God's Providential Preservation of His Word

Dr. White has been extraordinarily gracious to our congregation over the years. I was totaling it up.

I think we've been working Somewhat together for over 22 years now. When did we do that first debate?

2001 2000 no, wait a minute. It was See the two old

Some of us are a little older than others Well, don't go into that well talk about fitness, but at any rate, um, no

It would have been 2000 fall of 2000 is when we did the

St. Martin Luther Debate. Yes. Yes. Yes Yeah, well, it's been a while.

So Well, James has done numerous debates for a while We had him doing debates not only we have

Mormons one night and then we do a Catholic the next. Mm -hmm He's accused me of trying to kill him before the last visit.

Well, you've accused me of trying to kill a little old Mormon No, I just pleaded with you Yeah dr.

Scharf's was Trembling like I've never seen anyone with Parkinson's tremble and it's like that was

North High School Was that was uh, no mom hunter high school hunter hunter hunter high school but We have invited dr.

White to come and address us on the reliability of the New Testament text He's done that presentation many many different times many different ways

I Asked him if he would be up to an interview because in spite of how clearly he has

Expressed himself many times. I found that there are lots of folks who don't seem to actually understand what he's saying

Or don't want to understand well What they say is not what you say

So, you know a couple years ago. We had you here for the Lee Baker debate and So I heard you say something there that I'd like everyone to hear

Do you believe that one word? One letter of what the

Apostles wrote in the New Testament has been lost to the church today In answering that question you can just do a simple answer and say no

I do not but that immediately goes So, where are they? So let me just briefly lay out why

I would take a position that many people involved in doing textual critical study

Would find somewhat unusual though in reality in history. I think most people were were definitely on the same side.

I know the New Testament manuscripts Demonstrate something called tenacity

Tenacity that's that used to be a word we'd use, you know, that was you were supposed to be tenacious now no one says things like that because they don't want to hurt your feelings, but tenacity is stick -to -itiveness and The reality is that in the scholarly realm what that means is

When a reading appears amongst the New Testament manuscripts, it stays there.

It's tenacious now you might say Well, that doesn't sound good to me. You mean if a scribe makes a mistake, let me give you an example

There was one scribe We know without a doubt exactly what happened in this situation

Now my my Conjecture that he didn't get his coffee that morning.

We can't prove perfectly but this manuscript when you read it in The genealogy of Luke everyone has the wrong father and When you start looking at it closely you can tell what this poor guy did

Was he had? Like a two or three column manuscript he was copying from But like I said, he didn't get his coffee that morning so instead of going down this column and then down this column and then down this column he went straight across and And so everybody ends up with the wrong daddy

In in Luke's genealogy and the poor guy didn't even notice it now if you've been copying something like Sermon on the mount or something like that.

It wouldn't have made any sense. He would have caught it. We still have that manuscript We didn't do what the

Muslims did when they burned manuscripts of the Quran To establish a particular text now you say well, but those are mistakes, right?

But if the mistakes were preserved, what does that mean? The original readings were preserved as well.

And so we have in the manuscript tradition Everything that John or Paul or Luke ever wrote

But I see I'm getting a lot of stuff here, but that's because you have to give some of the background information But what we have to do is we have to study those manuscripts to be able to identify where for example

There have been expansions So it's very easy to take

Manuscripts in the New Testament when we look at the oldest ones they'll say something like then

Jesus said to the man and then One that's maybe 500 years later

Would say then the Lord Jesus said to this man and you can put together an entire chart where the older manuscripts will have a shorter reading and Then the manuscripts later on will have a slightly expanded

So he becomes Jesus Jesus becomes the Lord Jesus the Lord Jesus becomes the Lord Jesus Christ there is an expansion of what

I call piety involved in these later manuscripts and so our job is to In all of this in all of this.

I will defend this statement. I Want to know what the

Apostles wrote? Not what a scribe 500 years or a thousand years or 1 ,200 years

Thought the Apostles should have written and if that is your ultimate goal

Then there is only one real direction you can go in the analysis of the manuscripts

If you are willing to give that up You have to ask the question. What am I giving it up for?

Because especially here in Utah, you know that we deal with people who claim a particular religious text as well and It may not just be the

Mormons. It might be the Muslims now. You've got everybody here in Utah now and so We have to have equal scales we have to stand firm in saying

I want to know what the Apostles wrote and I'm not simply going to say this text over here that's my standard because we know lots of other groups that do the exact same thing and if we're going to critically interact with their texts and Point out the history of their texts, then we have to use the same standards with ours

And it's obvious here. We can talk about that with Mormonism, but the same with Islam it's the same with a lot of different groups and so I want to know what was originally written and therefore when we look at the manuscripts that we have today and we have far more manuscripts far earlier manuscripts and far higher quality manuscripts

For the New Testament than any other work Contemporaneous with the

New Testament by a long shot. There is nothing that comes even close And so we have a massive amount of information millions of pages of handwritten data that we're dealing with and the question that must guide our analysis of those is

What did the original authors write now I brought with me tonight a critical edition of the

Greek New Testament and while it's not exhaustive It has far more information in this one volume than any

New Testament scholar had access to before I would say 1950

Which wasn't all that long ago, but to younger people seems like a long long time ago There is more information in this one volume than almost any scholar had access to for 95 % of the history of the

Christian Church And so we have a tremendous amount of information we can draw from we are hiding nothing

It's not it's not like you have some priest group you have to go to to get your information Anybody can buy this my

Muslim friends buy this I know Mormons who look at stuff like this Jehovah's Witnesses and others.

We don't hide anything. We don't need to hide anything Because we can openly lay out our here's how we're gonna do it.

Here's the rules that we're gonna go by here's why we think this is the way to do things and we put it on the table and You end up with a

Tremendous amount of consistency in an understanding of what the original text of the New Testament was

One last thing I'll say because we have other questions to get to one last thing

I'll say is This Historically The King James and the

New King James are based upon what's called the textus receptus The textus receptus is actually a number of different printed editions of the

Greek New Testament the Historically the 1624 edition is

Really the TR but today the Trinitarian Bible Society textus receptus has sort of Taken the place of that one

And that was produced by a brilliant scholar by name of FHA Scribner in the the late 19th century and That's the that's what underlies the

King James Version and the New King James translation of the New Testament if you have a

New American Standard ESV and IV legacy standard Bible Christian standard

Bible any of the modern translations they are based upon this Greek text, which is called the Netsy Allen text this text in its main readings because if I had a if you

The the main text is above but then you'll see a number of notes down at the bottom a lot of notes down at the bottom of the page in The main text here if you compare that with the

TR there is about a I think it's 2 % difference in length and That represents those expansions that we were talking about all of those expansions are in the notes here

So you have it right there. It's on the page. You can look at it. You can make your own decision as to whether you

Accept that reading or not, but here's the point either in the main text or at the bottom of the page are all the original readings from the

Apostles, they're still there and Robert Bowman, that's the name. I couldn't remember earlier today

Robert Bowman used I thought a brilliant Illustration Dan Wallace agreed.

