Is the Bible Reliable?

And we want to wish all of you a happy new year.

And we're going to have a little bit of a special episode for you.

We're going to provide a message that I delivered at NorCal Fire this last

year, where we discussed the topic of biblical reliability.

Can you trust the New Testament?

That will be the topic.

And we wanted just before we get into today's episode, I want to just give you some things

to let you know.

This next weekend, if you're listening live, January 5th, we will be doing a Christian podcast community

event down at the Museum of the Bible.

You can contact us if you want information on that at info at strivingforeternity .org.

And basically it will be guys from Theology Driven and Wrap Report.

We're going to be going down doing a tour.

I will be teaching through some of the things that you'll hear about in this podcast,

things about biblical reliability.

We're going to go through the New Testament section and talk about that.

So if you're in the DC area, Saturday, January 5th, check us out.

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And we will go now to today's episode.

Welcome to the Rap Report with Andrew Rapport, where we provide biblical interpretation.

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity.

For more content or to request a speaker or seminar for your church, go to strivingforeternity

.org.

I'm glad to be back with you again.

I guess now, since Anthony said this, I guess I have to

tell some stories, don't I?

Okay, so, and I will preface this by saying this was his first

time speaking, okay?

So cut him some slack.

I don't, but you could.

You could.

We were at an event.

The first time that Dr. Silvestro and I were speaking together, it was the first speaking event that he had.

And he was scheduled to speak twice in the morning,

followed by me, who was going to have two sessions.

And so, if you figure about an hour session each, he would have an hour session one,

an hour session two, I would have an hour session three, an hour session four.

He was finishing his session two when I was supposed to be ending session

four.

It caused me to say, you know, this young man has a lot of talent.

He's very bright and skilled.

He just needs some time management when it comes to speaking.

Because what he didn't realize, see, it was an event where people could ask questions in the middle.

If you haven't figured out, if you haven't talked to him when he's not up here and you just go talk to him, you'll realize he has lots of

answers and he's very anxious to let you know what they are.

He's just waiting for you to ask the questions.

It actually doesn't matter what question you ask, the answer is Genesis.

It will always go back to Genesis.

So it's really simple.

If you want to know where he's going to go in the conversation, Genesis, you've picked that up already, right?

Okay.

Okay.

So that was the, so I said, look, you know, he's, Dr. Svester came on with us

and started to work with us.

I started discipling him.

He was having his own ministry at that time with Creation Revival.

And just to disciple, that's what we do at Striving for Caring, we want to disciple in lots of different ways.

And one of the ways we saw frustrations that we saw in ministries, I don't know if you've seen this, where ministries

attack other ministries to try to build a name for themselves.

I can't stand that.

It's not biblical.

So my dad raised me, you don't complain about something you can fix.

Well, okay, I can't fix that in the world, but I can fix it at least in my little area.

So we started trying to disciple others to not do things like that.

People that wanted to get into ministry, and that's how that had started.

And one of the first things that I sat down with Dr. Svester was to say, okay, learn how to manage your time.

Even if people are asking questions, you don't actually have to give all of your information at one shot.

I shouldn't give him too much of a hard time.

The first time I ever preached behind a pulpit, a friend of mine let me have his pulpit.

I do not know how long I spoke.

I do know everyone came up to me and said, that was really good, but how was it long for a Wednesday night service?

I do know, okay, I'm dating myself.

You guys remember the cassette tapes and they would flip?

I do know it flipped twice.

So I must've went for over an hour and a half.

People are like, I gotta get the kids in school.

Kids gotta go to bed.

But Dr. Svester and I do a lot of travel.

I was talking to someone earlier and said how we actually have seen each other

quite a bit, even though he's in Ohio and I'm in New Jersey.

Last year, we saw each other every single weekend for a

whole month in a different state.

This year we did it three times.

We had a month this year where we saw each other three weekends out of the month in a different state.

And so sometimes that happens.

We do a lot of travel.

And that's really, you know, that's the thing that we talk about striving for eternity and Dr. Svester mentioned it.

And really that's where what we do is we get support from people.

So we can, we have a really strange model.

We go into churches that can't afford speakers as much as we can.

That seems odd, doesn't it?

Because how do you make the money?

That's why he and I both do some side work.

Mine doesn't pay as well as being a dentist though, just saying.

But the reality is that's what our goal is.

You know, there's so many people that look to build a big name for themselves or go to the big churches and big audiences.

I was telling Pastor Steve, I got invited to a conference and they said, you know, it's going to be small.

I was like, that's okay.

He's like, no, no, it's really, it could be really small.

You sure you want?

I said, yeah, it's fine.

He's like, it could be like five people.

I said, okay.

It was.

That was the large crowd.

There was one day there were two people, the pastor and I, and two other people.

And that was okay because we had supporters that helped fund us to get out there and speak to them.

So that's some of the, that's the mindset we have.

We're all about that which will last for eternity.

Not trying to build a kingdom for us here and now, but doing what we can for God's kingdom.

And if we get no glory here and now, big deal.

I mean, what does it matter?

It's about God getting glory.

And so that's, that's our goal.

And so being, being that Dr.

Silvestro had started and before I get in, I do want to mention

one thing.

I noticed the pastor threw me off there a bit for the offering.

He said, Andrew, would you pray?

