Dan Wallace

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona. This is the dividing line. 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. Our host is dr. James white director of Alpha Omega ministries and an elder at the Phoenix reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.

If you'd like to talk with dr. White call now. It's 602 9 7 3 4 6 0 2 or toll-free across the United States. It's 1 8 7 7 7 5 3 3 3 4 1. And now with today's topic here is James white.

Introducing Dan Wallace and the Work of CSNTM

Hold off on those phone calls until just a little bit later. I already see somebody calling we're gonna have a little contest actually little giveaway a little bit later in the program and we will let you get in and Get some questions toward the end of the program today because we have as special guests on the dividing line today I'm so thankful that he has joined us.

Dr. Dan Wallace of Dallas Seminary. What has Dan not done of late? So many things that people that listen to this program are very interested in and in particular probably the two biggest things. We have often discussed his work in Greek grammar.

Greek grammar beyond the basics. Just a book that almost everybody who teaches Greek has used or has at least threatened his students with one point in another in time and of course in the area of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts and the preservation of that great heritage of the czars.

Dan. Thank you very much for joining me on the program today James it's a pleasure to be with you. Now. You probably remember the first time we met Walked Walked into the Studios, where was that? Was that in Nashville?

That was that Chattanooga Chattanooga, Chattanooga, Tennessee. That's right John Ankerberg and I don't know How did you get the short end of the straw because you ended up having to sit over with all the King James only guys?

I think it's because I got there late. I Took a flight four flights from British Columbia the night before at 6 p .m. Never slept and got in a Chattanooga Airport at 10 and the whole thing was supposed to start at 10.

So, ah, that's what it was. Okay.

Well you we stuck you over on the far side for some for some reason actually that ended up working well because you and I sort Of tag-teamed Dr. Strauss in between the two of us and I think it was good though.

The dr. Strauss was between you and Sam get personally. I think that there could have been problems. Sam struck me that way interesting. Anyway, that's when we first met and since then. Believe it or not. That was 1995.

And I look back on the videos and chuckle at my large glasses and thinning hair and how skinny I was and things like that. You haven't changed a bit, of course. But so many things to get to and I know there's people a lot of folks that are gonna want to call in.

CSNTM Field Work, Manuscript Discovery, and Funding

Let's start with with what you're doing right now, I guess I want I said an email maybe do that last. But I want to make sure to get to that right now obviously. If you are how much time are you spending away right now?

Basically chasing down manuscripts from all over Europe and Just just the entire Mediterranean area. How much time is that how big has that become in in your life? It's a huge project.

This last year was my sabbatical from Dallas Seminary and the Administration gave me the photographing these manuscripts and writing up my discoveries and things. And I was overseas for about 40 weeks in 10 different countries including Australia and New Zealand and Greece Germany.

Now I'm about to head down to Australia next week. What in the world were you doing down there?

There are some manuscripts in Sydney Melbourne and Auckland and we were allowed to come down there and photograph them. So they have. The the most important biblical manuscript in the southern hemisphere is at Macquarie University and p91 third century papyrus of.

Very important manuscript. Well since I'm gonna be there next week I now have something to go see but. So now for folks that don't understand why this is so important. Look, don't we already know what all these manuscripts say?

I Wish we did.

There there's been probably of the approximately 5 ,700 manuscripts six million pages or four places. Oh, this is this kind of text. So we'll look at again. So there's still a lot of work that needs to be done but.

Trying to and there are people who would like to do that work but having access to the manuscripts. Weren't they all microfilmed at some point?

About 90 of the known manuscripts were put on microfilm. And there's one Institute in the world the Institute for New Testament textual research Germany that has Those microfilms the quality of them is fairly bad and.

Now. How did you I mean you were I would assume busy enough teaching Greek and and All the things that come with having one of the most popular Greek grammars around. How did how did this opportunity to?

To be involved in this kind of work. Come up. I.

Think the st Catherine's Monastery had a fire. When they put the fire out they noticed between the hundreds of manuscripts in their segments of manuscripts. These have not been examined in detail and for me to go to st Catherine's in 2002 and examine them that just I guess that rekindled my interest in my Desires to get into textual criticism.

Far more than I had before and so it was that year that I started the Center for the study of New Testament manuscripts.

