Response to Liberal Theology

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Welcome to the Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

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This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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Well welcome to the Wrap Report. I am your host, Andrew Rappaport, with my trusty sidekick,

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Bud the Wiser. How you doing, Bud? I'm doing well.

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How are you? You got your Bud light on over your shoulder there with the library over it.

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No, my wife is downstairs. I usually introduce myself as Bud, and this is my wife, Bud Light. Oh, you're talking about the neon.

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Okay, never mind. Yeah, you got the neon light that says

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Bud, Library Bud. So yeah, you know, we're recording again.

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We were here to answer questions that people have, and there was a discussion that came up online, and so we're going to deal with some of the liberal arguments that are made for scripture.

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I'm trying to tackle some of this. Now some of these things that folks that you're going to hear today, you're going to go, I never heard this before.

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Well, what we're going to give you is things they teach you in seminary, typically at, you know, liberal seminaries, and it's things that you get taught.

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And well, if you're in a good conservative church, you probably never heard it because any conservative pastor who was taught this in school knew it's hogwash.

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So yes, right from the get go, we're going to poison the well, not actually so because we're going to tell the truth about it.

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It is hogwash. The poisoning the well is when you say something to undermine someone's complete argument, you know, by saying something that's incorrect about something.

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So it's poison before someone even starts. We're going to tell the truth about it. And so it's not technically a poisoning the well fallacy.

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But I know you're thrilled about this. You couldn't wait to record. You know, you brought this up to me the other day, and because I have to pester you so I can prep, what are we going to do this week?

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What do we want to discuss? And you bring this up, and I'm like, what? I mean,

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I was exposed to this in college, and I think that's probably the last time I have encountered it.

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And that's what, 35 years ago, I guess. I'm familiar with it. But I'm going to be sitting in silence because I don't know what you're dealing with.

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Except what was my response to you when I said when I said, yeah, you told me I need to evangelize more.

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Obviously, you're not evangelizing enough that you're not here. Apparently not within the circles you are.

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Because when you go out and evangelize and you deal with some of the folks that have been reading more of the liberal scholars, you are going to be coming across some of these things.

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And so that's why we're going to kind of cover these things so that you're better prepared when this comes up, when someone challenges you.

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And this is going to be some things that we're going to deal with a document, supposed document called

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Q. And then we're going to talk later about this J -E -P -D theory.

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You don't know about that. We're going to explain these two to you and explain how they believe these things come about.

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And so what we end up seeing, let's start with the first one,

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Q. Now, let's be clear, as I mentioned this on Apologetics Live and someone informed me that Q is some character from Star Trek that pops in and out or something.

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So Q is not some creature from Star Trek. I thought it was a guy off the James Bond movies.

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Wasn't he the dude that invented stuff? I don't know. Maybe not. It very well could be. But you're not talking about Q Anon either.

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This is not about that. Yeah, sure. There's that whole thing now too. Yeah, no, we're not talking Q Anon. You know, okay, side note, rabbit trail.

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So Anthony Silvestro and I were out having lunch with people we knew. We know them in our evangelism circles and we're talking with them, having a great lunch.

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And just before we go, the wife starts mentioning something about how she's so glad that Trump is, you know, getting these children that are being human trafficked, you know, out of human trafficking.

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And I was just like, okay, yeah, I didn't Trump. There is efforts to get children out of human trafficking.

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I was like, yeah, that's a good thing. And I kind of just blew it off and didn't think much more of the comment.

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Anthony, same thing. And then just before we get ready to go, she starts mentioning, like, well, you're following Q Anon, right?

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And we're like, what? And because we didn't know what it was, that was the mistake. We probably would have been better off just going, yes, and walk away quickly, right?

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Did you get educated? No, yeah, 20 minutes. And then we walked around. We walked out with going like, our head hurts.

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Oh, like, I mean, just like the things people were the things that we were hearing.

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And it was like, this is just nonsense stuff. But yeah, so we're not talking about that.

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Yeah, good. Now we got that situated. I should mention last week, I was at the

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Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter. Great time there. It was, I did have a funny experience there, as we're walking through.

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And this is kind of funny. So as you know, we're planting a brand new church and we're working with another church.

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And it turns out that when we were at the Ark Encounter, the pastor of the other church, he was actually at the

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Ark Encounter the same time we're having lunch in the same area. We didn't see each other. We didn't find out until this week when we were talking.

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I said, he was like, oh, I was just at the Ark Encounter. I was there Tuesday too. It was really kind of funny.

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And so we were there at the same time. But he and he was saying he goes, he was with a couple guys and he was waiting to he goes, we're going to run into someone

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I know. He's just he was expecting it. And they didn't there, but finds out that, yeah, we were together.

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I told him, I was like, yeah, it was really kind of funny. So my bride kind of says, you know, we go places.

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I mean, we even went on vacation once. We went to Williamsburg. And I just mentioned on, you know, somewhere that, you know,

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I was in Williamsburg looking at, you know, I mentioned on Facebook and there was a guy who he was like,

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I thought I saw you in the hotel. Like, I guess I got in the elevator and he, you know, well, that that this happens a bunch.

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And so we're at the at the museum and I'm like, we're almost done with the museum. We're kind of almost at the last part of the museum.

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And I actually was like, OK, I think I made it through the museum without anyone recognizing me. And all of a sudden, this guy that I know who works at the museum, his name's

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Lalo, great evangelist, great, great guy. He's walking through with Alex Kendrick.

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And, you know, they're trying to, you know, with a security kind of get them through where they were going into the into the there's like a, you know, the employees only section.

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And we're sitting there and I turn around and I see Alex Kendrick and then real loud.

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And Lalo has a good loud voice. He's like, Andrew Rappaport. Like everybody in that area is now staring at me.

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And he just goes, well, Alex, you know, Andrew Rappaport, I'm sure, don't you? And so we shake hands. We've never met before.

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And Alex is just giving me a look like, OK, I don't know who you are, but I guess I should. And they walk off and then everybody in that area is just staring at me because the assumption that he made was like,

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Alex should know who I am. And Alex just walked off into the private area and everyone's looking at me. And I'm just like,

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OK, let's move, move along quickly. Well, I mean, there is like, you know, that that John McArthur kind of profile, that platform.

