1 John 3:1, the Pericope Adulterae, and More on Ecclesiastical Textism

Well greetings and welcome to the dividing line on a rather cool day here in phoenix. Um normally a couple days after we have weather here uh y 'all back east get really bad weather so be warned. Um we've got it's been windy the past couple days and might not make 70 here today which um by next week's be 95.

So 68 that's what we're saying that mine's saying still saying 70. But anyway um i'm not complaining. Uh it hasn't been this cool since january. Ah uh anyway i hope you have access to a bible. You if those of you who maybe have learned greek or studied greek or have a greek new testament or have accordons or logos or bible works or olive tree by the way warning to my fellow olive tree using preachers.

He who lives by technology dies by technology. I was 20 percent of the way into my sermon on sunday morning in luke 24 and i was i had my ipad uh ipad 4 and i i had a double window open so i had the nesb and i had the greek.

Not a good idea just telling you now if you're if you're gonna have to be scrolling close that second window but put it put it down at the bottom. Don't don't let anything be there because this has happened before.

And this time i'm right in the middle i'd already read the text but i was right in the middle of a sort of a second read through making a point choked died. And all of my notes with all of my references are in that program.

Somehow i i immediately popped over to accordance to finish the reading but uh i somehow reset the whole ipad and got it all working again. But just just a a warning. Um just he who lives by technology dies by technology.

Everything. Yeah you should have been using a bible. You know a real bible. Yeah yeah yeah yeah okay anyway um uh i i wouldn't mind doing that but then the notes would have been huge. And then what happens when you lose your notes.

You know at worst come to worst. I would have had my notes here. That's that's one other nice thing about that. So but anyhow the real trick was getting through all that without anyone noticing it. First john 3 -1.

First john 3 -1. I want to address some textual issues today. I appreciate the uh uh mostly kind things that have been said about um the program that we did last week um you might want to pray for rich today.

He's still sick and uh in fact is on on death's doorstep in the other room uh but he's dragged himself in here and um brought his ivs along with and a couple doctors and nurses and um and a glass of coffee.

Roy boss oh you got tea. Okay when you're sick that probably helps when you're in this this is respiratory baby. Oh the only cure for that's tea. Okay all right. Chicken soup. Of course i i'm mouth reading you at the moment because i don't have my why should i i'm not to be playing anything.

Um and the only other thing you have to hear is you. Um so listening to me is completely out of question. Okay i get this uh-huh. Anyway um so i appreciate you know i was i was uh just about to do some more rowing when jeff durbin texted or put on facebook hey come over here we'll do it.

And i started thinking i thought yeah all right you know it's on the side of the valley but he offered mexicans so and then i didn't know but summer and thad and clementine and january came over afterwards so i got to see the fam and it was great.

So we did that it was put out in a timely manner and um obviously there are many folks didn't appreciate what i had to say. I get that. But most folks were extremely encouraged by it and and that's great.

I want to do a little follow-up. Um there are some folks and look i realize there's there's no end to this and so um especially amongst folks for whom this is a extremely minority very small but um theological thing for them.

Uh i i realize nothing. I say you know they're just gonna have to you know they're gonna have their say i'll have mine. You make up your minds as to uh what to do with it. Um but there are some folks that like to when you disappear like that coughing like that i'm expecting to see legs go up in the air and and if i and if i see feet go up in the air and then then i i know um that hopefully you've at least left the microphone on and so we can at least get through the end of the program.

Um whether you'll survive that long or not. You know we have to have priorities. I have my cell phone in case i need to call an ambulance. Okay yeah don't bother don't bother calling mine. It's on silent.

We've got our priorities here man anyway we can't have two dividing lines in a row that that are you know that's just that's that's not possible anyway uh i want to point something out um i do firmly believe that ecclesiastical text ism is a human tradition.

It's utterly indefensible and is a gross misrepresentation of the reformed faith. I really do. Uh i i think it's it's a retreat it's anachronistic it's incoherent and it's indefensible. All right pretty clear about that all right.

And there are certain people who just every once in a while have to come out and throw darts my direction and then when i face them it's like hey debate somebody your own size you know i'm. And then they start quoting this person over here.

It doesn't actually take their position and this person doesn't really take their position at all cobbling all this stuff together and it's it's a little scary to me um to see some of the stuff that's being put together and i'm gonna be looking at paul barth because he he put together an it's scary to me.

