Greer-Heard Discussions

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona. This is the dividing line

The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence

Our host is dr. James White director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church This is a live program and we invite your participation.

If you'd like to talk with dr. White call now. It's 602 973 4602 or toll -free across the

United States. It's 1 877 7 5 3 3 3 4 1 And now with today's topic here is

James White And good afternoon. Welcome to the dividing line. Just want to make sure that number is open for whoever one of the

Muslims is if you have looked at the blog today, you know that I posted a

Response to one of the Muslims now, I I noticed after responding to it

That according to the YouTube Information here one of the Muslims is from the

United Kingdom Which might indicate that it would be a little late for him to be calling the program, but we have invited one of the

Muslims to contact us Because I certainly would be more than happy to give him an opportunity

To attempt to explain his obviously false Accusation against me that I am a modalist or a patra passionist

It seems that if his argumentation is correct Then all

Trinitarians are actually patra passionist, which of course is untrue but it in essence boils down to Are either all

Christians are confused and wrong or this one Muslim doesn't understand the

Trinity which I'll let you figure out which one you think is is more likely is it's more likely that one

British Muslim does not understand the Trinity or that all Christians down through the ages even for those many centuries prior to the beginning of Islam That all those

Christians didn't get it if you haven't seen the video on the blog then you don't know what

I'm talking about But to make a long story short Since I like all Christians confess

Jesus to be God and Lord as Thomas did in John 2028 then we we had a gentleman one of the

Muslims is the identifier on YouTube Argued that on the basis of 1st

Corinthians 8 6 that means I am a modalist or a patra passionist and so he put my picture up there with heretic flashing on it and Just another example of you know,

I'm still waiting still waiting for the the Muslims who actually will allow us to define ourselves and to to actually, you know get involved there and Get you know get on board shall we say so 8 7 7 7 5 3 3 3 4 1

I don't know Whether that's you know really works across the pond.

I doubt it does but we certainly would Appreciate his giving us a ring sometime.

And like I said, we'll do an entire program Not only will I defend the deity of Christ and the Trinity But I will certainly demonstrate that I am anything but a patra passionist

So while waiting for one of the Muslims To call

I wanted to make some more comments on the Greer heard material that we talked about a week ago and specifically in regards to Bart Ehrman and Dan Wallace and some of the other discussions that took place that particular point in time and Specifically, I suppose it would be well if at least one point

I disagreed with Dan Wallace now Dan is a great guy. We do not see eye -to -eye on everything in fact when

I wrote my article in the Carmen Christie for the CRI Journal a number of years ago, I Made sure to take the time to send my comments on that subject to him because I've mentioned the story before I was at the

Evangelical Theological Society meeting in 1998 not last year as my opponent in California thought last week when he

Identified the events of that particular ETS as having happened last year, but anyway in 1998

Shortly after Dan had recovered from something that I guess the doctors still don't know what in the world it was but he was down and out for a while and I had kept in contact with him and and One of the most enjoyable experiences

I had at that one time that I attended ETS Was standing at the NET booth with Dan Wallace arguing about?

the syntax and meaning and interpretation of the Carmen Christie Philippians 2 5 to 11 and I've always appreciated that and I've used to Dan's books from teaching

Greek and and so on and so forth so At the same time however and of course in 1995

When Dan and I tag -teamed the King James only guys on the John Ankerberg show that was always another rather positive memory, too, but anyway

One of the questions that was asked of Dan I truly became confused about because Dan has said that he does not hold to a doctrine of preservation of the

Scriptures and When he gave a response to someone and the question

Really does touch on what the debates can be about in January When Dan gave his response half of his response,

I just gotta admit I did not even begin to understand so let's play it and Let's let's interact a little bit with that and then

I wanted to interact a little bit with Airmen's response to Dan during the cross not so much cross -examination, but going back and forth during the initial

Presentations, let's listen to this question that is asked of Dan Wallace This question is for dr.

Wallace This is regards to a question or actually a comment made by dr.

Herman About the preservation of the text if God has given his word to man

How can he not preserve it faithfully so that we can know it with one with at close to 100 % certainty

Given that you have denied a doctrine of original of preservation yourself.

Dr. Wallace How would you how would you respond to that and how would you recommend the church deal with this?

Well, first of all just to explain why I don't believe in a doctrine of preservation There's two fundamental reasons why

I don't there are typically five passages that are used to argue that the text has been preserved for example in Matthews gospel we have the

Lord say not one jot or tittle is going to pass from the law until all is fulfilled and Heaven and earth may pass away, but my words will never pass away well, when you read the end of John's gospel, it says if I recorded everything that Jesus did and Presumably some of those things he did he actually spoke in those contexts.

It would fill all the libraries of the world It's a bit hyperbolic. I suspect but nevertheless what we've got is

John telling us there's a whole lot more I could tell you about what Jesus said and Consequently, we have not preserved all of his words.

