Ehrman Debate

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona. This is the dividing line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is dr. James white director of Alpha Omega ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.

If you'd like to talk with dr. White call now, it's 602 -973 -4602 or toll-free across the United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic here is James White.

Opening Remarks on the Debate and the Broadcast Setup

And good afternoon morning, whatever it is wherever you are welcome to the dividing line I am I've moved my my MacBook Pro over to the the window of my Cabin, if I had a balcony, I'd be out on the balcony, but I've only got a window cabin this time And so to try to get the best Internet connection speed through my little wireless modem I have it propped up on the back of Philip Comfort's New Testament text and translation commentary and Aimed out the window at the various people water skiing past me here on this celebrity century we are currently anchored in Key West, which is why we're still able to do this and We will be pulling it out right as the dividing line Ending.

I hope they don't start moving early or the modem will fall over. But anyway that's what we're doing and I've managed to get four bars out of five. So I hope that'll be Good enough to play the clips and to understand any callers a call at eight seven seven seven five three Three three four one.

I have eight clips set up to play today and Obviously the sound quality isn't exactly what I'd like it to be because this was taken through the air. That is I just pulled the audio from my little video camera my little Casio digital camera that I take everywhere and But it seems to be clear enough I think it'll certainly be clear enough for our purposes to be able to follow the discussion obviously, I promised to provide An update on the subject of the debate a lot of people in our chat channel already know all about it because I managed to fire up Skype and a number of people listened live off of my off of my Mac that was sitting there.

And then recording started circulating pretty quickly. From that and other means somehow and Anyway, so a number of people have heard it. We Lord willing. We'll have the mp3s up either today or tomorrow.

For purchase what we're going to try to do is I have created a small quicktime movie of The presentation that I made so that you can stop and start that little movie and see What it is that I was displaying because a couple times let's say now here you see manuscript p75 or here you see Vaticanus or whatever and If you don't have the presentation, it would be a little bit Difficult to to follow that along.

So that'll be a separate downloads about 3 .3 meg file. We'll figure out a way to make both of those available so you can follow along as as you listen. I Personally I'm not sure how the debate it could have been much better.

Obviously on on one level it would be nice for the debate to have been somewhat like the debates that I've had with with people like Mitch Pacwa and other people where there was none of the Grandstanding and things like that, but that wasn't to be the case dr. Ehrman Believes his own press he He really does believe himself to be the the top dog out there and therefore Finds that simply insolence on the part of a conservative evangelical to dare to question what he has to say.

It was very interesting along those lines to See the form of argumentation. He used it was pretty much the same as But less but a little bit more nuanced is what you got with the infidel guy. In other words, it was basically I'm Bart Ehrman.

Believe me. How dare you? Question me. I held p52 in my hands. I Rubbed shoulders at SBL with the top British Textual critics and the top German textual critics and the top French textual critics and you don't even know who they are.

I'm Bart Ehrman. So is the argument from authority along those lines? You would think that if you're the top dog and you have the the facts on your side that your argument would be well that's impossible because of this fact and this fact and this and this and this not just a bunch of.

Well, I'm just far better known than you are or so on and so forth. But that is pretty much how liberalism views Conservatism while conservative seminaries you study what liberals believe and why they believe it.

That's not the case and liberal seminaries. You don't spend time invest time to worry about these things and those of you who followed The debates I've done in the past. You know, that's exactly how Peter Stravinsky treated me.

That's how Barry Lynn treated me. That's how John Shelby Spong treated me. It was painfully obvious that dr Ehrman had done no particular preparation for this debate. He did not know who I was. He had not even so much.

I think is googled my name. He didn't know where I lived. He hadn't read any of my materials hadn't listened to any of my debates didn't know what my positions would be at all. And in fact David Wheaton asked him the night before what do you what do you do to prepare for a debate like this?

And he said well, I don't do anything. This is this is this is why I feel this is what I've done for 25 30 years. I don't need to do any preparation. And so so he didn't and so as a result, he blundered a number of times.

