KJV Only Abuse of Numerology, Dan McClellan on NT Manuscripts
36 views
Had a bunch of other stuff I didn't get to, but did manage to look at an excellent example of how KJVOism destroys real confidence in the Bible by looking at an example provided by Pastor Jonathan Burris https://youtu.be/waClyoCQlsc regarding the abuse of Deuteronomy 16:11 by one such KJVO advocate. Then we moved over to this video https://youtu.be/sVif0u-O2fA from Dan McClellan, starting to respond but giving a lot of background, looking at CBGM and some current developments in that field, etc. Heavy on the "geek" content today!
- 00:32
- Well greetings welcome to the dividing line I'm supposed to do a Vanna White thing and remind you we have a raffle going on for this beautiful cross and this beautiful Bible So there you go.
- 00:41
- I held them up and I said we have a raffle going on. I'm not even sure honestly Where is is it on the front page?
- 00:50
- Winnings on the front page. There you go And and there you go They're just so good at Doing this kind of advertising stuff.
- 01:00
- Well, actually, you know when when rich runs in with it 30 seconds before the program starts What can
- 01:08
- I do? There you go. Um, and it's going all the way through the month as I recall, so We may run out of raffle tickets,
- 01:17
- I really don't think so, but in fact, I don't think that's really possible but Anyways, welcome to the program.
- 01:25
- I got a lot to get to today Not exactly sure Where to start with everything because I do have a lot of stuff here and I have to keep
- 01:36
- Putting it up on one thing here. Um, we'll go ahead and start with this, I guess I I'm trying to think where I put this
- 01:54
- Did he did he King James only ism You'd think by now it would have like maybe gone away or something it'd be nice if it would but It just seems to mutate and just just take on new forms
- 02:15
- All the time and so I Don't go looking for this stuff.
- 02:22
- One of the reasons I stay on Twitter honestly is because stuff will just Appear out of nowhere and by the way,
- 02:32
- I Know lots of other people. I'm not questioning that anyone else is having this problem but And I haven't seen you say anything about it, but you you do weird things on Twitter But Everyone's talks about porn bots on Twitter.
- 02:54
- I have never had that happen to me. I Have encountered it when you when it when you get down to you and your replies
- 03:03
- They'll say click here for more replies and sometimes they'll even say Some which may be offensive so on and so forth if you click on that then you can find stuff
- 03:14
- But there are people saying that they you know, they're just scrolling along and all of a sudden there it is on the screen I've never had that happen.
- 03:20
- I've never had it happen. I've had Circumstance, you know, I have my my my account locked down.
- 03:26
- So you have to do a friend request and I screen everybody Oh, well, I don't I don't have any but the only thing
- 03:32
- I I would get in that that's even close to that is I get These random people with no followers.
- 03:38
- No, they're not following anybody. They want to follow me and it's like no, no
- 03:43
- That's the closest thing and there and even those pictures aren't In that category, so I don't
- 03:50
- I've seen it in other platforms, but not Twitter. Yeah, I just don't I don't know Because I don't think that my account is set up in such a way that that that would be precluded but anyway, as I was saying the reason that I one of the reasons
- 04:08
- I prefer Twitter to everything else is Stuff will just come by that.
- 04:14
- I would not see. Otherwise, I don't have time to be searching for this kind of stuff But that's really interesting.
- 04:20
- So Jonathan Burrus is a fellow who a pastor who will take on a lot of this
- 04:28
- King James stuff and so I Happen to see that he had posted a video titled
- 04:38
- KJV pure Bible search Horrible hermeneutics and and so I clicked on it and I started watching it and I Discover an app
- 04:52
- Which I think I did install it on this computer, which may be dangerous
- 04:59
- But it is a it is an app designed
- 05:05
- Specifically to help you Come up with numerological arguments the
- 05:12
- King James Version of the Bible now Mormons have done was this the Book of Mormon Muslims have done it with the
- 05:19
- Quran I think it was the late 90s There was a big surge of Bible numerology the
- 05:29
- Bible code stuff and I remember I lost some friends In the then developing just developing
- 05:42
- Internet stuff Well, yeah because now I think about it
- 05:47
- The IRC channel we actually started that in 96 So yeah,
- 05:54
- I remember some people going off and getting involved all that stuff and I was going this is ridiculous
- 05:59
- This is absurd. And so They said I was a terrible horrible bad person so Here is a an entire app that you can get to allow you to come up with numerological arguments for the
- 06:12
- King James Bible and I Just a reminder of some basic facts,
- 06:19
- I recognize not everyone is aware of I Wasn't aware of as a young person. I still remember
- 06:29
- Sitting in a church service once and finally Asking myself the question.
- 06:37
- Why does the pastor keep referring to Greek? We we read English. What's what's what's the issue?
- 06:43
- And you know, once you start learning a little something You you hopefully learn something about how
- 06:52
- The Bible came together and that it wasn't written in English and that English was not written in English is a translation that there have been many many
- 06:59
- English translations and that The English translations have been based upon different and differing
- 07:07
- Greek and Hebrew manuscripts Collations of Greek and Hebrew manuscripts and printed editions and all sorts of stuff like that and So once you understand that once you start getting a little of that down Then a lot of this stuff just starts looking really silly this
- 07:26
- King James only stuff because what they're doing is they're They're basing so much on The English translation and of course there are you've got the
- 07:37
- Blaney revision you've got the Oxford you've got the Cambridge there's going to be differences between them and And different editions of the
- 07:49
- King James and all sorts of stuff like that, but then So the
- 07:55
- English isn't a fixed body and so counting words or this this word appears at this point in this book or something like that is
- 08:09
- Can be thrown off by just the small number of changes as you would have even between The Cambridge and Oxford or between the 1611 and the 1769 or something like that 1789
- 08:24
- So and then not now maybe I understand why there were people in when
- 08:30
- I was very much younger who were so upset about the new Schofield because the new
- 08:35
- Schofield Changed the King James. They're all the numerology out anyway, but all of that is just in the
- 08:42
- English translation It doesn't reflect The the text that was inspired by God in the first place
- 08:52
- And the reality that they will use chapter and verse
- 08:57
- Numeration as having some kind of great significance the chapter and verse stuff is
- 09:06
- Relatively modern. I've I've pointed to the 1550s upon us back there over and over again
- 09:12
- It does not have verse numbers in Because it was the next year of 1551
- 09:18
- That Stephanos inserted the verse numerous numeration system that we use today and so 1500 years had passed
- 09:30
- Since the resurrection of Jesus and no one had ever referred to John 3 16 because there were no verse numbers and So when they use verse numbers and Then make connections
- 09:45
- It's just so artificial. It is so silly it's so childish because it ignores the history of the text and Yet, they just do it and they they are utterly
- 10:00
- That they They do not apologize for what they're doing.
- 10:07
- I don't think we tested the Sound so we will find out fairly quickly whether this is going to work or not.
- 10:14
- I think this is where it belongs as far as the position goes, but Brother Burris is
- 10:23
- Responding to a guy who's using this app To make an argument based upon Deuteronomy 16 11
- 10:34
- Now think about for a second 16 11 there is you cannot be a rational person and Think there is a connection between the year 16 love and by the way
- 10:50
- Even that has changed. I mean Julian calendar, you know all that all that stuff that that When do you really start it?
- 11:01
- all the rest that kind of stuff so 1611 the year and Deuteronomy chapter 16 verse 11 there was no
- 11:15
- Deuteronomy 16 11 until there was no Deuteronomy 16 until the Middle Ages and no verse 11 until Period of time after that.
