Thoughts on the King James, TR, Ecclesiastical Text Movement, etc.

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:35

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. Can't see anything on the screen again. I never know whether we're really started or not when that happens, but there we go.

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We'll get more advanced computer programs someday.

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Maybe a little red light. A little incandescent red light on top of the thing. Anyway, I don't know what made me go looking for this.

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But I pulled this out of the dark corner of a storage place at home.

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This is a little Cambridge King James version. Red letter edition.

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I'm not real big into red letter, but it's got a little snap on it. And it's a little beat up on the corner down here, which would be an interesting illustration of some of the damage you see on the ancient papyri, but we won't go there right now.

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This was the primary Bible that I carried with me for many years out in Mesa, at the

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Easter pageant, and up in Salt Lake City. Honestly, as I sit here right now,

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I could not read it. I really couldn't. I've got a pair of reading glasses over there, and I might be able to pop them on.

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But I honestly could not read it. But when you look at what's marked in yellow, it's the key text that you use in talking to Mormons.

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And I don't think this is the one. I think it was... I wonder where that one is.

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That might be in the other room. I think it was a gray one that I had. The night that that young Mormon missionary...

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Well, he actually wasn't a missionary. He was a returned missionary. Does that make you not a missionary? I don't know. Anyway, reached over my

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Bible and pointed at Ephesians 1 .11, because I'm pretty certain I had it outlined.

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But it might have been this, because it's in the right spot. Because I do remember that's where it was. So it might have been this one. I just thought

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I had it outlined. But that really wasn't a normal verse I'd be talking with Mormons about anyways.

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But I just read to that Mormon missionary, and I'm sorry.

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I think I've told the story, but I'll tell it again. I was talking with this returned

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Mormon missionary, and he very, very quickly got to the real issue.

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And that was, he asked me, why are there so many different churches?

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And my response to him was, people pick and choose what they will and will not believe out of the

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Bible. And he obviously had not run into that particular response before.

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And so he said, well, what do you mean? And so I went into it, and I basically was talking, interestingly enough, the same thing that I said in the

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INC debate. Sola Scriptura and Tota Scriptura. You have to believe Scripture alone, but you also have to believe all of Scripture.

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And as an illustration, well, he said, okay, okay, okay. And then we moved on to the issue of salvation.

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And he asked whether I believed in predestination. And I, you know, it might have been this one, because I do remember that's exactly where it was on the page.

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But then again, as long as the Ephesians started on that page, that's pretty much where it would be in almost any printing.

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But anyway, I read that. I opened Ephesians chapter one, and I read that text.

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And he said, so you're saying, and I stopped him, and I reread it. In whom also we have obtained, and any more,

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I'd be in danger of assault, because I'd have to stick the Bible so far out there.

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In whom also we have obtained that inheritance hath been predestined according to the purpose of him who worketh all things out of the counsel of his own will.

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And he said, well, so you actually think, stopped him a third time, reread it.

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And he, you know, it was like holding it like this. And he reached over, and he tapped the page.

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He found where the number was, tapped the page, and says, that's wrong, and I feel good saying that.

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And I've told that story a number of times before. Now, why do I start with that? Well, this is what

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I carried. And from this, I defended monotheism, and fundamental

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Christian doctrines, sola scriptura, justification by faith. I dealt with, you know, how you know what truth is, the testimony of the

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Holy Spirit, all sorts of stuff like that, out of this King James version of the

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Bible. So when I hear people saying, well, you're opposed to the

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King James, I always correct them, I'm opposed to King James -only -ism, because the translators of this

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Bible would have been opposed to King James -only -ism. There's no question about that.

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None. So, why then do

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I promote what are called modern translations? Well, because I do believe that as tremendous a monument to the scholarship of the early 17th century that this is, as deeply indebted as we are to the

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King James for so much of our language and terminology, and how important it was, and I think everybody should have a

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King James, and should be familiar with the King James, so on and so forth. The reality is, it was done between 1604 and 1611.

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And I don't eat food from 1604 to 1611. I don't use the technology that existed between 1604 and 1611.

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I don't wear the clothing that was in existence between 1604 and 1611.

