The Comma Johanneum Question

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All right, so we are continuing tonight in our study of apologetics, and for those who have not been with us, I want to just give a very, very brief reintroduction, or an introduction for you, and for those of you who have been with us, a reintroduction.
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We weren't here last week, so just a reminder as to where we are.
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We are in a study of apologetics.
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Apologetics is defending the faith, and we defend the faith according to the book of 1 Peter, which tells us that we are to give a defense for the hope that is within us with gentleness and reverence.
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My wife said something this week that was very profound.
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I posted it.
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Some of you saw it, but it really was one of those things where when she said it, it really just, it struck my heart as being so profoundly simple, and yet still profound.
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She just looked at me, and she said, you know, it would be a lot easier if people were just kind to each other, you know? If people were just kinder, or just kind to each other, things would be a lot better.
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And it was like, wow, yeah, I mean, that's so simple, but so true.
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If we were just kinder to one another, and just really considered one another, and had a heart for how one another feels and thinks, it would be a different world.
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And it was just profound for me.
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So when I think about the apologetics, you know, that we are to give a defense for the hope that is within us, but we do so with gentleness and reverence.
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We do so with kindness, love.
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We care about people, which is why we want, like you said, Rosanna, the people you work with.
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You care about these people.
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That's why you want them to know the Lord.
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It's not so that you can lord over them, and you're the spiritual one, and they're the lost ones.
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No, you don't want them to be lost.
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And so there's a concern there.
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So apologetics is defending the faith.
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And we said one of the things, in fact, the thing that is attacked the most in our conversations with unbelievers is the Bible itself.
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So we said one of the offshoots of apologetics is how we got the Bible.
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How we got the Bible, that's a huge question.
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How did the Bible go from the hand of the Apostle Paul to us? How did it go from John to us? How did it go from Moses to me? And that's been the subject of the last several weeks.
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And if you haven't been here and you're interested in those questions, everything we've done is recorded.
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You can go back and listen to it.
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I can't teach everything we've talked about.
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But just by way of reminder, I'd like to point out two things.
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When we talk about the Bible and how we got it, there are certain conversations we have to have.
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The first one is on the subject of revelation.
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Revelation is the fact that God has revealed himself to us.
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And then we talk about inspiration, God inspiring his words to be written down so that we would have them.
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Then we talk about canonization, how do we know what was written by God and what wasn't written by God? The canon is that list of books that God wrote.
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It's the measuring rod.
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The actual ones that he wrote and the ones that he didn't write are not canon.
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We talk about what's the difference between the book of Genesis and the book of Maccabees.
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We would argue that the book of Genesis is inspired by God and Maccabees isn't.
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Both of them have historical narrative, but we would argue that one is inspired by God.
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And so that's inspiration, canonization.
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And then we talked about the subject of transmission.
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Transmission is how the text goes from the writer to the recipient.
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It's transmitted down through the ages.
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No one still possesses any of the original copies of the Bible as it was written.
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Nobody has the first edition, not edition, the first copy, the first handwritten print of the book of Romans.
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Nobody possesses that.
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If it exists anywhere, it is hidden away, known only to God.
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There's no man that we know of that knows where it is.
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And we said that the transmission of the Bible is different when we talk about Old Testament and New Testament.
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The Old Testament was passed down very meticulously in a faith community and it was handled as it was a religious document.
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So the Jewish people were very meticulous in how they copied the scriptures and how they passed them down.
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And so because of that, there are actually a lot less copies available of the Old Testament than the New Testament.
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Because the New Testament was not copied within one particular group, but it was copied among many groups.
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The New Testament goes out as soon as it's written, it begins to be copied and copied and copied and it goes out all over the world.
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You know, the Apostle Paul was in his missionary journeys during the book of Acts and we know he was writing during that time and the books are being spread out all over that area of the world and beyond.
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And so that's why today we still find copies of the New Testament being unearthed.
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There's copies right now that are being studied that have only recently been found.
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One was found, there was a mask, it was a burial mask that was unearthed and it was made out of what looked like some type of paper mache, like we would think of paper mache.
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And they began to pull the pieces of paper off of it and they realized that this is scripture.
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Somebody had used paper that had been written as a Bible to make this burial mask and they found that it's likely a copy of the Gospel of Mark, which may go into the first century, which means it would be the earliest example of the Gospel of Mark that we possess.
