such thus translations such as the second Catholic edition RSV and ESV serve as conservative revisions of the RSV. Unfortunately, however, some of the problems in translation of the RSV then carry over to the ESV.

One example is Philippians 2, 6, which is translated was in the form of God rather than the Greek present tense being in the form of God. You know, it's funny that the Lutheran Lutheran take on the Carmen Christi is pretty odd itself.

So I'm not really sure if this has something to do with that or not. I don't know. One might get the idea of reading the text of Jesus only was in the form of God and gave up his deity. Some of the revisions are also quite odd, such as and here's here's what I want to talk about.

One of the things I want to talk about, such as reference to Jesus rescuing the Israelites from Egypt in Jude 5. This particular phrasing has very limited textual basis in the manuscript tradition here and in several other places.

I actually prefer the rendering of the original RSV. Now, I just wanted to mention in in passing that. The ESV actually anticipated. The 28th edition of the Nestle All in Greek text, this point. Some of you know that the 28th edition came out.

Was it last year or the year before? I lose track of which year it was, but relatively recently. And I've told folks, I don't even know if you need to bother investing in the 28th edition. Because there weren't that many changes.

And what's happening is it's being conformed to another major project that's going on. And so the only changes that they made were in like the pastoral pistols, Jude and the Catholic epistles. And so there just there isn't just that that much in the 28th edition.

And the 29th is probably coming out fairly quickly because of the ongoing work and other things. But the one big change was in Jude 5. And of course, if you're using your phone or something, you have to put in Jude 1 5, which is weird.

But anyway, the ESV anticipated the change that was going to be made in the 28th edition. So now they're the only ones pretty much matching up with the 28th edition, where they do have in their reading, in their main text.

And I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. And Jordan Cooper says, well, you know, it's a minority reading.

Well, he's he's going to go on and basically start promoting this ecclesiastical text stuff again, which we've addressed many, many times. And in fact, I should I should try to remember when we I'll never remember to do this because I never remember to do these one things once I get to blogging the show for some reason.

But I should link back to the disputatio that I did with Doug Wilson, many, many, many, many, many 1990s. I don't remember what it was. I think it was. Ninety six, ninety seven, ninety eight, somewhere around in there.

Douglas Wilson used to have a publication, I think it was called Antithesis. And he had a. A feature called Disputatio. And it was a pretty interesting way of doing things. You'd have a debate, a dispute.

And I don't remember it was almost it wasn't quite Twitter like. In other words. Each participant had, I think, 150 words, not 140 characters, a lot more, believe me. I think you had 150 words. And you would make a statement and then Doug Wilson make a statement and you'd make a statement.

I don't remember how many rounds there were. Eight, ten, something like that. It's on the blog. It's one of the it's one of the what do we call it? Legacy, vintage, vintage. It's one of the vintage articles they gave us permission a few years ago.

Well, and I could be wrong about it may not be one of the vintage articles they gave us permission to. If you if you just put in Disputatio in the search engine, it will it will pull it up. And. Have you noticed I'm using a different way of listening to stuff now?

I've got just one little flesh colored, almost almost CIA agent like thing in my ear rather than the two rather than these things, which I've had for years and years and years. But I stick it behind my back and sometimes it slides down and causes problems.

Anyways, we're not supposed to tell things like that because we're so professional around here. And so anyways, so we did this Disputatio because Doug Wilson back then and he probably still is. I haven't seen him say much about it, but Doug Wilson was pushing the ecclesiastical text perspective.

What's the ecclesiastical text perspective? Well, it's the idea that the Byzantine text represented by the textus receptus has been accepted by the church. Now that the irony here is that that that phrase textus receptus came from an advertisement.

The Elsevier brothers in 1633 and advertisements back then used to be in Latin. And so they they had come come up with their own Greek text based upon Erasmus and and Stephanos and and Beza. And they're trying to sell it.

And so in the advertisement, they use the phrase textus receptus, the received text. Well, this is an advertisement for crying, crying out loud. There was no council that said this is the received text.