So however, how we're going to take that kind of a text We need to recognize it is not talking about the preservation of the words of Jesus in our

Gospels If you read through the Gospels at a reverential pace just the words of Jesus get an old

King James It's got a red letter edition. It's easier to find that way you get through everything that Jesus said in about two hours.

I Highly suspect that he spoke more than two hours worth in his whole life And so it's it's rather doubtful that that text means what people want it to mean

The second reason now, let me stop right there because that's what I didn't understand. I've never heard a

Doctrine of preservation Defined as meaning everything Jesus ever said has been preserved

I've never I've never heard that doctrine before if someone asked me to define the doctrine of preservation.

I Would say it is the doctrine that since God had a purpose in giving us the scriptures then he has providentially

Preserved them over time now the mechanism by which he has preserved them is the issue

That's where the debate is the King James only ist basically agrees with the

Muslim and The how of how that must be done that is in one particular text form whether it's the

Othmanic Quran or whether it is the 1611 King James version of the Bible or the 1769

Blaney revision or the Oxford version of the 1769 Blaney revision or Schofield's notes or whatever

They all have the same same viewpoint Obviously, I reject that and I believe that God has preserved the text in a different way than the

King James onlyist has but I I've honestly and and maybe it's just because I don't run in the same circles or something, but I've never heard anyone

Present a doctrine of preservation that was based upon the idea That every word that Jesus has ever said has been preserved because I don't know anybody who believes that every word

Jesus ever said has been preserved and the idea that the New Testament is an exhaustive accounting

I Honestly never met anybody who believed that so when

I was listening to this, I don't know about a week or so or go somewhere over near Somewhere between Glendale and northern.

I just I remember where these things are. It's so weird how that works, but I was like what

I Don't understand that so it seems to me that in the second part

Dan gets pretty close to my view in what he calls a providential He's the term providentially, but the first part

I did not understand because I've never heard anybody Define the doctrine of preservation in that fashion

I would argue against the doctrine of preservation which is not an ancient doctrine by the way the first time it was ever Suggested was in the

Westminster Confession in the 17th century Let me stop right there. I that I think could be very very very

Easily Challenged there's nothing in The Westminster Confession that does not previously exist for quite some time in reformed writings

And so I think you could come up with a doctrine of preservation at least as I understand the doctrine

Maybe we're talking about something completely different But certainly as I understand the doctrine well before 1648

And certainly I would say that the providential preservation of Scripture And unless unless Dan thinks this is a photocopy thing

You know that's the only kind of preservation here, and I can't again

I don't know anybody other than King James people who actually think something like that Then I would say that that's the majority viewpoint that that that the early church fathers even held

That God was providentially preserving the scriptures and so on and so forth so you know the again

It's the exact means of how that becomes the question, but that part also left me going Yeah, the second reason.

I would argue that is it doesn't work for the Old Testament There are places in the Old Testament where we simply don't know what the original wording is and we have to can

Move to conjecture without any textual basis to say we think it said this here But we're just not sure before the

Dead Sea Scrolls were considered there are discovered There were several places where there was conjecture and many of them were cleared up once the

Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered But still there are several places left in the Old Testament So I would say

I don't want to be Bibliologically Marcionite and claim that the New Testament is more inspired than the old and claim that New Testament was preserved while the old is

Not I think that's a schizophrenic but I would say as far as Whether the church needs to wrestle with this doctrine of preservation here's two points

I would raise for before he gets too far down the road because it's hard to remember everything when you get as old as I am but anyway

Okay, there are some very very difficult And there are not many of them, but there are a couple places in the

Old Testament Where it's very difficult to arrive at any kind of satisfactory answers to what the original reading is between the

Hebrew and the Greek Septuagint and any Targums you might want to drag in and and blah blah blah blah blah

I don't know of any of those readings that have almost anything to do other than stuff like Some Comment about What somebody was doing when a king came to reign at a certain point in time or something in other words none of them that I know of have almost any impact whatsoever upon the message of the text or anything along those lines at all

But okay valid point if again the idea is that the doctrine of preservation is of a photocopy type of a situation where you

You know sort of like what as the Muslims have with the Quran or something like that So if again if that's what he's saying it goes back to the issue of what methodology

We're actually talking about and what's actually being preserved first of all I think what dr. Ehrman has suggested when he mentioned in his presentation tonight is if God inspired the text why didn't he preserve the text?

That's the very kind of a question that Muslims have asked and they've answered it by saying he has preserved the text

But I know of no Christian bonnet bonafide Christian theologian Who has ever said God has preserved the text exactly as the original now?

I think a lot of Christians would hold that viewpoint but not necessarily in in the same way

But that I just stopped it right there because that is the thesis of the debate in January What he just attributed to Ehrman and that is what

Ehrman says in print and in other contexts That if God inspired it then he's going to preserve it and he's going to preserve it in a particular way

That's the the key how how has he done that has he done that by preserving one particular?