There was a brilliant illustration he said the situation we face is like having a ten thousand piece jigsaw puzzle and We have ten thousand one hundred pieces

Now I don't know if any of you have ever done a ten thousand who's done a ten thousand piece jigsaw puzzle

The one young man down front who noticed he only went like this It's not like I asked who here has hand solo

Jammies or something like that, you know, I wouldn't want to ask that question actually Now, you know that having ten thousand one hundred pieces would complicate that process

Because you have to identify the extra pieces But which would you rather have?

Ten thousand one hundred pieces and have to identify the extra pieces or nine thousand nine hundred pieces and Never be able to complete the puzzle

We don't have the nine thousand nine hundred we have the ten thousand one hundred and So that is a to me is a tremendous

Testimony to the preservation of the text of Scripture over time. I believe that God has preserved the New Testament It's the method and methodology that he used that we have to understand

And a lot of people a lot of people want to have the Indiana Jones method of New Testament preservation

And I'm dating myself You realize how many people don't even know who Indiana Jones is anymore That is so sad

If you've not seen Raiders of the Lost Ark or this was search for the holy was what which one was it?

What the last crusade? Okay. Thank you Oh All is easy to identify the fans in the in the in the group in one of the

Indiana Jones films they were looking for the Holy Grail and they find it in this cave with a

Really really really really old guy. I mean like he doesn't die. Okay, and A lot of Christians wish that the original manuscripts in the

New Testament were in some Cave someplace with a really really really old guy who doesn't die who's been watching over them and eating bugs for the past 2 ,000 years

And that way we wouldn't have any questions There wouldn't be any little notes at the bottom of the page. You've got the same notes the bottom of the page in your

Bible, too and People don't like that but here's the problem

Unless you have 2 ,000 years worth of video recordings How do you know what that guy's been doing in that cave for 2 ,000 years?

You have to trust that whoever has that one Untransmitted text hasn't tampered with it

Now what's the best way to make sure someone doesn't tamper with something have lots of copies made and spread all over the place

And Then have some of them buried in the sands of Egypt and not dug up for 2 ,000 years because if you do bury some of them in the sands of Egypt someplace and they're found 2 ,000 years later and Someone has been messing with the text

What are you gonna see? Well, you see the massive changes. It's gonna be obvious well in the 1930s

We discovered that the well we knew for a long time that the British had been stealing the Egyptians blind and had been stealing everything, you know when they when they ruled

Egypt, they stole all sorts of stuff and took it to London and some of the stuff that they took

Were things like Egyptian funerary documents which help us here in Utah Which Michael H Chandler was running around showing people and that type of thing

But there were all sorts of papyri Ancient papyri manuscripts and lo and behold in the 1930s.

There's this guy. Can you imagine how smart this guy was? He's looking through these papyri Fragments just some fragments in a cardboard box in a basement in London and he looks at one it's about the size of a credit card and Yet this guy and that means you don't even have a sentence.

You've just got fragments of words You know how difficult that is to read. I mean, that's tough in English. Let alone ancient

Queen in Greek he recognizes that this is from the New Testament and Upon analysis what he had found is what we now call p52, which is arguably

Anyway is the earliest fragment in the New Testament we possess from around the year 125 ad and It's from the

Gospel of John John chapter 18 verse 31 34 on one side 37 38 in the backside which ironically is

Jesus's conversation with Pilate. What is truth? I've just always found that just fascinating that That do you have any idea what that one little piece of papyrus had to survive for for 2 ,000 years?

But we find all these papyri that we now have that no other generation of Christians had ever seen or had access to and They take our knowledge of the

New Testament 200 years back from where it had been at that point closer to the originals and Do we find massive editing from that?

No, we don't We don't so We have the ability at this very time where people like Bart Ehrman are running around sowing seeds of distrust and doubt

We have more evidence of the antiquity and the accuracy of the preservation of the text in the

New Testament Than any generation has ever had before us has ever had before us so I think the

Lord has been taking care of things and so Because the tenacity of the New Testament text,

I believe God has preserved all of his word for us but just like every single person

Who published a Greek New Testament that was then used by the Reformers?

Martin Luther Martin Luther had to use someone else's work. He didn't have access to manuscripts.

He wasn't a scholar in that field So what did he do? He read

Erasmus's Greek New Testament. Well Erasmus only had about a dozen texts To put that together with and he wasn't really all that concerned about The Greek he was much more concerned about the

Latin translation. He was providing because he knew it could get into a lot of trouble and so We've all had to utilize the works works of others

And in that process We have produced translations down through the years and everything else, but Erasmus would have given his eye teeth to have this but he didn't and so We are blessed and I personally think that especially for homeschool parents.

This is a topic that you need to know Because our kids when they leave our home the first thing that is attacked is the veracity and the transmission of the text of Scripture and I think this is just should be something that we all know about and know about it.

Well For ourselves and for our grandchildren as well Sorry about that I was that was a half -hour we done.

Okay. All righty. We'll see y 'all later question two. I Let me give a little lead -in to this you mentioned

Bart Ehrman he Every opportunity he gets he says there are more textual variants in the

New Testament than there are words, right? and You've explained in other venues

He's stating fact, yes, there are Many more variants than there are words

The impression that he is giving Purposefully is that therefore we can't know what's in the

New Testament with any certainty you have people on the other extreme

Who think that in order to respond to Bart Ehrman? they have to have a

Text about which there is absolutely no question, but it's not as if there are

Infinite number of possibilities of what things read right the the choices are between you use the example

Jesus said to the man versus the Lord Jesus said to the man

It's not going to turn there's there's no chance of Digging something up in Egypt.

That's going to cast doubt on whether It was something completely different.

It's One of the two well, let me let me give the illustration of that that little straight really well

I remember listening years ago. I wish I had kept the audio file It probably is someplace on my 8 terabyte hard drive, but who can find anything on that?

I was listening to a webcast where Bart Ehrman was on with an atheist. The atheist was the host and So you could just tell the atheist is just loving this and he goes so dr.

Irvin in light of all the changes What do you think the New Testament was originally all about?

Okay. So what's in his mind? His mind is that the New Testament was actually about Space gods from Kolob who knows

Weird wild wacky stuff like that. See and You can tell there's this hesitation and then

Irvin goes Well, it was about Jesus as the

Son of God coming to earth and dying on a cross to provide forgiveness of sins

And you can just it's like As the as the balloon just goes flat because the guy was expecting some really cool thing and Irvin is a scholar.

Okay. It's his conclusions that are off not as facts and He has admitted all we're doing is playing around with the text as far as what the original readings are

He says we know what the New Testament was about. There are a couple of places when I asked him in our debate if for a single place

Where he believed the original reading was lost. He could only give me one and It was whether it was and or Enoch Somewhere in 2nd

Peter. That was it No impact upon the meaning of the new test and he would admit There's really nothing

He loves to talk about the variant in Mark 2 where Jesus instead of in compassion in anger healed the leper and Then in Hebrews chapter 2 where there are a few manuscripts that say by the grace of Apart from God rather than by the grace of God that that's it.

Those are his big examples He knows that what the New Testament teaches is firmly established and it is interesting

I'll just mention this in passing. Sorry to have jumped in on this but he knows That since he did his doctoral work back in the 70s under Metzger at Princeton just over the past 10 12 years now

We have developed something called CB GM the coherence based genealogical method and To make a really complicated very very complicated subject very very simple.

