September 23, 2003

New Perspective on Paul and the Reliability of Scripture

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

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

Participation. If you'd like to talk with dr. White call now at six. Oh two nine seven three four six zero two four. Toll-free across the United States. It's one eight seven seven seven five three three three four one.

And now with today's topic here is James white. Well, good morning, welcome to the dividing line. My name is James white. Sounds like I have a cold or sinus infection at the moment. I sound very very low and very very muscly.

But I'm not sure quite what it is because I don't have a sinus infection. Everybody else seems to we've got the person outside the wall coughing and sputtering and spreading disease about and I Guess poor bishy-wishy in the channel also has got the same thing.

That's what happens in the fall. I guess the kids start bringing it home from school or something. I'm not sure what but we're back. We were in Austin, Texas over the weekend and.

And.

Unfortunately, the very same time is Austin City Limits the music festival thing. My body and boy. Do they have traffic problems in Austin? I thought it was bad around here. But it's I guess it's bad everywhere, but it's really bad around Austin and I hadn't been there in quite some time back in 94.

I was over there once twice and and it's that's when we did the debates of Robert fastigi and stuff like that and Boy things have changed a lot in the past eight years there and especially the traffic but I kept I kept mentioning everybody that I saw over there that I had been with before people like Dale Deloney and Larry Wessels and David Krill and When I saw him all this time, they looked better than they did eight years ago.

That's that that really depressed me because I didn't and they looked they really looked. Everybody had lost a lot of weight and they looked great and and it was it was depressing because Anyway, we were over in Austin a day spring fellowship.

I did I Did a very very very very very very very brief introduction response to new perspectivism and man they had that I did three sessions and basically what I Did was I explained? NT Wright's presentation in What st. Paul really said?

Which is probably the most popular presentation of at least his spin on new perspectivism. Anyhow, and.

I.

Tried to explain that In a way that would be understandable Using about four pages worth of direct citations from the book and then of course as I was giving it I was critiquing it as well sometimes and then applied it to certain passages such as think Indians 521 Philippians 3 9 and.

Gave a response from there. And so those are actually those mp3s are actually already available at the day spring site and I understand that Steven Luker is pulling them down and They'll be on the straight gate comm site, which is back up.

Yeah straight gates back and so. You all who've been in withdrawals and whining and complaining and so on so forth you you can you can emerge from your cocoon now and. Anyway, that's what I was doing.

And then Sunday morning was their 25th anniversary and I spoke on Acts chapter 20 and then Sunday evening I was at the Killeen Bible Church, which is right next to Fort Hood. They have a for example 10 members of their church that are currently in Iraq right now, and.

I.

Was asked to compress all three hours. The previous day a new perspective is into one hour down just you know. And that's that's tough to do, you know. And and to be fair to the material that you're doing that's that's tough to do, but we we gave it our best shot and Hopefully from discussions, they're going to be headed back to Killeen Bible Church.

Sometime in the future do a whole conference maybe on Mary or Roman Catholicism or something like that, but had a good time. It's always good to go out and meet the Saints David Hughes and his lovely wife and the two daughters who were there and I saw Nina from channel.

Nina her husband were there and and Met various every place I go anymore people who listen to this program. Just all over the place. It was really weird is I stayed Sunday evening with dr. Gary Long some of you have seen dr. Long's book on definite atonement where he deals with Second Peter 2 1 if you haven't seen that book you want to get hold of it.

Simon Escovedo's article on second Peter 2 1 draws heavily from that sort of defends that against the Chang's article and bid sack that's on our website and I Stated his home had a wonderful time Chatting chatting with him, but I came into channel Through his internet connection at home and One of the first things I discover is that one of our Australian?

Users of the channel clay toys. Had already listened to everything I had done the day before in Austin, Texas. And I had to stop and think about that here's someone in Australia and Saying hey, I really appreciated your presentations that you did yesterday.

In.

Austin, Texas, and he lives in Australia and Not only that but that didn't cost him anything either other than maybe the dial-up time or he's probably not on dial-up. Who's not very many people well lots of people are I guess but anyway it was just amazing.

You know how quickly Information gets around then last night both is our Wally bolt dr. Price in. Now in Hawaii, he's sort of halfway to where he needs to be. Australia's in Hawaii at half the distance anyway.