Form of the text or has he done so by distributing the text so widely that there can be no major changes in the text

But I think Dan is going to agree with eventually here only people I know if we claim that our textus receptus people

King James only type folks And we know they're just a little bit weird. So you probably don't give him much credibility

Now I would add I would suggest one of the thing and that is CS Lewis made the interesting argument about miracles

That when Jesus Christ changed the water into wine Immediately it had alcohol in it.

Oh, I'm sorry. This is Southern Baptist Seminary, okay I'm sorry. I agree with Lewis on this point.

So I've really offended you now Bob Okay, that's good in case the lightning strikes you don't want to get singed right, okay well it seems to me that what

Lewis is saying is Jesus makes the wine it's going to become alcoholic when you heal when you raise

Lazarus from the dead He's still going to die when miracles are done after the miracle is done

Then natural processes take over and if the Bible is originally inspired the natural processes due to humans

Rewriting this text copying it whatever is going to take over and so I would say I think I can argue for a general

Providence of the scripture based on the historical evidence, but I cannot do so on the basis of any kind of a doctrine

Okay, so right at the end there he basically says I can argue for a general providence

But not as a doctrine, so I'm I'm really not certain there may be something in the background

With with Dan here or something that I don't know about That that we're actually sort of talking past each other but it would seem to me that the doctrinal basis of a belief that God has providentially preserved his scriptures for us and given that Dan argues that 99 % of the variants are irrelevant and That the number of variances do just simply the fact that with number of manuscripts we actually sort of ran the numbers last time and and And really goes after Ahriman for this

Idea that in essence we just we just can't know there's this rampant Skepticism and so on so forth which basically leads him to a number of times by the way admit

We don't know what anybody wrote Only a few hundred years ago in essence is is what

Ahriman has to say all the classics We don't know what they wrote. We don't know about Plato We don't know that we don't know about any of this stuff and that kind of rampant skepticism most people go wait a minute

Something doesn't quite seem right there, and then you start pushing Well what we mean is we we can't say we have a photocopy of the original

The question is yeah, but you know what the original right well of course we know what the originals So people get lost and and I think

Dan made a very valid point that it does seem that that Ahriman Says one thing in popular formats to get books sold and then something else in the scholarly material

And I think that that's there's some validity to that even though I don't think he appreciated that response.

We'll see here in a moment, but anyway The the assertion that there is a general providential from a historical

Perspective preservation the text is what he's saying there toward the end And I don't know if he's just being very concerned in saying look

We can't make a doctrine out of this it becomes a test of faith or something like that obviously from my perspective

I Understand the preservation of the text of scripture to flow from its inspiration

Now he just said well once it's inspired then natural processes take over in the copying okay but however if the purpose of the original purpose of the inspiration

Was to provide to the church that which is necessary For the church to function as her

Lord would have her to function Then it would seem to follow that there must be some mechanism whereby that text is

Provided to the church and this goes back to how I argued the issue of the canon as well Remember canon 1 canon 2

I think it there's a connection here In regards to the preservation of the text over time now.

I think what he what? The mechanism that is used here involves

Textual variation that is getting the text out. There is rapidly as it can that results in these

Textual variants which as Dan himself pointed out the you know the largest reason for textual variation in the

New Testament is I'll never forget If you've never taken Greek this isn't going to make as much sense to you

But follow along and if you've done any studying in at all, I remember in my first year

Greek class That there were I remember certain people in that first year Greek class I remember when we we slowly got whittled down till there were only 12 of us and We all wondered who

Judas was gonna be No, they want to drop out and become

Judas. I remember the guy who was and but anyway and there there are certain people that I would remember like there's a guy named med schemes and Remember med yeah med schemes could not get

Erechemi for love nor money that verb he hated it because it kept changing forms in various You know when you're in various contexts.

He's tested it. He could not figure out the word is basically And then there was another guy and maybe it was mad too.

I don't know he had a few problems, but There was somebody else who hated the movable new

The movable noon I've taught Greek many times and I gotta admit it is sort of fun when first -year students there the the the blank

Deer and the headlights stare is just starting to develop they're just starting to get overload and you hit them with the movable new and What the movable new is is it's just a spelling thing it doesn't make any difference as far as meaning goes

But sometimes the Greeks would put a new at the end of particular words and sometimes they wouldn't and For some reason when you're a beginning

Greek student, that's very frustrating it's a cause for anger and Later scribes struggled with it too, and and of course sometimes that would be a

Difference in how people a dialectical difference In fact, Dan Wallace was talking about this in this the same thing and he jokingly said, you know you you have a bat and an apple or in Texas you have a bat and a apple and You got a good chuckle out of that.