Because he simply either didn't listen carefully enough to what I was saying or more to the point. Assume things that were completely wrong about what I was saying a number of times. Well, the leading textual critical scholars in the United States could not even follow a basic argument that I was making.

Because he didn't take the time to find out who I am what I believe where I'm coming from. Just you know, that's that's just how the left is. That's just the direction that they go. So that's just one of these things we have to deal with when we are debating folks who come from this perspective and I think that When people take the time to listen carefully to what I said If for example someone transcribes this debate and then puts side-by-side what I said With what he said in response.

They'll be a little bit amazed at the lack of carefulness That dr. Ehrman exercised in responding to me. Let me give you an example of that. I'm gonna skip past a couple. I've got here. I'll try to get back to them let me Give a.

In my hope this is from my opening presentation. Just a little under two minutes from my opening presentation. I am discussing the issue of Primitive the allegation of primitive corruption of the New Testament and my my primary argument against this is That when the New Testament comes out into history when we begin to to receive evidence of it in the form of manuscripts as Ermin would admit of all ancient documents.

It has the earliest and widest attestation of anything. We're going to hear him and say that exactly. I think I might have a shirt made With this exact quote that I'll be able to play for you a little bit later.

That's one thing that this debates could be very valuable for us providing some great quotes. But my argument has been that when the New Testament begins to be seen in history because it is found in multiple Lines, it's not it's not under control of any one group.

It's not just one line very frequently people hear. Dr Ermin speaking and they think that there's just one line of manuscripts, you know you've got this copy and then it's copied and then the copies made of that the copies made of that and that's just one line.

That goes on down through history and all the errors keep piling up and no one ever looks back at any earlier ones. And there's no branches and no no other lines coming from another place and intersecting nuts.

It's it's a nice clean line, but it's very corrupted. That's how people understand what dr. Ermin is saying. That is not the case and so my argument has been that given that you have all these different lines coming into history and They themselves demonstrate that there's one New Testament text.

There's not one New Testament says one thing and then another New Testament over here. It says something else and the New Testament over here that presents up a guy named Billy Bob is the Messiah or something like that.

No, there's only one New Testament. Then the onus the weight is upon the skeptic. To explain how the New Testament could come into expression in this fashion. If there was in fact primitive corruption that would have resulted in all these different corrupted lines coming forward and I used an example graphically with p75 and Vatican to illustrate as multiple lines and.

Yet how early they are going back to the very end of the first century for some reason dr Ermin just didn't get it. And what I don't understand is that Dan Wallace used the same example. I don't think he had the graphic that I Gave and he didn't put in the context of the of all the multiple lines and stuff.

We put in a little bit different context. But it's pretty much the same the same argument and Ermin had never said a word about it to to Dan Wallace. But he does here so let's hear what I said first listen carefully as I honestly think that there were lots of people in the audience who are not at all Textually critically aware who could understand what I was saying and then could see how badly dr. Ermin Misunderstood what I was saying.

So here's here's my statement first just a little bit under two minutes in length. The earliest manuscripts of our possession demonstrate the existence not of a single line of corrupt transmission. But multiple lines of transmission of varying accuracy.

Many of these lines intersect and cross defying easy identification. But the important thing to remember is that multiple lines are a good thing Script tradition that is not under the control of any central editing process.

One example is often noted relate the early transmission of the text is relationship between this manuscript p75 from around 8175 and this manuscript of ex Vaticanus from 8325. These two manuscripts are clearly very closely related in their text indeed.

They may be more alike than any other two ancient manuscripts in the portions where Vaticanus contains the same section of scripture is P75. Vaticanus is a much larger manuscript of this. But remember 150 years separates the copy of these two manuscripts.

This is not a copy of p75 for it actually contains readings that are earlier than some in P75. This means we have a very clean very accurate line of transmission. Illustrated by these two texts that goes back to the very earliest part of the second century itself.

What this illustrates needs to be kept in mind. Lies who asserts corruption the primitive New Testament text since the exit manuscripts demonstrate multiple lines of independent transmission. The skeptic must explain how the New Testament text can appear in history by multiple lines of Transmission and yet each line presents the same text yet without any controlling authority.