So you you started this. How many people are working with you now?

Well, we have we have Volunteers and we also have volunteers that help us and so the numbers Changed from almost month to month, but we also have you on these expeditions and dr Jeff Hargis our field director is full expeditions require at least four people and on one expedition We actually brought eight people two people to fit up to about ten thousand dollars a week.

Everything because we don't know if the electricity in any given place is going to be adequate for us.

Yeah, in fact, I've seen a picture and I I'm fairly impressed you have looks like a MacBook Pro there, right? That shows a tremendous insight into into what's what's good, but anyway. No, I I likewise made that switch last year right about this time so I could not be happier to have done so but.

Anyway, so so you're you're in.

You must have to be able to set up in some pretty unusual situations cameras on top of Ted know that you'd have on a warship or something like that and other places the electricity. They shut off. The government shut off the electricity in the entire country and they would not tell when they would do it.

But it would be shut off for anywhere between two and four hours. And the air conditioning had just finally gotten us to the point and then the air conditioning shut off. But we had our batteries for the cameras and computers and we just kept on working with the kind that could open.

Oh.

Yeah, well, I live in Phoenix. Yeah, I live in Phoenix. I can't I can't imagine That would be like. But are there going to be any textual variants introduced in the future due to sweat, however? I. Must be what happened at first.

Timothy 316. Is that a is that Thaos or Haas? Well, it's just a it's a sweat very well. Yeah, something along those lines. So obviously You're not finished. I mean now that your sabbaticals over then what does the future hold and.

Continue doing this work. And if we were fully funded we could get all of the Greek New Testament manuscripts in the world photographed in about 12 years. To be fully funded it would take months a year in the I guess about five or six percent of the New Testament Manuscripts so far.

Our website at CS ntm .org. We're a nonprofit organization. Just like you are and. So we depend on donations to be able to get the funding. Once we get all that funding or next year that want us To return we'll be in Romania, for example.

Bart Ehrman, Textual Variants, and the Reliability of the New Testament

Well, obviously it would seem to me that one of the biggest hills you have to climb is getting the word out that this Needs to be done because I I just I just get the feeling that a lot of people assume.

Because you can pick up the Nessie Allen text that this was all taken care of a long time ago when I when I give presentations on New Testament materials and Start talking about how you know Husky or did everything you could with Revelation?

Well now we've discovered more manuscripts Revelation. So even Revelation hasn't been completely examined as far as the manuscripts. They're available to us and people look at me like you're kidding me.

I thought that had all been taken care of.

It's interesting people that there's so much work left to be done in this field as we have an embarrassment of riches, right? There's no other ancient text in the world that comes close to the richness of the New Testament in terms of the number of witnesses nor the proximity of those witnesses to now.

Talk a little bit about what has happened. Because certainly those of us who monitor the textual criticism email lists and news sources and stuff. Like that keep seeing. Your name and CSNT M's name coming up of late.

And the term discovery of manuscripts. What? How does how does that work? It's not like you're running around, you know digging stuff up in the deserts of Egypt or something like that.

So, so how how would you be discovering a manuscript. What it means to discover a manuscript. And people couldn't read that but I'll Summarize it here for you is not yet catalogued by the Institute for New Testament textual research in Munster.

That is the official clearinghouse of Greek New Testament manuscripts. And they're the ones who just know them by about it. The manuscript has technically not been discovered because it is not known to so we are the ones who are informing Munster about these discoveries.

And these raped again that is we can tell that the part of the parchment is rougher and That it's it's been scraped over. So we look at it with UV lights or black lights and we can detect that there's an under text there.

So when we find that and we find that it's a biblical text It's still very hard to read even with the ultraviolet lights, but say okay. This is a discovered manuscript and we found quite a few manuscripts that way including our most important one.

We've also found manuscripts that are at the ends of books. For example, it might be The last few leaves of a book that were the binding and it may be any detail Manuscript that nobody ever paid attention to so that's a discovery, right?

In fact, I thought did I not read once about finding some leaves that were stuck inside a manuscript? They're actually from a different manuscript. Yes, that kind of thing can also need to needs to be documented and and those can be extremely important.

I mean look at look at manuscripts like 1739. I mean, they may be later manuscripts, but they go way way back and are very important witnesses. Yeah.