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And then right beneath it is you. I mean, everybody knows you. Yeah. Yeah, because I was at his birthday party, right?

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Yeah. According to you. I mean, John McArthur's that is. But yeah. No, I thought you were going to tell the arc story that you were going through where they stalled the animals, you know, where they put them in stalls.

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There was one for like Rappaport or something. Yeah, it is the arc.

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I mean, I was glad I hadn't been to the arc in, you know, they since like four months after they opened it. So it's been some years and they've they've added a whole lot more.

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So it was really neat when I first went there. It wasn't fully like there wasn't stuff everywhere.

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So it's really filled out. It is big. I mean, that's and that's the purpose of it is to show you there's plenty of room for the there would have been about thirteen hundred types of animals.

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And so there would have been about six, seven thousand animals. They go through when you go through the arc, they go through the whole thing of the, you know, the waste system and the water system, the ventilation, all of that stuff, how they would have done things for that one year, which is really quite neat to think about.

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I personally, I guess I like the museum more just because there's more you can learn there.

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And maybe it's because we go to the museum first and then the arc, when you go to the museum and then the arc, there's there's a lot of duplication over at the arc then.

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But I think that the they did a better job, I would say, in presenting the gospel over at the arc than at the museum.

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Museum, they have their, you know, they're going through the corruption and the other seven seas of history.

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And they go through and they moved. They used to have gospel tracks and they moved them. So now it's kind of disappointed.

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I almost wanted to physically move myself because they used to be in the just as you exited the room where it shares the gospel, they had a thing of tracks and it used to be as you walked out, it was right there.

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So you kind of had to walk around it and it says, take one free. And I noticed that this time it was kind of in the dark on the side.

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I don't know if someone kind of moved it accidentally because it had always been in the middle. So I always want to pick it up and move it back and see if I get in trouble or not.

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But, yeah, we we have so the arc encounter was great. Museum was great. Just to give folks an update on that, if you haven't been out there, you should go check that out.

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So let's get into talking about Q. What is Q? Hold on one second.

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My wife is playing music somewhere. I have to edit that out.

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Siri was playing music. OK. OK. I had hymns playing.

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So let me pause for a bit and then I'll get into Q. OK, so,

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Bud, let's talk about Q. This is an interesting topic that many hold to.

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Let me give the idea of how this comes about, why people bring this up. The idea of Q, it is short for the

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German word Quellum. This is the idea that there was a source document.

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Quellum means source. So there's this source document for the gospel accounts.

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The idea that they have is that Mark would have been the earliest gospel because it's the shortest gospel, and that we would have

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Matthew and Luke that took Mark and embellished from that, and then

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John took a little bit of those three but really embellished more. So there's this source document that's missing.

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Now, the idea of this is that you have the source document, which is the truest of the gospels supposedly, where they teach that Jesus is just a man.

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However, Mark embellished a little bit, just a little, and then supposedly you have the embellishment of Matthew and Luke, and then the complete embellishment that you have when it comes to John.

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And by the time we get to John, Jesus Christ is God. So the argument that they end up trying to make is that Jesus Christ never really claimed to be

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God. It's just that they had embellished. And through that embellishment, you have the evolution of Jesus being

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God. And so you have this core document. Now, first, let me deal with the embellishment of Jesus being

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God. I've actually gone through all the gospels, but you know this, but for the audience who may be listening,

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I've made reference to it on all different podcasts. But I'm working through the study of all the claims of Jesus Christ deity through the gospel accounts.

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And as we do that, I'm looking at direct and indirect references to Jesus being God. So as I look at this,

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Matthew, 45 % of the gospel of Matthew refers to Jesus as God.

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What do I mean by that? 482 verses out of the 1 ,071 verses of Matthew refer to Jesus as God directly or indirectly.

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When it comes to Mark, well, Mark is 46 to 47%.

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Luke is 39%. And John is 66 .7%.

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So now, why do I bring those percentages up? If you look at those percentages, you realize that Luke has the least, not

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Mark. So they're saying Mark is the earliest and would refer to Jesus as man.

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And then Luke embellished. However, Luke has less. Luke is 39 % compared to Mark, which is at 46, 47%.

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So if their theory was right, Luke should have been the first one. But the way that they did it is because Mark is the shortest one.

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And that's the argument that they end up using because that's the shortest. That was first. It was then embellished from there.

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Okay. Now, there's going to be a couple of things with this that we want to address how we actually get information and pass it along because it's a problem here.

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But what we end up seeing with it is I will actually make the case. I believe Matthew was the first of the

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Gospels. Now, I don't know if I'm going to get myself in trouble with you, but you might have to disfellowship over this.

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I don't know. You know, but there are people that have differing views with it.

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And we don't know the exact dating of the Gospel being written. Why would

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I hold to Matthew? Well, I would say Matthew would be an earlier writing of the

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Gospel because it was written specifically to Jewish people. So, each of the

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Gospels has a different thing they focus on. With Matthew, the focus is on Jesus as King, the

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Jewish King, where Mark is the focus of a servant. Luke is the focus of him being human, which explains why it is only 39 % of referencing the deity of Christ because the focus is on his humanity.

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That's the focus. The Gospel of John is the deity of Christ, which is why that one has the most references.

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So, you see, that's why you'd have that. But Matthew, if written to Jewish people, would have to be an earlier writing if he's writing to Jewish Christians because by the later part of the first century, there weren't as many

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Jewish Christians. There were mostly Gentile Christians. And so, that wasn't as much of an issue. Now, that would be my argumentation for why

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I think Mark is not the first Gospel, but Matthew is. The reason they take

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Mark as the earliest Gospel is because of this Q theory. The theory goes like this.

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Basically, that there had to have been a source document that Matthew, Mark, and Luke got their information from.

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And basically, the idea is that we can figure out what Q is by looking at those verses that appear in Matthew and Luke and see what they share in common with Mark.

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So, what they do is they say, okay, we're going to infer.

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We look at Matthew, Mark, and Luke. These are the ones we call the synoptic Gospels.

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We call them that because they work together. There's a lot of overlay in them that's different than the

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Gospel of John, which John mostly focuses on that last week of Christ's life.