Um it looks like a lot of the king james only stuff out there. It really does. It's not king james only but it's starting to partake of the same kind of i will cobble anything i have to put together to put together to defend my position type stuff and that that shouldn't just shouldn't be what reformed people are doing it it's it's it's frightening to me but i want to address this one text even before all this stuff started happening.

1 John 3:1 and the Textus Receptus

Oh by the way remember last week remember uh you know the firestorm and everything. Get ready for some more get ready for some more. Um there was one particular article that was um retweeted even by people like russell moore.

And i have written a response and it's a full response and this time it's not 545 words it's over 4 000 and um i'm having it read by a number of people of differing levels of melanin count. Uh as if that's relevant but a number of people.

And uh i don't know when it's gonna be posted but it could be posted as early as today. Maybe tomorrow we'll see. And just needs to be said just needs to be said so uh that that's coming first john 3 1 first john chapter 3 verse 1 in the new american standard bible.

Uh and i should be feeding this to you. Yes i am um see how great a love the father has bestowed on us that we would be called children of god and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us because it did not know him.

Now you'll notice that the phrase and such we are we are does not have a a note in it. Uh i sort of wish that it that it did. Um i'm not. I didn't take the time to look at other english translations to see if any noted i know the new king james would because it's not in the new king james.

Um in the new king james and the king james the what i think is a rather important theological affirmation. The phrase and such we are is not present. It's not present in the king james version. It's not present in the new king james version because it is not present in the textus receptus.

And obviously again i need to explain that the textus receptus that is i guess i have more than one here. Now dude don't i. Oh yeah i do. I wonder why i have two. Uh put that other one back in the other office.

But this is the the standard tr published by the trinitarian bible society simply called the new testament the greek text underlying the english authorized version of 1611. That's what it says. That's a little bit misleading.

Um because there was no printed greek text exactly like this that existed between 1604 and 1611. None none. Uh this is not the first edition of erasmus or the third or the fifth. It's not stefano's 1550.

I should have gotten that out. Uh didn't really have time to. But um it's not the 1598 besa. Uh this is a unique text with unique readings and as i've explained many times before this is a greek text based upon english translation.

That is that does not mean um that someone went to the king james new testament and back translated into greek. No no no. Uh as is well known what scrivener did is he went to those printed editions and uh he looked at what the king james translators chose amongst the variants in the seven printed editions they had the five of erasmus uh stefanos and beza and created this text based upon the textual choices of the different king james translation committees.

Now there are a number of different committees and there wasn't just well the king james translators as a whole. Uh there were different committees for you know the gospels and the pauline stuff and the catholic epistles and so on and so forth and and so there actually wouldn't be an even even a consistency in selection of variants that would represent the entire uh committee uh because it was broken down to subcommittees.

But that's what this is that's this is. And when you turn uh to uh first john uh chapter three um it says uh henna tecna they you clay thoman dia to taha cosmos uganos sky hey moss. So in order that we might be called children of god for this reason the world is not knowing us.

Now on the screen you see henna tecna theo clay thoman chi s men dia to taha cosmos. And there are two greek words that are not in here that are in there. And they are chi s men which is and we are and we are.

Now when you look at the textual data um let me blow this up just a little bit. Um let me let me read for you the specific commentary provided by dr metzger in regards to the ubs and a text platform in general about the phrase chi s men.

Although it can be argued that the words chi s men are an explanatory gloss introduced by copyists in order to affirm the reality of the state previously described it is much more likely that they are genuine being supported by representatives of both the alexandrian and western types of text.

The absence of the words in several of the later witnesses k l most minuscules followed by the textus receptus is due either describable oversight perhaps occasioned by graphical similarity with the preceding word.

And we'll be looking at this right here. It's real small right there but i will be blowing that up big time here in a second. So don't sweat it too much. But this is the magiscule text. Uh clay thoman chi s men magiscule is sometimes called unseal.

It's all capital forms no spaces between words and almost no punctuation or to deliberate editorial pruning of an awkward parenthetical clause. Now i suppose it's helpful first to understand why why scholars feel comfortable at times saying what a scribal error was.