- 11:25
- It's all editorial It's not inspired if you say it's inspired then you have a continuing
- 11:32
- Inspiration theory and King James only us don't have any problem with that. That's why King James only ism is completely indefensible and is on the exact same cultic level as people who defend the
- 11:45
- Book of Mormon or Use numerology from the Quran and all the rest is kind of wild wacky strange stuff but there's
- 11:54
- There's lots of folks that want the esoteric. They want the strange they want the
- 12:00
- Gnostic knowledge that nobody else has and That's how they do it. So I think I have it at the right point here, and I'm not gonna ask
- 12:09
- Brother Burris about the guy down there next to him I Wear cat shirts, so I can't be overly what?
- 12:25
- What Picard? Okay, it's a warp core. Come on You know, that's me in a
- 12:31
- Coogee So yeah, what's what's the problem? I mean, I've got enough swords in here to fight off about three dozen samurai
- 12:39
- But you know manuscripts lots of Bibles and books when you talk about I don't have there are no robots in here that I can see anywhere so There you go.
- 12:51
- I'm sure I'll get in a comment on on Twitter From the brother once once he sees this, let's see if I've got this the right spot
- 13:00
- Let's see if we can get started here I don't know what you're gonna believe you at least be able to see why people like me
- 13:08
- Believe this is a fulfilled prophecy. So if you turn your Bibles to do that you catch that fulfilled prophecy fulfilled prophecy
- 13:20
- Listen to that Fulfilled prophecy is
- 13:25
- Isaiah 53 Fulfilled prophecy is Psalm 22 Psalm 2
- 13:30
- Psalm 110. That's fulfilled prophecy Okay, the destruction of Jerusalem in 80 70 prophesied by Jesus himself as a prophet that Is fulfilled prophecy?
- 13:44
- Matthew chapter 24 that's fulfilled prophecy but making up numerology out of an
- 13:52
- English translation is Not prophecy and when you make it fulfilled prophecy, you are fundamentally degrading
- 14:01
- The validity of actual fulfilled prophecy something to keep in mind 1611 okay,
- 14:11
- Deuteronomy 1611. Let's let's um, uh
- 14:18
- Oh Well, look at that now we can watch accordance coming up Yes, I thought it was up.
- 14:25
- But evidently I I Took it down. But okay
- 14:30
- Deuteronomy 1611 EU 16
- 14:41
- Yeah, I Don't want it if I do that then the other one disappears and I've got to play games with it and all the rest
- 14:46
- I guess So I'll blow it up just a little bit here so it's a little bit easier to see and I'm gonna keep the
- 14:55
- Hebrew and the Greek because it's a reminder that the English came long long long after it but and you shall
- 15:05
- Rejoice before and you shall rejoice before Yahweh your
- 15:12
- God Eloheka You and your son and your daughter and your male serve male and female servants and The Levite who is in your town and The stranger and the orphan and the widow who are in your midst being too long here here at the end in the place
- 15:44
- Where is chosen by Yahweh your
- 15:52
- God To establish his name there
- 15:59
- So This is this has a historical context to it, obviously
- 16:07
- It is a command that the people of God all of the people So you and your son and your daughter and your male a female servant
- 16:16
- Levite it is to be a a cultural thing Even the stranger and the orphan the widow who are in your midst, but everyone
- 16:26
- Is to rejoice Before Yahweh your God and you shall remember the next verse that you were a slave in Egypt And you shall be careful to observe these statutes.
- 16:39
- So This is a command the people of Israel That across the entire culture you have this
- 16:50
- Celebration and this remembrance of their deliverance out of Egypt and slavery in Egypt and A reminder there to be careful
- 17:02
- To observe these statutes so you shall verse 13 You shall celebrate the feast of booze seven days after you have gathered in from your threshing floor and your wine vat
- 17:13
- So it so you're you're gathering in you're seeing the blessings of Yahweh Yahweh has made your your crops to grow has given you rain and the
- 17:23
- Sun And has protected you from marauding people to steal these things from you and everything else
- 17:32
- So it's a context here and it's a context that we can make application today
- 17:40
- And We should make application today. We all have so much we have so much food.
- 17:47
- We have homes we have transportation And all these things come from God's hands and we rarely thank him for the many things that we receive from him and even
- 18:00
- Remembrance of our slavery to sin and our deliverance from that So here's here's the historical context here's the reality of what's going on here this has nothing to do with the year 1611
- 18:16
- When you connected to the year 1611 you make a mockery of the Bible You make a mockery of its message
- 18:25
- It has nothing to do With what takes place in the in in in and around London other cities in between 1604 and 1611
- 18:40
- Okay In fact, let me Did it did it did it did it did it did it did it did a 16 -4 for seven days no 11
- 18:54
- For seven days no 11 shall be seen with you in all your territory and none of the flesh which you sacrifice on The evening of the first day shall remain overnight until morning.
- 19:06
- There you go that has something to do with King James ordering the translation of the
- 19:16
- King James because that's 16 for that because that 1604 Seven years to 1611.
- 19:23
- It has to have something to do with it, right if we're gonna be consistent, right? Well, we don't have to be consistent
- 19:30
- That that's the same wackiness. We've been dealing with I've talked about so many times when the
- 19:35
- Roman Catholics start trying to draw all these parallels between the Ark of the Covenant and Mary and and Six months in the hill country of Judea and bring them in and and You pick and choose
- 19:49
- I'll make a connection here the verse for verse after no I'll put dates in it.
- 19:55
- No, no, I'll just do the one thing here Put it together and anybody can do that with anything and prove anything divine
- 20:05
- Like I said, the Mormons do it with the Book of Mormon the Muslims do it with the Quran I don't know if the
- 20:12
- Hindus and the Buddhists do anything like this or not. I would assume they probably do I Just don't know enough about him to tell you
- 20:19
- But yeah, there you go. So there's Deuteronomy 1611 and Please notice the use of the term
- 20:28
- Lord Yahweh It occurs twice Yahweh your
- 20:36
- God Occurs twice in Deuteronomy 1611 and let me see here.
- 20:44
- One, two, three, four, five six Okay, and Yahweh even in this is the
- 20:51
- NASB 95. I keeps defaulting back to that. I can't get it to stop doing it It's doing it so many years.
- 20:57
- It doesn't know what else to do It's the seventh word and And I've heard them say oh that's seventh the seventh word, you know and and Go on from there.
- 21:11
- So, uh, let me All right.
- 21:20
- It's not as pretty That's interesting. One, two, three, four, five.