So There is the presentation that I made and I graphically had p75 up and I had Vaticanus up and then I showed two separate lines going to each one. But they joining at the end of the first century showing they were coming from the same stream of transmission.

But that p75 was not a copy of the Vaticanus not a copy of p75. Well. Here's just one place where where dr. Erman just did not understand what I was saying. It came up during cross-examination. He again. I had to keep correcting him and saying sir I I did not say if you had looked at the graphic I did not say that p75 is the lineal ancestor of Codex Vaticanus.

Here's my argument again. He still couldn't get it. So here's here's his response. A Completely bogus argument and of course a completely bogus argument that I never made I never said anything about how these Since these are are accurate.

That means there was no primitive corruption at all. I I Don't know what else to say other than I honestly expected him to be able to follow arguments a little bit more clearly. Then then he did but what what can I say?

That wasn't my argument. And so it wasn't a bogus argument, but dr Erman's understanding of it was was bogus. I guess would be the term that he would like to that he would like to use now I'm just gonna go sort of go in the order of these as they appear on my screen here.

Just make it a little bit easier for me and if you've got questions and comments eight seven seven seven five three three three four one and Rich back there in Phoenix will let me know that you're on the line and we'll try to get you in during the program today.

Hopefully that will all work out for us. One of the questions that I want to to get answered. Was dr. Erman when he discusses the New Testament always puts the worst possible spin on things so he was he was on the unbelievable radio program a few weeks ago in London and He was talking about the time frame between the writing of Galatians and our first manuscript evidence of it is 150 years.

I would say it's less than that, but let's go with 150 for now. What he said was that is an enormous period of time an enormous period of time now if you heard a scholar talking about this and He said there's just this enormous period of time between the original and the first example.

We have would that not communicate to you that there's something unusually long. About the time period between the first writing and our examples of it our first papyrus examples of it. Wouldn't that communicate to you that other ancient writings have a much shorter period of time.

I Think that's what it communicates to most folks. So let's take a listen to this audience this or this cross-examination question. Where I asked dr. Erman this very question and listen to his response on the unbelievable radio program in London you discussed the length of time that exists between the writing of Paul's letter to the Galatians and the first extant copy that being 150 years.

You describe this time period as enormous. That's a quote. Could you tell us what term you would use to describe the time period between say the original writings of Suetonius or Tacitus or Pliny? And their first extant manuscript copies very enormous, so ginormous would be a good one.

Okay John Enormous doesn't cover it the New Testament. We have much earlier attestation than for any other book from antiquity. What you can't do is. Okay, yes, right. That's right. So that's right. So it would be correct just to write a book called misquoting Suetonius.

Absolutely scholars do this and scholars write books all the time about how you don't know the work. About what Plato actually wrote or what Homer wrote or Suetonius or Tacitus or Ripley. This is just what scholars do of course, of course there are scans of books on just these topics and so when you cite them in your works you will you will say according to the best sources and We'll question the reliability of Suetonius or.

There's no there's no scholar who's an expert in Suetonius or Cicero or the Gospel of Thomas. Who would tell you that we absolutely know these texts originally said? So when they when you say know what these texts originally said.

But they will believe that we have a sufficiently clear knowledge to quote Suetonius. You quote Suetonius, don't you? Yes, of course. I quote the manuscript tradition of Suetonius. I mean, it's just understood among scholars what you're quoting.

And so you say in your books, I'm not really quoting Suetonius. I'm just that this isn't really what you said. I'm saying that we don't have the original text for any writing from the ancient world. The New Testament is no different.

Just as you can't establish the original text of the New Testament because you don't have sufficient evidence. You can't establish the original text of Suetonius because you don't have original see for dr. Erman sufficient evidence equals a Photocopy of the original or the original self if you have if you don't have that then you don't know this kind of radical skepticism is.

Something he repeated this over and over and over again now as it has been pointed out. I even went online today and looked at one of the electronic versions of his books that I have at amazon .com and I looked up his references to Tacitus and never does.