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John doesn't give as much of the account of those three years of ministry as much as half the book is focused on really the last week.

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And so, when they focus on those first three Gospel accounts and look at what they have in common and say, well, these all are in common, so we must get those from the same source, okay?

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So, we'll give an argument against that in a moment. But I've written about this in my book, What Do We Believe?

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And maybe you could give a quote from Reza Aslan's book, a

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New York Times bestseller, by the way, on his book, Zealot. But let me just let folks know, I mean, I have right here in my trusty hands a hard copy of my book.

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There are only 25 of these made in hard copy. And Bud is the only person in the entire world with two hard copies, just for the record.

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I don't even have two hard copies of this book, but Bud does. So, he is very special.

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He is unique in that way. He can claim he is the only person in the world with two hard copies of this book.

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So, it's like an indulgence, though, right? I mean, when I show up, I'll get like extra credit, right?

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It is, because that way you have one in your upstairs library, but then you have one in your collector's library, because people may not know you have two libraries.

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I actually have one down there. Yeah. So, if you could read that paragraph from my book,

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What Do We Believe, which, by the way, is available at strivingforattorney .org, if someone wants to get it. Available in paperback.

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In paperback, yeah. This is the volume I'm reading from. Okay, here's what -

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Which means that you have three copies. Actually, I have extra copies of this, because I bought some to give away.

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So, I don't actually, I don't know how many copies I've got. Which is a great idea. So, I should mention that this book, it's a systematic theology that, you know, for those on Patreon looking,

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I mean, it's not that thick, even in hardcover, but it tries to go through everything. And one of the things that it does uniquely out of most systematic theologies, most systematic theologies

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I know, they don't cover textual criticism. You cover that in seminary.

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And this is, there's people who are writing to debunk the Bible that a lot of atheists and Muslims will use, even some

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Mormons, to use writings of Bart Ehrman and folks like that to try to debunk

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Scripture as being divine. And there's not really anyone at a lay level answering it.

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And so, What Do We Believe? tries to do that in one of the chapters. And that's the chapter - It is a great book.

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The foreword, just so folks know, Phil Johnson, yeah, I'm familiar with the name.

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But if you open it up, actually, there is an endorsement that I was privileged to give.

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That's right. The first endorsement. I have like a whole page in this. It's like a claim to fame.

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Yeah, you realize that you and Chris Honholds write a lot longer than everybody else. Yes. So, here is what you have written,

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Andrew. And this is from the chapter on biblical reliability, which

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I think is chapter two. Yes. Okay. In his book, Zealot, The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reza Aslan tries to make the same case, and yet you can throw out all his work before the first chapter begins.

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In the introduction, he states that he is basing his research, he is basing his research on a document called, quote,

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Q, unquote, the German Quella, meaning source. Then he states, quote, although we no longer have any physical copies of this document, we can infer its contents by compiling those verses that Matthew and Luke share in common, but that do not appear in Mark, end quote.

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So, the neat thing with this is what Reza Aslan is doing. It's kind of funny because here he is, this is the introduction to his book,

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New York Times bestseller. And he is admitting, although we don't have any physical copies. Wait, just stop right there.

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How do we judge evidence? He's admitting, we don't have any evidence for this.

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So, there's no physical copies for Q. There's not even any references to this source document in any other books.

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So, before, you know, 50 to 100 years ago, you never heard about some source document where Mark got his information from.

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So, when we look at this, and this is the funny because the people who use these arguments are counter our views of creation, saying we have to look at evidence.

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And online this week, I've been dealing in my Christian apologetics group with a gentleman who shares the same first name with me.

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And he's asking, who is the author of Q? And my response was, well, there wouldn't be an author since the document never existed.

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And he's arguing it exists. And I said, where's your evidence? He says the same thing Raza says, that we can infer it from what the three

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Asanoptic Gospels share in common. And I remember, Bud, where I had been evangelizing.

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This is the first time I heard about Q outside of seminary. I was at the boardwalk in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, standing and doing my weekly preaching that I would do there.

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And I had a woman who was really receptive to the gospel. And I think that's what got this one young fella upset.

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He read some things from Bart Ehrman. And so, he thought he was ready to tackle me, which was a mistake.

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And I'll explain why it's a mistake, not because I'm so brilliant. But basically, he took over the conversation because this woman was very receptive.

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Now, I was glad that at the end of the conversation, I got back to talking with her. She didn't leave. And she was willing to pray to receive

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Christ. But this gentleman came up and he's arguing. And he's arguing the same argument here, that there's this document,

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Q, that they got this from. And you may have heard this before, that the way we got the

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Bible is the telephone game. That it's, you know, one person shares to another person who shares to another person.

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Now, one of the things we know, Bud, about the telephone game, I know this wasn't you, but I have to admit, if I'm going to be honest, it was me, that when you play the telephone game, the fun of it is that you have some long sentence in the beginning, that, you know, a couple of sentences, like a paragraph, that by the time it gets to the end, you want to see how messed up it gets.

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That's the whole fun of the game, is seeing how messed up it is at the end. And so, you have people like me that either don't care to pay attention to the sentence that's whispered in their ear, or just want to have fun and mischievous.

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And so, either way, whichever one it is, whatever you hear is very different than what you say.

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And you know that each person is going to pass it along. So, yes, there are times where, you know, in school,

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I remember we played this game and someone said something. And of course, I ended up twisting it into something about the teacher, which everyone remembered that part.

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And that part came out. Of which case, that was nothing that was in there. Not even close.

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Just something I interjected. And of course, now, where did that change occur? Nobody knows.

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So, that's the fun of that game, is to purposely mess things up. And people have time out in your day. Is that what they called it?

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Yeah, no. I was just glad I was after the, you know, swatting of the hands of the ruler type of behavior.

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Good thing I wasn't Catholic in a Catholic school. But the thing, though, is that people think that's how we got the

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Bible. That one person wrote, another person takes that, and moves on, and moves on, and moves on.

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And they're all copying from one source. Now, in the telephone game, there is a difference between that and written.

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And what we have with the Bible. The telephone game is audible. And so, Bud, if you're telling me something,

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I'm hearing it from one source. And once I hear it and repeat it, we can't go back to you as the source.