We can now with computer precision demonstrate the amount of Agreement amongst the texts of the

New Testament and we can demonstrate that the claims that there's this wild variation are themselves wild and This did not exist when when

Erman was and Erman has admitted. He's no longer in this field He does not claim to be work doing actual research work in the textual critical field any longer and so he's never dealt with CB GM and all the rest of that kind of stuff and So we can respond to even some of the things that he has said

Was significantly more material than than he he ever he ever knew so Keep this keep that kind of stuff in mind.

There's Bart, you know go listen go watch the debate that we had you can stand toe -to -toe with with the best the other side has to offer and When he did make our debate available finally years after we gave it to him years after we gave it to him

He posted it with one comment. This wasn't my best debate. Yeah, which is the greatest compliment you would ever ever ever get

From from Bart Ehrman. There's absolutely no that's ways about Yeah, we actually Took some of that and added a few things.

We did the Bible versus Bart Ehrman and I think that's really revealing His Most of his facts are correct, but he'll bend the facts to depends on his audience

Yeah, I mean you don't get on the New York Times bestseller list. That's right running. That's right Bruce Metzger kind of stuff.

That's right Bruce Metzger said we have the

Word of God. Mm -hmm. He said this is the Word of God. We have it the out of out of all these textual variants roughly what percent are actually even

Have any effect I mean May impress it.

What's the most common textual variant? Okay, the most common textual variant is

The same issue we have in English With Southerners Midwesterners are not exempt.

Well, this is true, but you're supposed to say May I have an apple?

not I have an apple and So I resemble that remark

So there will be many sexual variants created in Georgia, but anyway And Louisiana and parts of Oklahoma and so on and so forth but There was something called the movable new which in Greek functioned the exact same way

You didn't you don't want to pronounce two vowels in a row. No language. Well, never mind that Western languages don't want to do that.

There are some languages that think that's a lot of fun so the most common textual variant in the

New Testament is whether you have a movable new which does not impact a Apple or an apple does not change what it means.

And so it does not impact the translation into another language there are by some estimates

Between four hundred thousand and five hundred thousand variants in the New Testament and there are a hundred and thirty eight thousand 230

I think words in the main text of the Nessie Olympic, but the vast majority of those are movable news or they are

Issues that cannot even be translated another language. So in other words, they do not carry meaning of the let's say 400 ,000 variants there are about 1 ,500 that are

Meaningful they actually can be translated into English and have a have a different meaning and what are called viable so if you find a manuscript from the

Well, I could give you an example in the King James of this Well, well

I will if you let's look at a text real quick in Philippians chapter 3

I'm flipping Ephesians chapter 3 There is an interesting reading in verse 9 in Ephesians 3 9 in the

New American Standard It says and to bring to light. What is the administration of the mystery which for ages had been hidden in God Who created all things?

Now if you have a King James or a New King James, it doesn't say Administration it says what?

Anybody have one? It says fellowship Fellowship now fellowship and administration are not the same thing.

Okay. There's there there one is quaint. Ania. Yeah, there's a kind of meal now

The we have found the one manuscript That is from around 1213 hundred

AD That is responsible for the

King James having fellowship here instead of administration and It just happens to be one of the very few manuscripts that Desiderius Erasmus had access to when he created the first printed

Greek New Testament printed and published Greek New Testament in 1516 and We don't have any manuscripts before that We don't have any early church fathers before that Everybody who preached this text said administration all the all the papyri everything

Said and we have we have for example in the Chester Beatty library in Dublin Ireland We have p46

Which is the earliest collection of Paul's major epistles It's from around the year 200

Okay, so it's it's the earliest we have And by the way for those interested in such things it also contains

Hebrews Which means that somebody in the year 200 thought Paul wrote Hebrews.

That's all it proves. But anyway It says administration

So we can trace the text 1 ,100 years before one manuscript and yet that one manuscript ends up being used by Erasmus and that's why it's in the

King James and so The vast majority of scholars would say that reading is not viable

Because not only is it not found in any of the early manuscripts or any of the early church fathers But remember we're not just talking about the

Greek New Testament Because Christians wanted their scriptures to go to everybody. So you have early translations in the

Latin Coptics a headache for Eric And so on so forth and none of those translations

Have anything other than? Administration none of them have fellowship, which means there weren't any other manuscripts back there in those ancient days that had that reading either so fundamentally

The reading of the textus receptus that Ephesians 3 9 is not viable. It's it's impossible.

It's an error in the TR and so when you cut down all the all the variants to what is actually

Meaningful and viable. There's about 1 ,500 out of The percentage is less than 1 % of the of any of the text

Ehrman loves to throw numbers around right statistics Because he can confuse people he can overwhelm them

There are people who are advocates of the the

TR that will also throw around statistics and They'll talk about you know, five thousand differences between Vaticanus and Sinaiticus just in the

Gospels things like this But in terms In terms of What the

Bible teaches there are a few passages such as Ephesians 3 First John 5 7

The Johanning comma things like this Is there any doctrine that is in any way affected by these 1 ,500?

Variants, okay. Now we need to be really clear about this really really clear because I have said since 1994

That I would debate anyone on the assertion that The textual variations in the

New Testament Fundamentally changed the message of the New Testament. So I as I have said forever

That if you apply the same method of hermeneutics and interpretation to the textus receptus and To the

Nessie Alan 28th edition of the Greek New Testament. You will not come up with different beliefs now the list of verses

That you would put forth that would teach a particular topic

Might be slightly different so in first Timothy 316 in the

King James and New King James. It says God was manifested in the flesh That's pretty strong The modern translations say he who was manifested in the flesh is it's the different it literally and this is this is one point where it's

Very helpful to be able to project this on the wall but the difference is between Haas and theos

But as they were written in the ancient language you need to remember something for the first 900 years of The transmission of the text of the

New Testament it was transmitted By writing in all capital letters

No spaces between words almost no punctuation Can you imagine what that looks like so it's a page filled with nothing, but an unbroken line of Capital letters and you would not even at the end of a line

You would just break a word and start on the next line that was

How Greek was written at that time period and for the first? 900 years of transmission of text in the testament.

That's how it was done. And then somebody woke up one morning and said You know if we use capital letters and small letters and spaces between words and punctuation.

This might be easier to read and Very quickly. That's what took over. It's called minuscule text and you can just watch the numbers starting right at the turn of the millennium all the old way of doing it disappeared and All the manuscripts after that are written in minuscule text, which is what you study in seminary and what's in the

Greek New Testament today So in a first in 316 the difference between Haas Omicron Sigma and say

Haas Theta Sigma is Just two small horizontal lines very and you're writing a papyri papyri had lines in it

It'd be very easy to understand how someone could make a mistake one way or the other for in John 118 in In John 118 in in the four earliest manuscripts of the

New Testament of the Gospel of John John 118 says hominogonous they asked the unique God God the one and only has revealed him has revealed the father here is a application the word they asked to Jesus Later manuscripts say we asked son

So it's interesting A lot of people is did any of you ever see the interview

I did with Steven Anderson? The really neat fun guy out in Tempe That was for a movie and I think 30 seconds of it got used in the movie but the big thing that they pushed in the movie was for Simit 316 and the idea that Modern translators are trying to deny the deity of Christ and stuff like that well

You could turn that around and say on the basis of John 118 That the King James translators are trying to hide the deity of Christ, but both are lies they were simply following the manuscripts and the the printed text that were before them and So you can you can do stuff like that.