It was it happened to be the default text at the time because it's what they had. It was not like someone sat down and said, OK, we are going to select the Byzantine platform over against the other. They didn't know what the Byzantine platform or the Alexandrian platform was.

Erasmus had half a dozen manuscripts. He didn't even trust the best one that he had. You know, it just it's so anachronistic. And yet you can you can make it sound so good. You know, well, this was the text reformers.

Not purposefully. It wasn't. It was by default, but not by not by choice. And unfortunately, sometimes even reform folks. Prove themselves to be a little bit less than discerning on certain issues. There are certain things that reform folks can get into that are just sort of on the margins, just a little bit out there.

This is one of them. There's another one I could mention that would get me in a lot of trouble. But. And so Doug Wilson was presenting the ecclesiastical text, the church has accepted this text and these these modern eclectic texts, these modern textual critics, you know, it's it's it's changing all the time.

We need we need to have an unchanging standard. Well, what they don't seem to realize is there is no one ecclesiastical text. There is no one textus receptus. There are five editions of Erasmus. One is Stefano's, one of the actually it's a more one, but one popular one, Stefano's, one of Beza.

They all differed from one another. And there are simply readings in the textus receptus that are absolutely indefensible. They are indefensible. And yet there are people that will overlook that and go, but it's better to have that that unchanging standards.

So I, I refer people and credenda .org book and channel just mentioned it's still it's still listed in their archives and we got permission. So it's on our site as well to be able to post that particular.

It's in Twitter. I'm looking at Twitter. I don't see you on Twitter. You're not in my feed. I don't know why. I don't know why. I mean, I follow you, but I don't know why it's not there. So you can, you can pick it up in a number of different places.

And the reality is, I think, I don't even think it was a close debate. Even if you only had a hundred, once we got into specific texts, specifically to 22, the wheels fell out from under Doug Wilson's position, in my opinion.

As long as you don't get specific, as long as you stay in generalities. Oh, it's it's easy to make that position sound good. There it is. Now I see it says three seconds ago. But once you once you if you have a textual theory that cannot actually give you a text, that's not a good textual theory.

And it, you know, every time, years and years ago, I took on Theodore Liedis on this subject, who has since passed away in a car accident. Theodore Liedis was a big, plesiastical text guy. And there was this big, huge exchange we did back in the days of BBSs.

I mean, it wasn't even wasn't even on, quote unquote, Internet. And once you get into actually having to come up with a text and answer questions about specific verses, that's where what sounds like real nice theory just falls apart because you can't do it.

It doesn't allow you to actually practice textual criticism. And I guess you just have to say, well, whatever Erasmus did, whatever that Roman Catholic priest who wrote in defense of transpantiation did, we're good with it.

OK, whatever. That's going to come out a little bit later on. But going back to Jude five. What you have here would be a very clear reference to the deity of Christ. I mean, if it's Jesus who is taking a people out of of Israel, out of Egypt, I'm sorry.

Well, we know who did that. We know that was God that did that. If that's Jesus doing that. Wow. Now, that's the reading. The term Jesus is found in Alexandrinus, in Vaticanus, 3381, 2344, a few others, and in some manuscripts of the Vulgate.

That's the textual data on that particular. That's not a lot of sources, but that's very early sources. There's there's a major textual variant here. And I would never I would never use Jude five as a primary evidence of the deity of Christ because it is a textual variant.

It has to be put into that category where you note the variant and note, therefore, that its testimony has to be taken in light of the fact that there's a variation there. So. You keep that in mind, but I say kudos to the ESV for anticipating.

What was coming in an essay on 28 and just simply on the basis of textual critical principles. It's it's hard to argue against the reading, given its exceptionally primitive foundation to be wonderful.

If we had some. We do have one papyri, P72, and it has a very interesting reading. It's Hati Theos Christos. The God, Christ, the Christ of God, if it was the you possibly. That's a hotbox reading. That's that's the only manuscript that has that reading.

So it's really hard to understand where P72 is. It'd be nice if we could if we come up with some more papyri of Jude. Jude, because it did have to fight for canonical inclusion, has a very different textual history behind it, similar to Revelation along those lines.

