Submitted Scholarship

Greetings and welcome to the dividing line. My name is James White. Hope we sound all right today. You will notice that once again, Rich has gotten the the technology itch and so now We have new microphones Every time they're the greatest.

Then a year later and not so great. You know, it's sort of like, you know iPhone 6 awesome iPhone 6s awesome murmur And that's the sort of how it works. But well, we'll see how of course that always means things gonna change and and I I don't know how things gonna sound but We're here.

And as long as you're there, that's the that's the important part. I Am not a hundred percent certain how to address what's on my heart today. I listened some of you May recall I think I mentioned I'm pretty sure I mentioned that There was a very interesting Encounter coming up on the unbelievable radio broadcast Justin Briarley premier hair Christian there.

That's You're a Christian when you live in in London. The rest of us are Christians, but in London, there's a cut above Where they're everyone uses crest and so they're Christians, it's really odd anyway.

There is a two-part which we all know was a one-part divide into two programs but two-part exchange between Bart Ehrman and Richard Balcombe now Richard Balcombe Wrote a very very well-known book which I Until recently had sitting down there someplace.

I'm not sure where it went. But anyways GS &E eyewitnesses, I guess a a new version is coming out a expanded version and In fact, I wrote the review of it for the CRI Journal years ago when it when it came out and It's very interesting there's you know issues in it like which John wrote the Revelation and the epistolary literature versus the gospel and was it the Apostle John or was it a John who lived in?

Jerusalem and So on and so forth we are we already have one person on Twitter saying they sound much better.

So I'm hoping you feel much. I have a number of them in the YouTube chat telling me the same thing I do hear little anomalies here and there that I'm trying to correct. Okay. All right. Good. All right anyway.

And I think that's the same fellow that has asked me about going to Peoria, Illinois. Which I haven't gotten back to his email on but of course, I'm folks of this year. Anyways, so that's sort of why but anyhow that I just I just responded to a tweet via the program without anyway anyway, the The program aired over two weeks and I listened to the first week as I was starting a Century ride 103 mile ride and I was I I had been a little concerned.

Dr. Balcombe is not known as a debater and His voice is very it's very Scottish and very but very soft very breathy hard to hear especially on a bike. But not a lot of experience in going back and forth in a in that kind of a context and So I was actually very pleased with the first half of the encounter.

But there were there were big blocks of presentation and so it wasn't a lot of What I would call cross-examination where you're going back and forth immediately. Second Encounter second half where they went more into the issue of memory and Things like that.

I did find interesting Bart did make the claim at one point that for the past for two years. He did nothing but read books on the subject of memory. I think it's gonna come back to haunt him someday. Because I'm sure he did other things we will have a wonderful example of How some people misinterpret statements because I'm sure he did other things.

I'm sure he ate during that period I'm sure he slept during that period of time but anyway, uh. And he said he read over 200 books, I don't remember the bibliography being quite that big but anyway, that's neither here nor there.

Once they got into a situation where there was a little faster exchange I Knew that eventually the issue of one's fundamental bibliology would come up. Because you've got to understand with Ehrman. That's.

That's the thing. I mean if you looked at the books, he's he's written recently his popular books. He hasn't written many really scholarly books recently. He's making his name and he's making his money on popular New York Times bestsellers.

And he doesn't have to do what certain people do and have well He doesn't have a church to buy, you know, 200 ,000 copies to make him a bestseller like some other people do but Which is why I've never been on the list and never will be on that list personally.

Um. Look at the books he's been doing when you think about it this last book that he just did What is it remembering Jesus or something like that, uh, it's it's about the issue of memory he started off with misquoting Jesus and There he's going after the idea that we can't trust the textual transmission of the scriptures then he goes for forged.

Well Jesus interrupted then forged. And so now we we don't even know who wrote At least some of the books of New Testament. We can't know whether they've been transmitted to us accurately. And now what he's doing is and even once they wrote it It was so long after the events and memory is so bad That even if we could know what they wrote, we couldn't trust that.