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Because you may not even remember what you heard. So, you don't have a way of comparing those two.

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However, if you were to take the copy that you have of what do we believe?

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Hardcover, because this was the first printing. And you were to look at, actually, no, this was the second printing.

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If you were to look, say, at some of the pages, like, you know, you'd see immediately a difference.

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See, right here, I'm holding up. You would see page 26 here is on the outside. But if you look on your version, go look on your version, because you might have got one of the early print versions.

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Is the page number on the inside? No, it's the same. It's the same.

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Okay, so you got the second printing. So, we had some in the first printing where the page numbers were on the inside.

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Now, what can we do? If we had a copy of the first printing, what can we do with this second printing one?

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We can compare them. We can open both of them up and look at them and do a side -by -side comparison and see the differences.

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So, you'd be able to see that in the first printing, all the page numbers were on the inside of the spine.

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And on the second printing, they went to the outside. So, it was something we had fixed and corrected. You would see on my book,

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What Do They Believe? It didn't have in the very first printing. It didn't have on the top in the heading.

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It didn't have in each chapter. It gave the book name rather than the chapter name.

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That changed after the first printing. So, we can go back and compare those two. In other words, when we have a written document, unlike an audible thing, we can go back and do a side -by -side comparison.

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So, that's one thing that we know different than the telephone game when it comes to the writing of the

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Bible. It wasn't from audible sources. This is different than what you would see in, say, the

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Quran. The Quran was memorized audibly. And when their soldiers started dying off, the third caliph,

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Uthman, realized we need to write this down because we're going to lose it because all the soldiers that had it memorized from Muhammad word for word, they had it memorized and they were afraid they would lose it if all the soldiers die off.

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So, they wanted to write it down. Now, here's an interesting thing of Islamic history, which most people don't realize.

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The irony. The Muslims will say they only have one copy of the Quran in Arabic and that it's perfectly preserved.

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However, when Uthman had all the soldiers write it down, he put a decree to burn the abhorrent text.

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Now, what do you have? You have one copy of each of them. Each of these soldiers wrote down what they had memorized word for word, supposedly from Muhammad.

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They wrote there was one copy from each of them. And Uthman says burn the abhorrent texts.

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In other words, this is a time where you actually could change what's in the Quran. Why? Because when you look at them, yes, now they're all written down, but he burned all but one copy and that became the copy.

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That right off the bat tells you that these guys memorized it and it was different. That was sort of a telephone game or it's whatever they could remember, but they remembered it differently.

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How do we know that? Because Uthman himself says burn the abhorrent texts, which means there was different versions of it.

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Once he burned all those and said this one is the right one, there should not be any more, right?

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Any variances. Turns out that there are in the Arabic texts, but there shouldn't be according to them.

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But that actually would be the telephone game. That's not how we have the Bible. It was a written document.

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So you can do comparisons. And when it comes to Q, the argument is that there had to have been an original source.

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So let me get back to the case with this young man at the boardwalk. He's arguing there has to be a source for Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

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And he says that there was a source for Mark that Matthew and Luke had that source.

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They had Mark and they embellished a little bit. So the idea being that Mark embellished from Q and Matthew and Luke embellished from Mark and Q.

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So in other words, they had Q, they had Mark, they saw those two, they embellished a little bit more.

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So the idea is that you can look at where all three of them, what Matthew, Mark, and Luke say, and where they agree that is

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Q because they all got it from that document. Okay, let's see if this works in reality.

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And this is what I said to this young man. This was back when Barack Obama was running the second time for president.

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It was right after the Democrat National Convention. Barack Obama had spoken on Thursday night.

32:25

I was out on the boardwalk on Friday night. And I asked this man, I said, did you hear or read about the speech that Barack Obama gave last night?

32:34

And he said, yes. I said, did the New York Times report it? And he said, well, yes.

32:40

I said, did the Washington Post report it? He said, yes. I said, what about the Boston Chronicle?

32:46

He said, I'm sure. I said, how about the San Francisco Chronicle? Sure. I said, what was the original source that they all got it?

32:56

Did they all get it from the AP? Did they all wait to write their articles until the

33:01

AP came out with it? And then they all got it from there? And he went, no, that's foolish.

33:07

They all were there. I went, wait, you're telling me they're eyewitness accounts? But they have so many things that are similar and different because this is the argument that they make with Q, that there's things that they got that are similar.

33:20

So that has to come from the same source. But then they all have a different take on things. And those differences show where they embellished.

33:27

I said, so the fact that we have all these differences, the only thing we can look at is look at all the papers across the

33:32

United States and look at what they have in common. And that's what we have in that original source.

33:38

We can infer the original source from there. Now, was that the AP or was it something else? And he goes, you're being so silly.

33:47

They were there. They were eyewitness accounts. And I looked at him and said, oh, you mean exactly like the gospel writers claim they were.

33:57

Yeah. And he just looked there. It's always fun to have that look on someone's face where his jaw opens, but no words come out because he just realizes, duh.

34:09

I don't have an argument anymore. Yeah. I just called my own argument stupid. He just took my argument, applied it to something else where I said it was really stupid.

34:22

And that's the argument I was making for something else. So it's kind of fun to do.

34:28

One of the things I had asked him, I said, well, you obviously have studied textual criticism, right? And he goes, what? And I said, well, textual criticism, it's a branch of higher criticism.

34:38

And you've done a lot of background there, haven't you? And he's like, I don't know what you're talking about. I said, well, let's assume one of us has done some research in textual criticism, which is the study that we're discussing of how we get back to the original words of the

34:54

Bible. One of us has a master's degree where we've done work in this area.

34:59

Is that you? And he's like, no, I'm still in high school. I said, okay, then

35:04

I'm going to trust my actual study to your non -study, right?

35:10

He's like, well, I read a book. I read those books too. But here's the difference. I've read the scholarly work from Bart Ehrman as well.

35:16

I could tell you that Bart Ehrman's scholarly work compared to the works that you read that's written to the public are very different.

35:24

Here's an interesting thing with Bart Ehrman. When he references his work, he's actually saying things that are scholarly and correct.

35:32

But then when he writes for the masses, he'll say things that are correct and put them in the wrong order or make conclusions that aren't always accurate.