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An amazing find, right? And this is happening with the New Testament all the time.
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Not so with the Old Testament.
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We don't have those type of discoveries.
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In fact, when was the last major discovery of Old Testament text, anybody remember? We talked about it.
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The Dead Sea Scrolls, right? And what did the Dead Sea Scrolls do? They took us a thousand years back because up until the time that the Dead Sea Scrolls were unearthed, the earliest handwritten copies of the Old Testament that we had were somewhere around 900 AD.
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That was about the earliest copies we had of the Hebrew Old Testament.
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But when they unearthed the Dead Sea Scrolls, that pushed it back to about 100 to 200 BC, which is about a thousand years earlier.
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So we're looking at, and the amazing thing, it demonstrated there was no changes.
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There were variations, but the variations were, we could see them and we could study them.
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It was amazing though.
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It was an amazing find.
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So the Old Testament has a different transmission history than the New Testament.
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But within the transmission history, we have something that results.
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And this has been the study of our last few times.
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The thing that results is what is called textual variation.
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Textual variation.
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Textual variation is whenever you have two manuscripts and you study those two manuscripts and you find that in one manuscript it says this, and another manuscript it says that, and you find that there is a difference between the two, there is a variation right there.
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What we call a textual variant.
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Let me ask you this.
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How many of you remember, it's been a few weeks and it's okay if you don't, how many of you remember how many textual variants are in the New Testament alone? 400,000 variants.
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400,000 variants are in the New Testament text alone.
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Why is that? Because there are over 5,000 handwritten manuscripts of the New Testament that are available that predate around 1500.
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They're from the time of about the 2nd century on to about the 14th, 15th century and we have over 5,000 manuscripts from that time period.
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Because we have so many manuscripts, it gives the opportunity for more variation, right? We've talked about this.
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I just want to remind you of all these things.
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Let me ask you a question.
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What is it that we know about 98% of those variants? They are insignificant.
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The 98% of that 400,000 is absolutely insignificant because they would involve things like word order changes or spelling changes, leaving off a new.
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Remember the new is the Greek letter N and we do that as well.
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When we say a apple or an apple, it doesn't change the meaning, but it does phonetically make a difference when we say an apple.
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And the same thing happens in Greek.
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And so that's called the movable new.
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It can come or go and we see that throughout the texts, those handwritten texts, that movable new can move and change and thus creates more variation, right? So 400,000 variants and how many words are in the New Testament? Anybody remember Greek words? Right at 138,000.
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There's 138,000 plus words.
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So right at 138,000 words, there's 400,000 variants.
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But of those 400,000, only 2% really matter.
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And 2% of 400,000 is what? Huh? Yeah.
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Yeah, around 8,000.
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I think we said it was 1% that really were.
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So we said about 4K.
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So of the 138,000 words, there's about 4,000 variants that we actually would say have meaning.
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Then you have the question of are they viable? And many of them are not viable.
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At the end of the day, it's not as broad as it may seem when you start looking at the numbers.
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There are very few places in the scripture where there's any question at all as to what the original really said.
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In fact, a lot of scholars have simply gone on to say it's really not even an issue.
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It's such a small amount of the text that it really shouldn't even bear having much of a conversation about it at all.
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But what is it, and this is our last lesson, what is it that really causes the issue for some people when this conversation comes up? There's one group out there that argue that there's one translation that should always supersede the others.
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And who's that? The King James Version, right? So we have people who say none of this matters.
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None of this should even be discussed.
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Because the king of translations is the king of Bibles, which is the KJV.
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And if you accept the KJV, then this doesn't matter.
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If you say the KJV is the answer, then your question...
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I wonder if that says...
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If you say the KJV is the answer to the question, then you don't have to talk about textual variation.
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Right? And so a lot of people take that and they would argue, well that's God's...
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Okay, sorry, there's a horn going off.
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I'm assuming it's ours.
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Okay, we got...
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I feel like I'm in a Leslie Nielsen movie.
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No, that's just the New Testament.
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What about the textual variations in the Old Testament? Textual variations in the Old Testament are quite a bit different because there's a lot less manuscripts.
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Remember what I said, if you only had one manuscript, there wouldn't be any variation at all.
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Because there's fewer manuscripts, it's not the same.