I don't know if you use those same words, but you get the idea but it's dialectical and So some scribes would have the movable new and some scribes wouldn't have the movable new and they're literally of the 2 ,400 thousand variants in the

New Testament at least a thousand maybe more of them have to do with movable news whether you got it or whether you don't which has absolutely positively no impact whatsoever upon the meaning and As Dan said 99 % of the variants spelling variants there.

They're not even reproducible in English translations. And so They just don't impact the transmission of the text over time and From my perspective what

God has done is the the the big arguments that people make today are that entire doctrines entire dogmas have been either excised from the text or inserted into the text and Given the way in which the

New Testament has been Transmitted to us that just isn't possible

That just isn't possible anybody who wants to make that kind of argument You're gonna have to come up with some type of evidence and the

New Testament manuscript tradition Stands in defiance of that entire hypothesis because the mechanism that I believe

God did use To provide us with the New Testament text that we have today. So I do believe in a providential preservation

I just don't believe that it involves the use of the photocopy commercial Remember the Xerox commercial from years and years ago

We had the fat little monk guy who didn't want to do his work And so he had smuggled somehow a Xerox copier into his cell and That was that had to have been 1970s maybe 1980s that was that long ago.

I am definitely dating myself at that point but that's You know, I I don't believe in that kind of preservation because it didn't happen

But when you look at the earliest manuscripts in the New Testament as they come into the historical record clearly

We only have one New Testament clearly as soon as that New Testament is is discernible in history and it comes into into view in different places and Clearly it already has a history behind it.

What we can see in that history is that there is one New Testament and That there wasn't one

New Testament that had Jesus as the Son of God and then another New Testament that had Jesus as a mere apostle

And another New Testament that had him as a Gnostic God or whatever else. There's no evidence of that When the manuscripts appear they're telling the same story

Now there are there textual variants between them in the sense of movable news and word orders and stuff like that Yes, there are that's what happens when people make copies

But is it the same New Testament that has been transmitted all along without any question? That's the point and I think maybe that's what

Dan was arguing possibly at that particular point in time Let me see here.

Oh, I squished my window down so much. I can't even find my files anymore I didn't want to play one other here real quickly, and then we will go to We will go to our phone calls

Adam just hold on there I know you've been there a while, but we'll get to here in a second I I wanted to play the very end of Dan's opening presentation where he's he's talking about some important stuff

He's taking on some of Ahriman's most common examples I mean anybody who's listened to as much

Bart Ahriman as I am and looked at his books knows there are certain things mark 141 lepers in the hands of an angry

Jesus, that's one of his articles and Matthew 24 36 neither the

Sun knows the hour etc etc of course the John 753 311 these are his favorite texts to look at and Everyone's known about these texts for a long long long long time

But these are the ones that he presents and so I thought Dan made some really telling comments toward the end here that I would think

Ahriman would want to respond to instantly but listen to his response his response is not to what

Wallace said at all And seems to me to be rather emotional rather than Rather than scholarly let's let's listen to it passages among his bread -and -butter illustrations

That is it's his example par excellence one reviewer said he discusses it explicitly in at least a half a dozen places in misquoting

Jesus And he calls it the most famous instance of doctrinal alteration in one of his academic books in misquoting

Jesus He argues that the reason for the omission is not hard to postulate if Jesus does not know the future the

Christian claim that he is a divine being is more than a little compromised Bart does not qualify his words here.

He does not say that some Christians would have a problem with Jesus ignorance No, he says that the

Christian claim would have a problem with it Now if he does not mean this then he's writing more

Provocatively than is necessary and he's misleading his readers and if he does mean it he's overstated his case

Bart suggests that the omission would have arisen in the late 2nd century as a proto -orthodox response to the adoptionist heresy

That's possible of course, but there's three problems with the hypothesis It's somewhat startling that no let me just mention since you may have missed this

But this is about Matthew 24 36 that day in the hour No one knows neither the angels in heaven nor the

Son But the Father only and it is about the phrase Whether in Matthew 24 36 that phrase

The neither the Son is to appear in the New Testament Church Father seems to have any problems with the words nor the

Son Until the 4th century and yet we have earlier fathers that are commenting on this passage

Irenaeus Tertullian origin they all embraced the deedy of Christ yet none felt this text was a problem

Irenaeus even uses it as an example of humility for Christians If the scribes were simply following the leads of their theological mentors

Then the lack of any tension over this passage by 2nd and 3rd century fathers Suggests that either the mission omission of nor the

Son was not a reaction to adoptionism Or it was not created in the late 2nd century now if it was intentionally created by the proto -orthodox scribes at this time

Then one would expect them to be following Irenaeus's example of speaking of the four

Gospels as the true canonical Gospels But the parallel passage in Mark 13 32

Definitely has the words nor the Son and even though Mark was not copied as frequently as Matthew in the early centuries of the

Christian faith By the end of the 2nd century the proto -orthodox would have regarded it as Scripture.