35:40

For example, he'll say the gospel copiers, the people trying to copy the gospel accounts were in such a rush, or the

35:48

New Testament, really. They were in such a rush that they didn't have, they were sloppy and they would make mistakes.

35:54

Well, that is true. They were in a rush because the message was so important. They wanted to get it copied and out there.

36:00

That's true. Were they sloppy for that reason? That's not necessarily true, but we do see evidence that because they were in a rush, they made mistakes.

36:09

Does that mean? So he says, because of that, we can't know what the original meaning is. That's a leap that he just makes because we actually have so many manuscripts, and I cover this in chapter two of my book,

36:22

What Do We Believe? We have so many manuscripts, we can go back and do that comparison. We have about 9 ,000 manuscripts now of the

36:32

Greek. And as we look at all those, we kind of know where people made those copying errors because when they copy the copying error, copy it over and over, we know where almost all of them are now.

36:42

And we can compare them. And guess what? Not a single one of them affects any doctrine. Even Bart Ehrman said that in the first printing of his paperback version of Misquoting Jesus, he says, because it was a

36:57

New York Times bestselling hardcover, so they want him to do a paperback. So add something to it, add an epilogue.

37:02

So people that have the first one will buy the second. And he did that. The first edition, he actually says in the epilogue that not a single

37:10

Christian doctrine is affected by any of these variances. And the publisher, after publishing it, people start saying, wait a minute, we're using this book to say that you can't tell

37:19

Christianity because of all these changes. You can't say this. So the second printing, they took that out.

37:25

So if anyone has a first edition paperback printing of Bart Ehrman's copy of Misquoting Jesus, I will pay for it.

37:36

Really? I want that copy. You're looking on your shelf. I'm looking at my shelves right now.

37:42

Yeah, I would love a copy of that. So someone found something on Amazon and you couldn't actually buy it.

37:51

It was out of stock. But yeah, this is what you end up seeing with this.

37:57

When they argue for Q, they're arguing that there had to have been one written copy that was then copied to Mark.

38:04

And Mark got it from this Q. And then Matthew got it from Mark and Luke got it from Mark.

38:11

And then John had access to all three, but he kind of did his own thing. That's the argumentation they have for how the gospel accounts came about.

38:20

First off, as I gave arguments, why I think that Matthew would have been written first just makes more sense historically.

38:28

The fact that the only reason people say that Mark was written first is because it was shorter and therefore the others embellished.

38:35

But there's no evidence that Matthew or Luke had the account of Mark in their hands.

38:44

They don't refer to this and say, as Mark said. So we don't have that to be able to say that this is the case.

38:53

So we look at these and the way we would figure out the dating of a book is if it doesn't give anything specific that we could tie to history from the dating, for example, no mention of the destruction of the temple in the book of Acts.

39:08

So we would assume that was written before that because that's a big deal they would have mentioned. So we assume it's before that.

39:14

Well, we assume that Matthew would have written first because he wrote to a

39:20

Jewish audience that was more of the earlier part of the century, not the latter part of the century. So that would be the assumption.

39:28

Can we prove it? No, but we can't prove Mark was first. They assume

39:33

Mark is first to prove this whole theory. I mean, that kind of buttresses the argument that they're trying to make here with this non -extant mysterious document.

39:49

And part of the problem is that there is so much similarity primarily between Mark and Luke.

39:55

There is a lot of, it's not duplication, because we understand the different perspective that each of those authors are giving us of whatever accounts that they may have that are similar.

40:08

So yeah, the dating of Mark is critical for the argument itself.

40:15

From our standpoint, it doesn't, and even though we do disagree on that, I kind of fall on the side that Mark probably is the first one written.

40:24

But that does not, I don't support that because it buttresses the argument for Q.

40:35

You know, the deductive reasoning that we're all for when this guy says we infer, okay, well, it's okay to infer.

40:41

But in this case, you don't need to unless you've got an agenda and your agenda is to deconstruct scripture.

40:48

You're not doing this from the standpoint of faith. You're doing this from the standpoint of academic scrutiny.

40:56

Well, that's okay, but you end up at two different conclusions.

41:02

And as faithful believers, we understand where the text takes us.

41:08

I'm not gonna convince you by destroying your Q argument. You destructed that guy's argument because it's unreasonable.

41:18

And that's good. You want unbelievers to be in a state of doubt because you've got an answer to come back at them with, and it's not the textual criticism.

41:28

It is the repent and believe gospel. And that's really what I want folks to realize is that if you come across someone that argues for Q, it's not something where, oh no, they've just proven something from a document that there's no...

41:42

Just ask the person, where is your evidence? And what are they gonna do? I have this all the time. Where's your evidence?

41:47

Well, we can infer this. No, no, no, that's not evidence. That's a logical fallacy called begging the question.

41:55

You're trying to prove the very thing with the accepting. You have to first accept there to be a

42:01

Q to prove it. You're assuming Q exists and then saying, well, we infer from this, but your proof precludes that you have to first accept the very thing you're holding to.

42:15

And so... Yeah, but your point too, I don't want to interrupt, but your point too is very important that a lot of Christians today don't realize you've got to know your history.

42:22

This is not some 400 -year -old argument. You know, this is a 20th century argument.

42:29

You can't go to a 19th century liberal theologian and find anybody suggesting this kind of thing.

42:36

Correct. So, all right. You know, I always go back to what Spurgeon said. If there's anything new in theology, it's wrong.

42:44

Well, it could be, but we're reformed and continue reforming. Hence, we become dispensable.

42:50

In light of what? The infallible word of God. Yes. So, not some confessional document from Westminster or...

43:02

Or a theologic systematic, like what do we believe? Yeah, we can't rely on that.

43:09

Well, you know, I just challenge you to go through this book and look at the amount of scripture that's in here.

43:15

It's covered in scripture. I'm just saying. The scriptures, there are no references to the

43:21

Westminster Confession, I don't think, or the London Confession. No, but, you know, at this point, you know, when it comes to Q, but sometimes a lot of the times what you have is people think, you know, that's it.