Anywhere in that in that book does he say now, you know, we really don't have any idea what Tacitus originally said. No, he will simply quote Tacitus he'll quote Suetonius and he will do so without really in any way indicating That you know, okay, so Tony has said this but you know, we just don't know what he originally says.

We don't really know if there's any real velvet historical, you know material here. No, he will just simply quote them the way historians quote them. And so I found a a bit of an inconsistency at that point on Dr. Ehrman's point a position that he will utilize these things, but He just simply doesn't treat them in the same way that he treats the New Testament now then there was another instance where in The closing of my opening statement I some of you saw the graphic that I posted a couple weeks ago Around manuscript p52.

I actually expanded it a great deal added a lot to it and things like that but but I when I was first putting it up there, I put that out there and so He makes mention of manuscript p52 in his rebuttal and I never expected that I must admit I expected a little higher level than this.

Where he doesn't mention he doesn't tell you this. He doesn't mention this and it's funny I was just looking at one of dr Ehrman's books where he mentioned p52 and I gave far more information. And he did and he didn't mention the very thing that he hear me here accuses me of sort of leaving out In my description of p52.

So let's let's take a listen to what he had to say. He put a Manuscript on the screen that was the oldest manuscript that he says that he had studied. I actually looked at this management held it in my hand for two hours one afternoon two summers ago p52.

And he pointed out that this is very similar to the wording by the trial of John before piloting up John's gospel. So the crowd used for pilot John's gospel in later manuscripts. He doesn't point out that there's a significant textual variant even in this credit card size a Significant textual variant involving the addition subtract of certain words.

Now basically, I guess that was his way of trying to say. Oh see there's he's he's trying to deceive you. By the way, I didn't say it's very similar to it is Luke 18 31 to 33 and Luke 1837 to 38. There's no question about that.

It's not this is similar to. And when he said that I wondered what he was talking about and so I looked at my Nessie Allen text and there is only one citation of p52 anywhere in the Nessie Allen text and it is a citation of a word order variant where p52 lines up with the other Alexandrian manuscripts and having one particular word order and then some other manuscripts have a different word order.

It doesn't it's a difference between saying he again entered into and saying he entered into again. Which again makes no difference and so I knew of that Variation word order variation, but dr. Herman himself says that there's no relevance to this and so he said well It's indicated by Metzger.

So of course, I have Metzger's work on New Testament manuscripts and so we we looked it up and From what you just listened to it would sound like. This was some major variants and it totally overthrows Everything that I was just saying about this one message going all the way through etc. Etc. Etc.

Let me read you. Dr. Metzger's own words from The very book that dr. Herman had on his desk the evening of the debate quote. The only textual variation of significance is the Probable omission of the second instance of ice to ta in verse 37.

If the full text of that verse is supplied line 3 verso has 38 letters rather than the average of 29 to 30. Consequently, it is fairly certain that p52 represents a shorter version. Perhaps the result of the scribes having accidentally omitted the second instance of the phrase.

Then he says about the other variant that is no than that's all text in reading pollen before ice top Praetorian verse 33 p52 agrees with p66 BCD and others. The reverse order is read by Sinaiticus Alexandrinus the Byzantine text and the Texas Receptus so there's the discussion and so what you have then is the Possibility it's in the text that is not in the manuscript you have to lay the text out next to the manuscript count the number of letters and see how many letters would have been a line and if You do that.

The average number of letters in the line is 29 to 30 but if you have Ice to ta it would be 38 letters. And so the possibility exists that ice to ta wasn't there. Well, what would that mean? Because again, the idea is that it's it seems from dr. Herman's perspective This is a major variant.

It's a big thing. But the reality is when you actually look at that when you look at the reading if you look at verse 37, it says for unto this I was born and unto this I came into the world and So ice to ta is repeated twice so the difference would be tweaked would be between friend to this I was born and unto this I came into the world for this reason.

