The Assyrian Encyclopedia Sam Shamoun

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

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

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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll -free across the

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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now, with today's topic, here is

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James White. And good afternoon, welcome to the Dividing Line on a Thursday afternoon. Some more post -debate reports today, and I am joined in studio live, the round mound of sound, the

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Assyrian Encyclopedia, Sam Shamoun is sitting right next to me. I barely even got my stuff up for the program here because we were wandering around my library and Rich, we need to pat

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Sam down when he leaves to make sure that, especially some of my rather expensive

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Brill Islamic volumes are still where they need to be when he leaves. I'm a little worried about that.

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So Sam, thanks for being here. Well, thank you for inviting me and causing me to envy. Well, I've always said if you'd show up, you'd be envious, but that's okay.

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You're out here in Phoenix visiting family, I think? Yeah, I have family here, friends, relatives, but one of the main reasons

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I flew in is because of the debate, because it took place on my birthday. Well, and I didn't even know that. I would have brought you something, maybe brought you a book that you didn't have or something, but I didn't know it was your birthday.

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Yeah. So I'm sorry. Couldn't ask for a better gift than to see you and Brown, pretty much. Yes, yes.

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So let's tell folks about what that is because no one has seen it yet. And in fact, I received an email a little while ago that Dr.

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Michael Brown was going to be listening to the program at the beginning before we had to go to a meeting. Hey, Mike, if you want to call in and would like to join us, feel free to do so.

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If you'd like to Skype in, do we have Skype up? We have Skype up at dividing .line. Dividing .line is the address.

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So Dr. Brown, if you're not on the road or something like that, feel free to, because people actually listen to this on the road now.

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This is what's so weird. And I know how it works. I have a Droid Incredible, and I can listen to stuff while I'm...

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It's just so odd that that is now a part of our capability. But the debate took place on Tuesday evening, and it took place in really nice studios of the

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Jewish Voice Broadcast. I have been told that those, that'll be two episodes.

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They'll divide into two episodes and that those will air in early November. So if...

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My hope is, obviously, even after it airs, that we'll be able to get hold of DVDs of it, because I would assume that they'll make

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DVDs available. Beautiful facilities. Obviously, you can't have a huge studio audience, but they had...

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We had a good crowd there. We had a good crowd there. And even despite how hot it is, I mean, it's still an oven here in Phoenix.

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For you, being an Assyrian, you all don't care about things like that. But we're still talking 106, 107 degrees out here right now, while the rest of you are already starting to button up and wear your jackets and things like that.

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But anyways, we got started around 6 o 'clock, went from 6 to a little bit after 9 .30,

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I think it was. I got home right around 10, which, man, I'll tell you, it's awful nice to do debates in Phoenix.

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Get home, get to sleep in your own bed. I think it's about the... We did two debates in Phoenix back in December of 1990.

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One at Northwest Community Church with Jerry Matatyik.

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Scott Hahn was in the audience. And then the next night at the City of the

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Lord Catholic Community out near ASU. And Scott Hahn moderated that one.

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And that's where Scott Hahn did his meltdown thing. That was very interesting. You've never heard my story about the Scott Hahn? No, I'd like to hear it. Really? Oh, remind me of that, because that's a fascinating story.

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But those were December 90s. That was within three months of the first debates that I did. So anyway,

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I teamed up with Dr. Michael Brown. The very Michael Brown that was on this program only a number of months ago.

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He and I debating the subject of Reformed Theology. And he is a good Arminian.

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I should call him a synergist, primarily. And he gave his reasons.

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And we went at it, and went at it fairly strongly. But in, I think, a way that demonstrated to people that you can debate that subject without ripping each other's lips off.

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And so when I was called and was invited by Jewish Voice to do this,

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I looked at the schedule and I realized, oh my goodness, that's only two days after I get back from debating

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Robert Syngenis twice in Santa Fe. That's not the wisest thing to do, given the range of topics.

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I mean, your preparation time is almost non -existent. But, as Sam knows, in fact,

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I don't think you are the one that mentioned this, but you are obviously involved in my getting involved with Shabir Ali. I first heard, it was the first time you had heard of Anthony Buzzard was when he debated

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Shabir Ali. Yeah, same with me. And I remember coming on The Dividing Line shortly after that and addressing his

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Psalm 110 argument. Because it just seems so bogus to me, and it seems even more bogus to me now.

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But did you like his reaction when I pulled up my iPad? Yeah, I was... And I had put...

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Now Sam, as everybody knows, Sam was in the studio audience, and you were pretty much straight across from me, even though I couldn't see you most of the time because you were behind the camera.

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So that's why I leaned over, so I could see your gleaming head back there in the back row. But I put one of the

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Qumran cave scrolls, I have in my Accordance software, the high quality, and again, thanks to whoever made that possible for me to get that,

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I have very high quality pictures of the Isaiah scroll. And I looked up a specific use of Adonai in Isaiah.

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So I made sure it was right there, I could point to it. And then I put it on my iPad, and I turned it sideways, and it blew it up to its full size, and I could hold that out to him and say,

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There's Adonai, but there's no vowel pointing here. So there would be absolutely no difference between Adonai and Adonii.

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That's a later commentary that is put in. And he even commented after the debate, he said,

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I want to look at that thing you had there. So it was really neat to have that stuff there.