Okay Why didn't they strike the offensive words from Mark? And the third point

I want to raise here is that if the scribes had no poems About deleting nor the

Son. Why did they leave the word alone in the text? Without nor the

Son the passage still implies that the Son of God does not know the date of his return Now this point is not trivial.

It cuts to the heart of Bart's entire method in Orthodox corruption He argues that the reason the same manuscript can vacillate in the kinds of theological changes

It makes us due to the individuality of the scribes Who under their own unique circumstances may have felt inclined to emphasize one component of Christology over another

But he adds it strikes me as equally likely That the same scribe may have seen different kinds of problems in different texts and made the requisite changes

Depending on his perceptions or moods at the time of writing Well, the problem is if we're dealing with that then just four words after the scribe had a mood to drop neither the

Sun Forwards later. He doesn't drop alone with the father. So I guess he had a mood change real quickly

Well, my point on this is that Matthew 24 36 may have some other things going on than just what

Bart has suggested as Gordon Fee has said unfortunately ermine too often turns mere possibility into probability and Probability into certainty where other equally viable reasons for corruption exist.

Thank you Now that's a I think a very very appropriate statement from Gordon Fee That I do think that Bart Ehrman very often turns probabilities into I'm sorry possibilities into probabilities and then changes probabilities into certainties and That is

I think one of the biggest criticisms that I would make is that this and one of the first things I said when

When misquoting Jesus came out was this spin factor the fact that he's he's

Normally quite right about the factual information when he's discussing factual information in his conclusions

He draws from the factual information that goes far far beyond What others would consider to be warranted by the information that is there itself?

so So here you just had a presentation That I you know,

I mean if he's saying it's a good question But concerning that day or that hour no one knows neither the angels in heaven neither the

Son except the Father only now if you're excising

The Son but you're leaving the word only in there. You are causing a

Problem a concern these are fair Analogies these are fair observations

He had earlier in his presentation quoted Ehrman over and over and over again and demonstrated that there is a conflict between what he says in his scholarly writings and what he says and is more populist writings and It's the populist writings that are being read by Richard Dawkins And it's the populist writings that are being promoted by Christopher Hitchens and it's the populist writings that are on NPR It's not his his

Brill academic volume that costs 145 bucks that's on the the shelves of Barnes &

Noble it's on my shelf, but it's not on the shelves of Barnes & Noble and So I think it is perfectly fair if if if he's going to enjoy the the notoriety of being the person that the mainstream media wants to go to As the

New Testament scholar, well, then I think you need to be ready to with fairness and equanimity respond to a documentation of the fact that you seem to be speaking out of both sides of the mouth there a couple times and Why is that and why is that actually is rather relevant?

To your role as a former something Is it possible that those media really likes to go to you because you're a former

Christian Etc, etc. So let's let's listen to what happened after that All right, let's take

All right, and there is a long time and we skip you don't want that Do I thank

Dan for that very lively and and moving Presentation Well first I should say

I didn't you know, I I thought we were talking about the textual reliability of the New Testament I didn't realize we're talking about the textual reliability of Bart Ehrman So my

I'm a little bit taken aback in my response. I I think I gotta admit

I you know I'm looking forward to this encounter, but I gotta admit on a personal level.

I I thought dr. Ehrman was Incredibly condescending to the audience really and I saw this in a number of the what other people wrote who were there and observed this

He was always talking about how he wants to simplify it how he wants to make it very simple for them He's gonna say that here just now in just a moment and I'm like Why I mean, do you really think these people are

I mean he's opening his opening presentation he's explaining this, you know, the very Basic stuff about like what papyri is made of I sort of figure most of people showing up for this know what papyri is made

You know, they've probably read Metzger and they've they've probably read book Ehrman, you know and and they're they're ready for a little bit higher level of discourse here and I just felt like it was you know a little bit disingenuous and maybe

I'm drawing from my own experience, but there have been a number of people of debate who really didn't appreciate the fact that I had taken the time to study their

Writings as deeply as I had I think of John Shelby spawn as one for example Now one who did was

John Donovan Crossan, but he was the exception to the rule In that particular type of situation.

I think I want to tell you honestly what I think that what Dan's talk was I Think Dan's talk was a very learned presentation

That was designed by its high intelligence to comfort you with the thought that you can trust that the text of the

New Testament is reliable and That it was designed less to convince by evidence than by intelligence

I'm not going to counter any of the points that Dan made directly

I'm going to try and speak simply and not try and Confuse anybody by by big words or by any kind of confusing ideas

Yeah, we don't want to be using big words in the context I was again.

I was writing while listening to this and I'm just going What were people looking like in the audience at this point?