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And I don't have the numbers on the Old Testament, but I do know it's considerably less.
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The differences are considerably less.
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Yes, sir? About the Old Testament, if Moses had Pentateuch, I guess...
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Pentateuch, yep.
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1500 years before Christ? Yeah, give or take.
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What scriptures did he have, or what did scholars think about that? Well, Moses would have written the first books of the Bible, Genesis through Deuteronomy.
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At least, we would argue that he wrote the majority of Deuteronomy, but not the end because he died.
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So, we would argue that a scribe, possibly Joshua, picked up writing where he finished.
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And that would have been the first scriptures.
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Now, there's argument that the book of Job preceded the writings of Moses.
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That Job comes from a time period closer to Abraham.
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And that the writing of Job would have been that far back, which is about 400 years prior to Moses.
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I don't necessarily know that that's true, but that is an argument that's used.
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So, if that is the case, the earliest written Old Testament book would have been Job.
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But that's not mentioned by Moses in any way, not alluded to by Moses in any way.
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So, there doesn't seem to be evidence that Moses used Job, or that it was being used in the midst of the Hebrew people.
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But, no, Moses would have written the first books of the Bible, and he wouldn't have had other scriptures.
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He got his revelation directly from God, as did the prophets and others.
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Okay, so what we're saying is Genesis didn't have a number of different authors in there.
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No, I don't believe so.
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There is an argument for that, and I taught on that when I was going through the Old Testament transmission.
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There's an argument called the documentary hypothesis, that there's actually four authors for the Pentateuch.
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There's the Jehovah's, the Elohimist, the Priestly, and the Deuteronomist.
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That's the four arguments, that there was actually four different authors, and Moses wasn't any of them.
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I believe Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible primarily because Jesus identifies him as the author.
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In the New Testament, he says, have you not read what Moses wrote to you saying? And so, when he said that, that gives me, at least from the words of the Lord, that I can trust that Moses did write that.
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And then he quoted, did he quote something from the Pentateuch? Yes.
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And throughout Jewish history, the Pentateuch has been identified as the writings of Moses, especially during the time of Christ.
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So, like I said, I would encourage you to go back and listen to it, because I did go through some of the arguments about the documentary hypothesis and all those things.
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Like, there's arguments that there was two authors of Isaiah.
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There's arguments that there was four authors, or several authors of Daniel.
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But all of these arguments tend to come from a little more liberal perspective than where I would come from, because they would argue against revealed prophecy.
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Like, the whole reason why they argue that there are multiple writers of Daniel is because Daniel was so accurate in his prophecies to the point that they would say, no one could be this accurate.
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And that's an anti-supernatural worldview, right? If they say no one can be this accurate, they're having to take an anti-supernatural perspective.
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And so, they say Daniel couldn't be this accurate, so others had to come along and correct it.
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And the same thing for Isaiah, saying there's two, there's a Deutero-Isaiah, which is the last, I think, 27 chapters of Isaiah, is argued it was written by someone else.
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No, that's great, that's a good question.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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So, like I said, when we talk about the Old Testament and New Testament, we've got two different transmissional histories, both of which have multiple copies, both of which have to deal with textual variation.
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But the vast majority of textual variation that we deal with, Ms.
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Rosanna, getting back to your question, is what we deal with in the New Testament.
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And there are three that we're going to deal with tonight.
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See, this was all introduction to getting where we're going to do tonight.
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Tonight, we're going to look at three, what I call the big three.
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The reason why I call these the big three is because these three are the ones that you are most likely going to get thrown up to you if you try to present the Bible to an educated unbeliever, particularly somebody who maybe is an atheist, who is very strong in their atheism.
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They may throw up a textual variant to you and say, did you even know about this? Right? And another one, the first one we're going to look at is actually one that's very popular with Jehovah's Witnesses, interestingly enough.
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Because, Ms.
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Rosanna, you mentioned about the Jehovah's Witness person that you're working with.
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So, the very first one is one that is argued among the Jehovah's Witnesses as well.
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So, we're going to look at these three textual variants.
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We're going to look at their history.
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We're going to ask the question, do we think they belong in the text or do we think they don't? And at the end of the day, we may disagree.
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We will still part friends.
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That's another part that we have to be able to understand, is when it comes to this kind of stuff, there are going to be times where we may disagree.