You can you can find the variance and It's not just with King James only us or TR only us or modern critical text advocates

Jehovah's Witnesses do this a lot, too I remember you got to be careful with Jehovah's Witnesses.

Some of those some of those people are really well -trained I was

I was driving home from teaching a systematic theology class or Golden Gate Theological Seminary years and years and years ago and I was listening to my own radio broadcast

Which was live at the time my friends were filling in for me and this Jehovah's Witness called in I could I knew who it was

So thankfully this was right as cell phones are starting and somehow I got in and He and I ended up doing a debate while I'm driving on a cell phone in the early days of cell phone coverage, which is sort of amazing and He hit me with a question we were talking about John 2028, there's no variant at John 2028, but John 2028

Jesus appears to Thomas and What is Thomas's response when he sees Jesus?

He says, huh? Cody asked me Kai Hathai asked me my lord and my god and Jehovah's Witnesses have to stand on their heads do handstands and and to do the splits and everything else to try to find a way around John 2028 because it's really rather clear and obvious and So he hits me with a question

How Cody asked me is in the nominative case and The Greek language there was a way to address someone directly which is called evocative

Now in the coin a period evocative was passing away. It was being replaced by the nominative So he hit me with a question.

He said Is there any other place in the New Testament? Where God is addressed in the nominative?

That doesn't involve a textual variant Because I knew there was one other but I also knew there was a minor textual variant there.

It's in Revelation chapter 4 So this Jehovah's Witness knew Not only where it was, but there was a textual variant of all that's how deeply these people will dive into Utilization of that type of information.

So hey all information can be used for good or for evil and Sometimes the cults use it and we need to know it on the other side.

So really when you think about it, what's interesting? There are only two

Multiverse variants in the New Testament that we end up always talking about and you need to know where they are and They are both of them are a block of 12 verses

That's big There's only two places and you probably know where they are the longer ending of Mark Mark 16 9 to 20 because there are multiple endings of Mark and the as Dan Dan Wallace has has expressed it his favorite story

That's not in the Bible The woman taken in adultery John 7 53 3 8 11

There just isn't anything else There are single verses. There's a commie Oh honey in the first John 5 7, which is not a viable reading either

We can talk about that more if you if you want me to expand on that but generally people like ermine will use the woman taken adultery, which is called the prick of a adultery as A means of unsettling

Their young Christian students and stuff like that. And so once you once you know the background of those two texts

They don't have much else to throw at you So an educated Christian is an insulated Christian as far as that's concerned

Now of those two the long -running remark has much earlier manuscript evidence than the woman taken in adultery does

As far as actually having a manuscript that reads that way the first manuscript that reads that way historically is

Called Codex Vesey Canterbury Jancis Codex D Now Codex D. I call the

Living Bible of the early church Which is not a compliment Theodore Beza Calvin succeeds successor successor

Successor at Geneva He was gifted this manuscript and Upon examining it

He eventually donated to Cambridge University with a letter and the letter he said this manuscript is

So unique in its readings that it is better stored than read So It is a highly unusual manuscript.

In fact in the book of Acts when Peter is freed from the jail For some reason this manuscript decided to tell us how many steps he went down to get to the street

He's a 29 or 39. I've got to look that back up again But it's a very very unusual manuscript and it's the first one to contain

That particular text and what's fascinating is Those verses are found in three different places in John the manuscripts of John and Interestingly enough in some other manuscripts

They're not found in John at all. They're found in two different places in Luke Now when you have one set of verses found in five different places

That's a story that people really really liked trying to find a place to call home and it's the only example of it in the

New Testament at all and so Those are your now there's all this the stuff that could be said about the long reigning of Mark And you can listen to a debate

I did in 2020. I believe it was on that particular subject I And if you know what if you want to believe the long reigning of Mark is canonical great fine

Defend it Here's the here's the issue just use the same arguments to defend it

That you would use to defend any other text that contains a variant That's that to me is the issue.

I Have to be consistent in the arguments that I would use Against the Book of Mormon against the

Quran. I have to be consistent. So I have to be consistent in the arguments I use for The readings that I believe should be adopted in the text of the

New Testament the problem is That when you look at the

Texas Receptus Because of its history because it was not the work of just one person

Because it was the work of many people they use different standards and so you could never take the manuscript material that we have today and Reproduce the

TR using any set of standards at all It just can't be done Let me give you a fascinating example,

I only found out about About two and a half three years ago. I had always wondered about this

It's well known that Erasmus struggled To produce and Erasmus just give you an idea

Erasmus Dutch humanist scholar humanist did not mean the same thing back then that it means today Erasmus was

Reading Erasmus is sort of fun He he could he could sling him with the best of them and He risked his life he risked his life to do the things that he did so you got to give him some credit

But Erasmus Was under a lot of pressure to finish Producing the first printed edition of the

Greek New Testament. It was a diaglot So it had the Greek on one one page and the

Latin on the other The dangerous thing he was doing is he was providing a fresh Latin translation.

Why was that dangerous? Because Rome had said the Vulgate was the final edition so if you're questioning that you could literally find yourself tied to a pole someplace and being turned into a crispy critter and So he was really focused on the

Latin the Greek Was sort of just to have it there He wanted to have many more manuscripts to work with he even moved to Basel Switzerland thinking that the library there would have a lot more manuscripts, but it only had about six and So when he got the book of Revelation, it is very clear from Erasmus's own writings that Erasmus had very little respect for the book of Revelation and In fact,

I think if he had his druthers and there were other people who agreed with him at that time he didn't think it was canonical and so He gets to Revelation and he cannot find a single manuscript of Revelation in Greek anyway

There's a reason for that by the way of all the New Testament books the book we have the fewest manuscripts of is

Revelation and The answer as to why that is is pretty easy. It had to struggle for inclusion in the canon

There were a lot of people who were like, are we sure John was behind this, you know, and you might go that bothers me

Which would you rather have the church going? We really need to make sure about this one or the church going We don't have nearly enough books with ten headed monsters and seven headed sea creatures, but we need some more of that No, it's good that they

You know, we're we're very intent upon examining these things and so finally

He had a friend Johannes Roikland From whom he borrowed a

Latin commentary on Revelation that had the Greek text inside it Now Roikland's fascinating.