Anyways, do you see a pattern here? He is He is constructing an Argument of utter skepticism at Every single point in the history of the text of the New Testament in particular. So you can't trust The original witnesses.

You can't trust The retelling of the stories over a lengthy period of decades prior to the writing of the New Testament books. You can't trust the writers because they're changing and editing as they go along even with the materials they have which are already corrupted and Then you can't trust that we even know what they wrote Because of the changing of the transmission of the text over time as well.

So in other words there he knows That the only way to validate What he himself has done in his apostasy is To totally invalidate the scriptures and our ability to actually know That they represent what Jesus said or or anything like that.

So he's gone after Every single element of The transmission of the text of scripture most of which most Christians have never given much thought to anyways so this is The absolute recipe for unbelief.

That's that's what he's he is defending unbelief because that's what he's become and For some reason you're not allowed to say that but if some reason ever oh, he's a great scholar great scholar well Okay in his area, he certainly left the area of his initial training and in fact one of the things I'm gonna be doing down in South Africa at Northwest University in Potter's room is we're doing a two-session lecture on the errors of Bart Ehrman and I Was just shown a on Facebook.

Someone had asked Ehrman whether he would Ever debate whether the New Testament authors Identified Jesus as Jehovah. He says no, I don't think I'd ever do that. It doesn't bother me as if that's Evidently once you're Bart Ehrman, you can just debate on what bothers you.

You can you can totally misrepresent the doctrine the Trinity in public debate, but as long as it doesn't bother you, that's cool. That's that's all right anyway, I I just remind folks Dr. Ehrman's training is as a textual critical scholar.

His doctoral dissertation. I was gonna bring his dissertation in today. I was looking at it again And I was gonna bring the printed edition in today. Like I said, I think I'm one of the only people in the planet other than his own his own Committee that's actually read it.

But it was on the development of the of the early that the proto-alexandrian text type and certain Egyptian Patristic writers and As far as it goes, that's great. That's you know, it's very focused. It's in one particular area That doesn't mean you know anything about the doctrine the Trinity.

It really really doesn't. How does that qualify you it qualifies you to know how to do research in a very specific area? But I'll be honest with you doing textual critical research is very different than doing than doing research in other fields of human study.

Sources are different the way of collating your information is different. So anyway Getting back to the unbelievable program. I knew that if BART got into a faster paced Exchange that would focus on the issues of The fundamental foundational issues, I am obviously well to dr. Balcombe's, right?

And as I listened to dr. Balcombe and As I listened to the wheels start coming off of dr. Balcombe's arguments in the second part the reason why they came off became so blatantly clear to me and I wanted to address this because this is an issue that we've talked about in this program many times for example, I have criticized the William Lane Craig Mike Licona Evidentialist school because they will seek to minimize the target of Their opponents by saying well look I'm not gonna we're not gonna argue issues of Inspiration or inerrancy or anything like that.

You don't have to accept the Bible as an errant revelation from God we can just simply take these texts as reliable historical witnesses and Go from there. Well, I've pointed out That if all the New Testament documents are are somewhat reliable historical witnesses They are insufficient to give us the Christian faith because the Christian faith says Absolutely amazing things Amazing things when you when you're claiming That God in the person of his Son entered into his own creation and The Jesus the deity of Christ the resurrection The second coming that Christ is going to judge all all men those are amazing statements and merely reliable natural Maybe sort of contradictory to one another.

A Historical documents are insufficient To be the foundation for that kind of claim they really are. So anyway as I was listening I Knew what was coming. I just didn't expect to be so quickly because coming so quickly because To get a seat at the table Of quote-unquote critical scholarship today there are certain Payments you must make to sell and buy during the days of the Roman persecution in the first few centuries the Christian era you had to get a libelous a Certificate that indicated you had offered sacrifice to The Emperor you had said Kaiser Kourios Caesar is Lord well to get to the table in academia To be accepted as a critical scholar.