Um there's a there's a movement today then interestingly enough some of the et guys are starting to grab hold of without realizing how self-contradictory they're being. Um to be honest with you some of the et guys have never collated a manuscript in their life they've never actually had to work through a uh a variant on their own their their their primary text is westman's confession of faith which was never designed to actually teach you how to do textual criticism and the movement is something that i have uh really criticized bart erman and and modern textual scholars.

For you know erman feels that we've pretty much arrived the best version of the original text we can come to. And now we're just moving little pieces around and not really doing anything because the current state of the manuscript tradition can't get us any closer than we are.

So all you can really do now is start to exegete the variants to see if you can in essence do some mind reading. Um arguably to this day his still most popular scholarly work is called the orthodox corruption of scripture.

And um what that has allowed him to do is to pretend that he can get in the mind of scribes that lived um 15 to 18 1900 years ago and go well you know this was the great controversy of the day. So this person must have been thinking that the fact of the matter is you don't know what any scribe was thinking.

No one can mind read someone from that far away unless they provided a marginal note. The reason that they messed up or made a mistake could have absolutely nothing to do with any type of theological concern or anything else.

They just might have had an argument with their best friend that day. And they're distracted. They might have had a really bad cold their sinuses were going their eyes were watering and they just couldn't see.

Well you just don't know. It is a fool's errand to try to become uh what was what was the johnny carson thing where he'd stick the karnak karnak the textual critic. That's karnak the textual critic. You just stinking don't know.

Okay you just don't know. And augustine didn't know either. We'll mention that a little bit later up. Um so if it is impossible to know what they were thinking then how can you even talk about recognized inscribable errors.

Well because there are common errors of vision and common errors of hearing that we continue to make to this day. Um words that have similar sounds to them. Um for example in in english there's all sorts of words that are that are pronounced the same but have completely different meanings.

Light l-i-g-h-t can be that stuff up there it's coming down from the ceiling. Uh it can be something that is not heavy uh l-i-t-e is another you know um textual criticism. Light uh you know there's there's there's all sorts of different ways that you can understand that.

And it's one of the reasons english is a difficult language for people from another language to learn because we have so many of these terms and so many different spellings and all sorts of stuff like that.

And so if you're writing something down that someone is reading it's very easy especially if you're doing it for a lengthy period of time to see how substitutions could be made and and and errors of hearing could take place.

But most early copying wasn't done in scriptoriums there were some that were but um especially during periods of persecution it would be more likely um that it would be errors of sight. And there was always a period of time when you know one person would just be copying in other manuscripts called your exemplar.

So uh you're you're copying from your exemplar and and there are errors of sight that we continue to make to this very day. It's a little bit easier now cutting and pasting. Um though have you ever have you ever missed the first letter or the first word of a cut and paste because you didn't realize that your your selection had started wrong.

Or you missed the last part because your your selection didn't go all the way down there you didn't notice it you thought it was all selected but didn't. So things like that can still happen. But back in my day when i was writing papers in high school and college i got my first computer halfway about halfway through college um you'd have a you know you'd you'd have to have a a book out and you you open it up and you know you put over here by the side and you're you're doing this this number you know and you go back here check which of course you're writing on an IBM Selectric so you're having to get your whiteout out to your correction paper or whatever else it is when you make a mistake you got something like that going on.

There's lots of you know things to distract you. And in the process your eye has to keep going back and forth the exemplar and so let me change over here to something else so you can see what it is. I'm i'm talking about here.

Uh you have to get this off of that screen because it's going to get confused and i don't want it to be confused. Uh-oh uh did that work. No i didn't think that it did uh boom that should work. And boom.

Okay so what would frequently happen is one of the most common ending what most common scribal errors was called homo eteluton homo eteluton similar endings. And it happens in english. If you um if you had the term uh education ends with tion and in the same uh line you have relocation.

That's just location education location both end with tion. And as you're copying it you look over um and you see what dan wallace doesn't think. Errors of hearing occurred. Well of course they occurred.

Why. How else in the world could you have all the different uh homo and hamon in like in first john one there's everyone i've ever heard uh understands. They were both pronounced the same way. Anyway uh you look over and you you've just typed tion your i sees tion and you continue on.

The problem is the tion you've seen is later in the line from the tion you just typed and as a result everything in between is gone now unless you're paying really close attention and sometimes the sentence will still make sense.