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However, I will always present my position as best as I can.
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So, get this erased so I can begin to write.
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Oh, did you notice there's a name on the board? This is John Ankerberg.
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Well, that's not him, that's his name.
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But, John Ankerberg, back in the 90s, John Ankerberg had a television program where he would bring on biblical scholars and have conversations about various sundry topics.
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One of the ones that he did was on the subject of King James Onlyism.
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I would recommend to you, going on to YouTube, type in John Ankerberg, KJV only.
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You will see several videos.
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The one that's three hours long, that's the one.
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Because it's several programs.
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I have watched every minute of it.
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I'm actually watching it again.
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Because it is so full of good information.
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He does some other, you can look on there and find some other things.
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He does a thing with Danny Faulkner on the Age of the Earth and some other stuff.
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But primarily, this is just a tremendous resource.
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And if you're going for a drive and you've got time and you want to sit and listen to something and you have an access to YouTube on your phone or whatever, pull it up and listen to it.
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It is tremendously helpful.
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Now, you might not always understand, because here's who's on the panel, by the way.
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Dr.
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James White, when he had hair, which is awesome.
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Because it was a long time ago.
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Dr.
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White's been around for a long time.
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That's my hero.
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And he was there, young man, seems, you know, 30 years ago, right? 20 years ago, whatever.
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But there's also Dr.
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Sam Wallace, huge scholar, important, very important teacher.
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The people who were the editors for the New International version were on the panel answering questions and accusations that had been made against the NIV.
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The editors of the King James, or I'm sorry, the New King James version answering questions about, accusations about the New King James version.
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It's a great conversation.
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And I would encourage anybody to watch it.
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So I just, I threw his name up there so I wouldn't forget.
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Please, if you have, if you have any interest at all, which I hope you do, go look him up.
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But now let's get on to our, let's get on to our lesson.
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All right.
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The big three textual variants.
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I want to quote real quick from a lady.
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She writes a blog on the subject of Christian thinking and things.
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She wrote this quote.
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She said, these variants, talking about these three.
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These variants are common knowledge among scholars, skeptics, and atheists, but are virtually unknown to many Christians outside the academic world.
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Often this information is used to blindside believers in an attempt to sabotage their faith and undermine their confidence in the Bible.
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I believe that.
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I think she has absolutely hit the nail on the head.
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She says, a lot of unbelievers know this information.
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A lot of believers do not.
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For whatever reason, we don't know it.
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A lot of people don't study it.
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We have become satisfied with not knowing.
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And I got to tell you, this is the, this is new in Christian history because throughout Christian history, Christians have been on the forefront of things like scholarship and writing and studying.
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And look at the, the, the, the massive amount of literature that has come out of the church.
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And now we're, we're satisfied in ignorance and we shouldn't be.
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We absolutely should not be.
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And so when she says that this is unknown to many in the Christian world outside of academia, that's sad.
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The church should be teaching these things.
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The church should, we should know these things.
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So we're going to look at three tonight.
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Now, last time we were here, we looked at several small variations.
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Remember we talked about little minor variants.
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These are not like that.
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These are larger variants, bigger variants, if you will.
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Not necessarily in length, but in scope and meaning and also length.
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And the three are this.
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You have them on your notes.
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You have Johonium.
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And that is Latin for John's comma.
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John's comma.
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You then have the pericope adulterae.
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And that is the parallel or the aside regarding the adulterous woman.
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And there is what we would call the longer ending of Mark.
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So we just say Mark's ending.
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These are the three we're going to look at tonight.
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By verses, the first one is 1 John 5, 7.
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So if you want to go ahead and open your Bibles to that, we'll go there first.
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The pericope adulterae is John 7, 53 through 8, 11.
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And then Mark's ending is Mark 16, 9 through 20.
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So these are the three passages we're going to look at tonight.
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And we're going to discuss their inclusion or exclusion from the text.
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Alright, 1 John 5, 7.
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If you were looking at a ESV Bible, and I want to have mine open just so I say this correctly.
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You'll notice in the ESV Bible in verse 7 it says, For there are three that testify, and it stops right there.
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And then it goes to verse 8, it says, The Spirit, and the water, and the blood, and these three agree.
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Everybody see that if you have an ESV? Alright, now how many of you have the New American Standard Bible? Anyone? How many? You do? What does yours say at verse 7? And it stops there.