There are certain Payments that must be made to the gods of the Academy. One of those payments is you must embrace and accept The concept that we can be morally neutral That we can be we can be epistemologically neutral as well that there That there are things that we can start with without reference to God without reference to Jesus Christ and That's just the cost that's just it's just what you got to pay to get into the club.

If you if you say no Jesus Christ created all things There is no fact that is a fact that he did not make. If you say that I first and foremost bow the knee Before Jesus Christ as Lord in all areas not just and see this is where We're seeing this more and more in Western culture We're being told you can have religious liberty.

But it only exists between here and here and only when you're in your church or in your home and you can't let it come out of those areas or we will make it cost you it will cost you to do that and Already the foundations this have been have been laid in the pressures that have been put upon us to accept the myth of neutrality.

Except the idea that what we believe about Jesus Can be kept out there and it it can be believed as a statement out there but what its ramifications mean cannot be brought into our Scholarship, it cannot be brought into our historiography.

There has to be a secular A Historiography that everyone can agree upon and You have to buy that to get a seat at the table, and if you dare say No Jesus is also Lord of history. There is this thing called God's decree that he's working out in history and Things happen for reasons and I Will not embrace the idea that all history can do is look blankly at chaos and Do its best to say This happened and that happened, but there's no relationship.

There's no purpose. You can't you can't allow for any of those things and certainly there is an Absolute unbreakable barrier over all of this history where God is excluded. There can never be any Recognition he doesn't he doesn't act in this world.

You can't you can't believe that and of course they make the Argument. Well, if you don't do that Then you can have anybody saying that this happened because God did it not happen because God did it and they go for these simplistic you know Canard Over here rather than a recognition a meaningful recognition of God's providence use of means blah blah blah.

But it's it's all an attempt to protect the idea of an absolutely naturalistic historiography and view of history. Well, I I don't know Richard Balcom he seems like a fine man. Hey, he's Scottish that that that's a that's obviously a Major major a positive thing.

But I Don't know what his theology is. I don't know what church he goes to I don't know how he deals these things, but he obviously embraces a critical methodology that allows him to create his Perspective Without laying the Appropriate Theological foundation.

You know, someone said William and Craig already get argued against that position is debate with Herman. I've listened to all this debate with Herman. They utilize the Minimum facts approach for example the minimal facts approach.

Where well, you know and and this this one I've got to say Even some really sound folks use this and they've just got to stop the minimal facts thing where well You know the majority of people working in New Testament history and theology agree on these minimal facts.

Come on. Don't make references to Opinion polls of opinions of people. There's Just so many there's so many flaws in that I mean obviously, you're gonna have far more Christians working in the field and non-christians working in the field and and The bias and and of course in so many places we have to go.

We stand against majority opinion. We will always stand against majority opinion when we say something like God's gonna judge this world By the one that he has selected to be the judge's world who he raised in the dead that's never gonna be a popular thing.

So we're hypocrites. When we go, well, you know 78 I believe. Come on, that's that's just there's so many holes in that kind of stuff. It's it's ridiculous. But anyway back to the point I Mentioned I forget when it was I think is I'm figuring two years ago or so I responded to a particular blog article About the issue of the Lordship of Christ in Scholarship and What we have to stand firm upon and The price we have to pay to be faithful to what we believe about who Jesus Christ is and so yesterday I Utilized a phrase in one of my tweets Subjected scholarship.

I was sitting there going. What how can you describe? Scholarship that begins with the Lordship of Christ. Knowing what that's going to cost from the world's perspective Begins with the Lordship of Christ is unashamed of that and Inconsistently seeks to always remain under the Lordship of Christ in all aspects of life and in all aspects of my scholarly inquiry.

