Microphone Testing, Living Out, Traditional Textism and the Longer Ending of Mark

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:39

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. It is a Monday, and that's not normally when we come to you, but we'll be in South Texas, unfortunately having to fly through the

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San Antonio airport. I used to love going to San Antonio. I've been there a couple times years and years and years ago, and the

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Riverwalk was really, really nice. But, as most of you know, the San Antonio City Council, taken over by leftist totalitarians who just decided that it is morally evil to eat

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Chick -fil -A sandwiches, and therefore they are not going to allow you to do that in the San Antonio airport.

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Well, dear San Antonio airport, I'm not going to eat in your airport ever again. I'll bring a protein bar and skip it, but I'm not going to help you in your leftist causes.

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If I can find the manager's office there at the airport, I will personally deliver that message as well.

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But, since we will be at the South Texas Bible Conference this weekend, and both

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Rich and I have a bunch of stuff going on this week and next week, and actually pretty much the rest of the year, we're trying to work some stuff out.

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I have to try to, you know, everything coming through Alpha and Omega with Rich, and then

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I'm trying to talk with the elders at Apologia about preaching schedules and traveling and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

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And so it just makes it really, really challenging to try to keep up with everything. But anyway, so we're looking at today and then

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Thursday, and we may go a little bit longer on Thursday or something just to make up for the fact that we will only have one program on the next week, on Wednesday of next week.

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And with the way things are going, things are very, very busy, and I'm trying to get used to this.

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I have fought these microphones for 10 plus years, but they are the highest quality as far as voice stuff goes.

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Everyone tells me that. I hate the ones that go over both ears.

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I can't tell how many times I've had one of these hanging from my shirt by the end of a conference because it's somebody else's.

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And so, I don't know, it's been probably a year, and we need to buy our own and get one with, you can get them with all these different plugs, so you can just plug into everybody's system and make it fit me.

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Instead of trying to make one that was just used by some other guy that's bigger or smaller or whatever fit you.

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It doesn't work real well. So, we're working on making this one fit me.

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It is nice and light, and it will be easy to carry, and I should be able to plug it into whatever.

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And as long as I can make it fit my ears without giving me a migraine headache, then we'll survive.

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But thanks to Matt DeJesus for helping us get the right ones and stuff like that.

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I was talking with Matt just yesterday at Apologia in the evening.

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But you'll probably see me playing around with it a little bit to try to get it where it needs to be. This is the first time we've worked with it.

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And so, it's just a matter of getting it squished down and, you know, just the stuff you've got to do.

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And I have a beard, and so it's going to rub against that. So, we'll work with it. We'll get it figured out.

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And so, I'm hearing it's, like the old mic, better quality. It's clipping everything else.

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Sounds sketchy. You're working on it. Rich says he's working on it. He's not blaming the microphone yet.

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But he's...might be the receiver, he says. I have no earthly idea.

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If it starts clipping and stuff, then we'll have to go back to the other one and figure out what's going on.

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So, you said it sounded muddy to you. It's muddy.

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Do you...okay. Alright, well, so what do you want to do?

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Oh, you already want to give up? You just figure there's no way of rescuing this already? Oh, I see.

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Okay. Well, fine. That was fast. I mean, here

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I am, finally trying to get to, you know, something that's modern that I can use and I'm carrying and stuff.

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What I'm carrying, yeah, that's all the time. But when I'm traveling, I can carry it with me. And it's like, nope, it's not going to work.

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Just get rid of it. Throw it out the window. I think it needs to be hardwired rather than using the thing.

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Hmm, interesting. So, the transmission, going back and forth doesn't make any difference?

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No, that's no difference. All you know is it is muddy. Okay. Alright, well, yee -haw.

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I'm sorry? You pull it out like this? That makes it better?

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Really? This is live radio, folks.

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Alright, let's try that.

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Much better, huh? So, it was too close to my mouth? Well, alright.

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So, I'm just going to put this over here for the moment. Undoubtedly, we'll probably swing my arms around at some point and catch it and it'll fall down and break.

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Survey. I've got people in South Africa saying, yes, keep it away. What? Maybe down a little bit?

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Okay, alright, well, okay. See, I've even got people in Twitter saying, okay,

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I've got, okay, our friend Ashley says the gain is too high. There is no gain on it.