So it doesn't necessarily catch your attention. Um but that's called homo eteluton similar endings. Well let me show you how that that worked in first john 3 -1. And remember something. This is something a lot of people just don't grasp and understand.

You're worrying me out there. I mean you know you're running into the other room to cough up a lung. You only have two. So um just just move along. Okay. All right. Um you need to understand. For the first 900 years of the new testament's copying in greek it was written in majuscule text which sometimes called unseal text though unseal actually has a technical meaning that wouldn't always fit.

But anyway all capital forms no spaces between words and almost no punctuation. Sometimes you know depending on the manuscript you'd have end of line forms and and there was a few things that scribes did.

But basically it was just a big long line of capital letters. And and most people who have taken like first year greek can't read unseal. They can read up the top of the page that's normally an unseal text or something like that.

But actually reading it if they actually look at sinaiticus or vaticanus or the papyrus stuff like that uh next to impossible to to even uh start reading. And obviously when you think about what that looked like homo teleton would be even more of a problem because it's just simply the same set of letters in a long line of letters.

And so let's let's look at what's on the screen here and here is oh great. For some reason it won't show the uh won't show the pointer. Lovely. Um oh all right won't be able to point out to you. But there is first john 3 -1 or at least a part of it in unseal you'll see.

Uh hey mean hot pot tear here not techno. Say you now say you there is the what's called a nomena sacra. It's only two letters. It's not spelled out like it is in our greek new testaments. And there should be a line over it.

Um because the nomena sacra had a line put over it to indicate the contraction. But then the last four letters of the first line are clay and then a theta clay and then thoman clay thoman um the children of god we might be called clay thoman kai s men and we are dia tuta ha.

And then your your kappa armicron is the beginning of cosmos which would be the next word. For this reason the world is not knowing us is how it goes on. You will see that clay thoman ends with mu epsilon nu and s men ends with mu epsilon nu or looks like men in uh if you're looking at in greek.

And so here you have a classic type of situation where a scribe writes clay thoman their eye goes back to the text picks up the end of s men which is not very far down. The line continues on there and you have an inadvertent deletion of a theologically relevant assertion of our adoption as children of god.

All right. So let's take that down. Um so there you see how it would have looked in the original language. But now i want to show you um let me see here bring your cordance up and send that over to you.

Now all right. Now let's take a look at the now that's that's sort of an analysis of the internal evidence. There is a a when you ask the question why would someone add the phrase and we are. And why would someone delete the phrase and we are.

Well when you have when you have an explanation that does not require the scribe to have malicious intent or editorial intent that's going to be the default thing to do. Um there's no malicious intent in recognizing homo teleton here there is editorial intent in trying to say well someone wanted to affirm this.

Well it starts the next verse. First john 3 2 says that. So there wouldn't be any reason to do that. But let's look at the external evidence now all right. It's right down here at the bottom and this is the ubs5 apparatus.

Uh it is given an a rating uh by the committee uh kai esmen is the reading of sinaticus alexandrinus uh vaticanus cp psi 533. You can see the number of minuscules and unseals. Uh the lectionaries in general.

And by the way keep keep something in mind here when we look at the percocet adultery in a little while they're going to peep once. One of the ways you can detect traditionalism especially amongst people that are trying to do textual criticism on the basis of a theological tradition is they go at it backwards.

They have a text and now they will do with the data what they need to do with the data to keep this text. It's not it's not that they have a system that would have given this them this text consistently in the first place.

No they're working at it backwards. And so when it comes to pericope oh well the lectionaries do this. So we need and the early there's a latin writer over here and you've got this over there and you've got all a set of arguments.

Then you get to first john 3 1 get rid of all those arguments and know it's something else. And so for here you have the lectionaries saying chiasm and you have uh it's a western reading. You've got uh various of the latin translations vulgate um all sorts of early translations.

Even augustine who is going to be one of the main uh testifiers for the percocet adultery says it should say. And we are omit it. Well when you've got byz that's the byzantine text type. Now let me see.

Uh i should have done this. Let me add a parallel here. Uh where did it go. See unfortunately this is this is a different computer than my regular one and so the uh texts are in a different listing here than they are in my other one huh.

I don't have that on this one. Hmm i'm gonna give it one more quick look here because like i said they're in different orders and i'm not saying it. Oh wait a minute. Let's go all the way down the bottom and see if i stuck it down here someplace.