You know I I mean I would want to put my hand up and go excuse me But I can pronounce

Polysyllabic words, it's okay. You know It's all right You know maybe he's just trying to avoid the really boring

SBL Lecture syndrome or something I suppose as possible. I don't know, but it's like wow

I want to lay it out for you as simply as I can and I think this will answer some of Dan's objections

Let's take one example Paul wrote a letter to the

Galatians Now Galatia was a region in Asia Minor This is not one church

It was a group of churches And we don't know whether Paul wrote one letter to all the churches or if he wrote the same letter to go to a bunch of churches

If you wrote one letter to go to a bunch of churches that means it would have been copied into numerous copies

Which means that it's possible that each of these churches got a different copy So which is the original of the letter to the

Galatians? Now let's just so say for the sake of argument that he made only one letter

Probably in Paul's letter to the Galatians. He dictated the letter he because at the end very end

He says see with what large letters I'm writing to you Which makes it sound like somebody else has taken the dictation and then he's written the letters at the end

So they know it's actually from him if he dictated the letter Is it possible that the person receiving the dictation wrote down the wrong word that Paul said?

Is it possible that somebody coughed in the room and the scribe didn't hear correctly and wrote it?

If so, is it possible that the original had a mistake in it or two or three?

The Galatians was sent off to the region of the by the way, I would just suggest to you

Keep track of the number of times you hear the term possible is it

Possible that this happened. Is it possible? unfortunately those Possibles become the very foundation of a conclusion that well

This is what happened or we just don't know we cannot know but the only thing we can know because of all these

Possibilities is that this cannot be what it's claimed to be by Christians. This is the argumentation

Now, I'm I don't know if this is necessary has anything to do with inspiration. I think this is gonna come out in January but the idea is here's

Here's where he's going the possibilities possibilities and you add up enough possibilities And well, then you don't really have any confidence that this could be what you've always thought that it was

Galatia Possibly with mistakes in it already It was copied there

One church in Galatia copied it and sent it to another church in Galatia Which sent it to another church in Galatia, which sent it to another church in Galatia Which sent it to another church in Galatia.

There are mistakes being made at every point Dan wants to argue that we have early copies

That we have copies that go back to the 2nd century. This is far better than any classical author we have

Yes Absolutely true Can we trust that the copies of Galatians that we have are the original copies?

No We don't know How could we possibly know our earliest copy of notice the standard here?

Obviously is 100 % Photographic certainty that can that in any historical situation would require us to time -travel that's the standard here and if you can't have that you can't know nothing and So this is an extreme form of skepticism

That basically means that at least until the advent of photography Or at least until the printing press and really it if you think about it

You have to go long after the printing press, but but basically let's go the printing press We don't know anything that happened between the middle before the middle of 15th century history began in the middle of 15th century

I mean using that as a rather odd Time period but we don't know because we

Can't get into a spaceship and do space travel and and do stuff like that, you know start a la

Star Trek Maybe somebody can do that then we'll know something about history. But given these standards at this point, we know nothing about anyone

All we've got are just wild guesses evidently Relations is p46 which dates from the year 200

Paul wrote this letter in the 50s The first copy we have is a hundred and fifty years later

Changes were made all along the line before this first copy was made

Except you don't have any evidence of that. You're just assuming this because well humans were writing it and This all along the line thing again

This isn't the phone game This isn't one copy to the next copy to the next copy to the next copy, even though he keeps insisting.

That's it That's the way it is. That is not how it happened. I would love to have heard I did not hear it

Maybe I missed it But I would love to have heard a dr. Ehrman interact with an excellent presentation

I'm afraid maybe at this point some people did lose Dan But he was talking about the relationship of codex

B Vaticanus with codex with papyri p75 and he's talking about how

Both of these are extremely accurate Transcriptions and yet p75 is not the progenitor of Vaticanus that Vaticanus is around the counts time now time of the

Council Nicaea p75 is around 200 They both are going back to a single archetype before them the

Vaticanus actually has some more ancient readings than p75 does but they are almost always together and What does this point out that there are multiple streams of transmission?

It's not just one to one to one to one in a single line there are multiple streams of transmission and That's why again if you want to make the argument that there were these different kinds of New Testaments Completely different teachings in them which when he's nailed down he says no

But that's what his writing seemed to suggest to people Then there would be evidence of this existing as soon as we start seeing the earliest

New Testament manuscripts But there isn't any evidence of that How can we possibly know?

That in fact it is exactly as Paul wrote it Is it possible that somebody along the line inserted a verse?

Yes, is it possible that somebody took out a verse? Yes, is it possible that somebody changed a lot of the words?

Yes, is it possible that the later copies were made from one of the worst of the early copies?