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Sorry, Ashley, there's no gain on it. He doesn't like, quote -unquote, condenser mics.

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So, y 'all can skip this part, but maybe we'll just cut it out, re -upload it or something,

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I don't know. It's too fun? Okay, alright. Well, anyways, we will press forward.

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So, with that, I did want to start off with the crazy stuff, and I suppose

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I should thank the individual who... Also, I don't need to speak as loudly when the microphone is this close.

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It's hard for me to...it sounds like I'm now telling people secrets or something.

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Hi, welcome to The Dividing Line. Remember when

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I did The Dividing Line wearing the nice floral print tie, the bow tie, and we just talked about how we loved everybody and freaked everybody out?

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Yeah, there we go. Let's start with the crazy stuff, and this was from yesterday.

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I don't know who...I forgot who linked me to it. They may wish that the world did not know who linked them to it.

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But this is from Asheville, North Carolina, and someone said they did a search of the blog and saw no references to this

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Dr. Gene Kim. I remember, in fact, if I recall correctly, it had to do with John Six, because he was writing on a chalkboard or something.

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But he's a King James -only guy, and so someone sent me...it

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was about a six -minute, almost seven -minute clip, Dr. Gene Kim preaching with fire or something like that.

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And this is a portion of it, and I just realized this could make it very difficult for me to listen, unless we find a way to put a thing in with it.

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I mean, I can't do it in that ear. I've got to do it in the other ear, and that doesn't reach far enough to do the other ear very well.

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So anyways, let's...we're just thinking about things as we're going along here. Let's listen to what preaching looks like.

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And by the way, as the screen comes up, you will be able to see that you have here probably a fairly small building.

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It says, Jesus saves, up on the wall. And there is a blackboard, and then there's a whiteboard, and written on the whiteboard, it says,

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Love them to Jesus. So let's see how Pastor Kim loves people to Jesus.

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Let's jump in here. Oh, wait a minute, it's all the way down at the end. And here we go.

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Ready? Those of you who had your finger at us, and called us

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Rachmanites and idolaters, you will one day bow the knee, and you will confess

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Jesus is Lord, and then say, I am wrong. James White will have to confess, because every tongue has to confess all, at Romans 14, of all their account.

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And James White is going to have to say this, the original Greek is garbage, Jesus. That's what

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I did on the King James Bible, son. James White will have to go to Gale Ripley, William Grady, and Peter Upton, and say,

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I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Amen! What is that?

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What was that? I didn't get that part.

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But he obviously knows where the camera is. And of course, back here, this part where this guy's name is

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Sluder, and he's waving his Bible around him because he's on fire.

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So I guess they're fanning the flame or something. I would never do that with my Bible, personally, but there you go.

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But, you know, I estimated, I would say probably, given how many of these things are sent to me, and people say, hey, you should have heard what so -and -so said, so -and -so said.

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I would estimate probably about 12 times every Sunday, every

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Lord's Day, in some King James -only, IFB, NIFB church across the nation or the world,

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I am mentioned like that. And the whole reason is because I wrote the King James -only controversy. That's it.

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But I definitely live absolutely rent -free in these guys' heads.

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I really, really do. And especially Gene Kim. It's not the first time he has done something like this.

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But that's considered preaching, and to have the maybe other elder or whatever,

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I don't know, get up and wave their Bible at you. And yeah, that's preaching.

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That's what we're told. I'm sure down here, I'm sure that little table down front says, in remembrance of me and the whole nine yards.

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But there you go. I don't even know what to say in response to something like that.

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Gail Ripplinger and William Grady. Gail Ripplinger.

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I didn't know Gail still had much in the way of fans left, actually, but evidently, she does.

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Yeah, there you go. So if you're in the Asheville, North Carolina area,

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I think it's Bible Baptist Church is what it's called. Looks really interesting.

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I've often wondered what would happen if I walked into one of these places and sat down in the front row.

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Just right as the service is starting. And I thought about doing that here locally with Anderson.

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I mean, could you imagine what would happen in that situation? So there you go.

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Be very, very, very interesting. On another issue, before we get back to King James only stuff.

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This morning at 5 a .m. Eastern time.

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You're not sure. At 5 a .m. sometime. In some time zone. We posted an article, the first of,

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I believe, four. I read four articles by Tom Buck on the subject of the living out ministry.