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But Michael Brown sat next to... Obviously, Michael Brown and I sat on one side of this...

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I don't know, what shape was that table? Sort of triangular, but sort of cut off the top. Jonathan Bernis, the head of Jewish Voice, did the moderating, did a very good job.

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And then we had Sir Anthony Buzzard, from the Atlanta Bible College, taught there for 24 years.

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And then we had Joseph Good. Had you ever heard of Joseph Good before? Never. I actually thought he was a Jewish believer, but it turned out he's a

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Gentile. Yes, he is. Fascinated with Judaism. Yes, yes. Never heard of him. He had been in the

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Messianic movement stuff, and then went off into denying the deity of Christ and the doctrine of the

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Trinity. And so they sat directly across from us. And it was a three -part debate.

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The first part was the longest. We took a break right afterwards. We had two -minute opening statements each.

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I went last. Then we had questions that Jonathan would ask each side.

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The side that was asked the question would have two minutes. The other side would have 90 seconds, then 90 seconds, then 90 seconds.

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Exactly. Now, there's no question about the fact that Michael and I had one clear and distinct advantage.

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Michael does a daily radio program. He may be going on an even larger audience in the future, which is a larger radio network.

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I'm not sure. But if you heard when

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I was on his program, he has a lot of breaks. He has network breaks because he's on more than one radio station.

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We have network breaks. You have to get done at a certain time. Those are called hard breaks. I've done radio for years.

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We don't have that problem with the dividing line. It just makes it a whole lot easier to do. But I've done a lot of radio.

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I've done television, stuff like that. So he and I have a lot of experience that neither of our opponents did.

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And so the idea of how long two minutes is, how to prioritize what you need to say, which to me is the most exhausting thing in a debate, is you're never going to get to everything your opponent says because you can state error far faster than you can refute error.

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Now you've seen this on being on ABN and stuff like that. When you've got a caller or something like that, you have to prioritize what you're going to be addressing.

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And people will disagree with the decisions you make, but they're not sitting in your shoes, looking at the camera or anything like that.

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So the first section, I thought, really laid out the issues very, very clearly. Then we took a break, and the second section was...

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Questions that you had for each other, right? I remember that... I thought the first section, we asked those.

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The second section was, I think, from Jonathan. I think that Jonathan asked...

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No, no, it was the audience. That was the third section. Third section was audience questions. Second was questions that you guys had prepared for each other, from what

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I recall. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, because in the first section, you had opening statements, and then

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I don't know who was asking you questions. Was that from Jonathan? No, I think those questions, actually, we had come up with those questions.

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Yes, you're right. And then I think Jonathan and the staff came up with the questions in the second part.

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And then the audience was audience questions. And you got to ask one of the audience questions. Yeah. What was your audience question?

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Do you remember? Because I watched you. You didn't even look down at your card when you gave the question.

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You saw that, huh? I saw that. So you obviously had it pretty much memorized. What was your audience question? Pastor Joseph brought this up, and Unitarians bring this up all the time, ad nauseam, ad infinitum.

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The concept of agency, shalach. In response to the case you're making for the

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Deity of Christ, which was... Now mention what shalach is. Shalach basically is the Hebrew word from... Shalach, does it?

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...apostle. Right. It would be in Greek, apostolos. But their whole argument was, and by the way,

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I have to say, although obviously I'm biased, I'm a Trinitarian, it was a landslide victory. These guys didn't know what hit them.

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In fact, at the end of the debate, I really felt sorry for them. And I'm being honest. I'm not saying this like, oh yeah, because I wanted my guys to win.

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Obviously, you had the truth on your side, by the grace of God, but boy, they took a beating. But I don't think we were mean.

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No, you guys were fantastic. In fact, they were fantastic as well. They were very respectful and cordial. Yeah, they were. Very respectful debate.

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There was respect on all sides. But you guys were very passionate, and you just hammered your points, and refuted everything they had to say.

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And they really didn't have any response, apart from saying, Anthony Buzzer kept harping, well, there's only one Yahweh, one

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Yahweh, and 7 ,000 singular pronouns. And then Pastor Joseph kept saying, well, the reason why

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Jesus could be called God and worshipped is because he's God's supreme agent, invested with the authority of Yahweh, and therefore can be worshipped in a relative sense.

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And my question basically was this. The apostles were also God's agents, weren't they?

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Jesus' agents, he receives, he receives me. But that didn't give them the right to go around saying that they were

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Jesus Christ, right? Peter can come up and say, hey, I'm Jesus Christ, worship me. So how does that account for the fact that Jesus is called

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God, is worshipped as God, and he accepts it? I mean, no agent can do that, can they? And so I really didn't understand his response, to be honest.

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His response really wandered around, and it seemed like at the very end, he tried to get back to the question a little bit.

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But it did not seem like he really responded to what you were saying, other than to go back to the second king's passage and say, well, you know, the king accepted the worship of the people and stuff like that.

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And we had already dealt with this by going to the text and saying, look, look at all these texts.

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Is this a representative, or are people saying about Jesus the Hebrews 1 text?

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Did you notice, however, and I hope everyone who's listening, and if you'd like to call in, if you've got some questions for the

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Assyrian Encyclopedia and myself, 877 -753 -3341, dividing dot line is the

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Skype address, 877 -753 -3341. You've seen Sam on ABN numerous times.