He had listened to him, and it was just just absolutely amazing. So those are available. And they like I said very brief not nearly as in-depth as you'd like to get. You could you know looking at da Carson's work?

Coming out in regards to new perspectives, and you can tell you can go forever discussing a lot of this stuff especially. Well, you know what kind of a Pharisee was was Paul was he a was he a follower of Shammai or Hillel you know and and.

Just all sorts of stuff like that, but anyhow that's we were doing this weekend, and It's good to be back. And you may recall on the last dividing line and by the way the phone number here is eight seven seven seven five three.

Thirty three forty one. That's toll-free long-distance eight seven seven seven five three three three four one last Thursday. At least if I'm recalling correctly we began taking a look at a.

Article.

Written by Dr.. John Gee a LDS scholar on the alleged corruption of the scriptures in the second century, and I mentioned that much of what is said here is very commonly.

Repeated.

By others very commonly repeated. In the context of other individuals and as evidence of that. It just so happens that last evening. I came in you know you're sitting there. Going through your email going bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep.

You know I was gone for four days left my email on and just sat there bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep all the way. Through this spam and garbage, and I personally am starting a movement capital punishment for spammers.

I.

Think that I think that they should be strapped into an electrical chair. And then all of the voltage that it has required to transmit their garbage. All the copies of their garbage that they have spread across the internet will be run through them.

For many of them that would result in instant Friville it would be really bad, but anyway last night I was going through the email and there is this very yeah, yeah spammers need to be deleted. That's exactly right.

There is this a very interesting Individual who has been coming in the channel with whom I had a extensive discussion Regarding abortion last week and this person comes from a very non Well non-christian worldview in regards to that issue but for some reason has a great fascination with church history and had encountered the lectures that I did on church history in our church on the web and Happened to ask if I knew a certain Bible scholar By the name of Robert M. Price and and the name rang a bell, but I you know It's like well, I I know a doctor price he worked on a one Bible translation and You know, I've known some people with last name price it but I wasn't sure exactly who he's referring to and he mentioned that he had Talked with this individualist individual been very helpful.

Had you know done a lot for? Him or her. I don't even know if this person I was talking to is a him or her to be honest with you.

And.

Anyway.

Meanwhile someone else in channel as so frequently happens in channel Pulled up some of the writings of this individual once it was mentioned that this person is a fellow of the Jesus seminar. It's like ah Jesus seminar.

Yes, you're a wonderful and Looking at that particular Article I discovered that lo and behold.

It was.

Basically the exact same Argumentation that John Gie was using is here being used by one of the fellows for the Jesus seminar and it was interesting to me to once again see the coalescence the alliance of all of those who seek to undercut the reliability of Scripture and here you have the exact same kind of argumentation being used by a Mormon scholar is being used by an individual who interestingly enough if you look at his writings, you know, he's well He's an apostate.

Let's let's use the biblical term. He his own writings give testimony to that openly from fundamentalist to skeptic and so on so forth and and. So I was looking at an article last night and I have it up here apocryphal apparitions 1st Corinthians 15 3 through 11 as a post Pauline interpolation and.

Basically the argument of the article is that the reference to the Gospel the death barrel resurrection of Jesus Christ and the the resurrection appearances of Christ found in 1st Corinthians chapter 15 verses 3 through 11 is Was not original with Paul, but it was inserted during the second century.

I'd like to read the sections as you can see, especially if you listen to last program, then I'll go back to To ghee and you'll see here. You have atheists and Mormons Arguing in the exact same way again for the exact same purpose.

And that is to attack the validity and the accuracy and the well God's preservation of his scriptures over time and so. A reading from Price's article. He's talking again about 1st Corinthians 15 3 to 11.

He says in the present article, I will be arguing that this pericope presents us instead of a piece of later post Pauline Christianity. Therefore obviously what he's arguing then is that there has been a major textual corruption in 1st Corinthians chapter 15 that has left absolutely positively no evidence of its existence and That is an important thing to to recognize is that both of these men ghee in In his article and here Robert Price in his are putting forward the idea that we can theorize about corruptions without providing any evidence from the manuscript tradition itself.