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Which is headed up, as I understand, by Sam Albury. But Sam is not the primary writer on the living out website.

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There have been some real problematic articles and real problematic links from the living out website.

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Now, living out has been promoted by the E .R .L .C., Dr. Moore of the

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E .R .L .C., and by other leading evangelical voices.

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One of the concerns that we have is that there is so little understanding of the issues surrounding human sexuality, marriage,

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God's role as creator in defining those things, that many people in evangelical churches will be swayed, probably permanently, by the first meaningful discussion they hear.

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Given what's going on in our society right now, and given the epistemological slide that is taking place in the society and therefore in the church as well, the idea of very carefully thinking through and very rigorously thinking through, rather than feeling through, these issues.

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There's a huge difference between those two things, and unfortunately, in the experience of the vast majority of evangelicals in Western culture today, they feel through issues, they don't think through issues.

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You have to be able to think in a way that goes against how you feel about something.

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If anything marks leftist liberalism in my experience, if you want to see if someone's going that direction, then find out if they are, in essence...

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Listen to what their source of authority becomes. Is it a rigorous, logical examination of things, or is it much more a,

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You know, I listened to someone, and they just seemed so sincere, and I had never felt this way before.

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I came to understand, based upon these facts and this reasoning, there's a huge difference between these things.

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And if you want to see if someone's heading off to the left, listen to that language.

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Listen to the capitulation that people have in regards to thinking seriously about things and thinking them through logically.

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So, the concern that we have is the issue of homosexuality.

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Sam Albury and the other writers for the website claim to have same -sex attraction, and yet to live without engaging in same -sex...

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I'm going to have to put the channel down, since I've got people tuning out because they say the mic is still so bad.

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Is it really that bad? Well, that's disappointing.

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That means I'm not going to be able to carry it this week, so that's a bummer.

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Because everybody says it should be just the opposite of that, so maybe we need to look at a more expensive one or something,

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I don't know. So we'll go back to the tried -and -true way here, I guess. What was

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I saying? There are two others who write for the website, and personally,

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I sense a major difference. I'm sort of wondering if perhaps there is not some level of disagreement amongst the individuals involved there.

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We had the situation with the tweet in support of the ReVoice conference that was then polled.

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There just seems to be some inconsistencies in what is on the website.

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But certainly, there are articles on the website that Tom Bak is going to be addressing that are extremely concerning to a large number of folks, even though Living Out has been connected with TGC, ERLC, Ravi Zacharias, International Ministries, and a number of others.

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And so this is a – and I mentioned just a few weeks ago, I reviewed

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Sam Mulberry's comments on transgenderism at the

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Ravi Zacharias get -together. It was a month, month and a half ago or so.

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And expressed my concerns. I took the time to read his book, pointed out that on the exegetical issues, we interpreted the text about homosexuality identically.

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But it's in the application, especially in the meaning of same -sex attraction as a disordered attraction.

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That's where the difference seems to lie as to what that means.

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And it was interesting that one of the primary people from ReVoice jumped into that conversation on Twitter, which was very interesting.

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So those articles will be appearing this week at AOMin .org if you want to catch them there.

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I already know that – I don't think we do a bunch of statistics and numbers and stuff like that.

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But I can guarantee you there's a lot of folks that are aware of that first article, which doesn't say anything other than sort of lay the background and say,

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Hey, there's a lot of things that Sam Mulberry says that we can agree with, that we can be supportive of.

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But there's a lot of other stuff here that is going a direction that's very concerning.

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And why is this? What's going on here? And so Pastor Buck will be addressing those issues.

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So you'll be wanting to look at those things. I guess it was probably good that I did what

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I did there in having somewhat of a break. Because I don't want to have the rest of this discussion that we're going to have for the rest of the program to be connected to the zaniness of the

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Ruckmanites or even of a Steven Anderson style type thing. But having said that,

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I also recognize that there's a certain level of zeal involved among some people when it comes to the issue of the textual critical debate.

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I have a challenge that I have up on the screen that I would like to offer. Now, before we put that up,

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I was listening to a program that I'm not going to address today.

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But I was listening to a program the day before yesterday as I was driving back from a quick day trip down to Mount Lemmon in Tucson.