I was getting ready to, I realized I

wasn't the only Andrew here.

Actually, there's three Andrews, but at least the usher and I are not wearing a skirt.

I'm just saying, I know this is California, but

now I say that, which I'm going to have to tell a story which embarrasses me.

Two years ago, we were out here and we went out evangelizing after the conference

and Andrew was wearing the same skirt that he's wearing now.

And, and I kept calling it a skirt and he says, it's a kilt.

Well, I thought I'd be funny.

I saw this police officer walking by and I just said, officer, you know, we got to do something about the way this guy dresses in public.

He's wearing a skirt.

And the officer turned to me and said, it's a kilt.

And I have one at home.

I lost that conversation really bad.

They started talking about, yeah, we go to these Highland games and all this stuff.

And I'm like, I'm just going to leave in shame.

So I'm, I'm the Andrew that's shorter and not wearing the skirt, okay?

The other one's wearing the skirt and the other one's taller than all of us.

So that's how you could tell the Andrews apart.

So it's tall Andrew, short Andrew, and well, okay.

So my topic today is the reliability of the scripture.

And I will try not to go over the one hour that we had allotted, hour and seven minutes, for

Anthony, just saying we did check.

I won't, you know, maybe I'll try to save his, those seven minutes.

But no, we're going to talk about biblical reliability.

Can we trust this?

In fact, if you talk to unbelievers, I can tell you the number

one argument that you're going to come up against.

Dr. Sevesh is going to talk about arguments here on the street.

I'm going to answer one of them right now.

The number one argument comes in several forms, but it is that the Bible cannot be

trusted.

Now it comes in different forms.

The Bible has been edited.

The Bible has been corrupted.

The Bible has been changed over time.

Different ways they word it, but what are they really saying?

You can't trust it.

My favorite is the Bible was written by men.

Oh, I love that argument.

I used to carry around a book in my bag purposely just because I knew I'd get that argument.

People would say, I quote the Bible, that was written by men.

Okay, are you saying we can't trust books written by men?

Yes, and I like to ask it like four different times to really get them.

So you're saying if a book is written by a man, we cannot trust it.

That's right.

So if a man writes a book, you can't trust that at all, can you?

No.

I reach in my bag, and as I'm reaching, I usually go, so do you believe in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution?

And they go, yes.

And I pulled the bag out, and I pull out Charles Darwin's book, and I go, that's funny.

That was written by a man.

Well, that was a trustworthy man.

Oh.

Okay, how about I explain why we can trust the Bible, and then you explain

why we can't.

Does that sound fair?

There's only one possible answer in the public street to answer, right?

Yes.

What did they just do?

They gave me an opportunity to share why I think the Bible is reliable.

Then I turn to them, and they go, well, I've never read it.

Oh.

That's why I want to get a T -shirt.

Come debate me for hours about a book you've never read, because that's really what it comes down

to, right?

And so we're going to talk about biblical reliability.

Now, if you haven't noticed over to your right, my left, are a whole series of Bibles.

You should check them out.

Okay, there's more than just Bibles.

There's Pilgrim's Progress is over there as well.

But you're going to see those Bibles.

You're going to see some things about the Bible that you end up noticing that the Bible is written like a long time ago.

We kind of don't see it in America.

I loved when I was over in England, and I was speaking in England, and I'm looking at all the dates on the

buildings, and I'm, like, amazed because there's buildings that are older than our country.

And we had a chance to have lunch with one of the Oxford professors, and

I mentioned that.

And he says, well, you know, we have a saying over here.

In, you know, the U .K., we think 100 miles is a far distance.

In the U .S., you think 100 years is a long time.

Yeah.

You know, but when you go through those books and you look at them, understand that literally there

are people who died for the Bible.

First couple centuries, the Romans came in and said, give us your Bible

or go to prison.

And some people said, you know what?

You're going to take me to prison and find my Bible anyway.

Here you go.

Others who said, you will not get my Bible from me.

You'll get it over my dead hands.

Well, some of them, it was that way.

Others went to prison.

When Christianity was then legalized, it became a big issue of who were the real Christians because the ones who went to prison said the

others, you know, were compromisers because they gave up the Word of God.

There are people who literally held this so strongly.

They were willing to die rather than give it up.

There's missionaries that you can hear stories about.

Adonai Judson, who was in prison during a war.

He was an American and they went to war with England.

But he spoke English, so it was enough.

And his wife actually made him a stone pillow.

Why a stone pillow?

Because if she made a soft pillow, the guards wouldn't have given it to him.

And inside the pillow was the translation of the New Testament he was working on.

So he can continue to do his work and read the Bible while in prison.

The guards didn't know that it hidden inside a stone pillow.

They kind of felt it probably.

Okay, yeah, this is going to be painful to sleep on.

Yeah, go ahead.

This book that we get to hold, Pastor said we, many of us, have our own personal copy.

Do you cherish that?

Many people around the world don't have that.

A joke that my wife has with me is that we had a friend come to the house and saw all my different translations of the Bible that I

have.

He says, with all these Bibles, you should be the holiest man I know.

Which I kind of read into that, but I'm not.

We have, in America, a privilege that we often take

for granted.

And I want to give for you, in the time that I have, an assurance that the

Bible you hold in your hands, even in the English, is reliable.

Because that is a core thing we have to look at.

Can we trust the Bible?