- 21:28
- It's still seven. You shall be glad before Yahweh your God is the is the legacy standard version of that one so But notice it's it's
- 21:39
- Yahweh so we continue on with the King James only stuff here We're gonna start there, but this is just the beginning
- 21:47
- Deuteronomy 1611, of course has the year the reference of chapter and verse that it directly takes you to the year 1611 when the
- 21:55
- King James Bible was first printed. It was all and just think for just think for a second how utterly absurd this is
- 22:05
- In light of when it was written Now you could say well God is the God of history and so God knew that it was gonna be 1611 and God knew that the chapters are gonna be there and the verses were gonna be you can you can play all those games that you want to play and Come up with all the connections you want to come up with but as I said
- 22:25
- When you're sitting across the table from a Muslim that does the same thing with the Quran you got nothing to say
- 22:32
- You've got nothing to say You're stuck You're guilty of using the same
- 22:40
- Foolishness that they're using so you can't argue against that all you can do is my my numerology versus your numerology and there's
- 22:48
- There's no way of knowing which one's true because they're disconnected from reality Authorized in 1604
- 22:57
- They took seven years to translate it and the King James Bible that we have today was first printed in 1611 and over time there were standardizations and we'll get to that soon
- 23:07
- But in Deuteronomy 1611, it says something interesting This says and thou shalt rejoice before the
- 23:14
- Lord thy God thou and thy son and thy daughter and thy manservant and thy maidservant and Levite that is within thy gates and the stranger and the fatherless and The widow that are among you
- 23:28
- Now listen to this in the place Which the Lord thy
- 23:33
- God hath chosen to place his name there All right
- 23:39
- So let's stop for just a moment and let me give you the crux of what he's going to present in this hour and 13
- 23:45
- Minute video we are not going to watch all of this video. I'm not gonna play it I've got about eight or nine clips that I've Marked to be able to play for you, but this video is not going to be that long
- 23:56
- We're not gonna do that. So I'm gonna summarize it. I'm gonna link to this video I want to encourage you to watch it here what he has to say and see how he uses this text and uses this script this application to Defend his
- 24:09
- King James Version only ism in this verse. You're going to see a myriad of Exaggerations of misuses and I'm going to say
- 24:20
- Eisegesis where he is just simply going to take the text out of its context read something else into it use other text to defend his position that is really
- 24:32
- Just confirmation bias and I know that is a huge accusation just from the get -go
- 24:37
- And you've not seen much from him in that in that regard right now But suffice to say
- 24:42
- I'm going to use the application Use the tools or use the method that he presents in this video
- 24:49
- And I'm going to show you the results that he gets and how he uses that to defend his position so if we go over to actually let's before we do that, let's go back to the app for just a minute and Now I want you to see this app because it is fascinating.
- 25:04
- I mean it is interesting to see and What he does is he summarizes his argument before he then tears his argument apart
- 25:13
- And I'll try to remember to link obviously in the in the write -up so you can watch this for yourself but it is
- 25:25
- It's understandable if you don't know anything about the background of the Bible if you if you you're nothing know nothing about how it's translated if you're just a an
- 25:34
- Ignorant person and there are lots of ignorant people If you're an ignorant person this kind of argumentation can sound
- 25:43
- Absolutely, and and in and in a day where the Bible's being attacked as well. Don't you want to have arguments like this?
- 25:50
- Yes, but you want to have truthful arguments not Fallacious argue listen to what his premise is we go to And is 100 % agreed upon between Jewish and Christians alike to be
- 26:07
- God's perfect number of rest and completion and perfection Now, of course, there's many verses in the
- 26:12
- King James Bible where Lord is the seventh word of the verse I'm not saying that is any sort of proof.
- 26:19
- Watch how it builds on top of each other. Watch how many patterns Converge into one place in this verse you'll notice
- 26:25
- So what he's doing is he's going to assert and let me pull up Deuteronomy 16 11
- 26:31
- Watch all this work in 11 He's going to assert that the word Lord is the seventh word in the verse and then also in Deuteronomy 1611 since it the word
- 26:43
- Lord appears twice in that verse It's also the 49th word in that verse seven being the number of completions seven times seven being 49
- 26:52
- So that is a miraculous thing in and of itself Not only that but he's going to in order to save some time and again watch the video watch it
- 27:00
- So you see it and so, you know that I haven't taken anything And exaggerated it or taking it out of its context or misrepresented him in any way.
- 27:09
- It's also Deuteronomy 1611 and so it's pointing to the 1611 the
- 27:14
- King James Bible from 1611 There is another thing that is mentioned there.
- 27:20
- It's the phrase his name what he's going to do is assert that this is another
- 27:27
- Miraculous sign that the King James Bible is perfect because it has
- 27:33
- This phrase his name and it happens to be the 49th
- 27:38
- Example or the 49th occurrence of the phrase his name. So before we have any more commentary on On those things.
- 27:48
- Let me actually show you from the tool how he gets that and that yeah
- 27:53
- He's technically by the way, this app is free So you you can you can check this stuff out for yourself
- 28:03
- If you're you know want to play these types of games But it is it is available and I had not run into it before so that's one of the reasons
- 28:11
- I wanted to mention Right. I need to show you something very important in the tool This is not the
- 28:19
- King James Version from 1611 if we go to the menu and go to preferences and we go down to Bible databases and we look and see what
- 28:27
- Bible Databases are here. We have the King James Bible 1769 edition.
- 28:32
- So this is the Blaney revision and if you're wondering if you do not know there are multiple multiple versions of multiple editions of the
- 28:42
- Blaney revision and it is there's the Oxford There's the Cambridge and they are in fact, not the same.
- 28:48
- They have different they have different wording. They have different spellings They are not the same if you're wondering which one this is.
- 28:55
- This is the Cambridge version of the 1769 Blaney revision So we're gonna come over here.
- 29:00
- We're gonna add a phrase. We're going to do just like he does in the video We're gonna search for Lord when we put in Lord.
- 29:06
- We see that there are 7 ,836 occurrences now what he's going to assert is that the in Deuteronomy 1611 that the first Lord in that verse is the 1611th occurrence of that verse of that word in the
- 29:27
- Bible. So let's go down to Deuteronomy 1611 I'm going to show you how you can do this as well.
- 29:33
- So here we are Deuteronomy 16 and verse number 11
- 29:38
- I'm gonna click right here now at the very top in the menu There is this icon says view details.
- 29:45
- We're gonna click that popped up over here for some reason and I'm gonna move it down here and it is pinned
- 29:54
- So it'll stay there and if I when I click on verse 16 or Deuteronomy 1611
- 29:59
- It's going to show me right here that the first occurrence of Lord is the 1611 and the next one is the 1612 of 7836 occurrences of the word
- 30:15
- Lord that is Miraculous, right? It is the if we look at all the times the word
- 30:21
- Lord appears in the King James Bible when we get to Deuteronomy 1611 that is the 1611th occurrence of the word
- 30:31
- Lord Wow now what he does in his video is he points out that there are different Ways to look at there are ways different ways.
- 30:39
- The word Lord is used sometimes. It's capital L Lowercase or D in other places.
- 30:45
- It's capital L capital O capital R capital D and in the Hebrew capital
- 30:51
- L and lowercase or D is representative of Adonai when you have
- 30:56
- Lord in all caps That is the tetragrammaton. That is the name of God Yahweh whether you're looking at Lord or you're looking at Adonai the 1611th occurrence of the word
- 31:09
- Lord in the King James Bible is The 1611 time next
- 31:16
- I want you to see the phrase his name. So we're gonna come up here We're gonna change this and we're gonna look at his name.
- 31:22
- We're going to see let's go back to Deuteronomy 1611 and when we look there, we're going to see yep.
- 31:29
- There it is. It is the 49th of a hundred and sixty five Phrase occurrences.
- 31:35
- What is 49? It is 7 times 7 So we've seen that it is this the
- 31:40
- Lord is has the 1611th occurrence It is the seventh word in the verse and it's also the 49th
- 31:47
- Word in the verse so 7 times 7 49 and then we have the phrase his name
- 31:52
- So if we count up all the for all the times that the phrase his name Occurs in the
- 31:58
- King James Bible and the King James Version I'm sorry used to using that terminology that that it adds up to it becomes the 49th occurrence
- 32:06
- What a miracle right if you okay, so I'm not gonna play the whole thing What?