So I'm not gonna be I'm not going to be a naturalist. I'm not going to Embrace the idea that this world is just a chaotic spinning mess. In other words, I'm going to approach history the way Jesus did now some of you go now immediately.

Many of you go. Well, we we have no earthly idea. We have no earthly idea how Jesus approached history because many people have already embraced the idea that You can't really know what Jesus thought or said because everything is mediated by flawed sources.

So since Jesus didn't write a book we can't know That wasn't even Jesus's view of the Tanakh, that's not Jesus's view we called the Old Testament Jesus saw Jesus believed God was speaking. Well, then again You again the skeptic always has way around anything.

Well, you mean Matthew representative was saying that and John or you know, if you want to be skeptical about everything You can you can destroy all knowledge. There's there's there's no question about it but in each of the Gospels In each of the Gospels and we only have four That any sane person believes goes back to the first century.

The Gospel of Thomas does not go back to the first century you have to be Really prejudiced even begin to think that. Yeah, it's just it's just painfully obvious anyway Jesus his own view of Scripture in all the Gospels is that God is speaking in those words.

That there is such a thing as divine revelation now Bart Ehrman functions upon the presupposition that there is no such thing as divine revelation and My assertion is as long as we play that game We will always find ourself in the situation that we found ourselves at The end of this encounter.

I think a lot of folks listen to the first half. Oh, that's interesting. Second half is sort of like What happened? Everything we thought we were hearing in the first fell apart in the second and I want to play a segment and I'm gonna go ahead and Take it all the way up to 1 .4.

So you will actually be able to tell that. They're talking faster. But it's still fully understandable unless you're already listening at 1 .8 and That that it's gonna become chipmunk II for you, but let's let's listen to this portion of the exchange, all right, and Well, I don't have anything to show you here because it's not a it's not video but.

Here we go. I asked my students, you know, so we had the State of Union address two months ago. I'd like you to reproduce it for me. Well, of course, they can't reproduce it for me. So you say well, but they weren't really don't try to memorize it or suppose they were trying to memorize it.

As Richard said memories were no better in the ancient world than they are today. So so suppose suppose Obama or Cameron or anyone else gives a speech for an hour and you try to remember it and then Say a week later you try to reproduce it.

What are the chances that you're going to reproduce it correctly and now suppose you don't wait a week suppose you wait 50 years. And you reproduce it even if you were there. What are your chances of getting it anywhere near right?

And what if you haven't in fact heard the speech? What if you heard about the speech from somebody who heard it from somebody who heard it from somebody who heard it from somebody who? Heard it from somebody and then you try to write it down 50 years later.

What are the chances that you're going to get it? Right? I'd say the chances are extremely remote now.

Let me just stop right there. If you embrace the these are simply reliable historical records perspective. He just blew out of the water. That's not we believe the Gospels are and If you if you buy that perspective, it's indefensible it is Insufficient for its task if if you cannot as a part of your fundamental understanding and defense of the Christian faith.

Do what the Apostles and Jesus did they said God has? Spoken. Oh, but everybody says that fine fine, but Lots of people say that There are fundamental inconsistencies Between the people who say these things you have to examine those things, but that was the same case in the days the Apostle every city every Roman city that Paul entered into Had temples that had oracles in them where God was quote-unquote speaking.

So what? That's what people claimed it doesn't mean that it was actually happening and unless you're gonna embrace the absurd idea that well if one person or if Dozens of people claim to speak for God and God hasn't actually speaking to them.

That means God's never spoken. If you thought about the logic of that once. Most people don't well, we can't know. Well Christians say you can know there's this thing called fulfilled prophecy this thing called consistency as things called as the empty tomb.

And there's this thing called The fact that you're creating the image of God. There's all sorts of these things that are part and parcel of The mechanism that has been given to us to be able to differentiate between all of these alleged revelations.