Do you know what the down that name? I mean, I know the name but I don't know Roikland If you ever have taken

Hebrew you can blame Roikland for your ability to do so Because he risked his life

To learn Hebrew from a Jewish rabbi now the rabbi risked his life as well. This could have been a setup and Gave us our first Hebrew grammar for Christians so He also ended up getting into weird

Hebrew numerology, too So anyway, but we try to think of the positive things rather than negative things anyway

So he has this commentary. He asked to extract the Greek text of revelations as commentary in the process

Creates readings that have never been in any Greek manuscript before the 16th century and When he gets to the last chapter the last few pages have fallen out of the book

The last six verses he doesn't have the Greek to So his printer

John Froben is going come on. We need to get this done need to get this done So what he does is he back translates?

from the Latin Into Greek Now he does a fairly decent job but in the process he creates readings that have never been seen by a

Christian in the entire history of the Christian Church and They're in the last six verses of the book of Revelation Now that's sort of historically known

What I was never able to figure out Is he did four more editions he did five he did he still had another 20 years

Why didn't he fix it? And Then why didn't Stefanus fix it in 1550 and Baysa fix it in 1598?

Why are those? Weird readings in the King James Version to this day. I could never figure it out and Then I was reading this excellent book on Erasmus and Baysa and The subject of what's called conjectural emendation

And I found the answer in a footnote. You got to read footnotes. Got it. Got to read those I always got to read the footnotes in my books.

So I just read the footnotes everybody else's books I've put some good good material in those things

Here's what happened Erasmus is first edition comes out 1516. This is what Luther uses

When he's reading when he's studying Romans and stuff like that very very important Erasmus knows his revelation

Stinks he hasn't done a good job with it. And so When the next edition is coming out

He says to his printer about a year after his year or two years about two years after his

Initially came out the Align brothers published a Greek New Testament and Erasmus is aware of this and So when his second edition goes to the press he says the printer

Go get the Align New Testament and correct my readings in Revelation by theirs

He just didn't he just did not want to do the work there. There was there really is good evidence he just felt doing that the

Book of Revelation wasn't worth it and so he said go get theirs correct mine and He never revisited it again his entire life.

In Fact for hundreds of years. Nobody else did either which is amazing There's only one problem

The Align brothers had used his first edition for a relation that's why nothing was changed and That's why those readings that came from back translating from Latin and Greek are in the

TR to this day or in the King James this day because Erasmus thought he had fixed it

But he didn't and that's why those readings were there for that long and you may be going now

That wouldn't happen today We people would catch that that's right.

You know why? Because we have the ability to communicate we have the ability to do

Journal things we've had that ability for a couple hundred years now, but you've got to realize

Just simply to know where all the manuscripts are let alone what they read is

A completely modern situation Erasmus wanted to have more manuscripts.

He just didn't know where to find them There weren't no card catalogs back. Then you couldn't go online and Google it and In comparison what we have today the

Center for the New Testament study New Testament manuscripts They are digitizing manuscripts from all over the world

You can go online today to literally look at the page itself for so many of these manuscripts now

It's hard to communicate to folks how absolutely unbelievably rare that is

No one back in those days could have ever dreamed of having that kind of access that much information

So today you would catch The fact that nothing got fixed in the book of Revelation pretty quickly because there's a lot of eyes on it and we've got communication

We've got computers. We can do all that kind of stuff The vast majority of Even preachers and teachers that were now had a printed edition to Greek New Testament Never ever saw a handwritten manuscript in the

New Testament. This is all they had. They had no way to compare it to anything else and So it was hundreds of years later

Once you started having universities that would publish catalogs of what manuscripts they had and stuff like that The people could start comparing things and that's when the issues in Revelation were found and and things like that and you had the revision of the text and and stuff like that, so We have to keep in mind that we live in an absolutely unique age.

We really really do the amount of information I mean Literally only 17 years ago.

I Was wishing that I could have the textual critical data on my phone because I went to London and we went street preaching and there even back then there were

Muslims everywhere and When we go street preaching the Muslims would show up and so what they do is they'd shuffle the

Muslims off to talk to me well, they continued preaching to pagans and I wanted to be able to show

The textual data without lugging around, you know heavy books and stuff like that And I even tried to create

PDFs and you know this type of stuff now It's all there. It is all there right there on my phone and Accordance Bible software.

It's it's all there That's only in 15 years. There's been 17 years there's been that kind of a change

So we need to keep that in mind when we look back at the history of these things I don't have any idea what question you just asked me.

I think we're up to three now Anyway, oh

And I may not have even answered your question for that matter. Actually you did. Okay Let me talk a bit.

I think a lot of folks they hear that there's some question about the exact words

That were used by the Apostles and that throws everything into question. How do we know anything for sure?

Right One of the variants that comes to mind is

My brain just slipped two gears. It's in Matthew. It's necessary the fences come But woe to that man by whom they come

About half the manuscripts have that man about half of them have the man It doesn't affect the meaning.

No Is there any Give other than the woman caught in adultery longer ending in bark

People may want to appeal to first John 5 7 in terms of proving the

Trinity or first Timothy 3 But is there any difference in the message?

I mean you've made it clear, but I want to make no like I said, I if you apply the same

Methods of interpretation To the Nestle on 28th edition that you do to the Texas Receptus.

You will have absolutely positively No difference in theology at all. It's just I I have

I have challenged people To debate that issue and no one no one will do it

They'll quote Dan Wallace, which it's funny. My first name is Daniel. So I'm actually dead.

I'm Daniel J. Wallace Okay. All right. Okay, but anyway, not that that means anything. He's all the better in Greek than I am

But he's learned it three times. I know what in that fascinating. Yeah Why was why this disease, you know that when

I when I was, you know, I walked with him through that. I Can't I stayed in contact with him? We had long conversations when he was recovering that was what they thought at the time.

It may have been some type of Encephalitis or something It was yeah, but the poor man had to learn

Greek three different times in his life You'll you'll get folks That they won't certainty so bad on It's got to be the man or that man or everything's in question, right or just in rising to death.

Yes, right all the manuscripts have Jesus rising from the dead, but the

But in terms of There's there's no other than the woman caught in adultery.

Well, you're gonna quote Dan. Oh, I'm sorry Dan. Yeah, I'm getting old so much They will quote

Dan Wallace and say it is it's an impossible task to ever get back to the original reading is

Now I can't speak for him. Sometimes he says things that are kind of out there. Yeah, but is that a fair?

Description of the critical text let me put it this way Has the 29th edition come out

Nestle on no, okay What differences are there between the 27th and 28th edition because they they're constantly throwing it.

Well, there's new editions. We never know We're never gonna have a fixed tax Well, let me first give you the quote But I thought you were gonna give from Dan Wallace's where he says there are many people who will trade truth for certainty.

Yeah, and He's exactly right We you I've met many of them, you know, how many missionaries that I talked to who

I present truth to them and No, but they're certain the

Book of Mormon is it's word of God So they have certainty they don't have truth. The two are not the same thing but In answer to your question

What is going to be the what is the difference? Well the 27th edition Which was just before this?

27th edition was the basis of the ESV NASB so on and so forth in their modern versions like the 1995

NASB The Only changes to this to the 28th edition have come about because of what's called the

ECM ECM is a Dish Yo critical mayor or the major edition critical edition the

Greek New Testament So the the primary group that is work that does all the stuff that doesn't that's the island

It does the United Bible Society text, which is what a lot of people use in Greek when they're learning so -and -so is based in Münster Germany I Visited this place in 2019 to ask questions on The production of what will be the most extensive?