- 32:14
- Yeah, yep, rich rich just converted to King James only isn't So now he's gonna go through and demonstrate that what the thing is counting is not is going to include
- 32:27
- Other uses which makes it completely irrelevant as to that May I point out that?
- 32:35
- for example the canon order in the King James Bible is
- 32:42
- Not the same as the Hebrew Bible. So early on it's the same obviously
- 32:49
- But the canon order of the scrolls for example That Jesus would have you know when he was handed the scroll of Isaiah How did the
- 33:01
- Jews understand the order of their canon completely different The minor prophets all considered one book other books made part of other books and the the
- 33:17
- Historical works are the end. They're not in the middle. They're at the end So so after you get out of the first five books, basically all that stuff just flies out the window
- 33:29
- Unless you again want to make the argument that God's people Were irrelevant up until the
- 33:38
- Reformation in England and I've encountered people who really do take that perspective.
- 33:45
- They don't care what scriptures Were in the possession of the people defending the deity of Christ in the fourth century.
- 33:56
- They don't care They only care about What's in their leather -bound thumb indexed
- 34:03
- Bibles? King James Bibles in their fundamentalist Baptist Church today so all of this stuff if you know anything about the history if you know about the order of the canon chapters versus translation that this stuff is is conflating
- 34:26
- Yahweh with Adonai and Sometimes even references don't have anything to do with God at all.
- 34:32
- So the 1611 is irrelevant I think
- 34:38
- I didn't remember but I think there are places where his name isn't even about Yahweh's name so it's just it's
- 34:47
- I think the original source For a lot of this stuff was Strong's Exhaustive Concordance because that's all people had for a long time.
- 34:55
- I Thought that's all people even even knew how to use if they even And I remember the first time someone started pointing me to Strong's Concordance and that's just really cool
- 35:05
- You know, I didn't need so much information here But it's not information about how the scriptures were originally written
- 35:13
- It's about how they are translated into English in a certain form at a certain time a millennia and a half after the time of Christ and hey, if that can give you really cool stuff to amaze your friends with Evidently for a lot of folks that's all you really need
- 35:32
- You don't have to worry about whether it's truthful or any of the rest that kind of stuff so I will try to remember to Post the link for that When I write up the material after the program and Hopefully that will be of assistance to you
- 35:54
- Here we go All right now
- 36:00
- I saw this little video From Dan McClellan.
- 36:07
- I haven't spent a whole lot of time with Dan McClellan He is As far as I can tell is still a member of the
- 36:16
- LDS Church. I'm not sure how that works McClellan is a part of the well,
- 36:27
- I've talked before how there was very clearly a Decision made a number of years ago to try to mainstream
- 36:38
- Mormonism and So instead of just having the best and the brightest just study at BYU and just get degrees at BYU or the
- 36:49
- University of Utah or whatever else They started sending their graduates out to Ivy League schools big -name schools get degrees that would be really impressive to the world
- 37:04
- Problem is once you took your best and your brightest and got them out of the
- 37:09
- Intermountain West and Sent them off to these places. They're going to encounter critical
- 37:16
- Theory not critical theory as what we're talking about today was critical race theory and stuff like that But they're going to be taught to analyze religious texts
- 37:30
- Hopefully with some kind of Consistency in the context in which they were originally produced and The problem with this and I've seen this happening a lot
- 37:43
- This is what's one of the major things causing changes within Mormonism today is they come back to Utah?
- 37:49
- They start teaching at BYU or wherever else and they bring this Critical methodology with them and here's the problem none of the
- 37:58
- LDS scriptures can even begin to survive critical analysis if You're doing text critical analysis of the
- 38:07
- New Testament At least you're dealing with an ancient document you're not even dealing with an ancient document the
- 38:13
- Book of Mormon and When you when you look at the changes that have been made in the
- 38:19
- Book of Mormon, um, you know, there's a LDS scholar we've talked about this on the program before as an
- 38:26
- LDS scholar who has done a rather fine
- 38:32
- English translation for Mormons of The New Testament from The critical edition the
- 38:40
- Greek New Testament. Here's the problem the Book of Mormon when it quotes the
- 38:45
- New Testament is quoting from the 1769 Blaney revision of the
- 38:50
- King James Version of the Bible which means it's quoting from an English translation of The textus receptus, which is not a critical.
- 39:00
- Well, okay, technically it is a critical edition, but not in the modern sense of a textually textual critically arrived at text the textus receptus is
- 39:13
- Basically the Result of the
- 39:19
- King James translators looking at five editions of Erasmus Stephanos those of Beza, especially 1598 and making textual decisions
- 39:30
- Not purposely trying to create it a Greek text at all and It wasn't the same translators either
- 39:37
- So you'd have one group of translators dealing with the Gospels a different group of translators dealing with Pauline epistles
- 39:43
- And they're gonna make different textual decisions. So that's why it's not Technically a critical text in that sense because it's not the same group of people applying the same standards anyway, the point is if you're if you're
- 39:57
- Translating the New Testament from the best text that we can arrive at today
- 40:05
- Which this scholar did up in Utah That means you're gonna come up with readings different than what
- 40:13
- Joseph Smith did in the Book of Mormon How are you gonna explain that because Joseph Smith's giving us an inspired
- 40:26
- Translation if you call the Urim and the Thummim or the seer stone inspired translation, so how do you fit that together with your textual critical work and That's the problem that Mormonism is facing right now is
- 40:44
- By sending these guys out then bring them back in they injected directly into the bloodstream of Mormonism an absolute poison and I Remember talking with some
- 40:58
- Mormons not too long ago, and I was just stunned at their willingness to go
- 41:04
- Yeah, Joseph Smith, you know, he had some he had some some problems some issues He didn't understand this didn't understand that but you know, we are we've come to understand profit in a in a very different way
- 41:16
- Then it was understood in the past. I'm like, yeah, then is what understood by Joseph Fielding Smith You know by the people who said
- 41:26
- Joseph Smith was either either a prophet divinely called Or he was a fraud. There is no middle ground, you know, and now they're like, oh no, no, no, no, no
- 41:36
- That's way too black and white. Where did all this come from? Well, that's that that's where it's coming from.
- 41:42
- You have to come up with some Very different way of looking at the LDS scriptures
- 41:49
- If you're going to have these people coming in and applying critical methodology and stuff like that So it really doesn't work.
- 41:56
- Well, so this I Have a feeling this is going to start playing
- 42:03
- Okay Now, why does it keep doing that? Okay It did it did it to be
- 42:12
- Some reason I don't know why The app that I've been using to download video files
- 42:23
- QuickTime player does not like the result So I'm having to use
- 42:28
- VLC and VLC can be a little bit weird but here's some
- 42:38
- Here's him, but let's get it starting here. And we'll we'll comment on what what what what goes down All right, let's see it
- 42:54
- Okay, so here's here's what Dan McClellan active member of the
- 43:02
- LDS Church degrees from outside of Mormonism in Various fields of Especially expressions of divine names and images and stuff
- 43:22
- So Here's what it says me explain that out of seven thousand nine hundred fifty seven New Testament verses
- 43:28
- Only forty can't be resolved with textual criticism compared to twenty five thousand ancient manuscripts making its accuracy nine nine point five percent
- 43:36
- Okay, let's start off. That is a muddled mess That's just I I'll do respect to whatever
- 43:46
- Kind believer was trying to make a point here, but that's not even English let alone a real good representation
- 43:55
- Me explain that out of seven thousand nine hundred fifty seven New Testament verses. Okay? Only forty can't be resolved with textual criticism.