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In fact, Sam and I were just talking about the fact that we both called in on the discussion of the Quran burning situation.

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Was that the week before last? It was September the 8th, I believe. Okay, all right. So it wasn't very long ago.

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It was a week ago. And we both called in on that. So you've seen Sam. The last time that I was on ABN, Sam was on with me.

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I have learned so much from Sam, and I hope Sam's learned a little something from me down the years. Tons from you,

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Dr. Wright, tons. So we've demonstrated the fact that two very different kinds of people can be united in the bonds of Christ and in the ministry.

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And I know that the Shabir Ali debate at Biola never would have gone the way that it did had it not been for Sam Shamoon's assistance in my preparation and things like that.

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And for those of you who are thankful that we are addressing Islam, and for those of you who are not, you can both blame

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Sam. Some to the positive and some to the negative. But did you notice, we're sitting here talking,

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I hope you're finding interesting to listen to two apologists discussing a recent debate. Did you notice, and Michael and I were talking about this in email, you listened to, we are having a, oh, we are having a break today?

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Oh, okay, all right. Well, I'll try to keep my eyes on that, but if I skip it, you know, it's life. We're so professional here that I talk with Rich, but hey,

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Rush does it, so I can do it too. You heard, I know you heard my discussion with Sir Anthony Buzzard on the

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Unbelievable Radio Program with Justin Brierley, because I remember I got some emails from you. Yeah, I was trying to re -hear it today again. Oh, okay, right.

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And we got into Hebrews chapter 1, verses 10 through 12,

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Psalm 102, and his very unique attempt to get around that passage that identifies

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Jesus as Yahweh, basically by going to the Greek Septuagint and saying there's a change in address here and the creation, and he did at least once say this,

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I caught it, I'm not sure if anybody else caught it, in stating, when we were looking at Hebrews 1, he was saying that Jesus' creative work is the second creation, it's all redemptive, it has nothing to do with Genesis 1, 1, etc.,

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etc., which, I don't know, has some echoes of some other Arians that have attempted to deny the deity of Christ too, but anyway, he has a very complicated, he didn't even try to bring it up, and I don't know how many times both

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Michael and I referred to Hebrews chapter 1, and I know I read it, he did not even attempt to do it.

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He didn't interact with it at all. And Michael and I were both wondering, does he just realize that that's impossible to try to even explain to an audience in a brief period of time, because I've listened to his

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MP3 on it, and it takes him forever to get around to explaining it, maybe he just feels like it's just too complicated to even try, or both he and I, both

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Michael and I, in correspondence with him or on the Unbeliever Raider program, just said, look, even

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Bruce doesn't take it the way that you're taking it, there's just no way to do that, and we're just sort of wondering, has he given up on that?

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I don't know, but they just, they let most of the Yahweh passages just pass by with the, well,

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Shaleach representative, but you can't do that in John 12, you can't do that in Hebrews 1, it's impossible.

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Exactly. I did talk to Sir Anthony afterwards. I heard that. I heard this loud voice, but wait a minute, what are you doing?

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I said, oh, Sam's talking to Sir Anthony. One thing he did say is that he wished there was much more time to deal with the issues, it was too brief, they didn't have -

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That's television. That's how it is. So then that's when I said, okay, well, why don't you debate Dr. White? Which I had actually talked to him about that in the green room beforehand.

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Did he agree? Oh, yes. Oh, glory to God, that's going to be great. I'll fly out for that one. He actually gave me a name of a student if I was talking about like five or six years down the road, because he's 70 some odd years old now.

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But I said, no, we're talking about, and I told him, I said, there is a large church in Atlanta that has already told

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Michael Brown that they will sponsor a debate between me and Michael on the doctrines of grace, on Calvinism.

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And we had said on the radio programs, this is great, but what we really need to do is a much fuller debate.

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And of course, from my perspective, we've got to start where I believe

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Michael's position is the most vulnerable. And that's start at the beginning. And that is, does God have a sovereign decree that determines events in time or not?

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I think in my experience in listening to our debates, that was where I think his thinking is not firmly solidified.

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And so I think that's where we start. But then we can draw the subjects beyond that. But hopefully the same church would then likewise have a debate with Sir Anthony.

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So it would be interesting to Michael and I against one another, but then Michael would be on my side, though he wouldn't necessarily be involved in the debate, to myself and Sir Anthony.

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So I don't know when that will happen, probably sometime next year. Dr. Wright, you alluded to Psalm 110 in the beginning, but just in case maybe some of the people listening don't understand, maybe you can briefly describe what is

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Sir Anthony's position concerning Psalm 110 .1 and how the Dead Sea Scrolls and the evidence that you presented shuts that down.

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Yeah, you know, I played some sections on the DL. I know that in the past I've played his comments with Shabir Ali.

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But Yahweh says to my Lord, so this is Naum Yahweh La 'adani in the

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Masoretic Greek text. Yahweh says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool, which of course is quoted over and over in the

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New Testament in different contexts. The Psalm 110 is extremely important because it's also where you get the

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Melchizedek priesthood issues that Hebrews picks up on. So it's extremely important in the

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New Testament and I think he agreed with me when I asked him this.