There are many people who would say we cannot.

There's many people out there who would argue that you cannot

trust the Bible, that it's been edited.

And I want to highlight one chapter of my book for you, and I'm just trying to see which chapter it is.

It's chapter two in the book, What Do We Believe?

Because that's where this talk is going to come from.

I won't be able to go into all the detail that I would like to with it, but in that

chapter you can go into more detail.

And actually, speaking of which, Dr. Silvestro mentioned his book and how nice and

shiny it is.

Okay, his is shiny.

Just go in the back and feel the nice matte finish.

Do you want it to look good or do you want it to feel good in your hands?

I like it to feel good in my hands.

So, as you can tell, we like to have a lot of fun back and forth with one another.

And I actually believed that the chapter on biblical reliability was so important that we put it into Dr.

Silvestro's book as well.

We tried to do some cross -promotion.

I took a chapter from his book and put it into mine, so we had some cross.

But it is probably the most important topic that we could deal with as Christians in America today.

So when we look at our New Testament, and I want to stick to the New Testament for one reason.

If you understand how we got the Old Testament scriptures, they're more reliable.

Why?

Because the way the scribes did it, I don't have the patience for the job of an Old Testament

scribe.

If you've ever been to the Museum of the Bible, they actually have a gentleman who they have there that is a

scribe for the scrolls.

And he is copying it letter by letter.

Okay?

But what the scribes would do in the Old Testament is, say I'm going to write the word letter.

I'm going to write the word letter, okay?

This is how we would do it when we're copying.

I read the word letter, and it's over here in my text here in the manuscript, and I want to write it in the new one.

I'm going to copy it.

This was a time before Xerox, you know.

Wait, I'm dating myself.

It was a time before email.

Still, okay.

Before texting, you know.

Or no, nowadays they just Snapchat it, just take a picture.

Right, so they would copy things by hand.

What they would do to prevent errors is they would write the letter L.

They'd see an L, L.

They'd look for their chart.

They'd find the letter L, put a tick mark.

E, E, E, tick mark.

Find the T, write the letter T, find the T on their chart, tick mark.

They'd do that with every letter.

They'd get done with the word.

Then they'd find the word letter on their chart and put a tick mark.

And when they are done with all of that, they would then count up the number of words and letters and

know if there was a mistake.

A mistake could have been that they forgot to do a tick mark or put too many tick marks, or it could be that they forgot a letter or a word.

But if it had more than three mistakes in it, now think about it.

Think about, and you could try this.

Go home and try rewriting the entire Old Testament letter by letter.

See if you make any mistakes in doing it.

This is what they would do day in and day out.

If there were more than three mistakes, it was not to be used for synagogue.

So that's why we don't see too many of these changes.

I mean, if you try this at home, you're going to see, you're going to make some mistakes in copying.

You're going to see the word the on this line and the on this line.

They're going to line up, and you're going to skip a whole line.

That happens, and that would happen in people copying.

So the Old Testament was a little bit more reliable.

By the way, to really see how tedious this job was, when they had to write the word for God,

the name for God, I am, we don't even have the vowels for it, but we use the word Jehovah or

Yahweh for it.

Before they go and write that word, they'd have to go home, wash themselves, put on new clothes,

come back, and write that word.

That's how sacred the name of God was.

So this is the Old Testament.

Well, the New Testament wasn't that way.

The Old Testament, there was a lot of laws.

It became very legalistic, so it kind of fit with that system maybe.

But the New Testament, man, is that freeing, isn't it?

The idea that we could be forgiven of sin, oh, don't we want that message to go like everywhere and as

far and wide as possible?

You know, that was the same excitement that they had in the first century.

So they were quick to take those messages.

They were not trying to get the best scribes.

They wanted to get as many scribes to copy it and give it everywhere.

You know, actually, it's kind of interesting that there were scribes that didn't even know Greek that were doing copying.

I mean, they can see the letters and make copies.

You know, they were actually some of our best people to make copies from.

We could tell the people that didn't know the Greek when we look at manuscripts.

But you know why they're the best?

They didn't insert theology.

They didn't insert things or try to change things.

You know, we do that.

We read things and put things in parentheses to try to explain to people.

They did that as well.

Sometimes you would end up seeing that there would be times where what would happen is you

would have somebody speaking and all of a sudden it's like, hey, this sounds like speaking

of the Trinity.

And in the notes on the side, they might just draw a line and say three or

one.

Maybe.

Or was that there?

Because sometimes what would happen is sometimes what you'd have is someone would actually just skip right over something.

Oops, I forgot that.

Let me put that in.

And they'd draw a line and write it in.

Now, which one's which?

That is the topic of what's called textual criticism.

Textual criticism is this science that we have to try to get back to the original meaning of the Bible.

Now, there are people who do this for a living that do not believe in Jesus Christ.

Actually, most of them.

If you want one that believes in Christ and does good work, you could look up the name Dan Wallace.

I've actually had the privilege of having a class with him.

And he has some great material.

But, you know, one of his students that he went to or one of his colleagues he went to school with is a man

by the name of Bart Ehrman.

I don't know if you know that name.

Don't encourage reading anything from him.

I'll give you a general rule of thumb in case you ever do read anything by Bart.

It's really simple.

If he's writing something that's technical for scholarly work, it's probably pretty good.