For example, you may recall last week that ghee would for example go to Clement Of Rome the the letter the epistle of the church at Rome to the church at Corinth and say we'll see the writer here is Quoting from stuff.

He's quoting from a form of text. We don't have anymore and so what he's saying is the text was was very different in the day of Clement than it is today and We do not have any evidence of this within the manuscript tradition itself.

And this is the exact same argumentation that's being used by Robert Price and so he says reading again from prices work and By the way, you can call in eight seven seven seven five three three three forty one recent articles have tried to establish ground rules for scholarly Theorizing that would rule out arguments such as mine from the start two of these prescriptions against heretics or Frederick W With the textual limits to redactional theory in the Pauline corpus and Jerome Murphy O 'Connor Interpolations in 1st Corinthians these scholars seem to speak for the majority when they maintain that short of definitive manuscript evidence.

No suggestion of interpolation of the Pauline epistles need to be taken seriously. The texts as they stand are to be judged innocent until proven guilty which in the nature of the case can never happen.

Otherwise if we had to take seriously interpolation or redaction theories based on internal evidence alone. The result would be a state of uncertainty and diversity of scholarly opinion historians and interpreters in such a case can no longer be.

Sure, whether a text or parts of it represent the views the author someone else the game would be rendered very difficult to play. Well, what's he saying he's saying here is that there have been others who have written on the issue and What he is suggesting is a redaction theory and most redaction theories do not have any manuscript support.

You can't go to a documentable source. It is a theory based upon As he uses the term here internal considerations Based solely upon the the concept of well internal evidence and obviously what eternal internal evidence is Depends upon the scholar who is promoting it in this case.

For example price will argue that some of the terms used In this passage are not used anywhere else in Paul. Well, of course any time Paul used the say a new sauce is only used once in the entire New Testament by Paul.

Does that mean it was not original with Paul? Of course not, but that's the kind of argumentation. Well, you know this this isn't Paul's normal language. Well that may be relevant when you have external evidence that a variation has taken place when the manuscripts themselves Demonstrate that there has been a variation in the tradition sometime in the past.

Then such issues as internal evidence and whether one term is Paul's normal term or another can at least be Properly brought forward, but when you're dealing with a passage such as this where there are no manuscripts that do not contain the passage.

There are no manuscripts that demonstrate some sort of a textual problem here then that becomes very very light evidence very very thin evidence indeed to be taken taken seriously and so I continue reading from Prices article I see in such warnings and listen to this This is this again very very similar to how Mormons have to argue.

I see in such writings I'm sorry. I see in such warnings essentially a.

Theological.

Apologetic on behalf of a new textus receptus an apologetic not unlike that offered by Fundamentalists on behalf of the Byzantine text underlying the King James Version. And remember this guy's a quote-unquote former Baptist in fact.

I think I saw on channel last night Southern Baptists and American Baptists ordained at one point in time. And so listen he would know at least be familiar with King James only ism and things like it.

And so he's saying an apologetic not unlike that offered by fundamentalists on behalf of the Byzantine text underlying the King James Version of the Bible just as the dogmatic theology of the latter group Was predicated on particular readings in the Byzantine King James text and thus required its originality and integrity.

So does the biblical theology of today's? magisterium interestingly enough capitalized of Consensus scholarship require the apostolic originality of today's Nessie Olland UBS text. Herein perhaps lies the deeper reason for the tenacious Unwillingness of such scholars to consider seriously the possibility of extensive or significant interpolations or indeed any at all.

Well, that's an interesting statement. What he's basically saying is well the reason that modern scholarship is Is saying that theories of interpolation Cannot be taken seriously without without some sort of manuscript basis something something documentable.

He's saying it's because of the same kind of commitment to the new textus receptus. Which would be the text underlying modern translations what's called the Nessie Olland or the UBS text there that they're the same text just minor differences in punctuation things like that.

And of course that's simply ridiculous. And I can say that's ridiculous from from every possible standing that you can say it's ridiculous. I can say it's ridiculous because I know King James only ism if there's one thing I know it's King James only ism and I know what the arguments are that are promoted in its behalf and to parallel the commitment of someone to the TR.

So as to preserve the King James version and say that the modern view that says we shouldn't look at an at an interpolated Theory without manuscript evidence is somehow parallel to that is absolutely absurd.