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And in that program, the perspective that I've called the traditional text or TR position was identified as the confessional text position.

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And this is by Reformed Baptists. And let me just say why

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I will not be using that terminology. I do not refer to, for example, the people who put out the statement,

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I don't know how long ago it was now, four or five years ago maybe, who identified themselves as the traditionalists in the

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Southern Baptist Convention. They put out their statement on a traditional view of the gospel. Which was against Reformed theology.

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Now, immediately, people like Tom Askell, Founders folks, objected to the language that was used.

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Because it's untrue. That is, it tries to claim something and make an argument simply by the nature of its language.

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And that wasn't the traditional view. And you can demonstrate that from the beginning, there was a deep and abiding

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Reformed understanding of the kingship of God and salvation and everything else.

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And so to call it the traditional view is to change history.

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Likewise, to identify the modern promulgation of the 16th century

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Greek text produced through a haphazard series of events.

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Because it was. Erasmus, when he began the work in 1516, well, he began it before then, but when it was first published, had no idea how many editions it was going to go through.

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He did not have any idea what kind of pushback there was going to be. He would not have had any way of knowing that Stephanus would pick up his work.

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Who it would be that would pick up his work that would go through Stephanus to Beza. Didn't know how the

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Reformation was going to work out. All the wars that were going on, the invasions and the rebellions, and had no way of knowing which texts were going to be used.

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Which cities in Europe would host the manuscripts that may or may not be examined.

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No way of knowing whether Erasmus' rather low view of Revelation would the next editor likewise have a low view of Revelation.

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And the editor after that. There's no way of anyone knowing any of these things.

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That's why I say it was a haphazard series of events that could not have been foreseen.

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Which is why it's not repeatable, by the way. Led to a particular form of the

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Greek text based upon not an examined, collated, purposeful collection of Greek manuscripts from all across Europe.

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There was no such effort being made. But a

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Greek text based upon a particular spectrum of manuscripts ends up being utilized by the

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King James translators between 1604 and 1611 to produce the King James version of the

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Bible. And then 20 some odd years later, you have it being printed by the

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Elsevier brothers and they call it the Texas Receptus. So, people who are promoting that primarily 16th century production, which was produced by men who were using textual critical principles.

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These textual critical principles had not yet been formalized. But it is beyond all question that Erasmus, for example, spoke of the corruption of the text.

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He spoke of common scribal errors. Substituting similar looking words.

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Looking at the more difficult reading. He recognized dittography, homoeoteluton.

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He picked up a lot of these things from Lorenzo Valla before him.

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But he did not apply them consistently. Because what you have with the 16th century

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Greek text is similar to what you have with Bible translations that are done by only one individual.

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You may like Moffat's translation or something like that.

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But the best Bible translations are done by committees. Why? Because a committee acts as a buffer against your particular personal predilections and ideas.

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And so, modern Greek texts are produced by a committee of scholars who do not walk lockstep with one another.

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They have differing views upon things. So, they have to argue things out. That's a good thing.

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It's not a bad thing. But that Greek text, you didn't have that.

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You had Erasmus having to respond to criticisms.

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So, there was that level of discussion somewhat. But what's interesting is many times in the annotations, what

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Erasmus does is he'll admit that maybe someone has a good reading. But he won't change the reading in the text itself.

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He just wasn't concerned about it. He was not trying to produce a text that would be the authoritative text.

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It was the last thing on his mind. And so, there are times in annotations he said, yeah, this is probably the stronger reading.

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But then he wouldn't edit it. And it would still have the reading that from his own perspective was no longer the strongest one.

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And in many instances in the annotations, he says, leave it up to the reader. If you find a manuscript that reads otherwise, fine, great.

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So, he was not in any way cognizant of attempting to produce what is now presented as the final authority, the inspired word of God.

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And he, again, would have laughed at the utilization of his text by individuals today.

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But there are those who today are saying that to be confessional, because the confessions then are written in the next century.

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And there is not almost any meaningful textual critical analysis going on.

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As far as, again, collation of manuscripts, collecting of manuscripts, cataloging of manuscripts, comparing of manuscripts.

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None of that's happening for quite some time. And so, the 17th century,

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Westminster Divines, framers of the 1689 London Baptist Confession, embrace a

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Greek text that is theirs by default, not by decision. There is a difference between accepting something by default and accepting something by decision.