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I said, it is my understanding, Sir Anthony, that in every single presentation on your website, whether he's talking about John 1 .1,

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whether he's talking about Hebrews chapter 1, three what's, one who, or three who's, one what, whatever, and I've downloaded all of those and listened to them many times, it seems to me that in every single presentation he brought up Psalm 110.

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And a couple days ago I was writing and I was listening to his debate with Fred Sanders and he specifically made the statement,

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I didn't read it, I had it on my iPad, I should have brought my iPad in here, but he had a specific statement where he said, this

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Psalm, Psalm 110, should govern our entire interpretation of the

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New Testament. That tells you, that's an overarching text in his understanding.

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And he goes after the common

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Christian understanding and in fact, I guess there is a note in the

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New American Standard in Matthew 22, I believe, when this text is cited, that gives as the reading,

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Adonai. And his whole point is that in the

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Hebrew Masoretic text, and let's make sure everybody understands what the Hebrew Masoretic text is, the

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Masoretes, and there's a lot of people that are confused about this, the Masoretes were not around in the days of Jesus.

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The Masoretes flourished about 900 years after the time of Christ. And they inserted the vowel pointing into the text and solidified the text because Hebrew at that time just as the original, the

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Quranic Arabic, did not have vowel pointing in it originally. And once a text sort of comes into use and there is a desire to standardize its pronunciation, then vowel pointing is added in.

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Now you know that that is a controversial issue in regards to how that happened with the Quranic text.

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Both Arabic and Hebrew are Semitic texts and that means that they are consonantal languages in the written form.

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That is, you don't, you have vowel letters but you do not have a specific vowel pointing originally.

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And that's why I showed the Isaiah, the Qumran scroll because very clearly it is a non -pointed

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Hebrew text. This is not actually arguable. And Sir Anthony has never argued, he's never argued that the text was pointed at the time of Jesus.

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You may have noticed what he was trying to get me to say was that it's, that it's pointed wrongly. And what

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I said was, what I said was it is pointed as a commentary. That was excellent.

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And so, long after the time of Christ these vowel points were put in, the consonants for Adonai, which in his understanding is

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Yahweh, my Lord, the deity, over against Adonai, which is only used 195 times of human people, of human persons, never of deity.

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His whole part, his whole argument is it's Adonai, it's not Adonai, and therefore

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Jesus cannot possibly be God. That is the Masoretic interpretation, and I can guarantee you one thing, we can prove by the second century that the

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Jews were already well aware of the Christian utilization of Psalm 110. And so, all this vowel pointing is is a commentary on the part of Jews hundreds of years after the time of Christ that we don't believe in the deity of Christ.

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Well, that's not exactly an earth -shattering revelation. But, of course, the vast majority, sadly, the vast majority even of seminary graduates who skipped

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Hebrew, or slept through Hebrew, or, as they did in some situations, I know some seminaries that offer

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Hebrew in 13 days. And when you try to learn a language in 13 days, all you learn to do is hate it, not to read it.

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I can assure you of that. The vast majority of evangelicals are just going to be sitting there sucking their thumb when

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Sir Anthony gives that presentation. They have no way of checking that kind of thing out. But it is not a meaningful argument.

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But then, as you and I discussed, even before I was on with Sir Anthony in England, he made the argument.

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And at the time, I didn't understand what his argument was on Unbelievable. It was not clear when we were discussing it at that time on Justin Brarley's show.

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And he didn't try to make the argument, I think, because I shut it down before he could get to it during the debate.

24:27

But he did seem to indicate back in February, in London, that the

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Greek Septuagint makes a differentiation in its rendering of Adonai versus Adonai.

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Did he say, Tuesday night, that Hakuriasmu is never used of Adonai?

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I know that he was arguing that Adonai, that the Greek bears witness to the fact that there's a distinction because Adonai, when it's translated in the

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Septuagint, is Kiriasmu. Whereas Adonai is simply Kirias. That was his argument. And in his published work, that's what he defends.

25:05

But that's not true. Exactly. Psalm 3523 and Psalm 162 both indicate that there would be no, there's no indication on the part of the

25:15

Septuagint that there is a recognition of the differentiation of Adonai and Adonai. And maybe it's because I brought that up and he didn't want to either try to respond to it or just wasn't aware of it.

25:27

I'm not sure how he could not be aware of it. One thing he did say, he goes, oh those are just rare exceptions in the debate.

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When you brought up Psalm 3523 and 162, which in the Septuagint, it's 34, 23, and 53.

25:39

Right. He goes, oh those are rare exceptions. Except there's only a certain number of occurrences in these words.

25:45

What do you mean rare exceptions? In fact, what I love about Psalm 3523 is it's ha -thay -ah -s'mu ka -hi -ha -kod -ee -ah -s'mu, which is the exact same language but reversed from what

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Thomas says, my Lord and my God, in John 20, 28. Yeah. And I was looking right at him because it was interesting.

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You probably saw this. In the first half of the debate, they wanted us, as we were giving our opening statements and answering the questions, to look at the cameras rather than at the other participants.

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Yeah, I remember that. Then after the break, they wanted us looking at each other. And that came up in the second half of the debate.

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So I was looking right at him when I was talking about Psalm 35 and Psalm 16.