But it is it's a fascinating reading. And of course, the ESV is going to have a textual note somewhere down at the bottom someplace. It's going to discuss that particular issue. At least it should have that particular thing.

I'm looking here and I don't I don't see a textual note in my electronic version. But I don't have an English or ESV in here as far as a paper version. So but the information is is is there. So I happen to think that that the reading Jesus there has some very strong support.

But that's where it's going to we're going to go to that here in just a moment. I also wonder sometimes whether the ESV should even exist, he says, going back to Jordan Cooper. In many ways, the ESV is trying to replicate the same translation, textual ideology of the NESB.

I'd agree. Though originally a revision of the ASV rather than the RSV, the NESB is in many places identical to ESV, like I said, without semicolons. Both were put together by conservative biblical scholars to render an accurate formal equivalence translation of the earliest manuscripts.

Quite true. The updated NESB of 1995 basically does the same thing as the ESV. So what need was there for the ESV in the first place? Well, he knows what that is. Unfortunately, the reason for so many translations often has less to do with the need for the church to have new translations and more with the profit gained by companies owing the copyright to various translations.

Again, it was pure business. It was don't want to pay royalties to somebody else. I don't think anyone would really argue that. I don't think anyone's going, oh, the church is in so much need of a new English translation.

No, I don't think that was anyone's argument at the time. In places where the ESV differs from the NESB and the RSV, I generally prefer the original RSV rendering. However, the liberal leanings of the RSV in a few minor places are problematic because that this is weird.

This is where I just went, eh, what? Because that my preferred formal equivalence translation from the critical text is the second Catholic edition RSV. Go figure. Lutherans, they're just mystery. Mystery all over the place is this.

Why is Lutheran? It's a mystery. You know, it's it's just that's the way it is. This is a slightly revised version of the RSV, which utilizes modern language and fixes the translation of both Alma and Monogonace.

I don't know what the second Catholic edition RSV does with Monogonace, assuming it's unique or something. Finally, this is where I think a lot of people were wondering and asking me to comment on this.

Finally, I wonder whether the critical text should even be the basis upon which our Bible translation should be built. Yes, these editions do try and incorporate the most ancient available text, but those ancient texts are only from one small region of the world, Egypt.

Well, this is a common misunderstanding amongst people because we talk about the Alexandrian text. And so the assumption that people make is, well, that's the text that exists in that one particular area.

The problem is the reason that Egypt gives us so many of the earliest manuscripts is because of, of course, its climate and the fact that a moist climate is going to destroy papyri, especially. Whereas the dry desert climate of the biblical lands or Egypt itself, very perfect for maintaining even papyri for a long, long time.

And so while there was a text type that was predominant in the Egyptian area, not everything that's been found in Egypt is necessarily of that text type. And the Alexandrian text is certainly represented outside of the Egyptian area.

Basically, scholars look at three primary textual families, and that is the Alexandrian text type, the Western, which is generally represented by the Latin text, but also by Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis and other manuscripts like that, and then the Byzantine manuscript tradition.

The majority of scholars in the field view the Byzantine manuscripts as secondary. Secondary in the sense that they are not individual Byzantine readings might be represented within the papyri, but the text type as a whole demonstrates a secondary nature because of the conflation either of readings found in the Alexandrian or Western together, or sometimes you'll have divisions within the Alexandrian manuscripts, and the Byzantine will have both of those.

And if you have a growing text with conflations represented in its readings, that has been taken by the majority of textual scholars as an indication of the secondary nature, the later nature of the Byzantine textual platform.

Now, of course, the majority of manuscripts are Byzantine in nature. Why? Because that is the textual version, the textual family that had become firmly entrenched around what is modern-day Istanbul, ancient Constantinople, Byzantium.

And especially after the Islamic expansion between 632 and 732, you have North Africa and the Holy Lands being taken over by Islam. That's not overly positive for the production of biblical manuscripts.

Greek is still being used and copied there in Constantinople, and Latin has become the primary language of the West, even starting as early as the end of the second century. And so, of course, history tells you why the majority text is in the Byzantine, but the vast majority of scholars have recognized that to take the Byzantine and establish it as the standard.