That there are so many differences there that it immediately causes me to wonder. And to say that that's not that that that demonstrates a very obvious bias that is destroying logical thought on the part of Dr. Price at this point.

And that's just simply ridiculous. And then he continues to say the issue resolves itself in the theological canon polemics if the integrity of the canonical scholarly text proves dubious in the manner feared by with the whole text will seem Will be seen to slide from the Eusebian category of acknowledged text to that of the disputed.

That is the danger not that a few particular texts will pass all the way into the spurious category and be rendered off-limits like the Long-ending of mark, but that wherever he steps the New Testament theological exegete will find himself amid a marshy textual bog.

The former would actually be preferable to this since whatever remain could still be considered terra firma and thus the Apologetical strategy is to disallow any argument that cannot fully prove the secondary character of a piece of text.

Mere probability results in the dreaded anxiety of uncertainty. So mere probabilities are no good if we cannot prove the text secondary. We are supposedly entitled to go on regarding is certainly authentic innocent until proven guilty.

God forbid the scholarly guild should end up with and then there's with the winsome Monroe's seeming agnosticism. Until such time as the entire epistolary corpus is examined not merely for isolated interpolations.

But to determine its redactional history most historical sociological and theological. Constructions on the basis of text as it stands should probably be accepted only tentatively and provisionally if at all.

Now, what does that what does all that mean? I Mean, there's some scholarly speak in there. Let's let's do the proper thing and make sure everybody understands it. I'm one of those folks that believes very firmly in Demythologizing scholarship and the fact that it is my experience that some of the best thinkers are people who have not had their thinking process corrupted by higher education.

And so what. What is he saying here. Well. The argument he's attempting to put forward here is he's basically saying is that the Academy or the magisterium? Or the majority of scholarship today has has some vested interest in disallowing.

Redactional.

Criticism of the New Testament and what is redactional criticism? Well, I just. I saw someone in channel asking why thinker was banned. That's that's one of the longest stories on the planet, but anyway.

Why why would such a theory be put forward? Well, he's obviously coming at this from the Jesus seminar perspective. I mean this articles on infidels org. Okay, that gives you an idea of where it's coming from and.

The.

Idea that that that New Testament scholarship which by the way is a tremendously varied and and wide Spectrum of belief with very very very few people In that in that entire spectrum that would be anywhere near even Contemplating such a such a conspiracy as as the writer here is seemingly suggesting.

But the idea is well, you know We we really wouldn't have anything to do if we just admitted that we can't know what any of the text Really is all about that. All of the text is uncertain. Now, of course, I immediately stop and say wait a minute upon what? basis is.

Is this kind of a.

Overarching.

Allegation of of redaction and corruption being based what what evidence is being put forward there? There isn't any. Basically what New Testament scholarship is saying is look unless you can demonstrate that a Interpolation has some foundation in something that we can put our hands on we can examine it.

The New Testament text has such ancient credibility such such ancient witnesses involved in it that to assume that it was corrupted in the second century without any evidence of that surviving into the third is In and of itself a Massive leap in assumption that has no basis.

It has no foundation in reality and so That makes perfect sense and he this is what he's arguing against and of course what he's what he's then in this quotation. Saying is it's the most radical form of of criticism and that is you know what?

Until you've examined everything for every possible interpolation. How do you examine that? Well, the problem is there is no way to come up with final rules. For how you look for something like an interpolation and insertion.

Those of you who've listened to the the Malik debate Homs Abdul Malik and myself in the subject deity of Christ. Remember that's the terminology that he used. Any passage that teaches the deity of Christ has been interpolated it's been thrust into the text at a later point.

Well, of course the question then becomes well what happens? When the manuscripts that do not have the interpolation are preserved over time. I Books whole sections like p46 of the of Paul's Paul's writings and things like that that were were Disappeared from from public view they were they were lost to transcription.

No one had control of no one could change them and when they come to light thousands of years later if the theoretical reconstruction of The 2nd century transmission of the of the New Testament text was true.

We would find every time we find new and earlier manuscripts it would create all sorts of havoc. We would have first Corinthians with with all sorts of blocks of text missing or blocks of text Inserted or blocks of text.