Yes possible possible possible possible We have no evidence, but it's possible possible possible possible because you want to throw it back into prior

The time prior to where we have any of the manuscripts Now we don't we don't have any of these other alleged epistles to the

Galatians Where they disappeared to in history, we don't know but we're just going possible possible possible how many possibles have we heard so far and What they always lead to we don't know

There is the radical skepticism. It's possible. We don't know

Dan started out by saying that he was confused by two different things that I've said in two different contexts and Implied that maybe

I try and sensationalize things to popular audiences but that I'm a little more circumspect in front of my colleagues in other words what

I had said before that is that Wallace is demonstrating that if you read his scholarly stuff

It's much more reserved in the conclusions than what you find in the stuff that is being promoted by NPR And did you find an

Amazon? Let me explain the situation What I have said to my colleagues is that we are as close as we can hope to be

To what we might imagine as the original text what I've said in popular audiences is we don't know if we can get back to the original text and I stand by both statements

We don't know What originally wrote to the Galatians and we have no hope of getting any closer now

In the future than we are already now We have no Evidence that can get us any further back than we have already gotten and our earliest evidence is from the year 200 a hundred and fifty years later

So can we know for certain? No, we can't know for certain that the text was reliable You might want to think it is you might want to hope it is you might want to say well

They're intelligent people who say it is and so probably it is but think about it for a minute People are copying these texts year after year decade after decade

Do these differences really matter for anything Now, let me just I know poor

Adam has been sitting there for a long time that's what you get for calling so early in the program, but Again, I think it's important to point out, you know, what he thinks certainty is is a

Videotape of each of the New Testament writers writing each of the manuscripts so that we have a copy of the original and if you got

Anything beyond that? Well, we don't know and What that means again is we don't know about anything in the ancient world the

Quran Any of the classic writers nothing? Until at least printing and I would argue that even he seems to understand that until at least

Last century with computers is the only time you could actually know

What the original of any written document doesn't matter whether it's six six six or six one six doesn't matter whether Matthew 24 said

That not even the Sun knows does it matter? Well do the words of the New Testament matter if the words don't matter.

Why are we studying them? If these textual variants aren't important, why are we studying them?

Why are people like Dan and me devoting our lives to them if they don't matter?

If they don't matter we should be doing something else with our lives Why do we have professional conferences devoted to these things?

Why do we write articles about them for scholarly journals? Why do we write books about them?

Why do we give talks about them? Why do we set up? Institutes both at the

New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and at the Dallas Theological Seminary devoted exclusively to studying the manuscripts of the

New Testament devoting hundreds of thousands of dollars probably millions of dollars

To the study of the text if there are no significant textual variants that matter.

I Simply don't believe that Dan thinks it doesn't matter He's devoting his life to it and hundreds of thousands of dollars that he's raising to it

These things matter they matter because there are places where we don't know

If we knew we wouldn't have to put this much time and effort into the project

These things matter They matter not only to Bible believing people

They matter to anybody who's interested in the history of civilization For all of us the book is of the

Bible is at the foundation of our form of civilization Whether we are

Bible believers or not This book matters to all of us It matters that we figure out what the words said and it matters to see how the words got changed over time

If it didn't matter we wouldn't be in this business Thank you Now he didn't even take his whole time and I don't know about you, but he's upset.

He's he's preaching And that wasn't Dan Wallace never said they didn't matter

Instead he challenged the Extended conclusions that Bart Ehrman is presented and I did not hear

Ehrman respond at all So there you go that's that's what took place and I find that Very very fascinating.

All right. Hey Adam has been very patient. Let's go to That phone call now.

Hi Adam Enjoying the conversation by the review is really

It was really interesting. I initially had called in with a question about Roman Catholics and their hermeneutics, but I think

I can apply it to this as well It seems like when I've looked at the folks who study the

Bible and whether it's the Old Testament or the New Testament They have to have this absolute Certainty this is what it means.

This is what it says And in reality, you know

There's something to be said I think in the Bible for hard work and doing the hard work to to understand more accurately what the text says and You know, whether it be a

Bart Ehrman who just says we can't know or the Roman Catholic who says you need to join our infallible magisterium to know

It's it just seems to me to be the same thing. I mean The reality is you've you've got to put the work in yeah, there's going to be differences in interpretation yeah, there's going to be these textual variants, but I think that what matters is

What is the message of the text and by putting these variants things can we more accurately understand what the message of the text is

It's not a matter of do we have the message of the text? This is the matter of are we willing to do the hard work?

Put into us so we can more accurately understand it And it's the same thing that I find when I deal with Roman Catholics and they use the old well

It's just your interpretation, you know, there are how many different interpretations of this passage, you know, it's a real quest

I must have it handed to me on a platter what it means it does it does bother a lot of people not only in Rome, but outside of Rome when there are differences of Interpretation.