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And there was sort of a look in his eyes of where am I going to go now? You know. But it is interesting to hear him utilizing terms.

26:33

I wish I could remember the exact, maybe you'll remember the exact term he used when

26:38

I brought up Hebrews 1 .10 on Unbelievable. He didn't say this weird text or this,

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I don't think he said queer text. Remember, he is British so the words wouldn't have the same meaning, you know, unnecessarily, even though he's lived over here for many years.

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But do you remember what it was? Well, I wasn't there but was it peculiar? It might have been peculiar.

27:01

Yeah, that might be it. But he used a particular, maybe that's where the kuh sound came from,

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I don't know. But he basically dismissed Hebrews 1 .10 as an odd, strange, you know, type of thing.

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And I'm sorry, when it's smack dab in the middle of a rather clear argument where he himself, did you notice?

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He admits that one of the two places Jesus is called the Aus, or God, is

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Hebrews 1 .8. So, how in the world could 1 .10 through 12 in reference to Yahweh be unnecessary and unusual?

27:36

I don't know. But it was quite interesting. One of the arguments he brought up, maybe, and you shut it down very well, he says, well,

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Hebrews 1 .2 clearly denies the pre -human existence of Christ because he says that in previous times

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God spoke through the prophets various ways but in these last days he spoke through a son or through his son therefore the son could not have existed prior to his conception in Mary's womb, ignoring what follows after.

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Well, not only that, but it just struck me as such a massively strained reading of the text that it was,

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I wasn't trying to slam anybody but the only, and that's one of the problems, maybe, you know, you were saying you were feeling sorry for him by the end of the time but when you make a really bad argument when you are corrected on that argument it sounds like the people correcting you are being mean to you when that really isn't the case.

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I mean, look at our educational system today, you know, when some kid says two plus two equals five now our poor teachers are told to be very gentle in not correcting but suggesting another answer.

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Man, when we were in school they said now you idiot and moved on from there and we all seemed to survive it and all was well but maybe that did have something to do with why you were feeling sorry for him but I was pretty impressed by how many times

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Michael Brown who is such a nice guy would just look across at these guys and say you just blew that I am absolutely disappointed that was the most pathetic response it was just like ba -dum -boom bing you know and I think because he's been on Jewish Voice before and has a connection there you know

29:23

I think he felt very free at that point but I was sitting next to him going ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo

36:14

Hello. Thanks for taking my calls, sir. Well, I sort of have to, because you write on the blog all the time, and so I have to sort of take your calls.

36:23

You're not quite right, actually. I am not the same Jamin. Really?

36:28

I know that Jamin, we're actually distant cousins, but I think I get to claim the name because I was born a couple years earlier.

36:35

Okay, but does that mean that everyone in South Dakota is actually in the same family? No. Okay, that would be very frightening.

36:43

I don't know, but... Well, I'm sorry that I confused you with our

36:48

Jamin that we know as Slam -Baman, but anyways, you're now the second person that I've met that has the name

36:55

Jamin, so... Well, there you go. Okay, what can we do for you? Well, I'm personally, wouldn't call myself an apologist of any color, and was having a conversation with a friend of mine who referred to, you know, of course, some typical arguments about the

37:11

Bible being unfaithful, but referred specifically to Marcus Borg's book, The First Paul, and saying that the more conservative letters of Paul were unauthentic.

37:21

And having seen that you've debated Mr. Borg in the past, I was wondering if you could help kind of help me understand what his arguments are, and I might respond to this gentleman.

37:30

Oh, all right, well, of the making of books about Paul that seek to make him something other than his own writings would reveal him to be, there is no end.

37:45

My shelves have many such books, unfortunately, sitting upon them.

37:50

And you need to understand that the vast majority of these come from a perspective that says we don't really have to take seriously any type of effort to harmonize

38:02

Paul's own statements. We can assert that he contradicted himself, that he certainly,

38:08

Marcus, would not start with the assumption that this is Scripture in the sense you and I would understand

38:14

Scripture. Have you heard the debate we have available on our website, Dr.

38:20

James Ranahan and myself against Dominic Carson and Marcus Borg? I have not listened through the debate.

38:25

I just fell across it today. Okay, I would get it and realize that it took

38:32

Dr. Ranahan and I a solid 45 minutes or so to get through to Dr.

38:39

Borg what we were saying about the Resurrection, and his response was, well, wow, if you believe that about the

38:47

Resurrection, you must think we are really off base. And it's like, yes, we got through!

38:54

But Marcus Borg takes more of a spiritualistic view of things.

39:00

He certainly has a completely unorthodox view of what Scripture is.

39:05

And so the approach is you look at Paul's letters and you sort of get to pick and choose which ones you're going to actually believe are

39:14

Pauline and which ones are not. And see, this is the big thing today is that if you want to get published in a scholarly field, what you do is you come up with a new theory about which letters are

39:24

Pauline and which ones are not. That allows you to sort of form what's called the Pauline corpus into something you can then insert a new theory into.

39:35

And that allows you to get rid of contradictory statements from other writings of Paul. And it's really very, very popular, but I think it's completely bogus.

39:46

There is absolutely no reason that I can see whatsoever to reject any of the books that are attributed to the

39:54

Apostle Paul as being first century. When you listen to people like Ehrman and others give their reasons for that, they're all circular, they're all based upon saying, well,

40:02

I think the early Church looked like this, and therefore the pastoral epistles could not have been around at this time or whatever else.