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The level of knowledge of the existing Greek manuscripts in Europe at this time is very minimal.

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Mainly because you've got wars all over the place. The plague still keeps popping up every once in a while.

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Communication is difficult. And so, the idea of collecting manuscripts together and comparing them to one another and doing what is being done today so thoroughly simply wasn't in existence.

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And so, the framers of the confessions did not have one text and then another text and they weighed them and say, we take this over this and here's our reasons.

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That did not happen. And so, the very phraseology of confessional text is a myth.

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It's mythological. It's arguing for something that never took place. I have said many times, it is an abuse of the framers of those fine documents to drag them into a conversation that was not theirs.

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They were not intending to answer these questions. They did not have the data to even speak an opinion on the subject.

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So, to drag them in and then to then, hundreds of years later, create an argument that says we need to go back to the 16th century

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Greek text that was haphazardly put together still by a textual critical principle we're going to reject doing textual criticism even though our text came about by people doing that just inconsistently.

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But, we're going to make that the standard and then we're going to say that to be confessional, this is the text you must use.

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So, we will call it the confessional text position. That's an abuse of history. That accepts a narrative about what was going on in history that simply isn't true.

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It's just not true. It requires information to have been at hand that was not yet available.

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And I'm not just talking about the papyri, that's very important, but even the manuscripts that did exist were unknown to the vast majority of people.

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There wasn't a group that was going around from university to university cataloging these things.

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That would have been really helpful, but it didn't exist. It was almost always a single scholar having to collect stuff here and having to collect stuff there.

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And it's really not until the late 1700s that you start getting any of these collections coming together and they're still extremely partial.

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There is no time in history up until the modern period where you could even debate these topics.

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And so to try to drag people in from the past and use their authority and their godliness and everything else as an argument is a gross abuse of those individuals.

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So, here's a little something I put together before the program. Here is a challenge to reformed

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TR proponents. Here's a challenge I would like to level to reformed TR proponents.

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Present a consistent, repeatable method of textual critical analysis that, upon application to the currently available handwritten

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Greek manuscripts, would produce the text of the so -called Textus Receptus in just one book, the

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Book of Revelation. If you claim your methodology is defined by scripture, please explain with scripture how your method was derived.

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Okay? So, there's a challenge. It seems like a pretty straightforward challenge.

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Because, now, the Book of Revelation is the toughest one out there.

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And it's because we have the fewest number of manuscripts of the Book of Revelation and it struggled to be accepted as canon scripture.

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But we also know, or at least I know, and anybody who wants to know knows, that the

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Book of Revelation in the Textus Receptus is the most corrupt element of the Textus Receptus.

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Now, I have full respect for a person who will say, yes, the

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TR's Text of Revelation really needs emendation. And then would offer some type of consistent, relevant argumentation.

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But, I don't see how the modern movement can do that. Because, once you accept the idea that textual critical analysis of the

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TR must be done, now you have to offer a basis for that. And now you have to start explaining what manuscripts you will allow to be used.

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And how will you recognize where the one manuscript

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Erasmus used was misread in Revelation 14 .1

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or miscopied or didn't have something that Erasmus then inserted from the

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Latin Vulgate. That is going to drag you inevitably into textual critical methodology.

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And that's exactly what these guys are saying we don't want. Because once you go there, then you can no longer have certainty.

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As if not going there gives you certainty. It doesn't, but that's the whole point. So there's a challenge to present a consistent, repeatable method of textual critical analysis that upon application of the currently available handwritten

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Greek manuscripts would produce the text of so -called Textus Septus in the Book of Revelation. If you claim your methodology is defined by scripture, please explain with scripture how your method was derived.

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And that last sentence is because I'm actually hearing these guys making the argument that you need to have a biblically derived textual critical methodology.

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Now, having a biblically consistent textual critical methodology is fine.

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But biblically consistent and biblically derived are two different things. That is, there is, you know, if you literally say that your textual critical methodology you derive from the

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Bible itself, then explain to us where the

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Bible gives you instruction on examining Revelation 16 .5

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or 14 .1 or 2 .2 or we can give you a bunch of others where it tells you how to recognize parablepsis or homoeotelioton or dittography or any of these other issues that are relevant at that point.