43:34

It's time to throw in the towel. Yeah. And we don't have to do that. We have answers. But, you know, speaking of throwing in the towels,

43:41

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So maybe you want something to lay your head down on for this, but we want to talk about the

47:15

J -E -P -D theory. Now, many may not. J -E -P -D.

47:23

P -D. Yeah. Well, there's different ways they do it. P -D, whether the P or the D is at the end,

47:29

I've seen it different ways. So let me give what they stand for, because most folks don't. I was just being contrary.

47:37

Contrary, because you're good at that. No, you're not playing devil's advocates because you don't want to advocate for him. Okay. Just to be clear.

47:43

So the idea is that the first five books of the

47:49

Bible, Genesis, well, really Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, those four really are where this comes in.

48:00

Then Deuteronomy is kind of by itself. But the five books, they try to say that there's different authors.

48:05

Now, where this comes in is the argument is to really counter the creationist argument.

48:12

When evolution started being taught, people were looking at Genesis 1 and 2 and saying it is clear in Scripture that God created everything in six literal 24 -hour days.

48:26

People were trying to shove a gap in between Genesis 1 .1 and 1 .2, and that gave for the millions of years.

48:35

People would say that each of those days were really epochs. They were ages, and so there were millions of years for each one, which

48:42

I do kind of find funny, because if you'd say that each of those days is millions of years, you have the plants millions of years before the sun.

48:50

Just saying how that could work, you know, where did the plants get their nutrition from when they need the sun for that?

48:59

Photosynthesis didn't work back then for millions of years, right? Just, you know, got to put it in its context.

49:07

So, there are people, and I actually read a book from a guy who was professing to be an atheist, but then he was enlightened to the

49:16

Bible, and he realized that the Bible was true because he ended up seeing that the way he looked at evolution, he said the

49:23

Bible teaches evolution, and the first thing God creates is light, and he was arguing that the first thing that would have been in the universe at the

49:31

Big Bang would have been light, and so he kind of works his way through trying to explain some of these things, not answering simple things like where was the light that the, you know, he just says, okay, there's light in the world, but there was no sun.

49:46

It's kind of interesting how he had to scramble with some of that stuff. So, there was just, there was an earth before the

49:54

Milky Way solar system, kind of weird. You know, problems that you have when you don't look at the whole thing in its context, and so he ends up holding and teaching this

50:05

J -E -P -D theory, because what they're doing is they want to show that there's a difference between Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 2.

50:14

Genesis chapter 2 is clear that there was one man and one woman created at the same time in the same place.

50:21

Evolution would say that there was a gap there, which is kind of weird. So, you have what scientists would refer to as mitochondria male and mitochondria female, or mitochondria

50:32

Adam and mitochondria Eve. There's about 60 years between them, which is a really kind of an interesting thing.

50:39

So, you have mitochondria Adam, and 60 years later, mitochondria Eve. Mitochondria Adams had all the body parts for male, and mitochondria

50:48

Eve had all the body parts for female. My question is, who did mitochondria

50:54

Adam mate with to create another Adam until there was an Eve? Slight problem there, because he only had male body parts.

51:03

So, it's really kind of strange what you end up seeing when you look at some of the science that they end up giving. If evolution was true, they would have to have a male.

51:12

The first time you went from asexual, in other words, a being like an amoeba that doesn't have a male and female, to bisexual where you have male and female, the first time that happens, you had to have that split occur where they have all the body parts for both male and female working completely, and they exist in the same time frame, in the same place, and they got to know what to do with the equipment.

51:37

Right. And they say we have blind faith? I mean, those are beyond statistical impossibility to be true.

51:45

If that's the case, we should be seeing so much evolution. They say, oh, we see it all the time. It just happens so slowly we don't see it.

51:52

It's got to be happening a lot more, and we don't see any evidence of this in the fossil record where we should be seeing it.

51:58

We just don't see the evidence. But anyway, let's get to the argument they're making. So, the J in this

52:04

J -E -P -D stands for Jehovah. The E stands for Elohim, the

52:10

D stands for Deuteronomy, and the P stands for priesthood. And so, if you hear it

52:17

J -E -D -P, those are the letters where they stand for. Now, the argument goes that you have authors where Jehovah is used, you have that as the areas where you have this author referring to God as Jehovah, where you have

52:35

Elohim used, that is this other author. Deuteronomy is kind of by itself because they recognize that Deuteronomy is actually a treaty.

52:45

It's a covenant that we would see at that time frame.

52:51

So, it's laid out as a covenant. So, they'd say that writer is by himself. And then you have priesthood. So, what? What was that word?

52:58

A covenant. Oh, okay. There are covenants in the Bible, and that's what distinguishes each of the dispensations, by the way, that God works through.

53:09

But, you know, and I do remember this, and I confirmed it by looking it up when

53:15

I found out what our topic was this week. Your point on Genesis 1 and 2 is very important, not only for the issue of the creation of man, but this argument of J -E -D -P relies on the distinction between those two chapters with the name given or used of God in Genesis 1 versus what it is in Genesis 2.

53:39

So, not only apparently are the books, those four or five books Pentateuch authored separately, but even within the framework of a single book, you've got this different authorship.

53:56

Within the first four books, you have a mixing of three authors, the J, the E, and the

54:01

P. And the P is the one that's going to use Adonai, if you see that.

54:07

And the idea is, so here's the idea, is that you had the Jehovah source that supposedly wrote between 900 to 950 to 920

54:18

BC is the argument. So, he was the original, he places it when they got up on Mount Sinai at the covenant, puts them back to that time frame, uses the name we'd refer to as Yahweh or Jehovah.

54:33

So, 950 to 920 BC. The Elohim author came along later at 870 to about 840

54:42

BC. And what this person does is take some abstracts from the

54:48

Jehovah author, maybe redacted some, uses the term Elohim. So, that's his own style of writing.

54:56

So, it's written about that part. So, he's doing more of an abstract style, and he's got his writing.

55:04

Now, the argument that they would make is that you had the J author, the

55:09

E author, they're both separate. Then you have the Deuteronomy author who just writes

55:15

Deuteronomy. Okay. And now you come along and have the priests.