A critical edition the Greek New Testament ever produced Currently out they have mark acts and the general epistles and that's already

That's one two, three seven. That's already about 11 or 12 volumes Just for those books and they're big volumes and they're expensive volumes

It's all available online. So don't feel like oh, they're making much money If you want to have the nice hardbound volumes, it's going to cost you a pretty penny

The point is this will be the largest collation of Greek manuscripts ever done in history

That is a good thing Every one of the King James translators would have said that's a fantastic thing

They would have known the amount of work that goes into this And What is driving the creation of the

ECM is the thing that I mentioned briefly at the beginning called CB GM Coherence based genealogical method now some people means think is computer -based

German madness Because it is German But There are about In mark there were about 50 places

We're in the 29th edition. It'll read differently than 28 Almost none of them affect translation.

They are extremely minor extremely minor There's really so far only been one

Reading that CB GM has introduced into the text and that's the island That really catches people's attention now.

They're almost done with John John I think is finally gonna trigger people finding out about this

But you already have how many of you have an ESV Okay, you already have one of The CB GM readings in your

ESV and you didn't even know it It's in Jude 5

It's in the little book of Jude fifth verse and pretty much all English translations up until recently

Said the Lord delivered a people out of Egypt the modern

ESV The I think the LSB has it as well I Think the

TN IV has it but the these translations following the 28th edition say

Jesus Delivered a people out of Egypt Now You can't just come up with a reading insert in the

Bible. Okay I go back to my dad's Greek New Testament he used at Moody Bible Institute in the 1950s

I opened it up look at the bottom of page Jude 5 and There it gives you the reading Jesus and gives you the manuscripts that contained it and everything else

So it's not like people didn't know about this for a long long long long time but What CB GM did and without going into the details of it what the computer analysis does?

The computer can remember Every single place Where every single manuscript?

Agrees with or disagrees with any other manuscript or all other manuscripts our minds can't do that We just can't do it the computer can and So the computer is able to recognize coherence that is consistency

Between manuscripts and make a long story short when you look at the manuscripts of Jude 5

That say Jesus There by CB GM analysis their closest relatives

Also say Jesus so there's consistency of transmission but in many instances the manuscripts that say

Lord Their closest relative says Jesus low coherence

Now when you think about a scribe What would be the more natural? Understanding of Jude 5 will be the normal way to say the

Lord Delivered to people out of Egypt if you say Jesus delivered to people out of Egypt there has to be a particular

Theological concept you have in mind to say that so the analysis Demonstrates that that's what happened with the with the scribes and so that caused the editors of the

Nessie Allen text To put and if you look at the 27th edition Jesus down there at the bottom page and says

Lord up here Now they're switched. It says G is up here and Lord's above the page. So it's not like they hid something or anything else

It's just the decision what's going to be in the main text and then those translations like the

ESV Read their reasoning and go. Yeah, we're gonna follow that the NASB 2020 rejected it and They they do not have that reading.

So there is an example Like I said, there's the vast majority of the changes

Would be very difficult to explain outside of someone to someone who actually reads the language in other words, it really has not impacted the the the meaning of the text at all,

I Think a lot of people they hear bits and pieces of what's supposed to be scholarship, right?

They John Dominic Crawson And the Jesus seminar they're they're passing around a hat or whatever and they're putting marbles marbles, you know different color marbles and they're they're

They're they're just making conjectures about what they think Jesus would actually say

Bart Ehrman loves to say Jesus didn't think he was God. Jesus didn't think he was starting religion Jesus didn't you go

Paul didn't think this and you know, he was just writing a letter and They're just making it up and There are people who want to take all things

Scholarly and throw them into that But Somebody had to give you your

Bible translation. That's the point. I want to draw out. Is there any

Greek manuscript? That is precisely what the TR reads you've already answered it, but I want to make it clear

I think this is really important to understand There is no

Greek manuscript That is word -for -word identical to the Nessie Ellen 28th edition because well, first of all

More ancient manuscripts only contain portions. Anyways, so there you've got that but and There is no

Greek manuscript anywhere in the world that reads identical to the TR in any single book of the 27 let alone, you know, all all 27 and so what you have to realize is

Everyone has to utilize scholarship to produce a

Bible translation Desiderius Erasmus was a brilliant scholar for his day.

I mean Wow But he wasn't perfect and It's normally far better To have a group of men working on something than to have a single individual because that single individual can sometimes

Have their own bend on things That's why I've always said a translation done by a committee is far better than a translation done by an individual

Because you will let your prejudices into that. There's no question about it. I'm translating the epistle of Diognetus right now for a book and I realize

In rendering a couple of those texts, you know, I could go this way I could go that way and I'm probably going that way because of who

I am and what my background is something that so the Texas Receptus is based upon the scholarship primarily of Erasmus Stephanus Robert Estienne Calvin Sprinter in Geneva and Theodore Beza Now they were all scholars of great rank

But they had very little material to be working with and They were working primarily as individuals and so one just one cool example of this

I Made a big mistake once people say I never admit mistakes.

I actually admit making a lot of mistakes This is this is one you all can learn from I was being given a personal tour of Albert Muller's library.

Have you as any of you ever heard? Albert Muller's library is the most amazing thing

I've ever seen I mean it's worth millions and millions of dollars and many of these books are first editions and it's just astonishing what's in here and I Did the dumbest thing on the planet?

he's literally standing in front of me and I said sort of out loud. I Might have one book that dr.

Muller doesn't have Because I do have a pretty unique book that most of you know

Well, some of you know, I have a 1550 Stephanus Greek text it is a it was published in 1550

It's it was valued at thirty five thousand dollars when it was donated to my ministry and It could have been used by the

King James translators for all I know because they used the 1550 as one of their printed texts and And so I said that out loud

Yeah, he literally reached over to a shelf and pulled off a 1550

Stephanus Now, how do you rescue yourself in this situation is the question

So here's what I did He opened it up And I said dr.

Muller. Have you ever noticed? Stephanus's Very early primitive critical notes in the margin and his use of his beta manuscript knows no and so I I pointed to it in the text and Stephanus is the first one to start doing this where he put marginal notes and variant readings

But here's if this is and this is true Baza did not know that That codex can't can't abridge answers the one

I said the Living Bible the new test of the of the ancient world It had been given to him. He didn't know who had it earlier

Guess who had it earlier? Stephanus it was his beta text but Baza didn't know that and so Baza would look at Stephanus.

Oh His beta text had this reading look at that. So does my manuscript now

He thinks there's two ancient manuscripts that reading when it was only one Because he didn't know it was possessed by Stephanus So that impacted things that just shows where they were at that time and the information that they had and the things that they were working with and How different it is we stand on the shoulders of Giants, but the point is they had to do scholarship and We must

Examine the scholarship that they did in light of the very few manuscripts. They had their inability to compare one manuscript with another manuscript and Our ability to collate manuscripts much more fully than they had the ability to do at that time but you're gonna you're gonna have to borrow somebody's scholarship to produce a

Bible translation and The text is receptus, like I said

You can demonstrate any doctrine whatsoever the Differences are extremely minor between these these these texts, but the reason

I think this is important is that if I'm going to point my finger at somebody else and say

Show to an imam at Reform Theological Seminary like I did in 2015 I think 2015 20 no, it's 2016

I'm gonna put up on the screen variant readings in surah 2 of the Quran and His response is well, they all pretty much mean the same thing

Okay well, then I need to be consistent in looking at my own manuscripts and In how

I defend my tech. He's basically saying there's there's there's no reason to worry about those types of things

We have the ethmonic revision. We have our our Texas receptus basically. Well, I can't just turn around do the same thing we have we'll have nothing to talk about at that point and so I Really really believe that to in our modern day

To be able to defend the New Testament the way we need to in light of the Bart Ehrman's of the world that Simply defaulting back and saying well, you know what if this was good enough for the

Reformers. It's good enough for me is Simply suicidal Apologetically speaking we can't do it consistently and there's no reason to do it.