- 44:03
- Not what does that even mean? Well, what do you what are you saying forty verses forty verses?
- 44:10
- Variants are rarely just a verse And what do you mean can't be resolved are you saying that we can't know what the original reading was that the original original read
- 44:22
- Has been lost So, I don't know where this is coming from But I wouldn't even agree with that And can't be resolved with textual criticism.
- 44:34
- You mean by means of analysis of Manuscripts analysis of The kinds of variants that arise from the copying of manuscripts
- 44:50
- Sight errors of sight errors of hearing homo I tell you it on, you know All are we talking about is that we're talking about?
- 44:57
- I would assume so but Most of the time people who do textual criticism would not use this type of type of language
- 45:09
- Can't be resolved with textual criticism And then compared
- 45:15
- To 25 ,000 ancient manuscripts making its accuracy nine nine point five percent makes absolutely positively no sense at all
- 45:24
- You're mixing all sorts of different categories here You could have you could literally have ten variants
- 45:35
- In a single verse I've seen
- 45:41
- I've seen that's extremely rare I've seen entire verses in Hebrews for example where there was no variant even noted that was that had any meaning whatsoever
- 45:54
- So but this is comparing examples of a variant
- 46:02
- In a verse with how many manuscripts you have in coming up with an accuracy number
- 46:08
- Sorry, um that that's just not how to do it Let me show you before we get to McClellan here
- 46:17
- Let me show you how things have improved over the years and I'll do it with this
- 46:29
- Here is and this is all available online We just spent a chunk of change
- 46:42
- From the ministry resource list there is we keep talking about the travel fund which is extremely needful and necessary and We're doing a bunch of work on the
- 46:55
- RV right now, and that's what that's what these are for The the raffles helps the travel fund so and Derek just texted me and said
- 47:04
- He'll be getting on that on that blade when he gets back from a trip. He's taking right now and So that that's the travel fund, but there's also now is there is that still available?
- 47:18
- ministry resource list Used to be an
- 47:23
- Amazon wish list many many many Wow How is that was a long time ago?
- 47:29
- But the ministry source list allows us to get hold of stuff like this
- 47:38
- Hopefully by early September the next
- 47:44
- Installment of the ECM will be published There have been frustrating delays thanks to kovat
- 47:55
- I think I've some of you Three or four of you in the audience will remember that in January 2019.
- 48:03
- I visited Munster where the central hub for all this work on the edition of critical mayor
- 48:10
- ECM I don't have any my ECM volumes in here right now, but The ECM will be the largest published critical edition the
- 48:21
- Greek news has to an ever It'll be huge Huge be huge huge huge Uh -huh, and we can't say that he's a convicted criminal now, right?
- 48:34
- Anyway, uh It'll be the greatest they never world's never seen anything like it
- 48:43
- So, um The book of Revelation now so far mark acts and the general pistols
- 48:53
- Are that's done and those are published and you can go online and this is mark this is
- 49:03
- University of Munster This is mark chapter 14 verse 62. We'll blow it up here in a second
- 49:12
- And so I would assume that by September The Revelation module will be available online as well.
- 49:23
- So you don't have to buy these You can you can go online.
- 49:28
- These are they are really improving the Ability to make changes and and stuff like that.
- 49:37
- This is this is called CBGM here in space genealogical methodology and Again you don't have to Buy a subscription or anything like that.
- 49:52
- It's available. So for example, this is mark chapter 14 verse 62 variant number 9 so you you put
- 50:02
- The numbers are the the words are even numbers. The spaces are odd numbers.
- 50:08
- So you'll notice there's a little mark right here Where there is a variant and so it will give you an apparatus
- 50:18
- So Mark 14 62 is in Jesus's trial Gia said to them
- 50:24
- I am and you will see the Son of Man See it at the right hand of power and coming upon the clouds of heavens.
- 50:30
- This is this is where Jesus takes Psalm 110 and Daniel 7 and Conflates them in reference to himself.
- 50:39
- I didn't identify himself as the Son of Man Divine figure this is why the chief priest tears his robes
- 50:47
- And says you've heard the blasphemy, etc, etc. So There is an interesting variant
- 50:54
- That you can see here on the screen and you'll notice that it says a
- 51:06
- OM which is has nothing to do with Alvin Omega ministries though if I was a King James only us
- 51:12
- Could find some way to make a connection but anyways So all of these witnesses do not have a variant at that point the
- 51:24
- B variant is alto so You it would be and G is said to him.
- 51:33
- That would be to the high priest and Then variant C is said to him you say that or you said that Variant D doesn't have him just simply you
- 51:49
- Said that and then variant E you Jesus said that and then
- 51:59
- I am I go I me and you will see the Son of Man so on and so forth Okay, so here are all the
- 52:08
- Manuscripts. So for example hot tea is only found in 2517 If you want to know about 2517, you can you can click on it and get information and so on so forth this
- 52:20
- Variants only found in manuscript 700. There's more manuscripts that have the you say that And then more that have just the alto
- 52:30
- But the large portion of the collated manuscripts for mark do not have any variant there at all so There you have that kind of information and then it starts breaking stuff down for you, which is just fascinating so Here is
- 52:51
- The CBGM's way of saying okay Variant a is the no variant.
- 52:58
- There's nothing there and BCD and E can all see we can all see how they were derived from that particular variant and Then by color coding them that way then you can start looking at the primary
- 53:16
- Witnesses and how they relate to one another. So here's your your your your
- 53:22
- B witnesses your D your E C witnesses and how they are and now what the computer is doing is it is drawing connections between these manuscripts based upon their coherence there is pre genealogical and genealogical coherence
- 53:43
- And basically it The computer can do what the human mind cannot do and that is keep massive amounts of data points
- 53:56
- In in memory and so you can go I want to know when you look at manuscript 2737 and you look at manuscript 1515
- 54:11
- Um, how Many times do they vary from one another How many times do they have the exact same reading and when there is a variation?
- 54:22
- How many times does one join with the other one or differ from the other one and the computer can do all that? The human mind cannot
- 54:30
- God just didn't design us do that There are a few weird people who might be able to do that. You know, we've seen movies about them
- 54:38
- Rain man and stuff like that But most of us normal human beings can't do that. So the point is when we talk about Percentages of identity coherence
- 54:55
- Once the ECM is published Which when
- 55:00
- I was in Munster I was told then by the man in charge of all of it who was retiring shortly after that That they had funding through 2030
- 55:13
- It seems that John which is was farmed out to Birmingham has stalled that really hurts me because Most of the textual variants that are really relevant are in Paul and in John But anyway
- 55:35
- Then you can go down from here, I'll finish showing this to you and Here are so here is coherence in Attestations and I have to scroll across the screen because you just okay.
- 55:52
- So here here the computer is Taking us and And giving us a relationship
- 56:02
- Between all these manuscripts and how they are related via coherence to one another
- 56:08
- With and you can change see these numbers here. You can change exactly what parameters the computer is using to produce these charts and then you can look at general textual flow
- 56:25
- So pop that up Here's the general textual flow so you can see with the color where the variations you can
- 56:36
- Follow where those variations are. So so for example, I said to you there's only one manuscript 700 that has that one reading
- 56:43
- And you can see where 700 specifically fits in Relationship to other manuscripts as far as coherence is concerned
- 56:54
- And you can you can just see how massive the amount of information available Note no generation has ever had anything
- 57:04
- Erasmus would be sitting here drooling going. Oh, wow Beza any of them would be going
- 57:12
- Wow and never dreamed That something like that could could ever exist so go ahead and take that down.