But just because there are false revelations does not mean that there is not a true revelation. It does not follow logically, but if you start off with the these are just historically reliable accounts so we can sort of cobble stuff together and and you're either gonna end up with a very Shallow Type of Christianity.

It doesn't have much in the way of supernatural revelation to it. Or you're gonna have to grab hold of something else to fill in the gaps. Which normally becomes some kind of religious tradition. Some kind of religious superstructure or hierarchy to try to fill in the gaps.

There's been lots of ways in which has been done, but obviously from as my eyes I understand it. You have the Apostles Preaching from day one the message of Jesus Christ. You do have eyewitnesses. And they're not just writing these things down.

Ages and ages later you can see why. You can see why Ermin has to try to make the writing of the New Testament as late as possible. Because if in fact it's Earlier than the the time the time gap becomes.

Difficult though. He will say hey stories get changed the day after it happens. And and by the way, I hadn't thought about this we just had an illustration of this. In a rather famous statement from one of the presidential candidates just yesterday, I believe Who decided that the Attacks upon the World Trade Center took place at a 7-eleven.

So there you there you go. Memory has a way away from you. And of course, he has all these stories he tells about People being studied, you know one day after events and then they're Re-interviewed a year later and all the changes that have taken place and look folks if all we've got if there is no if God has not spoken if there is no spirit and.

And remember what's the constant testimony of the New Testament writers David by speaking by the Holy Spirit said It's just a given. It's it's just it's just what's there. You can't get away from it as much as you might want to and as embarrassing as it is in Modern-day academia.

Well that modern-day academia is also giving us the inability to know what bathroom to go into. So that's not really for me from my perspective these days that big of a deal but the point is he's. He's right.

If this is a naturalistic process if all we've got if the best we can hope for is a reliable Historical document it's not enough.

It's not enough won't do it. Hmm. Well, let's talk about the Sermon on the Mount. Richard how do you approach that. Because I've heard different people say different things about what exactly this represents in terms of is it a sort of a useful collection of Jesus's teachings and these things that would have been committed to memory in a sort of you know, Systematic way by his followers.

I don't know what your take on it.

I mean, I think it's a compilation of sayings of Jesus made by the evangelist. I mean, I don't think I've ever thought Jesus stood up and said the Sermon on the Mount like that. Actually, I was once present where somebody as it were performed the Sermon on the Mount now.

I I just slowed it down because you can't do balkan. And I wanted you to hear what he said there. Let me back up a thing.

I think it's a compilation of sayings of Jesus made by the evangelist. I mean, I don't think I've ever thought Jesus stood up and said the Sermon on the Mount like that. Actually, I was once present where somebody as it were performed the Sermon on the Mount.

It's very interesting because you find it just doesn't work if you try and perform it. It's far too concentrated. You know, it's all these little sayings which which mean a lot and they come thick and fast one after the other.

You can't follow in that sense. It's one of the worst sermons ever preached. It doesn't have a beginning middle and end.

Now let me stop right there. If that bothers you listen more carefully, that's not the bothersome part because I I've said the exact same thing very clearly. I Believe there was a Sermon on the Mount, but Matthew does not provide us with an mp3 copy of it.

Compare Luke's Sermon on the Plain. Which has many of the same elements. Jesus didn't preach completely different sermons everywhere he went and there were obviously many themes many parables many stories that he repeated many times and If we're talking a full three years worth of ministry.

You can read all the all the Gospels together in just a matter of hours. You Could read all the Gospels in less time. Then we know Jesus spent preaching just on the day in John 6 where they had to try to find some food.

So very clearly there isn't any question the gospel writers are picking and choosing their material. Now what Ehrman likes to do is say they're changing the story. Well, if you have literary dependence Where all you've really got smart John is an ahistorical Yahoo out in the woods someplace a raving madman out there.

We have to worry about him and Luke and Matthew are just simply editing mark. Then you have one stream and it's real easy to argue for the corruption of that. If you recognize the existence of the eyewitnesses the preaching of the church and the existence of oral tradition.