If he's writing books for the masses, it's probably pretty bad.

He does a very skillful technique by using things that are true in textual

criticism and then draw conclusions that are not.

But because he sounded like he said something scholarly over here, you know, he's hoping you didn't catch the bait and switch

because most people don't study this to know he said this like the fact that we have

scribes that were in a rush to print so they would have made copying mistakes.

And he says, therefore, we can't know what the New Testament actually meant.

What you're left to think is that if we can't get back to the original writings, then we must not have the Bible, we must

not be able to trust it.

If I do my job right in this hour or less than an hour,

I will be able to give you the confidence to know that you can trust the Bible that you hold in your hands

in its meaning.

So when we look at these things, there are variances.

And a variance, just to be a little technical, what a variance is, is just a change.

Let me give you some.

If I was to write and I'm writing the scriptures, I'm making copies, and I see the Lord

Jesus Christ.

You know, many of the times we see that, we see different ways of what's called a variant reading.

One could be Lord Jesus.

Another could be Lord Christ.

Another could be Jesus Christ.

Another could be Christ Jesus.

We see that very common.

Someone is reading, and this is why, now you see, someone who doesn't know Greek is going to write it

the same way that they see it, right?

But someone who knows and they're reading and writing as quick as they can see Lord Jesus Christ and just write Jesus Christ.

Has the meaning changed any?

No.

So when we do this science of textual criticism, there's three areas that we want to focus on.

Okay?

And I'm going to use an example that we can all understand.

I've actually done this when I teach this in a smaller group.

I give everybody a copy of something I've written out,

and it's the one time that I really allow my dyslexia to set in.

It's fun.

But what I'll do is I'll give 10 people a letter that I want them to write a paragraph.

And on different ones of them, I've changed some things up.

Now, I do it on purpose in this example, but most of it's the same.

Sometimes I'll say Lord Jesus, sometimes Jesus Christ, things like that.

But I do little things.

Sometimes I'll do a spelling error.

And I'll ask everybody to copy it as they see it.

And it's very interesting because some people, when I do this, will see a spelling error, and they automatically correct it

because they know what it should be.

There's other times people do it exactly as they see it, including the spelling error, because that was the instruction.

Okay?

So this is the thing we do, and this is what we would see with New Testament.

I would copy something.

I would make 10 copies of it, give it to 10 friends.

And then what would happen is those 10 people would make copies, but they wouldn't just make copies.

They would sometimes go to different places in the world and then make those copies.

See, the letters in the New Testament were copied down and sent out.

So if I have 10 letters, and some of them go to France, and some of them go to Spain, and some of them go to India, and I've got

to throw in Hong Kong because that's where my wife's from, right?

And so we have all these different places where the letters go.

But, you know, that one that went to Mexico, that's the only one.

All the copies there, when we look at these copies, all those copies in Mexico seem to have the same

reading, and we don't see it anywhere else in the world.

Would it be easy to conclude that someone had a mistake in just

Mexico, because when we compare it to all the others in the world, it's just this one

area, so that reading is probably not the original.

Is that easy enough to understand?

We see that happening.

So one of the keys we look at is geography.

Where were these copies?

Where were these manuscripts?

The second thing we want to know is how many manuscripts?

Because the more manuscripts you have, the more you can compare.

We do not believe what Islam believes.

See, Islam would say that there is one Quran, it's in Arabic, and it's

never been changed.

Please don't tell them that there's different variances in the Quran in Arabic.

They hate that, but it's true.

Actually, there's a Quran, a very old Quran, that just was discovered a few years ago in Turkey, and the

Turkish government has locked it up and will not let anyone see it after somebody noticed the variant.

There is a man in the UK, he goes to Speaker's Corner, and he puts a whole bunch of Qurans out, he's highlighted them all, and he

shows the variances between the Sudanian Quran, the Iraqi Quran, the Iranian

Quran, there's actually variances in the Arabic.

They don't allow that, because they think it has to be preserved letter by letter.

That's a problem for them, but not for us.

Because we do not...

The scriptures say that God's Word would be preserved, but he didn't say it would be letter by letter.

He said in the original writings, it was inspired, it was without error, without flaw.

In the original.

Now, sometimes that shatters people, and I hope that this doesn't shatter your faith to go, well, if that's the case, we don't have the

Bible, I can't trust it.

That's what many try to argue.

But, you know, we have so many manuscripts that we can do these comparisons.

Dan Wallace, one of the beautiful things he's trying to do is digitize all these, so we can do comparisons.

With the age of computers, we can start to do so much more than we could ever have done before, and do all of these

comparisons.

But the more manuscripts we have, the more we can compare.

If I only have one manuscript of something, say, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

Have you heard about that one?

Maybe not?

Okay, let me give you a book that was based off the Gospel of Mary

Magdalene.

Maybe you've heard of that.

Da Vinci Code?

How many copies do you think we have of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene?

One?

Actually, not really.

We're missing more pages of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene than we actually have.

And, oh, by the way, it was in French.

French wasn't developed for about a thousand plus years after Christ.

I don't think that's an original document.

And yet, so many people believe that Jesus actually married Mary Magdalene

because of a document that we have one copy of.

How do you know that's what the original said?

You have no way to go back and check.

You have no other comparisons to make with it.

So the more copies we have, we can do more comparisons.