- 57:20
- So the point is that With CBGM in ECM so CBGM is a methodology coherence based genealogical methodology
- 57:30
- ECM is being applied To the manuscripts to produce the
- 57:36
- ECM the additional critical mayor the the major critical edition of the Greek New Testament Which is available online?
- 57:45
- But in the printed version You know, we're we are purchasing it as it comes out that's part of you help us to do that with contributions to the ministry resource list
- 58:01
- We just ordered revelation again. It's supposed to be available in the US from Hendrickson September 2nd,
- 58:08
- I believe It is the most expensive one so far. It's just one book mark was
- 58:16
- Mark, I think was 4 volumes those revelation, but mark I think was only like 365
- 58:24
- This thing's over 600 why? Joe Biden, I think Inflation but This vault this four volume set on revelation is just under 2 ,000 pages long it's huge and Why?
- 58:44
- Because revelation has the most unique Challenging Textual History and background of any book in the
- 58:56
- New Testament. I think it's because it had to fight for inclusion in the New Testament itself There are a lot of people who rejected revelation
- 59:05
- They weren't certain that it had apostolic Authorship and as a result
- 59:13
- We have the fewest papyri manuscripts of it There really isn't a clearly identifiable majority text to it
- 59:24
- The Byzantine divides all over the place in it so a lot of us, okay a lot of us the
- 59:32
- The few hundred of us who actually have studied CBGM enough to even have a functional knowledge of it
- 59:41
- Are really really interesting interested in how this is gonna work out because of all the books in New Testament I said when
- 59:48
- I first was introduced to CBGM a number of years ago, man revelations could be a mess and Here it is being published.
- 59:55
- I'm really excited to see that I think there will be much more interest in John and the
- 01:00:03
- Pauline corpus. I can't imagine how big that's gonna be though. I I can't imagine they'll do all of Paul I'd just be that'd be massive.
- 01:00:11
- I don't know how many volumes that would be But when it gets done, it's gonna be a pretty impressive thing on the shelf, that's for sure so back to Where we were here
- 01:00:25
- When we look at this Claim and and by the way, I just wanted to make sure Dan McClellan's not making this claim.
- 01:00:32
- He's gonna be responding this claim. I Just don't even know where it's coming from Clearly whoever's did this doesn't know anything about CBGM doesn't anything about How you actually do textual criticism and so look
- 01:00:45
- I'll be the first one to say, you know, there's a book came out I don't think I have it In here right now
- 01:00:52
- But myths and mistakes and textual criticism or something along those lines. I think it was what it's called
- 01:00:57
- Came out. I don't know five years ago now and Yeah, there's
- 01:01:07
- I Remember when Norm Geisler Made very popular a real common mistake in how to count
- 01:01:21
- New Testament account variations in the New Testament and I remember hearing that from him.
- 01:01:27
- Thankfully. I was already in Greek class and so I was already reading Metzger and Holland and people like that and I was like What's he talking about So that there is bad material out there
- 01:01:43
- And we certainly have tried and because of my background and because of the fact that a few weeks into my first year
- 01:01:55
- Greek class With dr. Baird who I had dinner with Just a week ago now.
- 01:02:02
- Yeah, we go tonight. No, we could go. Yeah, we go tonight my
- 01:02:08
- Greek professor for seven years Very early on that first year.
- 01:02:14
- I remember opening up the UBS back then third edition corrected this is the fourth revised and That was what we were we were using
- 01:02:30
- It seemed like large print back Oh I'm looking at the footnotes going.
- 01:02:38
- No way. Oh, man. Ah anyway All of you young guys sitting there making fun of me right now.
- 01:02:48
- Don't do it. Don't know it gonna happen to you, too That's why my reading glasses are right over there and there's another
- 01:02:58
- I've got my click ones right here This this is what you need. Go ahead If you for the for the the aging man in your life go ahead and get him the click
- 01:03:11
- Reading glasses There you go. See and you can just go like that put him down there
- 01:03:16
- They stay hang around your neck and they're they're very useful and they do they're magnetic right here
- 01:03:22
- They click and hey, look at that. I can read all the footnotes again. That's wonderful.
- 01:03:28
- That's wonderful Anyway, I Asked dr. Baird. I remember where I was sitting.
- 01:03:34
- I remember what room I was in that that building doesn't exist anymore Sadly every single story building on that campus is gone has been replaced by big massive buildings
- 01:03:47
- But I remember exactly where I was and I asked dr. Baird What are these notes at the bottom of the page?
- 01:03:55
- And he said that's where the Greek manuscripts differ from one another and I was already talking the
- 01:04:00
- Mormon missionaries so I knew I had to delve into that and Yeah, dr.
- 01:04:09
- Baird remembers that very very well all these years later so There you go.
- 01:04:17
- So there's there's that It's after four o 'clock already So let's just start on this and we'll we'll we'll continue with it because it's
- 01:04:27
- I Know our I know our audience and a bunch of you are just utterly unrepentant
- 01:04:38
- Inveterate geeks. Okay, that's just all there is to it. That's why you that's why you watch the program and You love when we get into this stuff
- 01:04:47
- You were sitting there watching the CBGM stuff scrolling and you were drooling you really were it was
- 01:04:52
- The only thing that makes you more excited is if we played the radio free Geneva theme beforehand and at that point you would have passed out
- 01:05:02
- So so I'm not gonna just rush through this but he's responding to a
- 01:05:13
- Poorly framed argument CBGM can tell us that this is
- 01:05:19
- I forgot to finish making this point CBGM can tell us what the exact Coherence numbers are between individual manuscripts all manuscripts that contain a particular corpus
- 01:05:37
- So you can do a general number for Romans You can compare
- 01:05:44
- Sinaiticus and Vaticanus in a chapter in a book
- 01:05:51
- And remember Like I was about to say in the
- 01:05:57
- New Testament, but Vaticanus doesn't contain the entire New Testament. It finishes it stops at Hebrews 9 14 so To get specific numbers.