There's no question about it. And you then combine that with the modernist well the post modernist idea that all interpretations all ideas are by Definition equal with one another and now you've got a real problem on your hands

Because all all interpretations and and ideas are not equal with one another

Obviously someone who has spent time with the text Their idea is going to be much better than some guy who just walks up to it reads and says well

It means such -and -so knows nothing about the language nothing about the background So on and so forth so you combine all that together

And yeah You you are right that there are those who have converted over to Roman Catholicism because they just couldn't handle the idea

That you have to do work or that there might be Some things in this life you don't come to a final conclusion on and we're not talking about the central doctrines of the faith

But we are talking about certain passages historical events things like that and and even

Regarding the central doctrines of faith your confidence in those things can grow over time.

It's not like well I've got the Trinity figured out I can move on to something else We can affirm the doctrine of the

Trinity, but we can also grow in our understanding in our Seeing it in the text and its application and and and so on and so forth so it is an issue of maturity on that level and a

Lot of folks are much more comfortable saying you know what I don't want to do all that stuff I'm just going to sign my mind over to such -and -such infallible authority who will interpret this for me tell me what to believe and Go on from there.

That's why I don't You know I don't promote that to anybody. I don't tell people well. You just need to believe everything I believe

And just follow me I say here's what the text says and you need to deal with what the text says and here are some

Of the facts and you know the reason this viewpoint over here doesn't work is because it's ignoring this this and this

And I think you need to engage in that kind of thing But a lot of folks aren't willing to engage in that kind of thing anymore because that would require you to believe that Some views are actually superior to other views

Which we don't allow in religion well in fact. It's interesting I find that a lot of Catholics when they're trying to argue with Protestants will use

Arguments that are postmodern in character and try to avoid the conclusion They have an argument that she'll get is well

You can't understand what the text is there all these different interpretations, and you say yeah But you have to interpret what Rome tells you and they say well

We got an infallible interpreter we can go and ask him what it means And I say well if you have to go and ask him what it means

How do you know that you understood the clarification right? Any as if anyone gets to actually do that I mean come on You know well do you know but theoretically if I went to Rome and theoretically if I could talk and Theoretically if he said we define and pronounce and then so on so forth and you just go come on get get serious

When was the last time any pontiff actually gave that kind of infallible interpretation of anything?

Since it doesn't happen, then how really useful is that? Right it just is unbelievable to take the take the starting point of postmodernism

And then all of a sudden try to say I'm going to avoid that conclusion by by Going to an infallible story that I have to interpret that I have to contact or I have to trust someone else that they've

Contacted and they're reporting to be correctly. I mean you know that that type of thinking

In fact I found it interesting if you look on the Catholic answers website they say if you want to help us defend our

Catholic use against the deceptive works of Catholics for free choice and For life, but I'm just sitting here thinking you know it sounds to me like if there's if there is a infallible

Interpreter you wouldn't have to defend their folks against just a really infallible interpreter as spoken Would be nice, but we gotta admit

Catholic answers does have a leg up on anybody else because on their staff they have one of the foremost biblical scholars in the church and So all you got to do is ask him

Well, you know it's interesting a lot of these apologists Jimmy Akin folks like this if you're

I wasn't talking about Jimmy Akin actually But it but it's it's it's interesting that when you actually go to the scholarly works on interpretation of the

Old Testament New Testament None of these apologists ever quoted Yeah, when you actually go to the works that you know cost $120 that you have to buy from Fortress press and Brill and everybody else.

Yeah, yeah, you you'll find folks like Joseph Fitzmyer Raymond Brown Who many of these will identify as liberals and dismiss them anyways?

Yeah, but the interesting thing is many of them will also served on pontifical commissions I know You know the whole thing and yet at the same time

I understand where a lot of people are coming from, you know But the issues are a lot more

There has to be work put in in fact I'm taking a class this semester and studying ancient Hebrew inscriptions and many of the things that we're finding is that The original state of the text may be exactly, you know

What it is, but there may have been editing to that people can understand what it says that it's not so archaic And so when you study these things and you and you you study the way it is then all of a sudden

You you begin to understand and not just have to you know, sign your authority over To someone else just because just because of this back

Yeah, you're just you're just you're just becoming one of those those Gnostic scholars. You see that's

You know, you can't do that. You know, you just gotta it's got to be simple, you know, and you can't have any of this

Studying stuff. Well, that's the that's I think the sad part of the church today. I mean when

I think about how You know so many young kids. They're not taught young how to interpret the

English Bible and a basic level It just is really sad well there

I mean well a large portion the church does not engage in a whole lot of scholarly reflection or or even deep

Meditation upon the many truths of the scriptures We don't teach our people to do that. Anyways, and a lot of evangelicalism is infected by a very very deep

Anti -intellectual strain as it is, but hey Adam. Thank you very much for phone call Thanks for being patient through all that time and thank you all for listening

Again, I know talking about airmen and Wallace and some that stuff for some folks is like, yeah

You know couldn't you talk about Dave hunt? That's more exciting. But in reality What we're dealing with here is some of the most

Fundamental important apologetic stuff we could ever discuss and that's what we do here on the dividing line. Thanks for listening.

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