55:22

So, the Deuteronomy author would have, they argue, would have written around 620 was the dates

55:30

I remember seeing, 620 BC, maybe around 550, 520

55:37

BC. So, he would come later. But then really what you have is the priestly order, the priestly authors who come along, and the priests are writing at 550 to 520

55:48

BC. So, these would be the priests that they're taking. What they end up doing is they take the

55:54

J author, E author, and D author. They have all these documents, and they're going to put them together.

56:01

So, what they do is they redact all these works into five books known as the

56:06

Pentateuch. And so, they take the J author's version and the E author's version of Genesis and of Exodus and of Leviticus and of Numbers, and they're going to redact them into one book.

56:22

So, they're going to take pieces of the J author for Genesis and the pieces of the

56:27

E author from Genesis. So, they're going to take Genesis 1 from J, take Genesis 2 from E, and put them together into one

56:35

Genesis account. And that's why you have different renderings, supposedly, of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. Now, this sounds like a reasonable argument, and this is the liberal scholarship for it.

56:47

What is the purpose of it? The purpose is to deny that God wrote the Bible, that it had one author, to say that Moses didn't write.

56:57

Now, one of the things that has come to ruin this argument, one thing is they argued that Moses couldn't have written because they didn't have written form at that time.

57:08

And then they find a stone with writing that dates to the time of Moses.

57:15

Oops. Yeah, and if you go to the Museum of the Bible, you'll see they have a replica of that stone up there on display, and they go through tours, they explain that.

57:27

This was written at the same time as Moses. So, now they have something they can date, they can prove was written around the time of Moses, so there was writing at the time of Moses.

57:38

Oops. One thing shot down. Now, there's a reason

57:43

I give the dating, bud, because I give this dating because when we look at the

57:50

Old Testament, we do not have copies that are as close as we do the

57:57

New Testament. In the New Testament, we have copies of it that are within 20, 30 years of its writing. That's not the case with the

58:04

Old Testament. In fact, one of the wonderful things of the Dead Sea Scrolls was that when we found the copies of the

58:12

Old Testament that were a thousand years prior to the earliest copies we had then of the

58:18

Old Testament, which becomes really important because people used to say there were three, four, five authors of Isaiah, two authors of Daniel.

58:28

They would say that Daniel was written much later. So, the first six chapters were written, then the next six chapters, and the second chapters were written by someone after the

58:40

Roman Empire. It wasn't that he was predicting Greece, which mentioned by name, Rome mentioned by name, the

58:47

Medo -Persians, not mentioned by name, but mentioned two nations that would come together and work as one. All that's laid out during the

58:54

Babylonian captivity. So, they said this had to have been after the fact. What's the assumption there? It can't be supernatural.

58:59

It can't be a divine author. Again, begging the question, trying to assume the very thing you're looking to prove.

59:06

That's the thing you're going to find with liberal theology. So, they're going about it this way, and when they're doing that, what they're doing in this whole theory is to assume the thing they want to prove.

59:19

And so, they're looking and making this distinction and trying to find some way to say these were just human authors.

59:26

Now, I bring up the dates to say that when we look at the earliest copy that we have from the

59:32

Dead Sea Scrolls, we do not have anything that dates any of these books without being in complete

59:42

Genesis, complete Leviticus, complete Exodus. There are, again, just like with Q, there's no evidence.

59:50

There is no document of this J source and E source and D source where the priests supposedly put those together, but you have no evidence of it.

01:00:01

It's the assumption that we, again, infer because, oh, look, this guy uses this name, and this guy uses this name, and this guy uses this name.

01:00:09

It must be this. Or it's just that there's different names for God that have different elements.

01:00:15

You can go to our Striving Fraternity YouTube channel and take our class on theology, and you'll see when we get to the names of God, we talk about the differences of Elohim versus Adonai versus Yahweh.

01:00:30

Each of them have a different element to it. The name has a meaning, and because of that meaning,

01:00:36

God is explaining something of the covenant -keeping God versus the master, the creator.

01:00:43

There's differences there in the names. As we look at the names, they have purpose. This is what you end up seeing.

01:00:51

What they're doing with this is trying to assume the thing that they want to prove. That right there becomes the problem.

01:00:57

It's the same as we had with the Q. There's no historical evidence for separate copies of the

01:01:04

J author versus E author. So they're not doing what they would call science, where they observe it.

01:01:11

They're doing what we would call fairy tale. That's what Q and J -E -D -P are, fairy tales.

01:01:20

Exactly. The motive here, get behind, why are they doing this? This is not merely suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.

01:01:30

This is trying to deconstruct the truth. We've got to prove God wrong as a concept, but obviously their consciences must bother them horribly until they get to the point where they've so hardened it that they adopt an atheistic or agnostic position.

01:01:49

That's what's going on behind all this. Don't forget we've got an enemy at work and what is he going to attack?

01:01:55

He is always going to attack the word of God. And that's what's going on here.

01:02:01

And the arguments that you make give us an apologetic, which really helps buttresses the faithful.

01:02:10

You're not going to use that apologetic again to convert a guy from J -E -D -P who believes in that.

01:02:16

He's looking for a reason not to believe. The only thing that's going to do that is the gospel.

01:02:23

You don't see this higher criticism being practiced in Islam or in Mormonism or Jehovah Witnesses.

01:02:29

I mean, we do that for them because we want to show that there's problems in their theory, but they don't do it themselves.

01:02:37

Christians do. That's interesting. Christians do look into higher criticism and textual criticism and do the work of textual criticism to argue, no, you guys got it wrong.

01:02:48

What they're trying to do with this, as you said, is deconstruct the truth. You see, in Islam, they already are falsehood.

01:02:55

There's no truth to deconstruct, so they don't want to deconstruct that. The atheists aren't trying to deconstruct

01:03:02

Islam, Jehovah Witness, Mormons. They're trying to deconstruct the biblical gospel, biblical message.

01:03:10

So why is there a difference in Genesis 1 where it says Elohim? Because he's creator. And you get to Genesis 2 and it's

01:03:17

Yahweh? Why? Because he's personal God. I mean, there's a context for why these things.

01:03:23

Now, yeah, sure, you can build this elaborate structure that linguistically deconstructs this, but you're not going to destroy truth.

01:03:34

Your motive is to deconstruct something that you can attack, but you can't conquer.

01:03:40

And the thing that we end up seeing with it is, okay, how do Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 work together then?