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When I read through the Bible the first time at 16, maybe

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I fell asleep. Maybe it's in 2 Kings someplace where it specifically lays these things out and this is where Erasmus got his.

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And maybe I've just missed it and no one ever preaches on it or something. But quite honestly, the

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Bible does not give you textual critical methodology. And it scares me when

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Reformed guys actually pretend that it does. And one other thing that I would add to that challenge, if you are going to make the assertion that by holding the

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TR, you are holding to the text that had been delivered to the church from the beginning, you do, please realize that all anyone has to do, doesn't even have to be another

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Christian. It can be a Muslim or a Mormon or an atheist. All they've got to do is pop open

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UBS 5, go to the notes because UBS 5 has many, many, many more patristic citations than Nessie Allen does, and show you the number of places.

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Just take the TR reading and on almost every page, you will find early church fathers, early church writers, who have readings other than the

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TR or other than the Byzantine text. Did they not have the scriptures?

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Had it not been delivered to them? The Council of Nicaea in 325, vitally important time period.

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The defense of Nicaea for the next number of decades during the Arian ascendancy. What is the predominant textual reading of the church fathers during that time period?

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It's not the TR. So, did they not have the text?

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See, that kind of claim sounds so warm and wonderful.

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It's just a myth. And the Christian faith is not based upon myths and cannot be defended through mythology.

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I think that's an important thing to note. Now, I happen to grab my,

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I've shown this one a couple of times before. This was, you know, and I look at it now and I go, no wonder

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I need glasses. But this was the first Bible that I read through that year.

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I forget, would have been, actually it was junior year in high school.

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Still got a lot of the markings that I made in it. And it's still a red letter. I eventually stopped using that because it's really hard to mark red letter.

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At least with color, it looks horrible. But you can, when did, did

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I put a date in this? Yep, yep, yep. Bought it myself.

43:50

So on the presented page, I said, by the Lord. And I put 2

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Timothy 1, 7 -10, 1979. 1979 is when

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I got this Bible. And normally if Rich was paying attention, he would have switched over by now.

44:08

But he's got other things to be doing. People are probably calling you to help you with microphone stuff and things like that,

44:16

I imagine. Yeah. Anyway, it is a

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Schofield reference edition. Now, when

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I moved from using this as my primary text to this one, the open

44:34

Bible, New American Standard, did I lose something? Did I stop using the

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Word of God? Stop believing the Word of God? No, I didn't.

44:48

But there are people today that are being convinced that that is actually the case. There was a reference made, there was a couple things were said over the course of the past weekend, where the issue of one of the two major textual variants in the

45:12

New Testament was brought up. And I just want to briefly comment on this. I don't have time to go into it fully because today

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I only have until the top of the hour because of all sorts of other stuff going on.

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The two major textual variants, and that's all there are, when you talk about major blocks of text, 12 verses each, what's called the

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Prick of Adultery, John 7, 53 -8, 11, the story of the woman taken in adultery. We've discussed that a number of times.

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And then the longer ending of Mark, or the shorter ending of Mark, or the medium ending of Mark, or the combined longer ending and medium ending with the

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Freer Logion in Codex Washingtonianus, and some mixtures of these things that we have in various families and of Greek manuscripts as well as translations.

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Entire books have been written on the subject. Here's one called Perspectives on the

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Ending of Mark, Four Views. David Alan Black, Darrell Bock, Keith Elliott, Maurice Robinson, and Daniel Wallace contributed to that.

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There are other works that are of less value because of their strong bias or prejudice that they bring.

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And so there are two major variants.

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And as we've said many times before, when you address the issue of the amount of evidence, there is much stronger evidence for the antiquity of the various endings of Mark than there is for the story of the woman taken in adultery.

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So if you are a majority text advocate, if you're a person who counts manuscripts and just wants the majority numbers on your side, then you're going to hold to the longer ending of Mark and reject the interesting addition from Codex Washingtonianus called the

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Freer Logion. But there are a lot of folks who are reexamining, well, they're examining for the first time this issue, having only heard about it secondhand from other people.

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And so, for example, some of the comments that were made, and this wasn't just in, this is in an article actually that someone had posted, was about how pretty much every manuscript of Mark contains this ending.