Then you've got Matthew Mark and Luke drawing from that oral tradition and it actually ends up answering more questions. The singular literary dependence concept which is primarily forced upon people by naturalistic materialism because they can't believe that such a thing is inspiration like that in the first place, but It that that taking that perspective ends up raising more questions and it answers if you Recognize the existence of an oral tradition.

It answers more questions than the other perspective does. That may not be the Popular view today, but it's very obvious to me anyway. What you have then is and it was interesting it came up In this segment in this second half.

Remember when Ehrman's book first came out just two months ago. One of the things I immediately jumped on was he utilized Jairus's daughter as an illustration here and We've covered this many many times.

We have covered the relationship of Matthew and and Mark in there telling the story of Jairus's daughter. I covered it in the g3 conference year before last as well as an example of how we need to understand The sources that we're utilizing and how we can do so fully believing Not only an inspiration of scripture, but in the inerrancy of scripture.

But that came up interestingly enough in this in this conversation, but that shouldn't bother you in the sense that He's exactly right. Uh Justin was exactly right there. He had he had the exact same Thought process there that I did look look at the Sermon on the Mount beautiful wonderful scripture, but very plainly.

It is a concentrated Summary of points that Jesus preached many times and in many different ways. What's the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount? How did how did Jesus make application at the end?

How was Jesus's transitions if you really think that this is someone sitting there feverishly writing as fast as they can. Not only was it a very short sermon but it wasn't a very good one and Nobody believes.

Well, I'll take that back. You shouldn't believe that it's an mp3 transcript it obviously isn't and So, yes, Matthew is taking what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount and he's forming does that mean he's changing it.

See, I don't like using that term. If what you mean by change is anything other than Knowing shorthand, which I don't think had really developed to that day. But anyway Then you can use the word change, but that's not how Irman's using it.

Irman equivocates on the use of that term and certainly the people reading him a Appreciate his equivocation. If you recognize it as Matthew taking What was delivered that incredible day on the mountainside and Putting it in an understandable summarized form over the course of three chapters.

I Mean, that's a major portion of his book. You can only put so much into a book. You know, they didn't have 16 gigabyte jump drives to just pass out to people in those days. You had to make it something that would actually be able to be communicable to other people so you had to make choices to what you're gonna include and Maybe because Matthew included so much of the Sermon on the Mount is why he had to telescope the story of Jairus and a daughter and his daughter and That's why Mark who doesn't even give us the Sermon on the Mount can give us more information about What happened with Jairus.

They had to make decisions as to how much material they're gonna put in. But when you have a Christian doctrine of Inspiration that is and I may I just mention I think us reform folks really got the leg up here.

Because we function within a a proper recognition a biblical recognition. That God has a purpose and everything he's doing in this world and it was God's purpose from the beginning. And this is this is taught in Romans 15 and other places in New Testament God had a purpose in giving scripture in the way that he gave it and If we believe that God has a purpose in the giving of scripture in the form it's in Remember The assertion of our theology a lot of people miss this All Scripture is they honest us the end result.

The end result is what is God breathe? The form that it takes in the pen of from the from the quill of the author or from the Quill of the scribe of the author as we know in a number of situations. So I believe that I have a solid biblical foundation for believing that God wanted Intended as a reformed person must believe that God intended Matthew's version Matthew's understanding and presentation of The story of Jairus's daughter to be shorter than marks and That John wasn't dimension at all and that in fact I can then learn in fact I've learned a lot from comparing Matthew and Mark.

It's helped me to defend the nature of the New Testament Gospels in Debate with Muslims all around the world. I I have a feeling it might come up in a couple weeks. I Have a feeling. But the point is That God has a purpose in Giving us Scripture in the form that we then receive it.