It's always every one of these manuscripts has a has a story to tell and we do the best we can to find out as much of that story as we possibly can. And one of the things that most people don't realize when we photograph and maybe a couple of and.

Usually it's only that it's working with manuscript and what we'll do is just like in a modern book. You'll have maybe eight leaves that are folded if maybe and if so that. It's a different handwriting.

Fascinating information that we look at when and I would imagine that given the quality of the images some of that examination.

There might be things that the discovered especially about scribes and things like that that comes after your work. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, but without that high quality image that just can't be discovered anyways, so right.

So in essence if you if the the work could be properly funded and completed then you would be moving toward being able to have a Well really have full access to the entire range of New Testament manuscripts in a digital format.

Exactly. And and what's exciting about that is we've got so many volunteers throughout the world who are beginning to examine the images that we've already taken. Indexes on each image so that find where we are.

And at CSNT M I first Timothy 316 on that page right. I think by the end of this year examine individual verses all sorts of things. Well, I can't think of.

Very many things that could be a Better thing for churches for example to support then then this kind of thing. I mean, this is the the focus of the attacks on the New Testament today and So you are right there in the in the forefront of doing that which sort of brings me to This.

I wanted to play something for you. I know you've heard it before but And my audience has heard it before too, but as you know back in January I had the opportunity of engaging one dr. Bart Ehrman in debate in Florida and in his closing statements he said something and Unfortunately when you have closing statements you only have so much time and I had already pre-written about 60 of mine, so I didn't get much of an opportunity to respond to this but since it's directly relevant I want to I want to play this and get your commentary afterwards.

I Understand the arguments of people like James and Dan Wallace. But sometimes you know, they don't make sense to me even though I intellectually understand them. Dan Wallace whom he keeps quoting insists that in fact Differences don't matter in the manuscript.

Well, if the differences don't matter. Why is it that he is undertaking a Major project Dealing with Greek manuscripts a project that is going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. If the differences don't matter.

What does he tell these people? He's trying to raise money from well we'd like you to donate $50 ,000 to our cause because the differences don't matter of Course they matter and if they don't matter it is shameful to be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on this in a world where people Are starving to death?

If the differences don't matter. Well, the differences do matter in my opinion. So there's there's Bart Ehrman and I was left sort of sitting there Just sort of staring at him wondering where in the world did that come from on on two levels.

A The I don't know the the fervor that he has in sort of preaching Almost at that point in time used to be an evangelical. There you go. I'm not sure how that works when you're a happy agnostic. But anyway but The the fact that and and of course feel free to comment on what he's specifically said about you and CSNT M.

But oh, I will. I don't know how many times You have corrected Bart Ehrman in your debate with him and I believe it was April was it March or April of 2000 April of 2008 in New Orleans I had corrected him already at this point.

How can Bart Ehrman keep saying that you and I and people like us don't think the textual variants are important. I.

Think because that and it's a very disingenuous note and he knows stations with him to the effect that I've Never said that and he even acknowledged that I had never said that. He said yes, but that's what people think you've said and I said.

But that's not what you said when you debated James White, right, right. And so I call him on that one and he continues to do that because I think that makes it look like he's got the upper hand that if he can prove the differences just matter that they're significant to.

Some degree people think that he's won the debate when that's not what the debates about at all. Exactly, right, right.

But even even after because I sent you that clip I think back in February something like that. It's been been a while back, but there was an exchange on the textual criticism email list Long after that where again, he said the same thing and and you wrote some excellent responses before the topic Unfortunately was prematurely shut down in my opinion, but it just seems that for dr Ehrman for a textual variant to be important It must follow that there can be absolutely no level of reliability for the New Testament at all.

It is a huge Chasm that you have to drop into For him to accept the idea that. Well, okay. Yes you you now you see that these these variants are important because they lead to a Complete unreliability of the of the manuscript tradition in the New Testament.

One of the things we can't Tell what an author means until we can tell what as long as there are any of us to what the original wording is. And and sometimes when he says stuff like that, I'm just dumbfounded because I'm thinking Bart this would not be true of you or any other book of it has one mistake in it.