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How could you delete it when in reality the issue is extremely complex?

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As far as being deleted in toto and just not being there, you do have

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Sinaiticus and Vaticanus and you have a manuscript called 304. You also have manuscripts both in Syriac and the

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Sahitic Coptic, which likewise do not contain anything there.

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And both Eusebius and Jerome mention in their opinion, and this is just an opinion because in their opinion, the majority of manuscripts in their day did not contain this.

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How do they know? Again, there was no mechanism in the third, fourth, fifth centuries to collate manuscripts.

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It's tough enough today when you have people flying around jet planes and going to libraries that have numbering systems.

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It's hard enough even for them to come up with a meaningful catalog of the manuscripts.

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It was impossible in that day to do so. And so when an early writer like a

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Jerome, because Jerome made many comments as did Eusebius, but Jerome especially on the text, when he talks about the majority of manuscripts, the majority of manuscripts that he has seen, well, how far did he travel?

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What manuscripts were available to him? Would that be different from the area around Eusebius?

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This kind of majority of this, majority of that type of thing has to be taken with a grain of salt.

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But the point is, when we talk about the Gospel of Mark, we only have a small amount of papyri testimony to the

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Gospel of Mark. P45 contains Mark, but it doesn't contain the last chapter. And that's one of the problems with many of the papyri, is that many of them will not contain either the first or last chapters of a book or collection of books.

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And it's that last chapter that's in the biggest danger, especially in papyri manuscripts, in being, having been damaged or ripped off, or just the ravages of time.

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So, unlike John, which has the greatest amount of papyrological testimony to it, and the earliest, we don't have papyri manuscripts of Mark that go to the end of the book.

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And so, we have to go with the earliest that we have, and the earliest are

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Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. As the earliest testimonies. But then, what's interesting is, we have a wide variety of information from the translations.

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There are divisions amongst the translations, as to whether they contain it or don't contain it, or what they contain it, how it's translated.

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And there are so many variants that what is very, very plain is that even though the longer ending becomes the standardized ending in later centuries, if you were to look at the situation up through about 600, up through Codex Washingtonianus, because Washingtonianus is really weird along those lines, and it's the archetype of the

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Byzantine text type itself when it comes to the Gospels. Though it has some interesting variants.

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What we have is a tremendous amount of discussion and confusion about what the ending of Mark should be.

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So, when people talk about, well, there's just such overwhelming evidence, how do you define overwhelming?

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If you're a manuscript counter, well, yeah.

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But that just means you're a Byzantine text advocate, and that also means you shouldn't use the

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TR every place, because every place the TR disagrees with the majority text should be amended.

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And if that's the position you hold, great, you're being consistent. Fine, wonderful. This new movement isn't consistent at that point.

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That's where the problem lies, one of the problems lies. But for someone to say,

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I've been lied to all this time. You haven't been lied to. You may have been ignorant, maybe didn't do enough reading, didn't listen closely enough.

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But let's make it clear so everybody can understand. The vast majority of Greek manuscripts, the

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Gospel of Mark that contain the ending of Mark, there is a distinction there, have an ending, normally the longer ending, but there's a shorter ending.

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And then there's the, like I said, the Freer Logion and it's got to be thrown in there someplace too. You can't just throw

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Washingtonianus out the window. At the same time during that time period, there are major differences between the translations that were being made at that time,

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Sahitic, Coptic, Boheric, so on and so forth, as to what their archetypes, the

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Greek manuscripts from which they were being translated, what they contained, whether they contained the longer ending of Mark or not.

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So no one is lying when they say that the earliest manuscripts do not contain it, because we only have a few, and that there is serious reason to question the originality of the longer ending.

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The serious reason is not based upon majority text perspectives, because that's not how the vast majority of Christian scholarship functions.

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They have not been convinced by the argumentation that that is how you should do things.

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You have to answer the question, why could

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Jerome say what he said, Eusebius say what he said at that time period? Why do you have early 4th century codices that do not contain this text?

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Why do other early fathers never mention material from that passage?

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That's an argument from silence, but it is a relevant argument when you're asking about whether this was even known to them in any way, shape, or form.

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And most importantly for me, why the differing endings if the one is original?

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Normally the answer is, well, in some early manuscripts it fell off, and so it was only transmitted in one line.