A third element that becomes important is how close to the original.

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, you can tell, can't be too close because the French language didn't exist.

So how close can we get is important because the longer the period of time, that means the more

copies of a copy of a copy of a copy and the more that you end up seeing the possibility of a

mistake happening.

Okay, so those three principles seem easy.

Okay, so I already explained the one of geography.

Let me explain the one that I just mentioned last.

How close to the original.

The closer you are to the original date of its writing,

there's going to be less chance that a mistake was made.

So how close are we with the New Testament?

Well, in the New Testament, we can actually go within 20 to

30 years of its writing.

A very interesting document that was found.

They found a mummy and they're taking him apart and whatnot and

they're pulling parchment because that's what they would use, old parchment, right?

You're going to take garbage paper that can't be used anymore because paper was expensive.

It's not like today.

What they would do is they'd take the papyrus and they'd scrape it and reuse it and scrape it and reuse it and

scrape it and reuse it and they'd use both sides.

And eventually it got scraped so much you couldn't reuse it and they'd throw it away.

And whatever was the last thing that was on there was what we have.

So we actually have two things that are really neat with the computers is the infrared so you can see where someone's written something and

there's actually a scripture that was underneath it and that they just kind of whitewashed

it and moved right over it.

But here's a case where they find this mummy's tomb and someone sees something.

It's about the size of a credit card.

They go, that looks like Greek.

That looks like something from the book of Revelation.

It looks like the writings of John.

We call it P52.

It was within just about three decades

of its writing.

We date that back to 125 because that's what we can date the guy who died,

right?

So it was a little bit older than that.

How much, we don't know.

So you know why that became so important?

Because many people said, you know what, you never even had a Bible.

The whole idea that Jesus was God, that came over time, hundreds of years.

The Gospel of John was written in like 300s by the Catholic Church until you find a document that's

125 AD.

How do you explain that?

I guess someone went, and this is no joke, this is what Matt Delhonte, a well -known atheist,

argued when talking about prophecies.

Someone was asking about prophecies.

He literally said, no joke, he said, we cannot discount the possibility of time travel.

So maybe if we apply his theory, someone went in the future, grabbed this document, went back in

time and then used it to mummify somebody.

Okay, yeah, I'm not believing that either.

Right?

So the closer we come, we have one now that is pre -100 AD.

We have a manuscript that has been cataloged and we think that it is dated

in 95.

Okay?

Within 20 years of its writing.

That's pretty close, isn't it?

We have about 125 Bibles and

manuscripts that are before 300 AD.

Why does that become important?

If you ever talk to a Muslim, they're going to say, well, the Bible has been corrupted.

I always like to ask, okay, so was the Bible that Muhammad, when he said that the Bible was trustworthy,

was that Bible the one that could be trusted, but it got changed afterwards?

And they always go, oh, yeah.

Okay, do you know we have like hundreds of copies before Muhammad lived of the Bible and they say the same thing

as the ones we have today?

Oops.

When did the corruption happen?

Because Muhammad said it was good.

So the one we have today must be good.

Okay, I'll go back to the older manuscripts that say the same thing.

How's that?

Now what do you do?

So we can see how close these are.

The reason that becomes important is because the closer it is, then there's less chance that those

changes to occur.

Lastly, I want to get to the fact that we have so many manuscripts.

I'm going to pull this all together.

We have, the latest count is

about 8 ,000 manuscripts of the New Testament now is the latest count

that I've heard.

And when we look at that, that's just Greek New Testament.

But if we're going to look at the meaning of the Bible, you know what, you have it translated into Latin and Coptic

and all those.

When you put translations in there, just to see the meanings of things, now it's not going to be word for word, but we can

understand the meanings or where people might have had changes even in a translation.

We're up to about 60 ,000 to 70 ,000 manuscripts.

That's a lot.

And we're going to compare that, before we close, with some other ancient documents and see

what's more reliable, the Bible or say the writings that tell us about Julius Caesar.

No one questions Julius Caesar, but they question the Bible.

Now when we talk about these errors, I want to help you understand.

When we look at these, and there's a couple different ways you can count these variances that occur.

The number you're often going to hear from people is that there's 400 ,000 variances

in the Greek New Testament.

That sounds like a lot, doesn't it?

Especially when you consider that there's only about 138 ,000 words.

Yeah, hmm.

Something seems wrong, right?

It sounds like there's about three variances per word in the Greek.

I argue that when people do that, they're doing an apples to orange comparison.

What are they doing?

They're looking up all the variant readings.

Right?

Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Lord Jesus, Lord Christ, Christ Jesus, five different

readings, and it's really just three words.

So you can read it several different ways, yet it's really that one phrase being read different ways.

You understand that?

So if I'm going to do that, really what I want to do is take all of the manuscripts, multiply it

by all of the words that we have, and compare that to the 400 ,000.

And by the way, those variants are actually, that number is from about the 80s, 90s.

The real number is probably closer to 500 ,000 right now.

But the real comparison I should do if I'm going to use that number is to compare it to all of the words we have in the

Greek in all of the manuscripts.

Those 8 ,000 manuscripts times 135 ,000 words, five, six

million, compared to 400 ,000, 500 ,000.

It's a little bit smaller.

In fact, one of the things I did using some tools that I had available was to go through the entire

New Testament.

It was painstaking.