We've never seen before. This would be all over the place. But that's not what we find what we find we find earlier and earlier manuscripts is the same text and What scholars have said is folks is given this evidence the theories of 2nd century corruption Simply don't have any foundation and you can see how relevant that is to Gee's article from last week as well.

We'll go back to it's the exact same kind of situation if these alleged corruptions took place evidence would Exist just like there's evidence that Demonstrates the corruption the text of the Book of Mormon, which is only a hundred and seventy some odd years old.

The evidence is very very clear when you compare the printers manuscript with the early editions and so on so forth. There's documented evidence, but that's not the kind of evidence that you can.

You can.

Produce here and so price goes on.

And he.

He makes the well. Let's just look at some of the things William O Walker jr. Has suggested that contrary to those opinions just reviewed in dealing with any particular letter in the corpus the burden of proof rests with any?

Argument of the corpus or indeed any particular letter within the corpus contains no interpolation talk about circular argumentation. I mean that is just absolutely. In other words throw up your hands ignore all Documentary evidence and just assume that any text you encounter has been massively edited.

Even if that would have created an entire situation of massively edited text when the the text does become seen In the middle of second and the third century. Just ignore all that stuff. Let's try to get rid of these of these texts anyway.

We can among the reasons advanced by Walker is the fact that quoting Walker the surviving text of Pauline letters is a text promoted by the historical winners in the theological and ecclesiastical struggles of the second and third centuries.

Stop for a moment baloney. Someone doesn't know their church history. In fact you can recognize that. You know even if he's talking here about Martian or something like that. The fact the matter is the the and this is where your church history is important to your defense the biblical text.

What happened after the Council of Nicaea? Those of you who have read my article at the CRI website on what really happened the Council of Nicaea are responding right now. And of course I can't hear you responding because that's the nature of webcasting.

But you know what happened immediately after the Council of Nicaea. For decades you have the Aryan resurgence. Jerome described it to the the world woke up and groaned to find itself Aryan. That's when Athanasius kept getting kicked out of his church.

By the the powers that be. Well did that result in some wholesale editing of the text of Scripture? Those were the winners at the time. No, it did not. And so the idea that there was there was this this massive ecclesiastical power that could make these changes.

Which is normally the theory promoted by someone like like the Mormons and John Gee. But here being promoted by atheists and skeptics just simply isn't the case. They did not have the ability not only to control the text of their day.

But they didn't have the ability to go back and obtain the text that had already been stored for posterity normally by disaster Earthquake or whatever it might be. So I go back to reading from Walker here.

In short it appears likely that the emerging Catholic leadership in the churches Standardized the text of the Pauline corpus in the light of orthodox view and practices. Suppressing even destroying all deviant texts and manuscripts.

Thus it is that we have no manuscripts dating from earlier than the third century. Thus it is that all the extant manuscripts are remarkably similar in most their significant features. And thus it is that the manuscript evidence can tell us nothing about the state of the Pauline literature prior to the third century.

What an incredible statement. First of all, it admits, you know what when the text comes into view far earlier than any other work of antiquity when the text comes into view in regards to the The the manuscripts in the New Testament it is remarkably pure.

But you you don't want to know why we have to come up with a conspiracy theory to explain why and it was those nasty Christians you see they they they destroyed everybody else's text. Let's not mention the fact that what is the state of the church in the second century folks.

Here's again. You got a no church history. This is where it's so good. What what were they doing during this period of time they're hiding. This is the period of the greatest imperial persecution of the Christian Church.

And here we have these.

Scholars.

Suggesting that in the midst of their they're being fed to lions and Whipped and tortured in prison that somehow they had the ability.

To.

Be running around gathering up manuscripts and editing and destroying variant manuscripts. Just I'm sorry, I just you know, these folks teach at at universities and and it just makes me sit here and Scratch my bald head at how in the world, you know, I feel for people who spend their money to get this this kind of Education he goes on with this is back to price now after the quotation from Walker With seems to think it was Unremarkable that all textual evidence for the third century has mysteriously vanished.

Well, it hasn't mysteriously vanished. We have Irenaeus we have Ignatius. It hasn't mysteriously vanished. That that's and of course is we're only talking about New Testament here because we're talking about Paul in regards to the first Corinthians.