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How about the NIV? Jack, do you have that? It says there are three that testify and it stops.
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Okay.
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Is there anyone else other than I know the King James has different? Is there anyone other than a King James or a New King James that would say differently? Okay.
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Alright.
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Brother...
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I know you...
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Don! I was going to say...
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Brother Don, read 1 John 5, 7.
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Alright.
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Alright.
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Very good.
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Read it one more time.
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For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one.
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Okay.
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Alright.
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So, is that different? Is that substantially different? Is that theologically more meaningful? Do this.
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Yes, the answer is yes.
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Okay.
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Alright.
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Feel free to just yell it out when you know.
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1 John 5, 7 in the King James Bible is the only text that references the three persons of the Godhead as being one.
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The New King James as well.
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And the reason why is because they are both based on the same manuscript tradition.
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So the King James and the New King James are both based on the Byzantine text type, which we discussed in our previous studies.
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All of your other newer versions are based on the Alexandrian text type.
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So, the New King James and the King James keep 1 John 5, 7 in As there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one.
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Now, I want to say this from the outset.
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From a purely theological perspective, I would love it to be accurate.
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Right? If somebody said, would there be a verse that you would love to have in the Bible that you don't think is there? Because I'll tip my hand immediately, I don't believe 1 John 5, 7 should be there.
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Not in that form.
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But, before we even get started, if this were purely biased, and it were the Keith Foskey choice, I would say, yeah, let's keep it, because it's pregnant with theological significance.
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And if I were talking to a Jehovah Witness, and I thought it were an accurate rendering, it certainly would deal with a lot of their objections to the fact that Jesus Christ is not a person of the Trinity, that there is no such thing as the Trinity, and that the Holy Spirit is just a force and not a person.
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Right? We know that's the argument of the Jehovah Witnesses, is that there is no Trinity.
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If a Jehovah Witness comes to your house, and they begin to talk to you, you have to remember the primary foundational difference in Jehovah Witness theology and Christian theology is Jehovah Witnesses are functionally Arian in their theology.
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Now, what is Arian? It goes back to the 4th century, the heretic Arius, who taught that Jesus Christ is not God, but Jesus Christ is God's first creation.
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He's a special creation of God, and God created all other things through Jesus Christ.
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That's why our Bible says God created all things through Christ.
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Theirs says God created all other things through Christ.
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They add the word other in the Jehovah Witness translation so as to differentiate Christ as a created being from all other created beings.
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They believe Jesus was created by God first, and through him all other things were created.
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So, if I had to say, yeah, I like it, sure.
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But guess what? It's not my...
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it doesn't matter what I think.
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And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you think.
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What matters is the truth, right? So the question is, should 1 John 5-7 read as the King James, or should 1 John 5-7 read as the modern translations? Well, let's talk about the history of this particular issue.
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The oldest manuscript with the Comma Johannium in its text is dated in the 14th century.
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Hear that again.
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The oldest Greek manuscript with the Comma Johannium as written in the King James Bible is from the 14th century.
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So what does that mean? That means it is absent from, you know, those 5,000 manuscripts we talked about.
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Most of those come from anywhere from the 1st century, or rather 2nd century, all the way to the 15th century, right? The vast majority of those manuscripts do not contain 1 John 5-7 as read in the King James.
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When Desiderius Erasmus published his first edition of the Textus Receptus, remember that was the first printed edition of the Greek Bible, he argued that 1 John 5-7 as written in the King James, which would come later obviously, but 1 John 5-7 in those words should not be a part because it was not a part of the manuscripts he had.
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Why then was it argued for its inclusion? Because it was in the Latin Vulgate.
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The Latin Vulgate was written in the 4th century by Jerome.
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I don't believe Jerome added it, but whatever Jerome was working from had it included.
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But whatever manuscript it had no longer exists in the sense that we don't have whatever he was working from.
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But here's the point.
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1 John 5-7 is in the Latin.
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We don't know that it was in what Jerome wrote either because again we have copies of that as well.
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Whether it was added in the Vulgate or not, we don't know.
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But the point of the matter is this.
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It is not in any Greek manuscript prior to the 14th century written that way.
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So if it is to be included, that would mean that an entire sentence could be left out for 1,400 years and make its way back in and be correct and we would not know it.