- 01:06:09
- You have to be looking at specific texts or bodies of texts, but we can now
- 01:06:15
- Generate those numbers. It's no longer a matter You know when
- 01:06:21
- I first started studying all this stuff This great scholar estimated this
- 01:06:28
- Estimated this number, but it's just a guess
- 01:06:34
- We didn't have the massive amount of collations of manuscripts we have today. So now we can be much more specific
- 01:06:43
- All right. So there are four statements of fact in this image one is uncontroversially true
- 01:06:50
- One is close to being true, but is also wildly misleading. The other two are pure fabrication
- 01:06:57
- The uncontroversially true statement is that there are seven thousand nine hundred fifty seven verses in the
- 01:07:03
- New Testament The kind of truth statement that is also wildly misleading is that there are twenty five thousand ancient manuscripts of the
- 01:07:11
- New Testament Okay These numbers change regularly
- 01:07:18
- Mainly because of ongoing efforts in cataloging When it comes to the
- 01:07:25
- Greek New Testament Manuscripts that number between fifty six hundred and fifty eight hundred keeps changing especially thanks to CSNTM And they're studying in their vote
- 01:07:37
- Doing high quality digital photography of manuscripts around the world and When they do that, they discover
- 01:07:43
- Oh this manuscript actually isn't a separate manuscript same manuscript as that one But part of its here part of its there
- 01:07:50
- Or they discovered their manuscripts that you open it up and discover that the last half is a different manuscript in the first half so that would
- 01:07:57
- Double the number there. The other thing would have the number there. The number keeps changing and Then the largest body of manuscripts you have are
- 01:08:07
- Latin manuscripts, obviously copied in the West and Then you know
- 01:08:15
- Armenian Georgian Ethiopic the Hittite Boheric all these other manuscripts
- 01:08:24
- That again up until the last century No one had any idea of these numbers
- 01:08:32
- Nobody you couldn't have There was no way to get
- 01:08:39
- The University over there and the University over there to even use the same nomenclature
- 01:08:48
- To identify manuscripts with the same catalog number or name Or whatever it was it was a real problem
- 01:08:57
- When the first critical texts were trying to be they're trying to produce first critical text that That utilized at least some portion of the available information out there
- 01:09:09
- It was really really really hard because what manuscript are we talking about? well,
- 01:09:14
- I saw a manuscript the University and such and such a room and such, you know, you know, you know, and So eventually you did have a
- 01:09:25
- Catalog system and you know you start identifying the unseals one way and the minuscule is another way and and You had to have some centralized place
- 01:09:38
- That would start gathering this information at first what they were doing is they were gathering microfilm well,
- 01:09:45
- I Was better than nothing, but have you ever tried to use microfilm? Um, it is not easy to do not easy that's why
- 01:09:54
- CSNT M is so important they're doing just massive high quality digital stuff and You know stuff that you could really dig down and do very close analysis of a tiny variant here there and everywhere
- 01:10:09
- But you really you really couldn't do that with the with the microfilm, but you need someplace Munster became the place that Gathered all this information didn't gather all the manuscript manuscripts, but where the manuscripts were identifying them giving them numbers
- 01:10:25
- Provisional dates stuff like that. Um, and so yeah, how many total?
- 01:10:33
- Really hard to say You you could you know, he's saying here it's actually a little over 27 ,000 again, it depends on You know how you are
- 01:10:46
- It depends on how you are counting manuscripts, for example,
- 01:10:52
- I I have a picture of me holding a portion of P92 I'd have to I don't have time to look it up, but it was a very brief portion from acts two and three which was at I Was examining it under glass
- 01:11:15
- In Sydney, Australia the other portion of it is in Italy so that can only be counted as one manuscript, but it's in two different pieces in two different places, so How do you how do you count all that stuff?
- 01:11:32
- That's why you can only give round numbers To be at all fair In looking at this type of stuff, it's actually a little over 27 ,000 but this counts all
- 01:11:46
- Manuscripts in all languages from our earliest manuscript all the way down to the printing press.
- 01:11:52
- In fact a Little past the printing press in some instances So when you look at the
- 01:12:00
- Kami Ohanian first on five seven Some of the manuscripts that will be cited there
- 01:12:07
- Are still handwritten manuscripts that were produced after the invention of the printing press sometimes
- 01:12:16
- Hundred over a hundred years after the invention of the printing press Because just because you invented the printing press
- 01:12:22
- Doesn't mean that there are a bunch of them running around and for a long time Manuscript production continued to be by hand in Europe until The printing press began to have you know
- 01:12:37
- Erasmus comes along and does his stuff and Cardinal Jimenez and Completion polyglot and all the rest that kind of fun stuff so the point he's gonna make and it's a very valid point and needs to be understood as a valid point and I am
- 01:12:52
- I have tried over the years to warn people
- 01:12:59
- Remember how I warn people. Well, okay, maybe you don't maybe you're one of those folks. It's it's new
- 01:13:07
- Back when I debated Bart Ehrman in 2009 during the audience questions a kind I'm sure very well -meaning elderly
- 01:13:18
- Christian gentleman hands up and As soon as he got the first sentence out of his mouth,
- 01:13:24
- I knew what was coming. I Knew it was coming He was going to do the
- 01:13:34
- Isaiah scroll argument and The Isaiah scroll argument is a good argument if it's used properly most people don't know how to use it properly and That is it is true that Up until the discovery of the
- 01:13:54
- Isaiah scroll at Qumran. I The cave where it was found sure,
- 01:14:03
- I'm glad I got to go that one time That there the
- 01:14:12
- The earliest manuscript we had at that time of Isaiah Was from 900 years after Christ The Isaiah scroll is from 100 years before Christ.
- 01:14:22
- So a thousand years passed by and When we look at the
- 01:14:28
- Isaiah scroll There has been no changes the Masoretic text type of The manuscripts we had from 900 years after Christ Identical now that tells you properly that there does not of necessity
- 01:14:51
- Have to be Textual corruption in the promulgation the copying copying of ancient manuscripts
- 01:15:02
- However, if we're going to be honest, there are variations within the
- 01:15:09
- Masoretic text and There are key variations within the Masoretic They pierced my hands and my feet is one reading in the
- 01:15:21
- Masoretic text They clawed at my hands is another reading at the same point
- 01:15:30
- Um when Jeremiah 31 is quoted in the book of Hebrews the
- 01:15:42
- Hebrew behind the Greek that is quoted because being quoted from the Greek Septuagint Even though I was a even though I did not care for them is what the
- 01:15:55
- Greek says The Hebrew says even though I was a husband to them The Hebrew behind that is the difference between but all and got all
- 01:16:07
- One letter difference and the two letters are somewhat similar to one another in shape especially in Proto Hebrew so those are realities that have to be dealt with and recognized
- 01:16:29
- And a lot of people don't know how to do that and the other thing to recognize is the book of Jeremiah Has a completely different textual history in the book of Isaiah Now the book of Jeremiah tells us why?
- 01:16:44
- Remember Jeremiah tells us, you know The the king took his his prophecy his scrolls and cut it up with a penknife basically
- 01:16:54
- Well so much for that one, I guess I'll have to produce another one. Oh, so there was he was having to produce multiple versions of his prophecy and then he shipped off to Egypt and There's there's reasons why the
- 01:17:07
- Greek Septuagint version of of Jeremiah is a third shorter Than the
- 01:17:12
- Masoretic There's a historical reason for so the
- 01:17:18
- Isaiah scroll argument is a good argument But it only says so much and when people try to make it to say more than that So when the guy presented it to Bart Ehrman, I knew it
- 01:17:27
- I sat back I knew he was gonna say and I I could have I could have said it for him but he
- 01:17:34
- Well, he says but that's very true however Jeremiah in the Greek said and you know and the poor guy had
- 01:17:41
- No idea how to respond to that because he probably never heard of it so that where we get into trouble is
- 01:17:52
- Is when we get in these conversations we start making these claims and we don't We haven't read deeply enough in the whole field to recognize.
- 01:18:03
- I Can only go so far with this particular claim Before I'm standing out on a limb and I'm starting to hear creaking and cracking behind me
- 01:18:12
- And I need I need to be careful. Okay Around 1 ,500
- 01:18:18
- CE and the overwhelming majority of those manuscripts Come in the second half of that window.
- 01:18:26
- So come in the medieval period after 1 ,000 CE Yeah, that's true though the and this is gonna be part of the important part here in comparison to any other work of antiquity
- 01:18:46
- The Reality is that the earlier testimony from the
- 01:18:52
- New Testament is better than any other work of antiquity We have to be really careful about that there are other works of antiquity that have broad manuscript testimony
- 01:19:04
- Homer especially But as far as getting
- 01:19:11
- Close to the original I Don't think there's anything that can that can even come close to the
- 01:19:17
- New Testament But yes the bulk when we when we talked about five thousand Let's say big number five thousand eight hundred
- 01:19:24
- Greek manuscripts vast majority of those are after 1 ,000 But the number of papyri that we have the number of early unseals that we have that have
- 01:19:38
- Vast portions of the New Testament No other work of antiquity comes close to that really doesn't and most of them are in Latin as well.