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And so I don't feel any particular requirement to have to use a translation into the

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English language that was produced between 1604 and 1611. Now, if someone applies the same methods of interpretation, hermeneutics, to this text as to my

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New American Standard or the ESV, are they going to come to a different conclusion on the key issues of the

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Christian faith? No, they're not. No, they're not. As much as there are King James -only folks who would say otherwise, it simply isn't the case.

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But what I feel as confident going into a debate that would deal with the history of the text, the very readings of the text, well, even the deity of Christ with the

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King James over against a modern translation. Well, of course, I wouldn't use a translation in those contexts anyways.

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But how about the underlying text? This is sort of the underlying text for the

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New Testament. Actually, now that I think about it, I don't believe I own a 1525

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Blomberg, which is the Hebrew basis of the...

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There's only like six or eight differences, so it's not a big deal, but probably have it in accordance someplace, or if I don't,

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I'll need to get it. But this is sort of ostensibly the basis of the

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New Testament of the King James Version. Generally, this is called the

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Textus Receptus. That's somewhat of a misnomer. This actually only goes back to 1894.

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So what does that make? It's 123 years old? And it's not technically a real

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Greek New Testament, though this day there were many students...

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Well, there were students in various places that were utilizing this as their primary

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Greek text in classes at relatively small Bible colleges. And they think that this is what was used in the

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King James. And in a sense it is, because this is the result of the work by a man by the name of Scrivener.

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And what he did is he went back and he used the King James, the actual

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English translation. And what he did is he realized that the

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King James translators had a number of printed versions available to them.

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I showed you one last time. It's down there. That's the third edition, 1550

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Stephanus. They had five editions of Erasmus, which he had produced between 1516 and 1535.

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They had the editions of Stephanus. The 1551 was the first one that had verse divisions, so they obviously had to be using some of those later ones for the verse divisions.

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And then they had a number of versions from Bayes, the most important of which was his 1598.

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So in almost no situations did they go outside of the printed text, either

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Greek or the 1525 Blomberg for the Old Testament, for any type of examination of the text or things like that.

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They did include textual footnotes, not very many of them, as was pointed out in one of the video responses to last week's program, but they did include them, which plainly shows they weren't saying, oh, this text that we've chosen is the text.

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You can't use anything else. And the church has spoken and all the rest of that kind of stuff. Anyway, so what

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Scrivener did is, since they used different ones, and the New Testament was done by different committees.

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There was a Gospels Committee and a Paul Committee and General Epistles, Revelation Committee and stuff like that. So unfortunately, there were inconsistencies between those committees.

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I've used the illustration that I learned about this, well, not the hard way, but a rather memorable way,

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I suppose. Years and years ago, I dealt with an atheist by the name of Dennis McKenzie.

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When I first started subscribing to Biblical Errancy, not inerrancy, errancy, why is

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Algo asking me questions in channel? Like I'm supposed to be able to type and talk at the same time?

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I have no idea. It's weird. Anyway, when

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I first started subscribing to Biblical Errancy, it would come very clearly mimeographed.

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And many of you don't even know what mimeographed was. But a mimeographed machine was before the copy machine.

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And mimeographed paper had a special smell to it. Remember the smell to mimeographed paper? Oh, all the old people in the audience are going, hey, hey, you triggered a member of the brain cell there.

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That is cool. Anyway, and Dennis McKenzie, one of the alleged errors in the

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Bible that he pointed to was the fact that the commandment, the commandment, thou shalt not kill.

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Thou shalt not murder. In one place, in Matthew, in the King James, I think it's murder.

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And in Romans, it's kill or vice versa. I think it's vice versa. Anyway, and of course,

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I point out to him, well, the underlying Greek's identical. So how can you say it's a contradiction when all it is is the fact that the various committees, the

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King James, there really wasn't an overarching committee that sort of smoothed the translation out and made sure that each of those subcommittees had followed the same rules as to how they were rendering things.

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This also comes up, by the way, this comes up a lot with the cults because Joseph Smith in Mormonism came up with three levels of heaven because of the translation committees of the

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King James. Did you know that? Why are there three levels of heaven in Mormonism?