40:13

And it's like coming up with your conclusion and then just editing out everything that contradicts your conclusion from what you allegedly derived it from.

40:27

And that's not how you do serious scholarship. And as popular as it is, I think it's horrible historiography.

40:34

Did you want to add something? I wanted to ask, who's the gentleman that brought up this objection from Marcus Bork? What was his worldview?

40:40

Was he a Muslim? Was he a Mormon? Because he said that he's doing some apologetics and he was discussing with someone.

40:46

What is that gentleman's worldview? Was he a Muslim background or what is it? Basically, I don't know real particularly, but as much as I can tell, basically just kind of an average postmodern, he was a college student.

41:00

And really just, I think, looking for an excuse not to deal with the

41:05

Bible more than anything else. Well, yeah, and unfortunately there are a vast number of books that are published that are specifically designed to give you reasons to disbelieve.

41:14

And of course it may be the only thing he's been exposed to. It may have been a textbook that he had in a class or something like that.

41:20

And it's improbable that he would have been exposed to any type of conservative defense of, for example, the

41:28

Pauline authorship of the pastoral epistles or anything else. And you can find stuff like that, but you normally have to dig.

41:35

You know, Hendrickson's commentaries on the pastorals have excellent stuff.

41:41

But a lot of these commentaries are just not the type of things that people are going to be encountering on a regular basis.

41:47

And so, you know, my daughter encountered the same thing when she went to Glendale Community College. There's all sorts of these professors out there that will expose their students to one side, but they won't expose them to the other side.

41:59

They'll only give them the one perspective. So it really does come down to understanding, basically, the

42:07

Ponzi scheme that is behind the type of argumentation where you basically say, you come up with your theory of who

42:15

Paul was, and then you edit his writings to fit your theory of Paul. And that's simply not how you do it.

42:23

The reason Christians believe Paul taught the things he did is you start with the Pauline epistles and you derive your beliefs from there, not the other way around.

42:30

It's a circular way of reasoning. Great. Well, thanks for taking the call. Okay, thank you very much.

42:35

And if you ever run into the other Jamin, say hi for us. We will do. Okay, thanks a lot.

42:40

God bless. Bye -bye. Bye. When I saw Jamin in South Dakota, I just assumed, what can

42:50

I say? Now, I can guarantee that our next caller, I know who it is, because there is only one

42:58

Turretin fan in the entirety of the world. And he is calling from Geneva.

43:03

And you put the two together, and we know we've got the right Turretin fan, right? This isn't the cousin of Turretin.

43:10

This is the real Turretin fan. Right, Turretin fan? That's right, although I have been accused of being a panel of people before.

43:17

Oh, you're a panel of people. Oh, okay. All kinds of crazy things are circulating about me out there.

43:23

Well, actually, I can understand that because I've sort of wondered if you're a panel of people because you produce so much stuff that is so researched so fast that I've sort of wondered a few times if you're not a panel of Turretin fans.

43:40

Well, if there's any soulless Turretin fan, I've been accused of being shaped like a panel of people. I feel your pain.

43:50

Very nice. The reason for my call is that I have perhaps an unhealthy interest in the vowel pointing of the

43:57

Old Testament Hebrew. I think you do have an unhealthy interest because of being a fan of Turretin.

44:03

But please go ahead. Yes, and maybe we don't need to go into all of that rationale, but what interests me is that from what

44:12

I understood, one of the arguments that was used was that a particular Hebrew word was vowel pointed in a way to distinguish between the word for Lord, meaning the

44:24

Lord God, and Lord meaning just a human being. Right. That argument, or that differentiation in vowel pointing, seems to be a similar technique to the technique of substituting that word,

44:42

Adonai, for the Tetragrammaton. And I'm wondering if he brought out any evidence or any proof that this vowel pointing, this differentiation in the vowel pointing, goes back any farther than 900

44:58

AD. No, he didn't, and that's why I had put the Qumran Isaiah scroll, which has no vowel pointing in it, on my iPad to show it to him, because he did not make that attempt, and I don't believe that he argues that you can demonstrate any vowel pointing at that time.

45:17

Now, I should note, interestingly enough, Turjan Van, because you and I discussed this in the chat channel, oh,

45:22

I don't know, back in January or February, Michael Brown made the very same points that you did when it first came up.

45:31

He let me deal with the Greek Septuagint aspect and the vowel pointing aspect, but then he made the point that even if you accept the

45:40

Adonai vowel pointing, that it does not follow that you can dismiss the utilization of this text in Matthew 22 -43, because specifically what is being said in that text is that this is

45:55

David's Lord, and that this would be in a messianic or kingly context, which would fit

46:00

Adonai just fine. No one's trying to assert that Psalm 110 -1, in and of itself, somehow proves the deity of Christ in the sense of identifying him as Yahweh or anything else.

46:11

My concern from the beginning has been that Sir Anthony is the one going way beyond what the

46:18

Hebrew will allow in not only just simply saying, well, see, there's a differentiation here that wouldn't necessarily support the deity of Christ.