My wife asked me why I'm doing it, and I did it so when people say to me, as has been happening, have you actually gone through

the entire Greek New Testament and compared?

Yes.

Have you?

They go, uh.

It's just nice to be able to say that, right?

I went through, and I had some tools that showed all of the Greek words where there's a different

reading in the Greek, and I counted them up.

Yes, I am that nerdy.

And I am an engineer by trade.

So what ended up happening is I sat and went through that, and I got about 6

,500 words that have different variant readings in the Greek.

Okay?

I'm going to ask you to remember the 6 ,500 because that becomes important in a minute.

Now what I want to do is I want to take some time to explain what kind of variances we see.

So I want to give you this chart because this is going to help us.

You see this big blue area?

75 % of these variances that we have are spelling errors.

That doesn't change the meaning.

It's not viable.

Okay?

Viable means, it's asking a question, can we get back to the original meaning or not?

Or the original writing.

Okay?

So if I spell the word create, and I left off the E at the end because, well, you know, English is really

not my first language.

My first language was basic.

I then moved on to Pascal, you know, C, C++, Java, JavaScript.

Anyone with me?

I'll see who's the computer programmer here.

My wife is at least nodding, you know.

I wasn't so good at English.

That's why I love computers.

We write things to correct our spelling.

So if I write the word create, can you get back to the original meaning?

The original writing, I mean?

Yeah, you can.

You can also, it doesn't change the meaning any because you can figure out how it should have been spelled.

That's 75 % of all the changes.

In fact, actually, it's a little bit more interesting.

That 75 % also includes punctuation.

You know what's so cool about that?

And I don't know if Dave has Bibles here that would have it the way it was written, but there was no punctuation

in the original and many early hundred years.

There was just kind of run -on sentences.

I like run -on sentences.

I used to do that a lot in English class.

I don't know why they complained you shouldn't do that.

I thought they were, it just made so much more sense, I mean.

And so what you end up seeing is you can get back to the original with a spelling error.

So out of those words that I said, the 6 ,500 words, 75 of

them, just toss that aside.

We can get back to the original and it doesn't change the meaning.

Not a big deal.

Then you have this next one, 19%.

These are not meaningful, but viable.

In other words, the meaning of the text has not changed, but we cannot get to the original.

We can't get back to what it originally said, but there's no meaning difference.

It doesn't change.

Now, I know I'm going to, you know, ruin some people's maybe favorite passage.

I'm going to tell you the most beloved passage that's probably not in the Bible.

There's an account of Jesus and some people bring a woman caught in adultery to him and bring her

there.

He writes on the ground and they say, what should we do with her?

And he says, let him who has no sin cast the first stone and one by one they leave and he

says to her, you know, who's here to condemn you?

And she says, no one.

And he says, well, neither do I.

Go your way.

It's probably not in the Bible.

You know, we find that passage in a couple different passages in the Bible.

It moves around.

That's why we think it's not in the original.

There's some copies of the manuscripts that don't have it at all.

We can't find if that actually was in there and dropped out of some places, if some people copied it in the wrong areas.

Can't get back to the original.

Does it change the meaning any?

I mean, if I remove that story altogether from the Bible, would you still be able to read the Bible and realize that Jesus is

forgiving?

Yeah.

Doesn't change the meaning, does it?

The third category, this 5%, they're meaningful but not viable.

In other words, the meaning does change but we can get back to what the

original text said, therefore we just go back to the original text.

So the only area of concern we have is this 1 of the yellow right there, and this is the areas that are

both meaningful and viable.

Meaning, the meaning of the text changes and we can't get back to the original.

Now, if you're going to write a New York Times best -selling book, wouldn't you want to put your best argument forward?

Well, that's what I think Dan...

Wow, that was a slip.

What I think...

Now I can't think of the name.

Misquoting Jesus, Bart Ehrman.

So in Bart Ehrman's book, Misquoting Jesus, this is the argument he gives.

He says we cannot know the meaning of the scriptures because there are

passages where we cannot get back to the original meaning and we cannot get back to the original

text.

Here's his example.

Are you ready for this?

I know this is going to blow you away.

Grab onto your seats.

I am going to rock your world because there are some manuscripts that actually say that Jesus Christ was a

carpenter.

And there's others that say he was the son of a carpenter.

I mean, does that just rock your world?

I don't know of a single doctrine that's based on Jesus being a carpenter.

In fact, both could be true because that's the way they would do things back then.

So both could be true.

But that's his best argument.

In fact, in his paperback edition, Misquoting Jesus, the first edition,

the editors, I mean, they didn't expect this hardcover book to be taken by storm and become

a New York Times bestseller.

So they wanted to get more out of it so they made it a paperback edition.

And in the paperback edition, they said, can you write an epilogue, add some more to it?

So he made a mistake and he told the truth.

In the first edition of Misquoting Jesus, Bart Ehrman said that there is not a

single Christian doctrine that is affected by any of the variances that we

find.

Second edition, which was done quickly, they pulled that because that undermined everything that they were trying to promote in the book.

The reason the New York Times bestselling, this was a New York Times bestseller and everyone loved it is because the atheists and the Muslims loved

that book is because it tries to argue we can't know what the Bible meant.

So if you go and you tell the truth and say that there's not a single doctrine that's based on

any of these variances affected, then you end up going, what's the big deal?