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Because Joseph Smith looked at 1 Corinthians 15 and there is a glory of the sun and a glory of the moon, a glory of the stars.

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Then he says there's a celestial glory and a terrestrial glory. And Joseph Smith's looking at that and he goes, oh, as a prophet,

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I see something's missing because there's three levels, sun, moon, and stars, and therefore celestial is the top and terrestrial is the next, and so there must be something missing.

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And so he took the first two letters of terrestrial and slapped them on the last part of celestial and came up with a new word called telestial.

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And so in Mormonism today, you have the telestial level of glory. The problem is the very same

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Greek words that are rendered celestial and terrestrial in 1 Corinthians 15 are more accurately rendered as heavenly and earthly in John chapter 3.

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Joseph Smith, not being a prophet nor a student of scripture, didn't know that and so came up with something really weird.

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So anyway, those committees, one committee might use

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Stephanus more often. Another committee might use Beza more often.

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Someone might use 3rd edition of Erasmus more often. And there's differences between them. They're not major differences, but there are differences between them.

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And so what this is, is Scrivener goes, you know, let's produce a

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Greek text that reflects the textual choices of the King James Translation Committees.

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And so this is a Greek text based upon English translation, which was based upon numerous other

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Greek texts, which were based upon manuscripts. And that's where it comes from.

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And of course, there is no Greek manuscript in the world that reads identical to this. So when our friends say, well, you know, there's, you know, the reason eclecticism leads you to a text that no one's ever found in a manuscript.

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Well, I'm sorry. It's the same thing. It goes both ways. It goes both ways. So what's the point here?

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Well, last week, I think it was last week, when I talked a little bit about textual critical things,

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I mentioned, you know, I held up my Stephanus text back there, and I pointed out that was the first printed

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Greek New Testament where variations were noted in the margins of the text itself, references to Greek manuscripts.

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Now, it was very few, obviously. And in comparison to what we have today, almost nothing at all.

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But the point was that it was a well -known reality that there were variations, even in what we would today call the

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Byzantine manuscript tradition, which was the majority of manuscripts, is the majority of manuscripts.

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But here's the problem. I pointed out this is problematic for the ecclesiastical text position, which never wants to actually prove its assertions, but just simply assert them and hope that they're not actually asked to produce a text, because, as they've pretty much admitted, they can't.

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The text that they have has been provided to them by other means, Erasmus didn't use their methodology,

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Stephanus didn't use their methodology, Beza didn't use their methodology. No one has ever used their methodology. Jerome didn't use their methodology to produce

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Vulgate. You cannot produce a text using their methodology, because, as they say, well, it's not a methodology. It's a worldview.

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Well, congratulations. But no one can produce a text with this belief system.

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And yet we have a small number of people who are arguing that every major Reformed seminary is off the rails when it comes to having the proper

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Greek New Testament. And this ecclesiastical text movement is a retreat back into history so as to, in essence, produce what

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I would say is a false feeling of certainty, rather than an advancement in helping more and more sound biblical believers to understand where we got the

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New Testament, why we have such an incredibly strong testimony to the

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New Testament, and how we can then defend that New Testament in regards to the attacks that are so prevalent upon it from people like Bart Ehrman and others.

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I don't know of any Reformed seminaries, any major Reformed seminaries, that utilize this methodology.

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I just don't. In fact, when I have spoken to some of the leading scholars, and when

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I say leading scholars, I mean people who are publishing and are really taking the forefront of Christian theology, and especially in the area of the text of the

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New Testament, things like that. When I've spoken to them, they're looking at me like, there are people pushing that?

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Reformed people? I'm like, yeah, keep an eye out, because they tend to be somewhat subversive, and how they do it.

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But yeah, they're out there. And so I made some comments about this movement, and Brother True Love, as pretty much expected, posted a video reply.

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And what I wanted to do today was to look a little bit at one of the primary points that he made.

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Because again, we accuse each other of talking past each other. I'll let people out there decide.

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But it just seemed to me that, once again, certain things are just simply taken for granted that cannot be taken for granted.