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That's a huge question.
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That's a huge issue.
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I don't think it should be included and if you notice in your ESV it's not even mentioned as a textual variant because it is so well documented that it should not be there.
31:34
The only people who argue for the inclusion of 1 John 5-7 are people who have a prior commitment to the King James Bible.
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It does not have historical foundation.
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And I've read what you gave me.
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I have and I know Dr.
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Morris would disagree with me on this.
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But I'll say this about that.
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His only position going back is outside of the Greek manuscript tradition.
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Not within the Greek manuscript tradition.
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I'm just saying.
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It's on the Latin.
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It's in the Latin.
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I don't disagree that it's in the Latin.
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But it's not in the Greek.
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And it's not found until the 14th century in the Greek.
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That's huge.
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That's a huge issue.
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And they found it supposedly from an earlier manuscript? Here's the other argument.
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I didn't want to really get into this but good question so I'll get into it.
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When Erasmus argued that he would not put it in his without a Greek manuscript that supported it.
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A Greek manuscript magically appeared that supported it.
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And the argument is that it was produced for that reason.
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How do we talk? Look, see it can't be accurate.
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This is wrong.
33:02
Well that's what we've been talking about this whole time.
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I mean we have to be able to address these issues intellectually and be able to address with people the fact that this particular variant though it's in the King James Bible is not something that we would stand behind.
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And that's why I don't use the King James Bible.
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It's not the only reason but it's why I would say that I don't believe that the King James Bible is completely without error.
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There's errors all over the place.
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No there's not errors all over the place.
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The difference between someone who's saying there's errors all over the place and the difference between this is we can point to this and say yes our scholars have dealt with this.
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We know that this was a question.
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This has been a question since the time of Erasmus and even Erasmus didn't believe that it has a political influence but I don't agree that it should be there.
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Most scholars don't agree that it should be in there and the people that are producing the newer translations don't even put a note saying it should be in there.
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That kind of wraps it up.
34:03
It was kind of all over the place.
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I have no idea how I would even.
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Yeah I would look at it from.
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Let me read.
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I'll read you just a little help on this.
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Many a Greek father would have loved such a reading.
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This is reading from my notes.
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Many a Greek father would have loved such a reading as this for it succinctly affirms the doctrine of the Trinity.
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By the way we all know that there was a little thing gathering in 325 called the Council of Nicaea.
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The Council of Nicaea gathered for what purpose? To argue for the deity of Christ.
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And they were arguing about the doctrine of the Trinity.
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You realize in all of the documents from the Council of Nicaea not once did anybody quote 1 John 5-7 to support the Trinity.
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Had it been part of the manuscript tradition don't you think this would have been the first verse that they would use to support the doctrine of the Trinity That's huge right? I mean that's a big matzah ball hanging out there.
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But I'm going to go on and read because it says the reading seems to have arisen in a 4th century Latin homily in which the text was allegorized to refer to the members of the Trinity.
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Because if you go on to read verse 8 it does mention three bearing witness.
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Right? And it does seem like that would reference the Trinity if you were using it allegorically.
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The Trinitarian formula known as the Commiohonium made its way into the 3rd edition of Erasmus' New Testament 1522 after his first edition appeared there arose such a fervor over the absence of the comma that Erasmus needed to defend himself.
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Why? Because for a thousand years the church had used the Latin.
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For a thousand years the Latin was the Bible of the church.
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And here he's produced a text that doesn't have one of the most precious verses from the Latin in the Greek and so he's pressured by the church to re-include it.
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But it wasn't until his 3rd edition that it was actually included.
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And again the codex that was produced remember I said one magically appeared it's codex 61 written 1520 right around the same time as all this was happening.
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How about the Latin Vulgate? When was that first? Latin Vulgate in mid 300's 4th century by Jerome.
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So he translated from Greek into the Latin? That was the Latin? Yes, in fact the Latin Vulgate would have come from the Hebrew text and the Greek text so it would have been Hebrew in the Old Testament and Greek in the New Testament.
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So no Latin Vulgate in Nicaea? No, because it would have predated Nicaea would have predated the Vulgate.
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So basically you completely discount the Latin even though it was based apparently on Jerome? No, I believe the Latin is what was introduced.