Therefore I can't understand anything you've said in that book, right? And I mean, he knows that that's just a rhetoric. Sounds good to the layperson who wants to buy into his arguments.

Well, I was I was completely taken aback because I just Aside from the radical skepticism that is is his in this area. It just struck me as a pretty low blow to be very honest with you. To to take a shot like that in the context of a public debate, especially there are starving people in the world, Dan I mean, come on.

What are you doing? You know, that was a very low blow back. I don't I can't even begin to understand that especially when I would imagine with New York Times bestsellers Right and left which are really to be honest and he says this they're nothing new in his books.

He's just he's resurrecting this the same old same old stuff, but he does it in a very understandable way. I Think you got to be careful which rocks you throw while living in glass houses as far as that goes.

But it just it just struck me as an amazing example of where folks are going to say. But it also brings up one other issue and I've heard you speak on this. In fact, if you want to mention where people can get the lectures you did at ETS and also I believe at a church somewhere I don't remember what the location the church was but there has been a fundamental change of direction in a large portion of what is called New Testament textual critical studies over the past 20 years or so and you mentioned this I I Had an interesting experience I was I was giving my New Testament reliability presentation at a church on Long Island about a month ago or a little bit more than a month ago and this Older fellow came up to me and he showed me the Byzantine textual platform book and I was extremely exhausted that time.

I was really really tired. I've been speaking once twice a day for quite some time and I said, yeah I've just got some historical problems with that and he goes why don't I believe in 100 because I wrote it.

It was Maurice Robinson Sitting in the back listening to the entire presentation and we ended up having a really nice discussion but you may recall that at one point I I got into trouble on the textual criticism list because I raised this issue and I pointed to the fact that Ermin and others are sort of very much pushing away from a concern about the original and abandoning it a discussion of really Reconstructing the original New Testament text and of course Maurice agrees very strongly you may come from a different perspective as far as how you how you deal with that, but Ermin in his closing statement was basically saying look Dan Wallace these people they've been left in the dust.

We the scholarship doesn't really think it's relevant anymore.

How do you respond to that kind of a claim or is in particular who are moving in the direction of? Trying to Make New Testament textual criticism go completely inordinate. Concerned for the origins the historical origins of Christianity, and he said that that's just that's ridiculous.

What we need to be thinking about is over the centuries and look at the verse and at various times to I think the the issue and church history and In this where he says all of the textual variants are equally inspired.

Why should we limit just the original wording to be spirit of God is still working today? To give us these in standard of inspiration and understanding of inspired agnostic. We're not the God of the Bible.

Yeah true deity original text that autographic text in any capacity at all and What I'm seeing here is in promoting this. Concerned to figure out what that autographic text is as much as we possibly can.

But those three names.

If you if you do a search for the current Published works in those field those three names are extremely prominent. Oh, they come up a lot. That's right yeah, and so I mean isn't there a danger that a lot of of the of the the minimal funding there is already is going into now exegeting variants and you know what does this variant tell us about the Christian scribe who made it and Etc etc.

It seems a matter of concern that there would be Such a divergence of of the goal that these individuals would have in doing the studies that they're doing.

Let's have to respond to that and and address the issues differently. Although there are plenty of other scholars who are Peter head PJ Williams at Cambridge University Dirk young can also at Cambridge University all three of them at Tyndall house Mike Holmes at Bethel seminary Maurice Robinson the majority text fellow at Southeastern Baptist myself There's all the folks at the Institute for New Testament textual research in Munster are Against this particular view and that's the epicenter for text critical studies in the world.

And they've published issues you know, unfortunately the.

Whenever the media touches on things like this, they're going to go for the the news story rather than the the solid balanced perspective and.

And this is one of the things about the media that's fascinating and Bart has he's brilliant to have captured on this. He recognizes that for somebody who has theological liberal and To well, you may be aware this James did about 99 of all theological liberals used so we could get into some time on your show.

But the point is that the media think that barter and trumpet him as Darling for themselves and for their views have not gotten before. Yeah, it is.

Well, it's something we have to deal with and I know that a Lot of people are working on that. It's just obviously the the media likes to promote that type of thing. Two things. But first I'm gonna go ahead and open the phone lines and here's here's what we do for the first two folks who have questions at eight seven seven seven five three three three four one we have the last two of the Original edition of the King James only controversy, I don't know if you know Dan there's a new edition of that out 32 more pages were added to that.