01:03:47

Very simple. Genesis 1 is an overview of all six days.

01:03:54

Genesis 2 zooms in on some of those specific days, but mostly on day six, and zooms in and gives details that the overview doesn't give.

01:04:05

That's not uncommon. You have some document. You have an executive summary. It gives the overview. Here's what you're going to read.

01:04:11

Then you start reading the details. It doesn't mean it's written by two different authors. By the way, I think I said earlier that Genesis 1 was written by J and 2 by E.

01:04:23

I may have if I didn't. Genesis 1 is the

01:04:28

E author for the use of Elohim. Genesis 2 is the J author for the use of Jehovah.

01:04:34

I can't remember if I mixed that up, but you have a zooming in now of day six, really, but chapter two is just the details.

01:04:47

You have the overview. Here's an overview all six days, so you have them, and then you go in for specifically into, well, actually all seven days, depending how you break the chapters, right?

01:05:01

Yeah. Because I think chapter two starts with day seven, but you end up having one that's an overview, one that's the details.

01:05:10

That's not very difficult. Well, Genesis 1, if you only had that, you could make a vibrant argument for a deistic kind of theology, because this is a creator.

01:05:22

He created, and then he walked away. No, no. Go to chapter two. He's a personal God. He's relational.

01:05:29

He is involved with his creation, primarily with man, his image bearer.

01:05:37

So, you have to understand the context. Just the obvious argument from the standpoint of believers, go read

01:05:48

Jesus. Jesus cites Moses as the author. Paul cites

01:05:54

Moses as the author. Luke cites... I mean, the New Testament, when we go to those individuals, very imminently...

01:06:04

The argument they're going to have against that, though, bud, is they don't believe that Jesus actually lived. Hold on, yeah.

01:06:10

Part of the deconstruction is to say, well, Jesus wasn't even a historical person. I'm going to have to whip out the repent and believe at that point and trust the

01:06:18

Lord to do his work. There was a group called the Jesus Seminar, and they wanted to find out what Jesus actually said, and they were deconstructing the red letters of the

01:06:25

Bible. What they would do is they'd have a voting system where if Jesus actually said it, they put a red ball in, and if he might've said it, it was a pink ball, and if he definitely didn't say it, it was a black ball.

01:06:36

And at the end, I thought this was hysterical, at the end, there was only one phrase they all agreed

01:06:44

Jesus definitely said, and that was when the woman is caught in adultery and comes to him, and he says, let him who has no sin cast the first stone.

01:06:54

Yeah. That's the only thing they all say. He said... What's interesting about that is those who do textual criticism don't believe that's actually what's in the canon of Scripture.

01:07:03

Yeah, yeah. The reason for that is that account moves in some of the earlier manuscripts. It moves around where it is in the gospel accounts.

01:07:10

Some of them don't have it at all. Many believe that this was something that got added in. We don't need it.

01:07:16

It's not needed for any Christian doctrine. We have the doctrine of forgiveness without it. It's probably a true event that occurred, but it probably wasn't in the original canon.

01:07:27

So, the only thing they could agree he absolutely said was probably something that was never in the canon. Not there to begin with.

01:07:34

So, kind of interesting, but this is... And just so folks know, just one other helpful thing, and I know we've discussed this before, as you're using your study

01:07:45

Bible or any contemporary version that is an actual translation, in those places, like the long ending of Mark, it's going to be bracketed in your

01:07:54

Bible, and there's going to be some kind of footnote that tells you that based on the science of textual criticism, most scholars believe that this was added, just like the event you noted.

01:08:07

Depending on your translation, if you have a more word -for -word formal equivalent translation, something like a

01:08:17

King James... Well, King James might not do it, but if you have a New King James, you'll have a

01:08:23

New American Standard, your ESV, something like that, your New English translation.

01:08:30

But you may not get it so much in NIVs or things like that, just so you're aware. So, I hope this was helpful for you.

01:08:38

If it was, let us know. You could leave us a review. There's a link in the show notes to leave us a review.

01:08:45

We love to hear from you guys. You can always email us at info at striving for eternity .org.

01:08:51

That's info at striving for eternity .org. It would be great to hear from you. Bud and I do this.

01:08:57

We speak to you guys. We get to see each other. We don't get to see you, and we would love to hear from you.

01:09:04

It's great to know what you find valuable, what you find interesting, what you didn't like, and most of the stuff that they didn't like that came from Bud.

01:09:13

I apologize. Well, we did get something in the email this week.

01:09:20

Someone didn't like something you had written in your many articles, which were great. I just disagree with them.

01:09:27

Well, I guess I just don't go to the source that they give because I don't trust that source. Oh, I thought you said you disagree with me.

01:09:34

Oh, my goodness. No, no, no. But email us. Let us know what you think.

01:09:40

If this was helpful to you, if you never heard this before, let us know. I encourage you to get my book, What Do We Believe?,

01:09:46

at strivingforeternity .org. Pick up a copy and read the chapter on biblical reliability. If you're going, wait a minute, there were copyist errors, there were variants, there were things that we have in our

01:09:55

English Bible that weren't in the canon in the original. What do you mean my faith is rocked?

01:10:01

Don't be. Just get my book, What Do We Believe? I go through all that to show you that the Bible is more reliable than any other document that we have in ancient times.

01:10:10

It's a wonderful resource. What Do We Believe? It's a systematic theology of the

01:10:15

Christian faith. It's very similar to something like, oh, say, London Baptist Confession or Westminster Confession.

01:10:23

Excellent resource. Excellent. Yeah, just more accurate. That's all.

01:10:29

So, wow, I'm going to get myself. I think I know our next topic. Next week, folks.

01:10:35

That was me trying to get people to email. I'm going to get a lot of hate mail on that one. What do you mean? The London Confession of Faith, the

01:10:43

Baptist Confession of Faith, the Westminster. They're good documents. They're good documents.

01:10:49

And I'm not putting my book up at that level. I'm just saying. They're not scripture. They're all not scripture.

01:10:56

They're not scripture. So with that, bud, you know what? You want to quit, don't you?

01:11:02

I want to throw in the towel. So that's a wrap. This podcast is part of the

01:11:09

Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.