There simply is no reason I I understand The warm feeling that comes from going but look at all the good

God did with this problem is If you're reformed you have to read

Augustine and go look at all the good that God did with Augustine Who was reading the

Latin? that we don't use and would never use So are we going to be consistent if you're gonna say well

God used that text for 400 years God used the Vulgate for 1 ,100 years So what?

There were unless you're gonna say there were no Christians from Jerome onward, which I guess some people might say But most people recognize that's not the case

Then you're gonna have to admit that God has used all sorts of things Down to the history of the church and you'd also have to admit that one of the earliest

Conversations starting with Justin Martyr in the middle of second century was a discussion about the variations in manuscripts

So Christians have never thrown out the baby with the bathwater they Remember the reason that you and I can be extremely focused on this is because we have printing presses

We have photocopiers These people never had them

The vast majority of Christians up until the time of the invention of the printing press had never ever seen two manuscripts that were identical to each other and They never overthrew the faith because of that So for us to do that really demonstrates that we just are not thinking historically in a meaningful fashion

I meant to mention it to you before are you familiar with Gordon fees commentary on 1st Corinthians? Yes.

Yes chapter 14 ah You have that's why

I don't do a translation by only one person. Yes But basically you have in terms of women keeping silent in the churches you have some some transposition of the order of the verses and Therefore he comes he does a conjectural inundation

That it's not original. It's in every Greek manuscript is

There any need to do conjectural inundations on the New Testament? Let's let's explain what that is a conjectural inundation is when you make a change in a text on the basis of conjecture without any evidence in previous texts that What you're suggesting should be there has ever been there

There was a conjectural inundation made for example by Theodore Bezos That's in your

King James Version Revelation 16 5 in all the manuscripts that we have

Said the same thing it used the term Hosea's he who was and is the

Holy One They all said Hosea's every Christian that we know of for 1 ,500 years that read the book of Revelation read who is and who was the

Holy One and That's what the Rasmus said. That's what Stefano said Baza looked at that phraseology because elsewhere in Revelation who is and who was and Who is to come right and So the idea being well, that's an established phrase

He did not have any manuscripts that said anything else But since that's an established phrase

He looked at Hosea's and he said that does look a lot like a somnus which would be and who will be the future form future participial form and So he made a conjectural inundation put a somnus and that's what's in the

TR on the King James's Day Which means you're reading something that for the first 1 ,500 years of the church. Nobody read that bothers me

It bothers me for a lot of reasons, you know I think the church had the Bible when they came up with the

Nicene Creed and I'm glad they did And sometimes we just forget about them and in fact when you argue

Well, look at all that God has done in the Reformation with the Reformation text, okay fine

But I sort of think I see it was important to You know church history didn't start with Luther and Luther didn't think that church history started with Luther and Luther probably would have cussed at you

In his far more readily than Calvin far more readily than Calvin would have but Luther would have cussed at you for even

Thinking such a thing let alone saying such a thing So yeah, there's a lot of these types of things we have to keep in mind but you have a

Bible translation because you are trusting someone's scholarship and Death various Erasmus.

I have a lot of respect for Erasmus But I also will have to admit he was a Roman Catholic priest and died in fellowship with Rome He wrote a book defending transubstantiation

So if you're gonna do the yeah, but modern translators, they're all liberals No, we're not actually all liberals, but there are some sure

Every generation has to do its fighting. There's no question about it But the warm fuzzy feeling that you that you get by saying oh,

I'm I'm just doing what the Reformers and the generations after the

Reformers did they did not have the information we have it is not fair To drag the Reformers in and say that they made these decisions.

They did not know about these other manuscripts They didn't know about the papyri They didn't have this information

So don't tell me that they would have decided like you decided when they didn't have this information to draw from that's not fair That's anachronistic.

That's an abuse of history in my opinion And I I've said that very clearly to people more than once.

I Want to try to wrap this up To me it's striking that with Ehrman you get all kinds of conspiracy theories in terms of What what led to changes in the text?

and you get the same thing from a lot of Apparent conservatives that yes, they have conspiracy theories

They want to portray Sometimes they'll portray you but especially in the past Westcott, oh, yes as a

Yes, and You know Hort Hort went liberal. Mm -hmm, but Westcott was actually defender.

Yes, he was of the Gospel of John Against German criticism.

It's commentary on Hebrews is really good, too. Yeah, and Yeah, you can hey, it's easy to pick on dead people.

Yes, it's very easy to pick on dead people But you can turn it around like I just said, how about Erasmus?

He wrote a book defending transubstantiation for crying out loud. Is there is there any evidence that Westcott was a spiritist?

No, there isn't the Stuff that the King James only us and Gail Riplinger and stuff throughout

I I gave one example in the King James only controversy many many years ago where they'll they'll quote about Whether it was

Horta West guy, I forget which one it was going into a Marian shrine or something like that They won't quote the next sentence where where they rip on Marian devotion as being pure superstition so it's so easy to Isolate quotes and to misrepresent people that it's it's astonishing and it's and it's there's no reason to do it

Westcott and Hort produced a Greek New Testament that is not the New Testament we're using today and Modern scholars have all the freedom in the world

I have all the freedom in the world the the the nestle and 28th edition uses a single

Conjecture a conjectural inundation at first Peter 3 that I reject I reject it and I can look at whatever scholarship is out there and Take the good and throw out the book throughout the bones man if we were hiding stuff if They weren't being open and honest with us as to what's going into the

CB gem analysis, okay That's a different world, but they're open and honest about it. You can you can go online and use the same stuff yourself that they're using so they're being above board about it, so the idea that yeah, but a

Bad person could do what you're doing. Okay? Yeah, that's true, but that doesn't actually mean anything

We're all dealing with the same text and some of us deal with it on a foundation of faith and some

Do not I just don't believe I just don't believe I believe God has preserved his word.

The question is how he did it and I don't believe he did it by enshrining a particular text at a particular time that no one in the earlier centuries the church ever possessed

I I want to I want to be connected to all the church not just to a particular portion of the church.

I Tell people all the time No one has anything to fear from truth, but liars. That's true sometimes truth is messy sometimes

Augusta can say things that make sometimes Augusta makes me go what on earth or you drinking that day?

Yeah and yet The church history is messy, but it's glorious God has built his church it the gates of hell have not prevailed

You know that the church didn't go away at the time of Jerome It's Was there was there growing darkness in some areas, of course but We don't need to hide.