But we have the original two of the originals left signed copies and we want to give them to someone so eight seven seven Seven five three three three four one if you have questions for Dan Wallace, that's toll-free number.

Eight seven seven seven five three three three four one is the number and You can fill those phone lines up now. I wanted to do two more things stay in the sort of the sublime area first. When someone like a Bart Ehrman says we don't believe that textual variants are important and yet we spend so much time Discussing them and going over them and talking about them and things like that one that I had mentioned to you that a lot of people are not aware of and there's not a whole lot of discussion of but that I think illustrates this concept of.

We need to know about these things and they can have importance is in 2nd Peter chapter 1 verse 21 and in the Nessie Allen text the UBS text Westcott and Hort text. Which of course underlies what most I mean?

Let's face it most people today are using translations based upon those now. Especially with the have you ever seen an explosion of popularity like the ESV has experienced?

The RSV experienced that in 1952. It came out on September 1st and the first day it sold a million copies. Wow, okay.

But the ESV has in the modern day. I mean, I think it's a clip the eclipse the NIV now It's just they've really known how to promote this thing. So they've done a great job on it. They really have but most those translations that are following after the Nessie Island, you know, I Bible study text At the end of that verse they they have the phrase a man being carried along by the Holy Spirit spoke from God and yet the majority of manuscripts and especially the the Byzantine manuscripts Have a different reading which is reflected in the King James where it says holy men of God Spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit now those are You know, I obviously very closely related But there's a major difference as I can see between speaking about men being carried along by the Holy Spirit speaking a path a you from God and The other reading that being that holy men of God Spoke as they're being carried along by the Holy Spirit.

So You have been obviously we haven't even gotten into this very much involved with the New English translation and We have found for example, I've I've turned many people on to the na -27 NET diaglot because that in fact, I don't know if you've seen this but That's what I carry my debates now when I when I debated Imam Shamsi Ali in New York That was a text I had with me because it is a goldmine of information I mean if if you want to be ready for what someone's gonna throw at you in regards to Especially textual critical and historical issues and you want to have one volume in your hand.

That's the one to have I mean it just it just is so that has become a Tremendously useful tool and we thank you for that. But when you encounter a Variant like this and especially you as an NET translator I'm sure you're involved in the editorial decisions.

In fact, I know you are because you've talked about the possibility even of removing the Prick of pay adultery from John 753 311 in the next edition of the NET and and things like that. How do you? handle The discussion of this for example in the notes, I would assume the NET discusses that variant.

I've amazingly I apologize forgot to look.

Today didn't think it was important enough to discuss but we probably will for the second edition. Yeah. Well, there you go. Important if I don't mean that it's not significant in terms of the meaning but rather that the evidence wasn't as compelling for Both readings to bring it in but I I should probably discuss second edition.

Yeah, and you know, one of the reasons I would suggest it is because there is still so much use of The KJV but even more so the NKJV that when a translation is used in a church it's really When there is this meaning difference that the variant introduces a lot of pastors are caught up short.

Because they sort of fell asleep during the textual criticism. Lecture is what they shouldn't. Because there is a difference between the two and people want to know. Well, which one is it? Why why is it?

Why is there a difference there? How do you handle that in in the NET and how do you handle criticism that when you have? How many thousands of text notes in in in the NET. I've had 60s in the net Bible.

We have somewhere in the neighborhood of only about 800 notes where we discuss it in some detail, right? But there are approximately 300 to 400 thousand textual variants among the Witnesses the Greek and we've picked about half of the ones that are listed in the apparatus of the United Bible Society's Greek text.

So you how do you handle the objection then from people who say by discussing these things you're actually Diminishing people's trust in in the Bible. And it's and it's authority.

Well, the King James Bible when it came out had 8 ,000 marginal notes that discussed both variants and different translations on words. And that didn't seem to diminish anyone's trust in in later editions.

They deleted that and of course that's to the glee of the King James only crowd because they say therefore the King James is sentenced that it's only been since this artificial sense of we know exactly what the Word of God is with these kinds of issues as Textual critics to try to get back to the original wording.