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Again, people go, why do you deal with this? Because I am very concerned when

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Reformed people abandon the heritage that has been given to us in the advancement in the state of our knowledge of the text since the period of the

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Reformation. When I read the King James translators, I am absolutely certain they would not have done that.

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They would not have done that. But that's what I see this movement as, as a retreat, not an advancement.

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And hence, I believe that it cripples doing solid, meaningful apologetics.

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And from my perspective, the people who can do the most meaningful apologetics are

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Reformed people. That's why I'm Reformed. That's why, in a couple weeks, when

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I speak in Wittenberg, my topic of my paper will be similar to what

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I did at G3, but a little bit more in depth. And specifically, on the subject of the

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Reformed understanding of the Atonement as the most effective response to Roman Catholic apologetics in the subject of the

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Mass and the Eucharistic sacrifice. Well, as I...

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Let's take that subject, for example. As I think on that particular subject,

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I can't, really off the top of my head, think of a specific textual variant that would impact that particular subject.

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I mean, in regards to Roman Catholicism, certainly

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Romans 5 .1 is relevant, even though even Rome doesn't promote the textual variant there.

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There just aren't that many textual variants that would impact the key topics.

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Because, like I said, textual variation doesn't change the theology of the New Testament. But insisting upon a particular

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English translation based upon a traditional Greek text is problematic, from my perspective.

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So, anyway, we were directed by Brother Trulove to the great work of Francis Turretin, his

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Institutes of Atlantic Theology. Three volumes in this form. I do have it in Logos, so I could have pulled these up, but I thought

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I'd use the old paper version for this. And Brother Trulove read some quotes from Turretin that made me go, really?

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And it's funny, he even said in the video, he said, I'm not going to argue about the textual stuff about these particular texts,

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I'm just pointing out. Like, well, that's the problem. You have to.

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You can run from it, you can hide from it, but we're talking about the text here, we're talking about what the manuscripts say.

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And one side has the evidence, and the other side just doesn't.

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Sorry, but you don't. So, to what am I referring?

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Well, first of all, referring to the need for glasses.

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I started looking at... This is, for those of you who have

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Institutes of Atlantic Theology, this is in the second topic, questions 10, 11, primarily.

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So, that's what you want to be looking at, if you want to look at these. And so I was looking through the questions that are given here, and I found it rather fascinating, because I don't care where you read in Turretin, it was just brilliant.

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And one of the things I think we can learn from our topic today is to once again challenge the sad misapprehension of many regarding church history.

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That if you disagree with someone on something, if you say they were wrong factually on something, held a wrong position, then you are either being disrespectful to them, or you have to reject everything they said.

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And, you know, a lot of people just really struggle when I, last week, pointed people to watch first the

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BBC version, Martin Luther Heretic, right at an hour long.

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It's available on YouTube. And then, and only then, watch

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The Radicals, which is also available on YouTube. And if you watch those two films, you're going to be conflicted.

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You're going to be conflicted because of the fact that the one presents

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Luther standing before the powers of his day, seeking to do what was right before God, and risking his life to do so.

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In a matter of years, being willing to use that very same power of government against other people who disagreed with him on very similar issues.

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This is the issue of sacralism. It's a really important issue. It's an important issue today.

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It's an issue that theonomists have to talk about and think about. And so, the point being,

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I can tell people that I have tremendous respect for Calvin and that I read

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Calvin's Bible commentaries all the time and that they're extremely useful. And, you know, the

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Institutes of the Christian Religion is just monument in Christian history to clarity of thought and expression and depth and all that kind of stuff.

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And at the same time, recognize he would have minimally had me banished from Geneva. No question about it.

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And Zwingli? I might have gotten my third baptism from Zwingli, which means being drowned from the bridge there in Zurich.

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So, for a lot of folks, you can't put those two things together. If you can't, you will not be able to study church history.

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And you will not be able to deal with the reality of the history of what

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God has done amongst his people and the fact that we live in a fallen world. So, I can deeply appreciate

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Turretin and go, wrong. And as I look at this discussion,

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I'm going to let you in on a little secret here. But we have to keep it amongst ourselves, okay?