We don't need to to fear If the 30th edition switches back to Lord from Jesus and Jude You know delivering people out of Egypt.

Is that going to shake our faith? We know it's one of the two. That's right So any any closing thoughts well, and those are the only two options at that point

So yeah, that's that's the point in each one of those and there are complex variants. There's one in Galatians It was five different possibilities and it's it's it's challenging.

But again, none of it changes the message of Galatians it doesn't change Galatians from Justification by grace through faith alone without the works of the law to justification by pilgrimages

Jerome I mean, that's just that's not even a slight possibility And so I I think that we need to rein our emotions in Especially when we are approaching the subject of the foundation of our faith itself.

We need to be What we believe today needs to be Communicable to the next generation and the next generation and I'm just I'm Truly thankful that as I look at the attacks on the

Bible today When you can produce videos and put them on YouTube and you've got the

Bart Ehrman's of the world running around Is right at the very same time when we have been given

More information with which to refute that than ever before in history. I am very thankful providentially for that one quick thought

I meant to ask earlier lots of folks will throw up Dean Bergen as you know monumental scholar brilliant man godly man and He stood against all this right and now he didn't stand against almost any of this he disagreed with Westcott and Horton their methodology but interestingly enough

There is a thing called the Dean Bergen Society But by confession of faith Dean Bergen could never have been a member of the

Dean Bergen Society, which I find fascinating Well, they threw out leaders didn't I think they did. Yeah But Bergen was brilliant, but Bergen His scholarship was prior to the papyri and prior to the modern period and That means he was dealing with significantly less data than we are dealing with today

And so even with that for example, he would have rejected the Kami Ohanian. He did reject the

Kami Ohanian He recognized that was not a an appropriate as first on five seven There are three the very witness father son spirit and these three are one that's that came into the

Greek manuscripts from the Latin It came into the Latin manuscripts in about the 6th or 7th century It is not it could not possibly have been originally written by John, but there are people

I had I had One of Jack chicks favorite authors

Alberto Rivera Who said he was a former Roman Catholic priest? He was a little short guy and I he told me right to my face

I was going to hell because I didn't have first John 5 7 in my New American Standard Bible. So So there's that but Bergen was truly a scholar and Hence to transport him out of what he knew then

Into another situation and say I know what he would have said again is pure anachronism and it's really abusive history

Did Bergen have some valid points against Westcott and Hort? Bergen had valid points in the sense that Westcott and Hort Over -emphasized

Sinaiticus and Vaticanus there has been a correction of that. Yeah But then there were certain readings where Bergen was correct at the time to make the criticism

But then when the Pirates show up and they have the same readings and they're 200 years earlier That would have impacted his conclusions if he had had that data exactly, but he didn't have that data

So I think it's really unfair when people Throw Bergen out there and don't tell folks.

Yeah, this is 140 years out of date now, and there's been a lot Development since then but hey, let's go with it.

Anyways. Well, thank you so much. This has been a real blessing Let's take an opportunity to thank dr. White Any questions

We need to make them short because I ran too long Just just really really quickly

I I like the reading because Jude 3 4 & 5 contains references to the deity of Christ.

I think it really does And so it makes that just all that much stronger in its in its reading but I think the primary reason you have a variant there is that it is a striking way of putting it and So the natural way the if you were just simply copying something the natural way of expressing it with the

Lord Delivered to people of Egypt because what what's that in in the Greek? Translation of the

Old Testament, which is what everyone's reading What was the Greek term for Lord?

Well, they didn't transliterate Yahweh They used a different term courios same term that's used in Jude 5

So that was the natural way for a scribe to refer to Yahweh in the Old Testament So that would have been much more easy for them to do if to specifically write

Jesus would require you to be following what the text was saying and As CB GM has shown us the manuscripts to say

Jesus that are related to each other. They all say Jesus The ones that say

Lord that's where the that's where the scribe Put the easier thing not because they were trying to change something.

They're probably just simply in the transcription process Another quick question. Oh, they're all good.

Nope. There's one. Yeah Well, the

Dead Sea Scrolls can be used primarily on our side the you do need to be aware of something here

If you have heard about the Isaiah scroll in the Dead Sea Scrolls and how

Up until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls The earliest Hebrew manuscript we had was from around 900 years after Christ We find the

Isaiah scroll and it's it's simply identical No change over a thousand years

What that proves is there doesn't have to be changed during transmission of the text that much is true, but be careful

The Dead Sea Scrolls version of Jeremiah is one -third shorter than the

Masoretic text now the fact the matter is Jeremiah tells us why that is if you remember

Jeremiah Remember, there's a time where his book is taken from him and torn up by the by at the king's command

So there was an earlier edition and then Jeremiah's Chuck chucked off to Egypt So he then has to reproduce stuff down below So the book of Jeremiah actually tells us why there would be different versions of Jeremiah Found in the

Greek Septuagint versus the Masoretic text, but hopefully you all know that about a year and a half two years ago

One of the scrolls that we had never been able to open From Qumran because it's completely fossilized you try to move it and it just well will turn to dust some brilliant geek

Realized that when you x -ray that stuff the ink had lead in it, whereas the the material did not and so they figured out that you could x -ray this scroll and then use a computer to digitally unroll the scroll and read it and it turned out to be a copy of Leviticus That again is smack -dab the

Masoretic text from a thousand years later So fascinating fascinating stuff

Old Testament textual criticism is a completely different world for a number of reasons it's much older and It's produced in a completely different context than the

New Testament is the New Testament manuscripts are written by multiple authors at multiple times to multiple people and meant to be distributed and Translated in other languages the

Old Testament scriptures were a Covenantal scripture for a covenantal people and primarily were only for those people the first major translation while the

Targums in in in in Aramaic but and then the major translation being the

Greek Septuagint 200 years before Christ and so there is a it's a completely different world as to Traditions within the

Masoretic text and things like that and you're still looking at far far After the times of the original writings because it's just so ancient

But isn't it fascinating that within the past month? They found what they didn't find but they published what they had found a few years ago on Mount Ebel A Tablet with curses

Using Yahweh's name from 1200 BC Well, that's where the blessing and cursings are in Deuteronomy 20 and 29

It's astonishing There's no other work of antiquity that can even come close to that. But if you want theologically

This is this one's actually if the person you're talking to is a Christian well theologically

That man who rose from the dead thought that the Old Testament had been accurately transmitted In other words when you look at Matthew chapter 22 when

Jesus answers the Sadducees The answer he gives on the issue of the resurrection is based upon the form of the verb

I am the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob not I was the God of Abraham So that has to have been transmitted correctly

For his argument to make any sense now, he also happened to have been the author so that really helps

You know, but that's the point is that you you really you have Jesus's testimony at that point to go to the accuracy of something that historically

We we you know, that was a long long long long long long time ago And it's and you cannot expect to find the kind of level of material

Because written material unless it's chiseled in a stone someplace as those tablets were 1200 years before Christ You're not gonna it's not going to survive this long.

It's just it can't That's all that's all you've got from anything in antiquity you know, well, we have refreshments in the

Fellowship Hall and Dr. White is Graciously going to be with us for Sunday school 945

Sunday He'll be preaching for us 11 o 'clock and Then he'll be back