No got the na28. No don't have it in this one. I don't have to add it in there. It's supposed to be in there someplace. Let's take a look at this one here real quick. This is the hodge's farstad. Yep i mean it notice it.

It lists the uh the reading in the footnote. Um but it says majority text does not have and we are all righty. So what you have here then bring it back up is a you have some lectionaries. They don't have it.

Certainly they'd be the later ones that are based upon this is really a later byzantine text versus all of the alexandrian and western texts and pretty much all the earliest stuff that we've got. Or to put it another way.

And here's the question for my ecclesiastical text. Uh proponents what church do you mean when you say ecclesiastical what church do you mean. Do you mean the east north ox church. Um are you consistent with that.

I mean theologically. You don't mean that you don't follow the east north ox church theologically. So when you say the church has given its approbation to these texts through usage what church. And when.

Because you know uh paul bart commented you know said i was misrepresenting them because i point out the vulgate. I wasn't saying they believe that. I was saying that they should have to come up with an argument against it.

Well westminster anachronism anachronism anachronism. You all need to do some church history reading. You really do stop with the anachronisms. The argument of rome against the reformers was an ecclesiastical text argument.

They said the church for 1100 years had used the same text and they were right. So if you're going to make your final authority the church and then get all nebulous as to what that is then you need to recognize how that argument has been used in the past.

And the very texts that you are now dependent upon as the et were written by people who rejected et arguments in their own they risked their lives to reject those arguments. You don't think that that might be something you might want to think about.

What it. Okay. What church was it. If it wasn't the western church latin vulgate then eastern church. Okay when council of constants maybe i mean what's the time frame. Because when you look at that textual evidence when you look at that textual evidence you know what that tells you.

When you look at the dates of those manuscripts you know what that tells you that in the year 1000 the ecclesiastical text. But let's just put it this way the majority text in year 1000 had the phrase kai esseman in it.

Now why would that stop being the majority reading. Because it wasn't in the byzantine tradition. And the majority of texts produced in the west were latin and the muslims took over north africa and ancient israel and up through syria and so on so forth up to the gates of constantinople.

And so the vast majority of greek texts produced after 1000 a .d. or from one area and the text type in that area had experienced a scribal error based on homo teleuton and therefore over time the deletion became the majority.

But it wasn't in the year 500. It wasn't in the year 1000. So the byzantine text argument is going to say well okay. But that's why we're not majority text or byzantine text. But the majority text guys are going to have to answer the question.

And the ecclesiastical text guys are gonna have to answer the question. So was the church in 1000 a .d. Chop suey. Was it. Was it irrelevant. How. About 500 a .d. I mean this is the you know christological controversies nicaea constantinople.

You know calcidon. Sort of important right. And so what was their text in that day. The evidence is that their text had kai esmen. And we are. So think about what your argument means when it gives you a different text depending on what century you live in deal with the deal with the material.

Not. You know what you know the scary part is the scary part is that what you're going to hear i predict this. I will preemptorily take care of the counter-argument. Well it's clear that they had a lot of manuscripts that we don't have access to.

Ah so what you're saying is when it comes to external evidence you're not actually swayed by external evidence. Here's a situation we have lots of external. There's there's a lot of witnesses to this little book of first john.

And what we have tells us directly in the greek manuscripts as well as in the translations that the earliest reading the majority reading of the first thousand years was and we are. But we are going to theorize a majority of manuscripts that didn't have it but we just don't have them anymore.

I want you to think about what that means. And then i want to ask you a question. Can you take that out of the reformed pub and take it to any university campus. Can you take on any muslim any bart ermanite anybody where.

When they ask you for evidence you have to go. Well you know they had a lot of manuscripts that uh you know we don't have anymore. That's why i say this stuff is the end of meaningful apologetic defense of the new testament.

It's the end of it. That's why i'm concerned about it otherwise solid guys that would be out there engaging the culture crippled by human tradition. That is simply not defensible. So what are you gonna do with the facts.

What do you do with the evidence now. That's just one variant of many that we could look at. That raises this question of what is the church. What time frame are we talking about. This raises issues not only for the et guys but the mt guys.

Ecclesiastical text majority text are not necessarily the same thing because majority text changes over time. And that's not the same thing as byzantine priority because dr robinson doesn't believe you go for byzantine priority because of the west minister confession of hate.