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So, we have a special filter right now we're going to put on the feed. And only truly reformed people are going to be able to hear what

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I say. And everybody else will actually only hear me speaking in Klingon.

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It's a cool filter. And, of course, I helped to design it because that's why it uses

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Klingon. Who else would have thought of that? Here's the inside story.

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Why did you go to the wide shot there? Are you making it dark now?

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What? Oh, you installed the filter. Okay, all right. But it would help if we were closer because I'm trying to whisper to people.

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So, you need to turn the lights back on. Here's the scoop.

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I think if we're honest with ourselves, some of our reformed forefathers might have been wrong about a few things.

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And part of the reason why some of them might have been wrong about a few things is because they overreacted to the people that they were arguing with.

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Now Rich is using this as an opportunity to play with toys. And he's completely ruining the whole point of what

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I was trying to do here. Actually, he's just having fun playing with things in the other room.

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So, that having passed by, a little face palm there,

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I think that some of our forefathers might have overreacted to Roman Catholicism.

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It's understandable. In fact, if you study church history at all, if you go back and you read some of the other church fathers, if you read, for example,

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Irenaeus, Irenaeus was arguing against what? Well, and against heresies, he was arguing against Gnosticism.

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Sometimes you read his arguments and you just go, really? I mean, like there's that one argument that he comes up with where he says it's apostolic tradition that Jesus was more than 50 when he died as an argument against Gnosticism.

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And we all go, yeah, that didn't come from the apostles. That's the earliest form. That's the earliest reference, by the way, to apostolic tradition in patristic writings.

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And it's something no one believes. Actually, you can go back to the apostles, which I always find extremely useful to point out.

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But Irenaeus overreacted to Gnostics. And some of our

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Reformed forefathers overreacted to Rome. And here's a really,

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I'm going to get in a lot of trouble. I'm going to get a lot of trouble here. But there were some

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Reformed Baptists back in the 1600s that overreacted to the

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Presbyterians. I'm done. He's out of there.

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Never going to speak at a Reformed Baptist church again. Yeah, I think that happened because all of us, and actually this is nothing new because any one of you,

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I remember I first gave my talk on Augustine and the influence of the

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Donatist and Pelagian controversies on Augustine and his exegesis in the 1990s.

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So I've been talking about this for at least 20 years. But we are all the product of the conflicts that we engage in.

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And the reality is that when you're playing tug of war, there's no balance in tug of war.

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That's why when someone lets go of the rope, that's actually something you might try doing.

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Everybody else on the other side falls down. If you grab the rope fast enough, you can win. That's one of the tricks that you would use.

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It only generally works once. But anyway, because you're not balanced. And so everybody ends up with imbalances.

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And I think I've got one certain thing in mind amongst Reformed Baptists. Seems like they just were out of balance in responding to Presbyterians.

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I think New Covenant theology, for many people, is an imbalanced response to Presbyterianism.

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And by the way, Presbyterians did the same thing in reverse. Not so much because they actually knew what

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Baptists believed, but because they just refused to listen to what we believed in the first place. That's another issue. Anyway, so I think some of the

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Reformation writers, especially getting into the 17th century, once the

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Jesuits really started growing and establishing schools and the

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Counter -Reformations in full swing, what did they do? They attacked the Scriptures. Now, the funny thing is, the approach of their attack in the 17th century has been abandoned by Rome today.

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They've just given up on it. The fact that Rome uses the same

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Greek text that all the rest of us use, well, other than Ecclesiastical textbooks, demonstrates that Vulgate, not so much for Sixtus and all that stuff, they gave up on it.

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That didn't work. But Turretin's writing in the middle of this time period, he's writing when the

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Papists, as he likes to say, are attacking the

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Reforms' ability to use Scripture on the basis of uncertainty about the text itself, as if Rome could give you certainty about the text.

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Rome couldn't give you certainty about the text. But that was the point of attack.

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And I think some of the things we're going to look at here illustrate that imbalance on Turretin's part.

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And it's an imbalance that is fully understandable, historically speaking, but is no longer relevant.

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And we have to go, he was wrong about that, and here's why. Now, if we just refuse to utilize the huge amount of data that is now available to us, over 5 ,800 portions of the

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New Testament in Greek, cataloged and available now.