But it hasn't mysteriously vanished. There are elements of it. We're talking about actual manuscripts That have been passed down to us. But according to Walker the absence of the crucial textual evidence is no mystery at all.

It was a silence created expressive to speak eloquently to the apologetics of with and his brethren. Today's apologists of the New Texas Receptus are simply continuing the canon polemics of those who standardized censored the text in the first place.

And I'll stop there because as we've already said that is absolutely positively Ridiculous, no material is a they can't bring forward anything here and it stands completely and totally against The condition of the text as we see it when it comes into existence.

The idea that the persecuted Christian Church of the second century had the ability to make all those other manuscripts Disappear is so ridiculous. We might as well throw these folks in with the folks that don't think we ever landed on the moon.

But this is all shot in Hollywood someplace. This is the level of Thinking that is involved here. And now we go back to John Gee's article and it's the same stuff. It's the same material. And I'll be looking at that just a moment.

I'm looking at the clock and noticing that we really need to get that computer Fixed out there. Mr Mr. A on in person because People want to hear your voice and and the voice of others doing these commercials.

They don't want me doing it and and I've actually discovered that a break, you know. You get a drink you take a breath. It makes the hour a whole lot easier. That's why people have commercials and we don't have commercials anymore.

So we need to get our commercials back. We need to we need to fix that.

Anyway.

The only thing I have to mention commercialized is we finally have after oh I don't know a year of not having or I'm not sure how long it's been but the Christian message tract is back in print. And some of you have seen the Christian message for two years.

The Christian message tract, which is our I wouldn't call it our response before spiritual lies. It is the basic gospel tract that that I have written and that we utilize and.

It.

It certainly has more text to it than the first spiritual lives does but it presents just a little bit more than. Then that particular track does as far as the message of the faith and it is now back in print.

I don't know if we have a graphic of it or something like that on the website. Those of you who. Can we use on there much. Those of you who have. Can we do what. I was just wondering what what. Never mind this this.

That's fine. We'll put a graphic of it up there and we'll invite everyone to pick up their copies. I don't know what it costs. I haven't.

Look at it since each.

But there's both there's all prices.

10 cents each. Oh.

There you made it simple there. Oh, okay. We've charged 10 cents each for our tracks for 15 years. We used to have both prices and I know that that's true. Okay, that's all I was talking about. We did have both price.

Yes. Well, that was how we you know, things cost more these days. I'm well aware of that. Yes, this is true. Anyway, the Christian message tract the basic gospel tract from a reformed perspective which even mentioned things like the Trinity and the sufficiency of Scripture and things like that.

Yeah, I think it does say some place that Jesus Christ specifically died to save his people. One of our Non-reformed friends from England was asking about that.

Anyway.

That's available on the website and Available to fulfill orders now because I don't know if we just took it down off the website for two years or just what but It'll be up there. So take a look for that on the ailment org website.

Eight seven seven. Boys to give up. Eight seven seven seven five three three three four one is the phone number. Eight seven seven seven five three three three four one. Going back to the John Gee article under the subtitle accusations of corruption we read if comparison between the beginning of the second century and its end shows that Scripture has changed.

A closer look at the Christian office in the second century shows that they were aware of this change and I mentioned last week a citation of 2nd Peter 3 15 through 16. Which of course has nothing to do with the perversion of the text of Scripture whatsoever.

In fact.

This what follows the citation this miss citation the sense of has no no contextual relationship whatsoever to The idea of changing Scripture, but we read the most sacred teachings of Jesus were not committed to writing and.

The citation for that one is 2nd. John Verse. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. 3rd. John verses 13 through 14. Remember from the perspective of Mormonism there's this this constant desire to emphasize the idea of.

The.

Secrecy of the temple and things like that. Well, what does what does the third John actually set? Well, let's look at it. Third John 13 says. I had many things to write to you. But I am NOT willing to write them to them to you with pen and ink.

But I hope to see you shortly and we will speak face to face. Now let's go back and see it. Notice what what is said here. The most sacred teachings of Jesus were not committed to writing. So we're assuming that at the end of John's life.

Having probably already written the gospel of John maybe even the revelation of John John writes.

To.

His audience a very brief note and Says I have many things to write to you. But I'd rather tell you in person and that means that the most sacred teachings of Jesus were not committed to writing. Can you say I said Jesus?