And by the way might i mention if you're going to quote him deal with the reality that he argues the way he does for reasons other than the ones you argue for he's not defending the byzantine text type because it happened to be the default text type that the west minister framers used.

Okay be up front about that say i'm going to steal from him to make this point to prove something completely different than what he actually believes. Just just just be up front about. I think i think that'd be good.

I think it'd be good. So there's first john 3 -1. So with that in mind let's consider the pericope adultery. Shall we. And i talked about this a little bit last week but i want to address it once again just simply to um answer a few more questions for the people.

I realize i'm not changing the minds of the zealots. The zealots are just going to just i know that's fine. But there are a lot of folks that want to hear they want to see evidence. They want to see who can present a compelling argument.

And again my assertion is if you are going to engage this area you need to present a positive theory of textual critical operation that can actually answer the question of what the text is they can actually produce a text.

And my assertion is the et guys are demonstrating they can't produce a text. History has produced a text for them. And now they do anything they can to defend that form but they don't have a system that would have created that.

That's the difference between them and dr robinson. Dr robinson has a system that creates a particular text. Now i think it's due to a presuppositional starting place which is why i can't buy it. But i get it.

And the system produces a text. The ecclesiastical text the eclectic text produces a text. Etism produces nothing at all because there is no system it can't answer direct questions. So when we come to the percobet adultery john 753 381 which dr robinson defends not because of confession of faith however what we're looking at and and one thing that i note remember the discussion of that extremely important text and i i wish we i had the date because i'm sure it's up on um sermon audio when we had alan kirschner on to discuss the text in luke 23 39 i think off top of my head um father forgive them tell you know not what they do.

It's a major textual variant. One of the things that we mentioned in looking at that text was the fact that one of the earliest exemplars of the byzantine text is codex washingtonianus. Now codex a is byzantine in flavor in the gospels as well.

Um and someone in channel yeah i know i don't know why it's not on my um my thing here. Um let me see if it comes up on easy install. Maybe maybe i just didn't. Yeah no yeah i don't know where it went because i have it on my other computer and it's just it just didn't didn't show up.

Um can i ask really quickly uh garrett in channel whether uh that contains kai esmen in first john 3 -1. I'll keep my eye on on the um channel there to uh to see what the answer that is. I'm pretty sure i know what it is but march no march 16 2013.

No uh it was the one where we this was years ago uh when alan was on to talk about uh that particular variant in in luke. And we talked about the fact that one of the strongest arguments against the originality of the phrase is the fact that when you have a variant reading where you have test consistent testimony in the alexandrian western and byzantine text types so in other words you have a wide dispersion of in that case deletion not containing that reading that is very important that's that's that strengthens the uh reading the strengthens the evidence that reading when you look at the omission of the percocet adulterate in the manuscripts which is i assert your primary source of authority it must be your primary source of authority.

No one argues that the percocet adultery is not an early story. So simply finding somebody talking about it is not the same thing as finding someone quoting say exegeting john and they go from 752 into the percocet adultery.

For example someone was quoting a commentary on ecclesiastes that mentions the story. No one's questioning that was an early story. That's not the point. The point is why isn't it in the manuscripts your manuscripts are your final authority.

That's the issue. Uh september 4th 2008 according to turretin fan uh september 4th 2008 is the the date for that one on the uh that other very important variant in luke chapter 23. Um point being when you look at the deletion of the pericope p66 p75 sinaiticus alexandrinus vid means there would not have been enough space that that portion is missing.

But when you look at what's there where the lacuna is and then afterwards and you figure out how much how many letters and words you could have fit in there there's not enough space for that 12 uh verse edition uh vaticanus same with c c and a same situation l n t washingtonianus delta uh theta psi um a number of of minuscules lectionaries numerous versions of the latin coptic sahidic a number of versions of the of the syriac um late manuscripts of the syriac added in once it became popularized coptic armenian georgian sloven.

In other words in the year 500. What was the ecclesiastical text of john 7. I'm asking us of paul barth robert true love in the year 500. Since brother true love chose to want to quiz my daughter about this last night he says he didn't know it was her.

Okay i'll accept that. Not sure how you can be in the pub and not know who she is. But anyway uh my turn to quiz you what was the ecclesiastical text of the year 500 in the original language. Did it contain the yes or no.