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We just talked last week about two new small but important fragments, Papyri 132 and 133.

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I guess it would be papyri if I just put 132 and 133. Anyway. Yeah.

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Do we say these things are irrelevant? Do we just ignore them? We can't. So, I was looking through, and it's page 111 of the printed edition.

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Like I said, this is question 10, number 21.

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Here's what Turretin writes. There is no corruption in the Greek text of 1 Corinthians 15, 47, but only in the

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Vulgate. The latter omits the word kurios, which here refers to Christ, to make it evident that the

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Lord is Jehovah, not a mere man. Thus the antithesis of the first and second Adam becomes much stronger.

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The first man is of the earth, earthy. The second man is the Lord from heaven. And so, naturally,

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I go, all right, let's take a look at that and see if that's the case.

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And so, I believe I am sending over to you accordance at 1

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Corinthians 15, 47. You got that? All right.

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Now, here is the textual variant right there.

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See that little mark right there? It is indicating the next word.

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Here you have, aha, the earth of the dust, of the earth, earthly.

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The second man from heaven. And so,

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Turretin said that there is no corruption of the Greek text, that it's kurios.

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No one's going to be able to see that. We're going to have to keep that up for now. There we go. That it is, and he would have had this reading right here, anthropos hakurios.

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And why do I say that? Because of this right here. This is the majority text symbol, and that means that it's anthropos hakurios, the second man, the

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Lord from heaven, in the corrected hand of Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus, the first correction of Bezae Canterburgiensis, KL, P, Psi, these including, interestingly enough, the marginal reading of 1739 and the main reading of 1881.

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It is the majority text reading and in the Syriac. P46 stands alone, interestingly enough,

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P46 being the earliest collection we have of Paul's writings, as anthropos pneumatikos, so spiritual man, probably harkening back to verse 46 and so on and so forth, so that's interesting.

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Only hakurios is read by 630 and at least what we know of Marcion.

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And then the text, which is just anthropos thou hakurios, is the original

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Sinaiticus, which, of course, had not been discovered in the days of Turretin.

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But B was known. C, the original reading of D, F, G, 1175, the original 1739, and there's where you have the

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Latin text, so it's a Western reading, and the Boheric here.

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Now, it's interesting that I point to B here, Codex Vaticanus, because of the fact that it was known, and as far back as the early 1520s,

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Erasmus had written to his friend Bombasius in Rome to actually look at Codex B at 1

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John 5, 7, which we're going to talk about here a little bit later on. So, given how thorough

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Turretin is and other things, it's not like he could go to the library and look up the readings of B.

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And maybe things were such that he didn't have any friends in Rome, as Erasmus did. Remember, Erasmus was a

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Roman Catholic priest. But he obviously just didn't have access to these things.

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So, what you have here, then, is you have the two earliest codices outside of the papyri.

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You're one papyrus, and it has Anthropos Pneumaticus. So, you have the two earliest both having simply

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Anthropos as their reading. So, you can go ahead and minimize that now.

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So, when you read the statement that there is no corruption in the

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Greek text of 1 Corinthians 15, 47, what do you do now when the facts become the facts?

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When you can put that on the screen and go, actually, there are a number of Greek manuscripts that do not have that, and they happen to be the earliest

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Greek manuscripts that do not have that particular reading.

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Now, I think where people struggle a little bit is the fact that, as he argues, he says, well, hey, this strengthens sound theology.

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Did you hear what he said? The latter omits the word kurios, which is vulgate.

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Well, vulgate here is actually following the earliest Greek witnesses. And almost became a point where, well, the vulgate's bad and everything else, again, it's that imbalance that comes from the constant warfare.

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The latter omits the word kurios, which here refers to Christ to make it evident that the

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Lord is Jehovah, not a mere man. Well, didn't

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I spend a long time talking to Joe Ventilacion about Jesus being

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Yahweh? Why wouldn't I want all the references I could possibly have to Jesus being

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Yahweh? I mean, shouldn't we have, shouldn't we take the reading that could be read in the most orthodox fashion?