46:26

That's not what he's saying. What he's saying is because it is vowel pointed, Adonai, Jesus cannot possibly be

46:33

God, period, end of discussion. And this becomes, from his perspective, the governing text for reading the entirety of the

46:43

New Testament itself. And so it was that massive imbalance. But I remember you yourself in channel had said, well, the use of Matthew 22 -43.

46:51

Is it Matthew 22 -43? I'm doing this off the top of my head. Is that a 34, a 1, a 2? No, it's a 43. Is not trying to assert the deity of Christ in the sense of identification with Yahweh, because it's

47:05

Yahweh speaking to Adonai. But the point is, how can David call him Lord if he is what the

47:13

Jews understand to say? So Michael Brown brought up that point. But he never addressed that. No, he didn't. I was trying to listen to his response to Michael Brown's point, and there was silence.

47:21

I didn't hear any response to that. No, he didn't. And no one can say it was because they didn't have time to.

47:26

Because there were, as you remember, there were a couple times where Jonathan turned to them and said, Do you have any?

47:32

And they just looked at each other, and we moved on from there. And then I guess the follow -up question would be, did he bring up any evidence of the textual transmission of that particular vowel point?

47:45

In other words, did he say that all the manuscripts that we have that are vowel -pointed have the same vowel pointing on them?

47:53

Are you aware of a variant at Psalm 110 .1 in vowel pointing,

47:59

Turretin Fan? No, I'm not. I'm not either. But my reason for asking is, it seems like there's a number of hoops you have to jump through before you can even get to, even assuming there was some kind of oral carrying on of vowel points, and even assuming the vowel points or the power of them is inspired, you'd still have to kind of show that this isn't just a single -letter transmission error, or not even a whole letter, just a vowel point transmission, which would be such a tiny hook on which to hang such a weighty argument that this can't be.

48:34

Except he does it in all of his presentations. He knows exactly how many times Adonai is used, exactly how many times

48:41

Adonai is used. And look, let's face it, for the vast majority of people with whom he would have a dialogue, that's enough.

48:49

They're not going to challenge it. They wouldn't know the difference, they don't know the languages, and they certainly don't know the history of vowel pointing, let alone knowing that the

48:56

Hebrew text that exists in the days of Jesus was not vowel pointed. And I just want to add something for Turretin fan. You heard

49:01

Dr. White elaborate on this. He does try to appeal to the Greek version to substantiate that the vowel pointing is accurate, and therefore should be

49:09

Adonai. He says that in Psalm 110 .1, if you look at it in the Greek, Septuagint, as well as in the

49:14

New Testament, because it's in Greek, it's Kyriasmou. And he says Kyriasmou is the normal way of rendering

49:21

Adonai, not Adonai. So he tries to use even the Greek to show that the vowel pointing is correct, therefore should be

49:27

Adonai. Except we then demonstrated that that is not the case, because Psalm 35 .23

49:34

has Adonai, and it's rendered as Hathaiasmou Kai Hakuriasmou, which of course is the same language that Thomas uses in John 20 .28.

49:45

That's amazing. And I suppose there's no difference on that between the other versions, like Aquila's version or anything else.

49:54

I'm not aware of any variation whatsoever as far as the translation of Adonai and Adonai when it, in the

50:03

Greek Septuagint, in the Psalter, is Hakuriasmou. Or actually, for specificity's case, it is in the dative in Psalm 110, so it's

50:12

To Kurioumou. But that's just simply a recognition of its grammatical function at that point.

50:19

Actually, not a direct object. Indirect object, isn't it? Indirect object, yes. Well, thanks very much for the answers.

50:25

I'm looking forward to hearing them. Oh, yeah. Well, I am really hoping, I'm trying to recollect,

50:31

I think we will be able to, at the very least, obtain

50:38

DVDs of the programs from Jewish Voice to make available through Alpha Omega. I doubt we will be able to do something like an

50:45

MP4 or an MP3, but we should be able to get DVDs. It's worth watching. It is worth watching, because the television, this was the best studio

50:55

I've ever been in. So you're probably talking high -def, really good stuff here. So now you're going to have to look at my face.

51:01

And even Sam, dressed as wonderfully well as he was, ends up on TV, too.

51:10

But it should be very useful. Okay, thank you, Tarzan fan. My pleasure.

51:16

Keep up the great work, brother. Thank you, sir. All right, bye -bye. You too. All right. 877 -753 -3341.

51:22

We've only got about seven minutes left on the program. And let's talk to Stephen in Indiana.

51:29

Hi, Stephen. Hey, how are you doing, Dr. White? Doing good. All right, I'm going to try and keep this question as simple as possible to keep it from getting incredibly complicated.

51:39

Could you expound on the textual variants of Isaiah 9 -6, if there are any, as found in the

51:46

Greek Septuagint? And are there any with the early Church Fathers? I think,

51:53

Dr. White, he's probably referring to the fact that the Septuagint doesn't read El Gibor, Mighty God, but the Angel of Great Counsel.

51:59

That's how the Greek Septuagint renders Isaiah 9 -6. And is that a reflection of a variant text?

52:05

Is that basically the gist of your question? Well, are all four titles found anywhere in the

52:11

Septuagint? Which four titles are you referring to? Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

52:17

When you go to the Septuagint, it says that the Angel of Great Counsel and God in his days shall bring peace upon the princess.