Reason for ice to talk for this reason I was born for this difference between the two and somehow this is a different message or we don't know what was originally meant or Because you don't repeat ice to ta.

That's that's that was worth adding this into a rebuttal period. To to say that I somehow had had misled everybody and and I didn't tell you everything you needed to know. I mean not that you couldn't have, you know, look all these things up to yourself but Yeah, that's that's that's what we've got there.

I I was Okay, there you go. So I I hear that the broadcast is starting to Break up just a little bit. I'm sorry about that. There's absolutely positively nothing that I can do about that on this end and there's really nothing that can be done on the other end either I don't know if it's me breaking up or it's the fact that we have a record number of people Listening to the program today.

There is a record number of people listening live. And according to the office I'm still fine, it's the fact there's so many of you who are listening. In fact, we're Wow, that's that's a number I haven't seen of people listening live.

That's that's pretty pretty amazing indeed. Let's play another one here. And again invite your phone calls at 877 -753 -3341 877 -753 -3341. And This was from the opening and This is Bart Ehrman. What he did was?

He started preaching a little bit in his. In his rebuttal the first about four minutes was was an agnostic Lecturing Christians about how we should be open-minded. That we should listen to other views and that we we shouldn't let people like James lull us Into thinking there aren't serious issues here as if as if to hold my position.

Means I don't believe textual critical issues are serious as if I've spent all this time Studying these things and that means I don't think this is important stuff. I Could not even begin to understand the mindset, but let me just play this quickly.

Then we'll take our break. Here's here's what Bart Ehrman had to say. These differences matter. Don't take this assurances. Otherwise Notice notice the misrepresentation the straw man that I had ever said these don't matter.

See because in his language these matter means the Bible can't be the Word of God. We can't know what it originally said. Since these matter that means they are unresolvable. We can't know what the original was.

There's a tremendous amount of equivocation and as far as I can tell from this. The only basis Erman has for making these statements is his own authority. These matter we can't know that's all there is to it.

And when you say when you mean we Know we can know that we can't you know, it's one of these two readings. And in fact, you keep claiming you know what the original was and I think one of the most valuable things I don't think I can play it for you because I I think that was right when my Cameras battery died and before the next battery got put in it was the rest of my my cross-examination.

So I don't have that yet. That will of course be in the mp3s that are available. Or will be available today or tomorrow. But I think one of the most valuable Instances was right toward the end of my cross-examination where dr. Ehrman basically admitted That he has moved away from believing that there is any type of original that we can we can look at and therefore his entire book the orthodox corruption of scripture in essence, he repudiated that because there's no way for that book to even be understood unless you You talk about the original reading of the text.

And so that that's an amazing thing. So let's go ahead and take our break and then we'll be right back with one phone call and your phone calls at eight seven Seven seven five three three three four one.

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Thank you and welcome back to the dividing line.

Caller Discussion: Manuscript Tradition and Early Corruption

My name is James White and we have Alan on the line which is really really silly because Alan's on the same cruise ship I'm on and he just could have come to my cabin and Stood here and we could have done this a lot differently, but you know, Alan's Alan.

So we'll go ahead and talk to Alan anyways, because it is odd that I'm gonna be talking to Alan via my MacBook Pro which is wirelessly connected the internet going to the Phoenix and Then Alan's calling Phoenix and then we're getting connected and it's boy.

It's a really weird world. We live in. So Anyways, yes, Alan.

Yeah, I didn't even I didn't even know you were gonna have a dividing. That's because you don't hang around me dude. No that I saw you having lunch and then I noticed you left early and then I thought that was weird and then I left and wanted to see if I could must be doing a DL from his room and then.

But not cool, of course. It did a statement in his in his rebuttal because it seemed like he ran into. He seemed really upset pleading pleading with the audience to have an open mind and things like the question that I I wanted to the manuscript tradition that you guys like what you're saying in when it comes to the Preservation in the manuscript to the manuscript tradition either.

Eastern. Well, are you referring to what I was talking about?

Primitive corruptions or. Or what are you just talking about the general.

Unity of the entire manuscript tradition. Really the general unity of the entire manuscript tradition. Yeah, I.