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Don't underestimate the weight of that argument. Do not underestimate the weight of that argument for many people.

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But the reality is, I want it to be a true argument. I want it to be a consistent argument.

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If you want to see what happens when you take that kind of reasoning to its final conclusion, watch

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Joe Ventilacion jumping from translation to translation to translation to come up with whatever is supportive of his position.

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You can't do that. And you don't get to take your position and determine the reading of Scripture based upon your position.

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It might be nice to have a reference to Jesus as Jehovah in this text, but if that's not what Paul wrote, then we have no business putting it in there.

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None. That's why I have said from the beginning, the commitment must be what did the apostles write?

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If you have anything other than that as your ultimate goal, you're going to have a problem.

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You're going to have a major problem. And so the fact is, he's just wrong.

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And so you have to factually look at that. Okay, now, the section that was specifically read in the video is question 11, paragraph 10.

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There is no truth in the assertion that the Hebrew edition of the Old Testament and the Greek edition of the New Testament are said to be mutilated, nor can the arguments used by our opponents prove it, not the history of the adulteress,

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John 8, 1 through 11, for although it is lacking the Syriac version, it is found in all the

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Greek manuscripts. That's a factual error. He probably wasn't aware of it, but it's a factual error.

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Not 1 John 5, 7, for although some formally called it into question, and heretics now do, yet all the

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Greek copies have it. That is not only an error, it's an upside -down error. In other words,

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I don't even know where he got that. I mean, that's just, that's not an error, that's a blunder. That's the only way that can be described.

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As Sixtus Sinensis acknowledges, they have been the words of never -doubted truth and contained in all the

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Greek copies from the very time of the apostles. That's laughably untrue. That's just laughably untrue.

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Not Mark 16, which may have been wanting in several copies in the time of Jerome, as he asserts, but now it occurs in all, even the

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Syriac version, and it's clearly necessary to complete the history of the resurrection of Christ. So, Brother Trulov's point was, well, see, for Turretin, it's the

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Perikope Adultery, the Kamiohonium, and the longer ending of Mark. And that's exactly where the ecclesiastical text differs from, well, again, what is the ecclesiastical text?

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Who knows? That's, it's not, it's not the

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Byzantine text platform, so evidently that's not the ecclesiastical text anymore. Because, immediately, again, anyone who uses the

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Byzantine platform is going to reject what he said about the Kamiohonium, because it's just false.

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It is untrue on a factual level. I can give you a list of all of the manuscripts that contain the

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Kamiohonium. They're all after the 14th century. Most of them have things written in the margin in a 16th, 17th century hand.

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It is a massively late edition, and nothing before the 14th century in a manuscript contains that text.

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And it's also untrue what is said about the others. It's in all the

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Greek texts. Here's what we, here's what we discover when we look at something like this.

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On the comma, I don't know how Turidzin got that far off, but on the other two,

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I can at least understand how he came to conclusions that he did.

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I get it. But what do we do now? What do we do in a day where we have all of this information available to us?

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Do we just close our eyes to it? Call it some type of modern conspiracy?

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Or do we have to examine even the people that we have great respect for from the past in the light of the reality that we now face today?

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I do not believe that it is a Christian it's a characteristic of sound

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Christian theology to close your eyes to factual evidence in regards to the claims of the

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Christian faith, even in regards to the claims of the Christian faith in regard to the scriptures themselves. As Dan Wallace has said many times, there are many people who are willing to trade the truth for certainty.

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There are many people willing to trade the truth for certainty. And this movement away from the text that allows us to rejoice in the discovery and cataloging of P132 and 133 and to look at that information and consider its dating and to take it into consideration in examination of the very few verses, but still the verses that those texts will now be cited in regards to in future editions of the

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Greek New Testament, that's a good thing. That's a proper thing.

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That's an appropriate thing. It's being accepting of the great gifts that God has given us in being able to give an answer to those who question the validity of the transmission of the text of the

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New Testament. Ignoring those things or saying that those things, you know,

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I hear people say, well, you know, if God wanted us to have that stuff, then we would have had it all along. Especially someone who calls themselves an ecclesiastical text advocate.