52:23

That's the reading in the Greek version. Is that a reflection of a variant text tradition in the

52:28

Hebrew? I think that's your question, right? In a nutshell, yes. Well, I'm just looking at it in the

52:36

Septuagint. I was looking around the studio here for my critical edition, and I don't have it in front of me.

52:44

And I was trying to remember. I think I might have it in Logos here, but with seven minutes, it's impossible to look that type of thing up.

52:54

I would want to look a little bit more closely at the sources that I have available to me before making any type of comment on that.

53:04

Off the top of my head, that would be very difficult. I'd want to see if there are any variations in Masoretic text whatsoever.

53:12

The Greek Septuagint itself has a fascinating textual history to it, especially anybody who's attempted to follow the

53:22

Septuagint in Jeremiah, for example, in comparison to the Hebrew Masoretic text.

53:28

There's no question, however, that the readings of Isaiah 9 -6 existed at the time of Christ, because we do have the

53:40

Isaiah scroll, and I can bring up the Isaiah scroll, and I've actually checked this exact text in the

53:46

Isaiah scroll, which predates the time of Christ. And there's no question that that's the reading of the Hebrew.

53:51

So why there is a Septuagint variation, and if there is any other streams within the

54:01

Greek Septuagint is something that I would have to look up. I do have the material to look that up, but not while sitting here without time to look at it.

54:11

I just want to add something real quick. Some people actually look at Isaiah 9 -6, the Greek version, where the child's called the angel of great counsel, as evidence that the

54:20

Jews expected this child to be the angel of Yahweh, the angel of God. Yes. So they take that as not so much evidence of a variant within the

54:30

Hebrew tradition, but as a commentary explaining what it means for the child to be the mighty God. He's a mighty

54:35

God in that he's the angel of Yahweh, who happens to be God and worshipped as God, according to that view. So it's actually an indication that the child is divine, but he's not the father, whom we come to know as the father in the

54:47

New Testament, but the angel of God who is distinct from God, but happens to be God. Now that's one view that I've read, but that's something worth looking into.

54:55

Okay. I actually just looked up the critical apparatus on Isaiah 9 -6 in the

55:03

Septuagint here, and I'm seeing something toward the end about eternity, but I'm not seeing anything in regards to any other streams that would be a rendering of the

55:17

Hebrew. So something I'll have to look at in some of the critical editions that might have some discussion of the transmission of that particular text.

55:27

Hey, just something. I'm not sure if you gentlemen are aware of this, but the Codex Sinaticus, they have finally come out with a printed version of it.

55:36

It takes in all four of the library's versions of it. It's a photographic facsimile

55:41

I saw the other day that's being released by Hendrickson. For $800, you can have that in your hand.

55:48

Actually, on Amazon, it's only $623. It's on my personal wish list.

55:54

Let's line up and get a copy. Yeah, that'll be the day. But yeah, that would be wonderful to have, but given that we have

56:06

Codex Sinaticus .net, that would have been something to come out with,

56:11

I don't know, five years ago, maybe for Codex Sinaticus .net game online, because you can see everything you need there.

56:18

Right. Yeah. Thanks for your time, gentlemen. Thanks, David. All right, God bless. Bye -bye. All right, well, we managed to get all of our calls in there, and I knew

56:29

I had the critical apparatus in here, but I didn't have a chance to bring the subject up at the same time.

56:35

I need to set up some different layouts in Logos here. It's amazing the amount of information that you can pull up these days.

56:41

But that is an interesting question, and we'll have to take a look at that. And as you noticed, the

56:47

Assyrian Encyclopedia already knew all about it. So when are you on ABN next? I think

56:52

I'm going to be on in October. October? They've asked me to debate somebody. You know who? Who?

56:58

I think at your recommendation, and they think he agreed. Joshua Evans. Oh, they just wrote to ask me if I also would be on with Joshua Evans.

57:05

I'd love to see you do it. And I'm looking forward to that. You know that I'm on with Abdullah Kunda on the 24th.

57:11

Yeah, yeah. And then are you going to be there for the Jesus or Mohammed Marathon?

57:16

Yes, Lord willing, in December. Excellent. I'm going to St. Louis and then straight from St. Louis to Detroit to be there.

57:23

So we'll be back at it again. So thank you very much for being with me today,

57:28

Sam. It has made for a very fast -moving hour. Thank you for having me. It's always a privilege. And you've been on before.

57:34

Remember we discussed last time you were on? I was adopted son. Zayd, right? Zayd and Zaynab bin

57:41

Jash. That's right. We have done some just fascinating stuff.

57:46

Just think of how many millions of people want to tune in and listen to an in -depth discussion of adoption and the

57:53

Quran and Zayd and Zaynab and all the rest of the stuff. We do the stuff that brings in the big bucks.

58:01

That's all I can say. But thanks for listening to The Valuing Line today. And we, Lord willing, will be back with you next

58:07

Tuesday morning. And then be praying for my debate. Well, Tony Costa is going to be debating this

58:16

Friday on a very similar topic that I'll be covering with Abdullah Kunduz. So pray for those debates on ABN.

58:23

We'll try to link to them so you can listen in. Thanks for listening. God bless. Thank you.

58:53

Thank you. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

59:23

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59:28

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59:34

World Wide Web at aomin .org. That's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G. Where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.