This is we look how old they are how reliable they are. Given this has to do with what is the author likely to have written? What is a scribe likely to have done? And in this instance in 2nd Peter 121 of the reading was found in manuscripts that for the most part Oh anything about what the original wording is were produced in and around Byzantium or Constantinople Beginning in the 4th century.

They did not become the majority until the 9th century, but then in the 11th century and beyond and they they really went into full entire Mediterranean region and Those in other areas and yet there are two manuscripts.

That have that other reading that are pretty famous pretty pretty well known with the with Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus. So it's it's at least a somewhat early reading.

Yes, there is especially Sinaiticus is from the 4th century. For the the reading just from God instead of Petrine epistles, which is p72 a 34th century Manuscript that has all of 1st and 2nd Peter and Jude a century manuscripts like Olive or Sinaiticus is but it tends to be a far more accurate Manuscript than Sinaiticus does and we have 1739 which although it's a later manuscript from the 10th century.

Almost all of us readings go back to the late 4th century. So you've got some very significant witnesses that have just the wording from God and That's called the looking at the external evidence. We're comparing these manuscripts to say, okay, which has this which has the other and then when we think about it internally We have to ask which is more likely and we look at the scribal tendencies in particular at that point.

It is interesting that Metzger noted the possibility of some paleographical confusion Between a path that you say you being a nominal sacred. So it's a it's an abbreviation and Hagia, Oethe you. As a possibility to which is which is interesting I don't know we you know.

Those are those are some of the things that we can look at as as Possibilities for reconstructing why a particular variant would have been would have come along but I think the important part is we don't hide these things.

New Testament Manuscripts and the Text of the Quran

We we don't. We don't try to sweep these things under a rug. We we discuss these things openly and for me, especially dealing with Islam a lot these days. There is a fundamentally different approach that we have in Dealing with New Testament manuscripts than Islam has in dealing with the text of the Quran exactly.

And I think that's an important thing to bring out.

I think there's a fundamental difference in how these two tech transmitted as well because in Islam you have that that Control that you've got very early on of what the copies were supposed to look like for apologetic purposes.

Well as within Christianity the the text of the New Testament Virtually never had much in the way of control it was due to the life of the church that these manuscripts were copied as frequently as they were.

And The very fact that they don't agree with each other as much as we'd like to see them tells us that the church was a living vibrant Uncontrolled spreading throughout the Mediterranean world and that's that's actually very exciting to think about.

Well.

And I think that's vitally important because there wasn't any single organization that could introduce any kind of overarching editing for apologetic purposes. Which is the primary? Argumentation. We normally hear from the Da Vinci codes and things like that of this kind of external corruption of the text.

Well.

Berman even argues that and then he also tries to argue that they are there as a conspiracy. Well, you simply can't have both at the same time in the same place right. If it's wild. It's chaos, and if it's conspiracy is control.

Well speaking speaking of wild and conspiracy.

To descend from the high plains before we take some calls. I did want to get at least a brief comment from you because Believe it or not some of us are still carrying the water in dealing with the King James only folks and You know if you do you ever get contacted from some of these folks because of being on the the Ankerberg show.

Do you ever?

Oh, I I do every once while they Tend to condemn me to hell pretty quickly.

Well Sam Giff is still around and you remember Sam. He's gonna look right into the into the TV's right into the camera and said God has promised us one Inspired and errant translation one language at one time and right now.

It's the King James version of the Bible, and I was right before he talked about how landing you know control towers Around the world use English, and this is relevant to how we should know what the New Testament originally said.

Well as you are Undoubtedly aware there was an incident that took place at the beginning of the fourth program. While we were we were both sitting there in the studio and John Ankerberg after lunch said look Don Wilkins of the New American Standard Bible Lockman Foundation.

We're going to come to you, and I'm going to ask you about New Age Bible versions by Gail Ripplinger. And hopefully you'll be able to hear this this is what took place. As soon as John Ankerberg said what did you all find out about Gail Ripplinger's book.

Well first of all That book. Are you already try it out? Hi, yeah, I think I'm all right now. All right. All right, so we'll pick it up right there. All right. Are you ready? So there was Don Wilkin I I'm not sure if he explained to you he did to me that he had flown in from Greece and He takes prescription medications for migraines that frequently dry him up a good bit.