That's what is they honest us. And if you don't If you don't have or if you're not willing to openly affirm and I know what Bart Erminell do. I I I heard the laughter. The scornful laughter of Bart Erminell on the phone prior to our debate in 2009.

When the term they honest us was even mentioned. Why should that surprise us? Well, if you if you're if their greatest desire is a seat at the table if you want to be viewed by people like Bart Erminell as If you want to sip lattes with French textual critics.

And if you don't want to be mocked for not sipping lattes with French textual critics. Then you're gonna be pretty quiet about things like this and you're not really gonna want to talk about things like this.

But you know what? I don't care what Bart Erminell thinks. Bart Erminell is a creature of God and he's gonna stand before his creator someday and answer for everything he has said and done and for every single dime he's earned destroying the faith of Christian people and I wouldn't want to be in his shoes then but I don't care.

I'm concerned About what God thinks. I'm concerned About the fact that in the Bible it says that if you're ashamed of Christ and his gospel He's gonna be ashamed of you in the day that he comes to his holy angels to judge the living and the dead.

I think that's a little more important because I'm never gonna be judged by Bart Erminell. I've already been judged by Bart Erminell. I've already been judged by the world. I need to stop worrying about it.

Wow, we are really really going long here because I had a bunch of verses to read and we haven't talked about coming up This weekend. We haven't talked about man a lot. This is this is terrible. I am.

Apologizing all over myself, but I've still got play some more of this things of Jesus. Were these short sayings long parable. Like the parable of the Good Samaritan, you know, those long parables are about the most that people would remember that what people remembered were these.

I think what Jesus deliberately did was to encapsulate his teaching in these pithy sayings and parables. And he didn't fill an hour with one after another of them. They're the kind of bits that you're supposed to take away the way of remembering it.

So I don't think we have in the Gospels anything like a reproduction of an hour's sermon by Jesus. We have these Encapsulations of his teaching which people deliberately committed to memory and.

Yeah, and so in that sense that was where the memorization took place that they weren't attempting to you know. It wasn't like someone set a tape recorder going and just reproduced everything that Jesus said in that sense.

I mean, but. So so it sounds like you're somewhat in agreement with with Richard on this point.

No, I'm glad to hear I mean Richard saying that Jesus did not deliver the Sermon on the Mount and I'm glad to hear him. Say that because that's that's what I think and so we're agreed on that.

The question is did he say the things that are nevertheless recorded?

I think he probably did say some of them. Yes. And I think you have to go case by case to do and do an analysis which is what people like Richard and I do. We go through each line to see is this plausibly something that Jesus said.

But now just by the way.

Is this plausibly something so you create your view of Jesus? And then judge what he did or didn't say by what you think Jesus would have been like. And of course your GS always ends up looking like your ideal Jesus, this is this has been the the The canard of all of this and and that's why that's why all of this naturalistic.

Quote-unquote critical scholarship and there's there's a proper use that term and improper use that term. Can never give us has not given us anything. Anything that has increased our knowledge of Jesus nothing.

It's always a diminishment. It's always. We can't really know we Certain we can't really know we. Who knows. Well, maybe that but you know, but then there's a scholar over here. He doesn't think Jesus that you you're left with nothing.

Because once you start with the assumption that these documents are not God speaking You're never gonna get to the conclusion that they are.

They're insufficient. Once you view them that way I think that the problem is that that many New Testament scholars have such kind of narrow vision. And so they ask, you know is Matthew 633 something Jesus said.

Well, that's fine. You do need to ask that but what about Thomas 114? We it's clear Christians are making up stories about Jesus and they're making up sayings of Jesus. Nobody doubts that. I'm Richard.

Certainly doesn't doubt that Tom gospel. Thomas 114 has a very pithy saying of Jesus Every woman who makes herself a male shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. Now remember ermine is.

Absolutely wedded to the Bauer hypothesis, even though the Bauer hypothesis has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. He is absolutely wedded to it and That is the well, he's written books the the faiths we never knew.