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I'm sorry, but it seems like some of these people have the view that the church has only existed since the

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Reformation. Because I can go back to these early manuscripts.

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Weren't they a part of the church? It's almost unfortunate because of the name that Codex Vaticanus is called

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Codex Vaticanus. But obviously, it was far earlier than the

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Vatican. There's something I want to point out.

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I've got a little whiteboard program here. We'll use a little whiteboard program.

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Codex Vaticanus is called Codex Wow. Why isn't tip size color tip size?

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Okay, it's called Codex B. Now, we have another manuscript which is earlier.

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We date B to between 325 and 350. We have another manuscript, an important papyri manuscript, called

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P 75. It's a gospels manuscript of Luke and John.

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It's around 175. It's about 150 years earlier than B. When you collate their readings, there are times when these two manuscripts stand alone in having readings found no place else.

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What we've discovered is B is a copy of an earlier manuscript that's in the same line as P 75.

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Right up here. B is not a copy of P 75, but B and P 75 are both in the same line coming down from this earlier manuscript.

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If this is 175, this is 325, then this is at least 150 maybe earlier.

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So it goes way, way, way, way, way, way, way back into the history of the

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New Testament, at least in the Gospels. In all likelihood, the rest of B has the same antiquity to it, but we have to be careful.

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This can only prove it as far as the Gospels are concerned. The point is that today we can without apology look to our

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Muslim friends and say, well, actually we can trace our text in the

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Gospels back to the same contemporary time period as that little fragment P 52. In case some of you have just gotten completely lost at this point or completely bored at this point, one of the things that's relevant about this is this did come up in the

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INC debate. And what am I referring to? I'm referring to the reading in John chapter 1 verse 18 because John 1 18 the use of Thaos there is found in both

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Oliph and B and both P 66 and P 75, which are our two earliest, not including

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P 52 because it's only a fragment of a couple verses, but our two earliest manuscripts, almost complete manuscripts of the

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Gospel of John. And so what that means is when you have

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B and P 75 agreeing on a reading that is an absolutely ancient reading.

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When you throw in a second papyrus P 66 which is contemporaneous to P 75 and you throw in Sinaiticus this is another reason why the

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Sinaiticus is a fraud stuff is just so absurd because Sinaiticus contains readings that are plainly traceable back to the papyri which hadn't been discovered in the days of Simonides.

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So much for all that blather from the King James Only folks. Anyway, that reading that came up briefly in the debate is found in P 66,

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P 75, Sinaiticus and B. Which means it is without a question traceable to within 25 to 30 years of the composition of the

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Gospel of John in the first place. So at the very, very, very, very, very, very least it has to be taken into consideration in your examination of what

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John is actually saying and it fits perfectly in the functioning as the book ends to the prologue of John.

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The theology of which we talked about on the last program. So, what is our conclusion here?

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This is a tremendous reality that once you understand it can greatly increase your confidence in the text of the

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New Testament. But how is it relevant to an ecclesiastical text person?

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You see, from my perspective, it's extremely relevant to the church because this was the text of the early church.

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That's still the church. Bringing something in from, well, in this case talking about what the text of the church what?

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Approximately 1 ,500 years later was? Well, they used it when we wrote these great confessions of faith 1 ,500 years later.

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Well, that's wonderful. But if you can't see the danger of saying, and therefore we should read this because it was used at the

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Westminster Assembly or it was used by the framers of London's Baptist Confession or something.

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If you can't see that that's not how to deal with New Testament textual issues, that's sort of scary.

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We've been given tremendous material to use in our day right when we need it to defend the veracity of the text of the

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New Testament. Going backwards accomplishes absolutely positively nothing.

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So, some things to think upon, my friends, as we consider these important issues.

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No more programs for this week. Lord willing, we will have a fairly full schedule next week because it's a week from Saturday that I head to Europe.

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I've got the debate in London on the 15th. Your prayers for that very much appreciated.

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We still need your support for all the traveling. I'm going to be gone for 22 days.

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That's the longest I've ever been away. But prayers for health during all that time, all the teaching

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I'm going to be doing, and then we've got more travel coming up right after that. So your support is very much needed and appreciated.