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I believe it was introduced as a homily as I said before as an allegory Remember I don't know if you've been here for all these lessons but I talked about the fact that textual notes made their way into the text itself.
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This is why we have John 5 John chapter 5 verse 4 which is you have what version do you have Nathan? I have the NKJV.
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No, don't use that one.
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It's okay.
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It wouldn't help It wouldn't help with the KJV.
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What version do you have Donna? I have You have the ESV? Well, pull up the ESV John 5 4.
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And there isn't one.
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There's an entire verse that's not in the Gospel of John because it's not found in the early manuscripts.
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It was part of the tradition but it was not part of the actual reading and we believe that it made its way into the text through a textual note that was added later and when you get a manuscript that's handwritten and you can't tell the difference between the notes and the actual script you include everything in your next copy because you don't want anything left out and that's how textual notes make their way into the manuscript itself and thus creates a manuscript tradition based on that copy and that produces a family of manuscripts based on that and they all carry that same error and we can trace that error back to a point of origin.
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Yeah, John 5 4.
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Not there, right? What do you have? What does it say? ESV for everyone.
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You're in 1 John.
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John, the Gospel of John.
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That's okay.
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John 5 4, not 1 John 5 4.
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And verse 4.
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I thought it might have been it.
38:58
I thought you might have been in 1 John.
39:00
Yeah.
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So, again, this is where simplicity would say let's just pick a translation and go with it, right? Simplicity would say let's take the King James at face value but I hope that I have demonstrated at least in the last several lessons that that is faulty thinking because if we take okay, the King James is the superior one the King James is the best.
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I've actually been thinking about something really, really seriously.
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I did a debate a few years ago on infant baptism and I've been kind of hankering to do another debate.
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Really enjoy that.
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I would really like to find somebody to debate the subject of King James only-ism.
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The only problem is it's so fraught with emotional-ism it's hard to get somebody who would actually discuss it with any type of intellectual reasoning.
39:56
So, why is the 15th century Anglican translation that had English before it the Bishop's Bible, the Geneva Bible, the Wycliffe Bible, the Tyndale Bible all preceded the King James Bible.
40:07
Why is it that you've held to one particular translation which itself is an Anglican translation a state Bible? Why is that the one? It's a really difficult question and it's based on printed editions of the Greek not handwritten manuscripts.
40:31
The translators of the King James based their work on printed editions of the Greek Erasmus' editions, Beza's, and there was one other and I can't think of his name right now but there was a few editions that they were working from and that was where they got their information.
40:48
It is absolutely documentarily provable that Erasmus did not have the last page of the book of Revelation and that he translated back from the Latin into Greek and that's why there's at least 17 textual variants introduced in the Textus Receptus which was Erasmus' text.
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There's at least 17 textual variants introduced in Erasmus' text that don't exist anywhere else in any manuscript tradition and that's why the King James Bible has readings in the last part of Revelation that is not found in any other Bible.
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It's absolutely true and I'm not making this up.
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It's just there.
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Well God used it for 350 years.
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How can we not trust it? God used the Vulgate for 1,000 years.
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Should we still be using it? It's the same argument.
41:41
So again, I'm out of time.
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Of course.
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This issue is one that is fraught with emotionalism.
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It shouldn't be.
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We should come at this in a sense of faith and kindness and love and brotherhood and we should want to know the truth.
42:00
I want to know what the Bible says as Paul wrote it.
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I want to know what the Bible says as Matthew, Mark, and Luke wrote it.
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I don't care what Erasmus did but I care about it from a historical perspective.
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What I mean is his authority stops that far.
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He doesn't have the authority to do anything.
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There are some places where we can prove textual emendation.
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That means amendments made to the text.
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I don't want that I want to deal with it.
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So the next time we meet because we got to leave tonight.
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The next time we meet we'll look at the Priccape adultery.
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That's the story of the woman caught in adultery and the longer ending of Mark.
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And by the way, how many of you have ever heard of snake handling? Do you know where that comes from in your Bible? Well, you can argue Acts where he got bit by the snake and he was being injured by it and it's in the longer ending of Mark a spurious text.
43:07
If there's any text in the Bible that I could argue to the hilt should not be there it's the longer ending of Mark and that includes the snake handling.
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All right, let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I pray that it's encouraging to all of us to study more and study just to know you better in Christ's name, amen.