Now, this 1 % that we use, we put it up there on purpose because that's a very conservative number.

I was asking Professor Wallace, I asked him, I said, what is,

in your opinion, with the newer manuscripts that we have, because this 1 has been out there for a long time, I said, with all the

manuscripts we have, what would be your more accurate number that you think?

Not the conservative number, but the one you think is more reality.

He said, if you're going to ask me, I would say it's one -fifth of 1%.

Now, if you use my numbers, we're talking about 65 words out of 138 ,000 words.

Doesn't seem so big anymore, does it?

You know, if you look at what Dan Wallace would say, if that number is one -fifth of

1%, then he is arguing that the Bible is 99

.98 accurate.

I'll put those numbers up at CNN any day of the week.

Go for it.

I mean, I don't even believe they're that accurate on a single day, any day, especially with Trump being in

office.

No.

They don't kind of get along.

So you see, when we look at these things, we either can get back to the original text,

or the meaning hasn't changed any, so we don't worry.

And if Jesus was the son of a carpenter or a carpenter, not a big deal.

Okay?

I say that to say this is something we shouldn't be worried about.

Let me give you a quick example, just so you have it, because I like to put this up because I argue with a friend

of mine that he stole this from me and put it on CARM many years before my book came out.

Anyone of you guys go to CARM .org?

Okay.

It's a great website on apologetics.

A friend of mine, Matt Slick.

The history behind this joke that we have is Matt Slick has a really big website, and he grabbed a

picture from Mormon Research Ministry, and he used it on his website.

And Bill McKeever called Matt up and said, Matt, did you steal my picture?

And he goes, yeah.

But I got the bigger website, so Bill, believe you got it from me.

In doing so, Matt and I were keynote speakers on an apologetics cruise, and Matt had this great

line.

Someone asked the question, why is it that all these heretics, they all get together?

And Matt just goes, demons of a feather flock together.

Now, I had internet.

I was the only one on the cruise that had the internet in our group.

I quickly typed it up online.

I said, you know, people may ask why heretics all get together.

It's because demons of a feather flock together.

Watch, Matt Slick will steal this from me next week.

Whenever he uses the line, he's quick to say, Andrew stole this from me.

Okay, so I did get this from Carm.

But here's the idea here.

Here would be the original writing.

It's not so good, but you can read this in my book.

Here would be a change that occurred.

It looks a little red there.

So this would be like a third century document where there was a change.

And that would be copied and copied and copied.

And as you see here, if we do this, this is right here, all this in red would be what's called a text family,

a manuscript family.

That's how we group them.

By grouping them in the families, we see that all of these have the same writing, maybe in the

same area.

And that is how we end up doing this to get back to the original.

And when we do this, we realize most of them don't have any meaning difference at all.

Now, I said I wanted to compare this to some ancient documents.

So let's do that.

The orange line here, and this is dated because this says at this time there were 5 ,700

Greek New Testaments when the person who put this slide together.

The orange shows how many manuscripts we have of something.

And the gray up here shows how the closest we have to the writing of it.

So the manuscript to the original.

So when we look at the New Testament, we have within 25 years and 5 ,700 manuscripts.

And this is dated.

The date now is getting better and the manuscripts is getting better.

Well, if you compare it to Homer, no one ever questions Homer, and yet the closest we have for Homer is 500

years from its writing and we only have 643 manuscripts of it.

You know that guy Caesar?

Anyone question whether he was around and about him?

You know what?

Caesar here, closest we have of the works there is 1 ,000 years.

I mean, if you can't trust 25 years, how can you trust 1 ,000?

And you only got 10 copies to compare to.

I kind of like this picture.

It shows it in a different way, same material.

The big yellow ball is representing the number of manuscripts and as

close as it comes to that little point in the center is how close it is to the writing.

I like this because all you got to do is look at the size of the ball and how close it is to the center.

And it looks like the Bible outweighs everything, doesn't it?

That looks like, I mean, this looks like I'm doing a picture of the sun compared to like, you know, Jupiter and,

you know, something like that, right?

And you just go, wow, that's a lot.

That's what I hope you walk away with.

That we can trust our Bible.

It's reliable.

The meaning hasn't changed.

There's not a single doctrine that's affected by what we

look at when we look at our scriptures.

Don't be worried when people tell you, oh, it's been edited.

It's been changed.

In fact, if you want, you could do what I do.

I love doing this.

I play dumb.

I know it comes natural to me.

You guys may not pull it off as well.

I was at Montclair State University and I had a gentleman who told me the Bible had been edited.

Okay.

How many of you have heard of Greg Koukl?

He's on Stand to Reason.

He's got great shows.

Stand to Reason is the ministry.

And he, str .org, if you want to go check out the resources.

He's got a book called Tactics.

Great book.

I usually, we usually have it with us, but I just had, I already had two 70 -pound bags, a 50 -pound bag, and a 40

-pound bag coming out here.

So my encouragement, please buy books for friends because I had to walk through the airport with it.

I'd really like to lighten up the load on the way back.

I mean, I know, look, I do know that I need the exercise.

I was telling Pastor and his wife, I have to fit into a tux in November.

My daughter's getting married.

And I love the guy she's marrying.

The guy flew out from Ohio.

Well, okay, sends me a message.