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Okay, I'd like to see the early evidence of that. Given the nature of the ending, it certainly strikes me as being something that was cobbled together from other sources and does not flow naturally from the mark and narrative at all.

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But none of the endings do, for that matter. So it is a highly complex textual variant.

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If you write entire books on it, it's highly complex. And people have taken different perspectives on it, but to emotionalize it and to weaponize it,

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I guess that's the big new term these days is to weaponize something. To weaponize it as an argument for a traditionalist perspective and to basically say, well,

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I was lied to. I was lied to my entire life. And maybe you misunderstood.

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Maybe you didn't do your homework. But the vast majority of later manuscripts contain the longer ending.

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But that's not the issue from most of modern scholarship. We already knew that. That was a given.

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The question is, why do these earlier manuscripts not contain it? Why do these earlier translations demonstrate that there was confusion about it?

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Why are so many, even into the later portion of the first millennium manuscripts, have asterisks and obelisks and marks that mark this off?

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Why is Codex Washingtonianus out there waving a red flag around? These are all questions that we can address.

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But once you accept a traditionalist text position, why are you even talking about it?

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You can't be convinced by anything. Your epistemology excludes any type of textual critical argumentation that could be derived from early translations or anything else.

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You have your text. It's there. That's it. There's no reason for you to argue about it. But you just need to be open in telling people when you're promoting this.

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I'm not basing this upon textual critical argumentation. I'm basing this upon a theological paradigm that I've developed.

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Unfortunately, most of the time, you all still want to throw that other part in, even though you've actually rendered it irrelevant by your argumentation, which is a strange, a strange thing.

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So, keep some of that information in mind. Sorry about the weight of the information on the program today, but it's just sort of how it worked out.

58:14

And besides that, I didn't get to use my new microphone. I'll probably end up sending it back anyways because it's not working.

58:20

And so it's just like, meh. So there you go. How's that?

58:27

Meh. I haven't even been looking at what's over here because it got too...

58:32

Yeah, yeah. It's like... It actually fit my ear well, too.

58:38

I bet you dollars and dollars it's not going to end up... If that, you already found the hardwire adapter for.

58:51

But the question then becomes, well, I'm not carrying that transmitter. I'm only carrying this, so I should be okay.

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Yes. If you had to take off your new microphone, you'd be in a funk, too. Meh. Anyway.

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There you go, folks. So, we'll try to find time on Thursday for a pretty decently length program.

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And, look, if you want to respond, why don't you let us know?

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And we'll... You know, if you want to... I'm only... I'm not talking about the wackos that just want time.

59:39

I'm talking about the people who really believe that to use the

59:46

Texas Receptus is to be consistent with the confessions.

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So, you know, that Texas Receptus guy, we're not talking about folks like that. We're talking about reasonable people here who can actually deal with facts and argue and things like that.

01:00:04

Open the phones on Thursday. I'm sure there'll be some other things we need to address because by...

01:00:11

Thursday would be the last one of Tom Buck's articles. So there may be some other things that we need to address at that point.

01:00:21

It could be... The way things are going these days, the number of people that are getting just kicked off social media, we may not even be on social media.

01:00:30

It may be the only way we can ever continue doing the Dividing Line is only to talk about textual criticism stuff because the

01:00:37

Google editors will fall asleep trying to listen to it. And so what we might have to do is we might have to do everything textual criticism and then like 30 minutes in a quick theological thing and then right back to textual criticism.

01:00:53

And then right back to it and hope that it doesn't get cut. Who knows? Using... Remember that guy?

01:01:01

Was it McCain or was it another guy? That when he was shot down over North Korea, I think it was another guy.

01:01:08

It might have been McCain. They put him on TV and he blinked in Morse code and communicated that we were being mistreated and stuff like that and then they beat him to almost death for having done that but they didn't catch him doing it.

01:01:23

So I may have to talk textual criticism while using Morse code to talk about what the Bible says about homosexuality.

01:01:30

That may be what's coming in the future. So you never know.

01:01:39

IRC video. Yeah, nobody cares about IRC. If we could somehow get IRC to work that way.

01:01:45

Yeah, that may be the way to do it. Anyways, folks, thanks for watching and putting up with all the technical stuff and not just that but the microphone stuff and things like that.