And there are, you know, Dr. Robinson at Southeastern, primary advocate of the primacy of the Byzantine manuscript tradition, but that perspective has not persuaded the vast majority of folks because we recognize that the earliest manuscripts, the ones that have the fewest generations before the original, and what we have in our extant copies, are going to have more weight than just simply either counting noses in the majority manuscript tradition or establishing the Byzantine manuscript tradition as being the standard by which everything else needs to be analyzed.

And so, when Cooper gets into this, I think he's missing some of the more important elements of the background to this particular issue. He says, because of that, that is this idea that these texts are only from one small region of the world, and I think it's missing what happened in history and things like that.

Because of that, our translations are largely limited to that particular textual tradition. Well, now he's showing he hasn't done a lot of textual criticism because there, if anyone has looked at the development of the critical texts over time, you will see that there has been a rebalancing.

Once the papyri were found, of course, the major unseals, Westcott and Horton stuff were way over-influenced by Sinaiticus Vaticanus. But there has been a move away from just slavishly reproducing those manuscripts, and there are a number of readings that have been adopted in the more modern UBS 5, NA 28, NA 27, that go against the Alexandrian readings.

Is it still the majority of that? Yes, certainly, but not the case. Anyway, so it's not just the translation of the Alexandrian text. The Byzantine is taken into consideration, the Western is taken into consideration.

The issue is the weighting of these various families. This also means that as more manuscripts are found, the text will continue to be revised, and more and more new translations will be released. There's no connection between the two.

Yes, the text will continue to be revised, as it must of necessity be, but that doesn't mean more and more new translations will be released. There might be revisions of continuing translations, but there's no logical connection between the two.

It's like, oh, we found new manuscripts, come up with a new English translation. No, I don't even see where the connection there is. This can be rather confusing for the average churchgoer with scripture memorization.

Okay, it also is somewhat odd that the text we use today is one that never existed in the past, and it is an attempt to reconfigure an original autograph that we don't actually have. Someone's been doing some reading, but I don't...

I'm sorry, Jordan, but I just don't get the feeling that you actually do textual study on a regular basis. You just don't speak as someone who does. Okay, this can be rather confusing for the average churchgoer with scripture memorization.

Well, yeah, that's true. I suggest to people that you find a particular translation, utilize that translation. I don't know that... I think there's lots of stuff to be talked about, about having a standard translation in a particular, you know, in the Pew Bible, or read from the pulpit, or there's all sorts of issues like that, but you don't determine the text based upon pragmatics like that.

That's one of the problems I have with the TR folks. And then it is also somewhat odd that the text we use today is one that never existed in the past. Now, I think what he means by that is that there is no one single manuscript that reads like the NA -27, and of course there is... or 28, and of course there is no single manuscript that reads like the Texas Receptus either.

That's true. So what are you going to do? Say, well, we have to have a particular manuscript that we're going to... we're going to make this one, this one copyist. Again, it doesn't show an understanding of the multifacality of the transmission of the text, the fact we have multiple lines of transmission.

And I think that's why the position tends to spread, is because people don't understand the way that the New Testament text actually has been preserved for us. As much as I... and I'm never going to... I'm never going to finish Angem if I don't hurry up.

As much as I reject the King James only IFB movement, there is a point to be made regarding the preservation of the text. Oh, no! Jordan, if you're going to go this direction, the only way to go here is to go with a Byzantine platform, a Byzantine priority argument.

I'm sorry, there is no argument for the TR that will survive even minimal cross-examination. It's not possible. There are readings in the TR that have no manuscript basis at all, period. Stop going back to the TR, people.

Erasmus, yay Erasmus! He had six manuscripts, okay? He made mistakes. Stephanos and Bezet did not fix his mistakes. And the TR will never, ever, ever, ever live up to its name. And the TR that you people are holding in your hands, this one right here, the blue case bound TR from the Trinitarian Bible Society, is an English text based... is a Greek text based upon an English text.

As you know, this is Scrivener's work. Scrivener went back to those seven printed texts the King James translators used, saw where there was differences, came up with this text based upon what the decisions of the King James translators were, and that's where this came from.