- 01:19:48
- They're being true Yeah, I'm I really think about adding that in specifically normally when
- 01:19:58
- I when I refer to The numbers of manuscripts we have I'm limiting that primarily to original language manuscripts 20
- 01:20:06
- Greek And so he's thinking 27 ,000 I'm not really Thinking along those lines transmitted during the medieval period
- 01:20:16
- When we look at Greek manuscripts, we have a little over 5 ,800 Greek manuscripts And again, the overwhelming majority of them come in the latter half of that window
- 01:20:26
- Here's a chart showing the century which our earliest Greek New Testament manuscripts come from now.
- 01:20:32
- It's interesting. I Didn't get any feeling In listening to this is a short video.
- 01:20:40
- It's Not showing it right here. Anyways, I think it was like six minutes like that.
- 01:20:47
- I didn't I didn't get the feeling that he that this is his area or that he's familiar with CBGM or the
- 01:21:01
- ECM at least as far as functionally because You'll notice it says he has here
- 01:21:11
- Alexandrian Egyptian eclectic Western and Byzantine. I mean it there's there's a
- 01:21:20
- Majority of folks Have already pretty much totally abandoned the idea there is such a thing as the
- 01:21:28
- Western text at all The only text type that CBGM has actually verified so far.
- 01:21:36
- I don't think the revelation Publication is gonna change this is the
- 01:21:41
- Byzantine The use of text type language and you read my
- 01:21:47
- King James only book it's all through it It's all we had at the time. See we I wrote that long before CBGM came along All that's changing and that's a good thing by the way
- 01:21:59
- See traditionalist go. No, no, that's a bad thing. No, it's a good thing if you if you just put your
- 01:22:06
- Traditions down for a second What we're talking about is the most in -depth analysis of the
- 01:22:14
- New Testament manuscripts that has ever been done There's never been a time before when we could have done. That's a good thing that's a proper thing and it's not going to be done for a long time and That's what bugs people.
- 01:22:28
- I I want to you got to have the firm text right now, but You know, that's how you ended up with the
- 01:22:36
- Latin Vulgate as the only text for a long time And people got burned the stake for wanting something better So stop it and also the textual tradition to which they belong so the dark maroon in the back the
- 01:22:51
- Byzantine tradition is where the Overwhelming majority come from and they come from after 800
- 01:22:57
- CE and that is also the tradition that has the most Variation from what is generally considered to be the most reliable tradition
- 01:23:07
- Sort of again CBGM When you when you look and the nice thing in the printed editions,
- 01:23:19
- I'm sure it's online too, but the printed editions I'm gonna go to 430 and then we'll we'll cut there.
- 01:23:25
- So They provide a Appendix Where they note all the changes that have been made from the previous edition that's the all in text to what they're producing now the number of Changes have been very small which would indicate we have been doing a decent job beforehand
- 01:23:51
- But Taken as a group There is more of a movement there is a correction and there is more of a movement toward the
- 01:24:01
- Byzantine rather than away from the Byzantine now there are There are a few examples going the other way, but in general
- 01:24:11
- Like manuscript 33 has Vaulted in its importance
- 01:24:18
- It's seen it's seen to be an extremely reliable Manuscript with high coherence is important witnesses and things like that.
- 01:24:29
- And so I Get what he's saying.
- 01:24:34
- But again, it doesn't sound like he's familiar with What's happening with CBGM or hasn't?
- 01:24:43
- Worked the modules or done stuff like that, which very few people have I'm not faulting him for that.
- 01:24:48
- I'm just simply saying That's something that I hear when I'm listening to what he's saying in the first 300 years of the transmission of the
- 01:24:55
- New Testament. We have maybe 124 manuscripts that's interesting because that's the number that Dan Wallace is and I think
- 01:25:04
- I use the same number in my debate with Bart Ehrman and You know
- 01:25:09
- Bart tried to argue with which which manuscripts are we necessarily talking about?
- 01:25:15
- But that's that's a fairly safe Number and It's an amazing number it's an amazing number why is it an amazing number it's an amazing number
- 01:25:31
- Because of the fact that We're talking about a corpus of texts
- 01:25:42
- Produced by a minority religion that was hated by the most powerful governmental entity
- 01:25:51
- Known at the time in the world and we know beyond a shadow of a doubt
- 01:25:59
- That that governmental entity known as the Roman Empire Sought to not only destroy the religion but to destroy the documents of the religion
- 01:26:10
- So a papyrus found 1990s Maybe early 2000s any in Egypt that Documented The persecution took place that the high point of persecution
- 01:26:29
- Was right before persecution stopped So the very beginning of the 4th century
- 01:26:38
- About 10 years there starting around 300 ish and And This papyri talks about what they had taken from various churches and specifically the number of manuscripts
- 01:26:53
- That they had taken and destroyed But the Romans had taken destroyed.
- 01:26:59
- So the fact that we have what we have Given the the nature of papyrus and The fact that you know in in places like Italy That's not a place.
- 01:27:17
- It's highly conducive for Paper documents to survive for 2 ,000 years having 124
- 01:27:28
- Manuscripts in the first three centuries. I do not believe there is any other work of antiquity that comes even close to that Even closer and the further the the nice thing about that Is that they are not coming from just one spot
- 01:27:47
- They're coming from multiple so which is what you want You don't want just one place
- 01:27:53
- Because that that one place can be controlled when it comes from multiple sources. You can't control the multiple sources so the 124
- 01:28:02
- Manuscripts is is a good thing. So I think we'll we'll just Eventually what this is going to get into is, you know, how do we know?
- 01:28:13
- Given given that there is There's a there's a line we don't have anything before this time period
- 01:28:20
- How do we know about that dark period what what happened in there? That was that was my goal
- 01:28:27
- When I started doing doctoral work in South Africa was to try to use that manuscript as a foundation because p45
- 01:28:39
- Draws from Sources that are different in their textual orientation
- 01:28:47
- So my whole idea was can that give us a window into that period before?
- 01:28:53
- That's what then forced me directly to run smack dab in the CBGM and Sadly, my doctor
- 01:29:03
- Votter had a major heart attack during kovat and had to retire And I I want to do it with him because he did his
- 01:29:09
- PhD under bets. So would still love to do that, but I'm not sure.
- 01:29:18
- I'd be able to do that in the gulag which Depending on what happens in the elections in 2024.
- 01:29:24
- So yeah, anyway, so we'll continue on with this I'm not sure when that's going to be because you're gone the rest of the week
- 01:29:34
- Friday. I Have got so many things going on.
- 01:29:40
- Well, we'll see if we can't do that. Well, I've tried to figure it out We'll see but we will continue we will try to do another program rich got some stuff going on.
- 01:29:49
- I've got trying to catch up with all the stuff that you fall behind after all the surgeries and traveling and everything else and and It's it's it's insane.
- 01:29:59
- It's good stuff meeting with folks and and Yeah, it's it's it's all good stuff, but it's still
- 01:30:06
- Challenging we will we will continue on with this. I hope this is helpful to a lot of folks
- 01:30:13
- Most programs aren't going to do most programs are not going to scroll across The coherence attestations modules and CBGM on their program.
- 01:30:24
- I realize that but there's a reason to do it and I Hope you understand that.