Presented that in essence. I and again he got lost on this too. And we ended up wasting a whole lot of time on this. Um, I presented those graphics where I had Bible works mark. The differences between originally I used the Westcott and Hort text as representative the Alexandrian side and The Byzantine text platform as the representative of the Byzantine side and as you saw in most of the graphics There was almost nothing mark.

There was one where there was there wasn't anything marked in Hebrews. And in most places there was just just massive amount of agreement and see he doesn't want to talk about agreement he wants to talk about disagreement and I mentioned that there were less than 6 ,600 differences between The majority text and the modern critical text that makes for a 95 plus Agreement on every other word in the New Testament.

Well, he just totally freaked out on that because he I don't know if he's ever thought about it never looked at it. He thought I was talking about a 95 agreement in textual variants, which I specifically said I wasn't even talking about manuscripts I was talking about printed texts.

And so he got totally lost on that. But yeah, I was was attempting to say was that if there was In the period before the New Testament manuscripts begin to be seen in history if there was something different in those first few decades That there would be evidence of that that as the New Testament Begins to appear in history and manuscripts that we would have multiple lines of very different things in fact Your your question reminds me of something that I wish I had asked him.

Always after a debate you go. Oh, I wish I had thought to ask that or oh, I wish I thought that's that you never really have time to do it, but I Had asked him during the cross-examination would not.

If you edited a Greek New Testament and you put all your choices in how different would that be from the modern critical text and he admitted it would be less different than my critical text than the new than the TRS in the modern critical text, so it would not be very different at all and so what I should have asked him if You took the diverse Early manuscripts say the first 300 years if you took the two that are the least alike and You applied the same standards of exegesis and hermeneutics to both.

Would you come up with a different religion because he's admitted in print that the textual variants do not Chain off the doctrines of the Christian faith, and if he was consistent he'd have to say no.

Well that would undercut his entire position and that's the point is that even if even if you take the most Divergent manuscripts that have the most textual variants one another and interpret them in the exact same way using the exact Same rules of exegesis and hermeneutics you would not come up with some different religion.

You're not going to come up with a different Messiah. You're not going to come up with with with anything because I would imagine the two most divergent Manuscripts that we can find would still have I would estimate a minimum of 92 of exact same words in the exact same place and the other differences would be the Byzantine manuscripts would have Expansions they'd have conflations.

Well, they've taken an Alexandrian reading in a Western reading and put them together as something along those lines. They'd have longer names for deity or certain things like that. But you would not have some different message in any way shape or form.

Was sort of desperate to avoid talking about that because once people get a hold of that. But they're going wait a minute if you're saying we don't know. You're giving us a really radical conclusion that just doesn't fall from the facts.

And so I would assume that that was probably what was behind some of that well.

Yeah, it's a whole not knowing thing is. You know as you said make this day because then you can't know about any originals. Over that. Another thing I thought was was weird was that the beginning of his cross-examination of his questioning you.

When he brought up the twelve manuscripts, I think that you said were within a century of the originals. Right. Yeah, that was news to him, which.

Was interesting since yeah, that totally left me flustered because he never challenged Dan Wallace on that at all. I.

Would you know? Well, I would like to. If you could blog about what they what they are or if you could do. Alan I did yesterday.

Well, I'm out of the loop. Let me let me fill people in. I did that yesterday and someone in Kansas City Sent the list to Irvin and Irvin's responses. Well, some of those in the third century and I mentioned in that.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna I'm gonna list them and I'm gonna list all the papyrologists and paleo paleographers Who placed them in the second century and so you can just see for yourself. I didn't make the list up.

I mentioned on the blog yesterday that I've been kicking myself it would have taken me less than 20 seconds to pull it up if I Remembered exactly where it was in my library library because I had it running and it took me less than 20 seconds to pull it up the next morning, so.

That was. I think I might have those tattooed across my forehead just so that I never ever forget them and sort of in penance for for having done that but. It's seven seven seven four three three three four five or one I can't know from that P.