Hey, I want to ask you and Mrs. Rappaport a question.

And by the way, can we visit your jeweler friend?

I wonder what question he's going to ask.

My wife is like, you are not going to tell him no if he's flying all the way out here.

And okay, I'll try to be serious, but I was still planning on saying no just as a

joke until he asked the question.

Because he flew in on Friday night.

We have Bible study.

You know, okay, after Bible study, I said, hey, we're going to the jeweler's tomorrow.

You have a question you want to ask.

You may want to ask now to see whether, you know, what our plans are going to be for tomorrow.

He goes, oh, okay.

He sits down and says, I got some things I want to say.

And, you know, if you have questions, just ask me.

And he opens up a notebook, and he's got two pages of notes explaining why he thinks my daughter, or daughter,

is so godly and why he wants to marry her and all the things he values in her.

And I'm like, are we really getting a guy like this as our son -in -law?

I literally did that at one point.

I turned to my wife and was like...

There was no way I could say no.

I couldn't even fool around with how serious he handled it.

So I have to fit into a tux.

So I know I need the exercise.

And I am traveling for the next two months, which means when I travel, I end up eating late at night and fast food and so...

But I really don't need that much exercise.

So if you guys could buy the books and lighten my load, I'd greatly appreciate it, really.

But I was in Montclair State University, and when I was there, I have this guy

who is telling me that the Bible's been edited.

And I, you know, using what Greg Koukl calls the Columbo tactic...

Some of you know who Columbo is, so you've just dated yourselves.

I'm sorry.

Those of you who don't know, go look up on whatever TV show plays the old reruns, okay?

Columbo is a detective that asks lots of questions.

And I just said, you know, I was kind of bored that day, and I figured I'd just try playing dumb and do this Columbo thing and

have fun with it.

It became a very fun way to evangelize.

And I said to the guy, I said, so you're telling me the Bible's been edited.

When did that happen?

He goes, oh, about the 1500s.

1500s?

Wow.

I said, um...

I may not be as smart as you, and I want to try to understand this.

Let me use an example that maybe I can understand.

You're saying that the Bible in the 1500s, that the Catholic Church collected all the copies of the Bible

and made changes and replaced them.

Is that what you're saying?

Yes.

And I said, okay.

Let me use an example maybe I can understand.

I said, here's a school newspaper.

How many copies would you think they print?

He goes, well, I happen to be the photographer for the school newspaper.

There's 1500 printed every week.

Okay, 1500.

If I wanted to do today, and he said the paper just came out.

This is now like 4 o 'clock.

The paper came out at 11.

I said, if I wanted to do what you said happened with the Bible, with the school newspaper, I want to see if

I could do that.

So where would I find the school newspaper right now?

Like the one that came out at 11 o 'clock.

He goes, well, right there.

I said, where else?

He's like, well, in the student center, all over.

I said, where else?

Student's dorm rooms?

Where else?

People's car?

Where else?

The trash?

Bingo.

I wanted that one.

Why do I want that one?

I want that one because if someone's throwing something out there, they're not going to look to change it and put it back.

By the way, where did I say we found P52?

In the trash.

They used it to mummify somebody.

Right?

It becomes important.

So, okay, I go through.

I said, so you're telling me that I would have, if I'm trying to do this, I would go into student's dorm rooms,

go into the trash, go into people's cars, grab all of these, go through a student center,

collect them all, and then replace them with another one.

That's what you're saying?

He goes, well, you can't really do that.

I said, well, I'm trying to understand what you're saying because, I mean, if you're comparing this to a Bible, by

1500 A .D., the Bible was everywhere in the world.

How did the Catholic Church collect them all?

He goes, you know, this isn't making a lot of sense to me.

I said, it wasn't making sense to me either, but I'm glad that we're finally on the same page.

You see how easy it is to handle questions of the reliability of Scripture?

And you can do that.

And if you can play dumb like me, it becomes fun.

So, what I hope that you got through out of this, and it is kind of strange that both of my

topics I was given, neither one of them deal with an actual Scripture.

Presuppositional apologetics, and then the reliability.

So, I got the topics that don't deal with Scripture.

So, Anthony just gets to go through all the Scriptures.

That just seems wrong, doesn't it?

Anyway, so, I hope that you've been encouraged.

I hope that you're encouraged to know that when the Bible you hold in your hands is way

more reliable, like, by maybe a hundredfold than CNN.

I mean, it is so reliable that there is no question to say that any of the doctrines of the Scriptures

changed.

People that try to argue that Jesus was a man and that the theory changed over time and it got embellished and embellished, and

then they said he was a god.

No.

We have too many manuscripts, too early, all over the world.

Not going to happen.

We can trust the Bible.

All right?

I'm going to pray, and then I'll give you some quick announcements.

And, by the way, 55 minutes.

Just saying.

Lord, we are grateful that we have your Word, that we know we can trust it.

It is a firm foundation that we can look to and know with absolute surety

that we know what you wanted to communicate to us.

Oh, we don't know everything about you.

But as you say in Deuteronomy 29, 29, that which you have revealed to us, that we obey

and teach to our children.

And we're glad that we have your Word.

We have something we can compare against and look to and know that we have an

absolute standard, a firm foundation.

And may this be encouraging to us not to allow the world to think that we cannot trust

your Word.

We thank you in Christ's name.

Amen.

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