Bart Ehrman vs. James White Debate P1

well thank you very much for that warm welcome well I I take this topic very seriously I think it's one of the most important topics that there is not just for believing Christians but for for everyone the New Testament is the most widely purchased thoroughly studied highly revered book and history of our civilization knowing more about where it came from and how it came down to us as critical for everyone in our culture whether they are believers or not this is the question that I've devoted a major portion of my adult life to when I was 22 years old I went off to Princeton Theological Seminary to study with a master of Greek manuscripts a man named Bruce Metzger I did both my masters and my PhD with Professor Metzger and in the 30 years since I have spent a good chunk of studying the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament I tell you this because I want you to know that this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart and so I'm glad to have a very serious discussion about it with being white I want to begin by talking about how we got the books of the New Testament how we actually got the books of the New Testament this may not be a question that ever occurred to you because you go to a bookstore and you buy a New Testament and it's the same set of books every time twenty-seven books always in the same sequence always between hardcovers are in paperback and every time you buy a certain translation it's the same translation no matter where you buy it if you buy an NIV it doesn't matter whether you buy it in Palo Alto if you buy it in Las Vegas if you can't buy it there if you buy it in us in New York it's always the same translation no matter what well it wasn't always that way because of course before the invention of printing there was no way to reap manuscripts accurately time after time after time printing wasn't invented until the sixteenth century so what was happening in the fifteen hundred years before that to the Bible to the New Testament well I'm going to start by giving an example of what happened with the Gospel of Mark we don't know actually if you wrote the Gospel of Mark but say it was somebody named Mark we don't know where he was writing that the tradition is that he was writing in Rome so let's say Mark was writing in Rome mark wrote down a gospel an account of the the life of Jesus his ministry his death and his resurrection he probably wrote this account for his own community he didn't originally plan that it was going to become part of the Bible he was simply writing an account for his community so that they would know the things that Jesus said and did an experience leading up to his death and resurrection how was this book actually published well in the ancient world there was no such thing as publication the way we think of where if James writes a book the publisher prints off several thousand copies and sends it around a bookstore throughout the country that's easily done now but in the ancient world it couldn't be done at all if you wanted to publish a book it meant that you put it in circulation which means you lent it out to somebody and if they wanted a copy they had to make a copy the way they made a copy is by copying it by hand or by having somebody else copy it by hand there was no other way to reproduce a book you had to copy it one chapter one page one sentence one word one letter at a time it was a very slow and painstaking process even if you were professionally trained to do it the earliest Christians evidently were not among the intellectual elites of their day most of the early Christians as it's true for most people in the Roman Empire most Christians were illiterate they couldn't read or write so who was copying this copy of the Gospel of Mark well it'd be whoever who was in his community say in Rome who was able to copy a text somebody who is literate among the Christians presumably this would be the person who would copy it for say his own house Church mark maybe had a community of say ten or twenty people met in his house church and maybe across town in Rome Rome a very large city there is another house Church and they wanted a copy of the gospel though somebody copied it what happens when somebody copies a document by hand slowly painstakingly one letter at a time well if you don't know what happens try it yourself sometime I tell my students if they want to know what it's like a copy of text if sit down and copy the Gospel of Matthew and see how well you do I can tell you what will happen if you copy the Gospel of Matthew some evening you will make mistakes they'll get time--where your mind will wander you'll get tired you'll get bored you'll start thinking of something else and you'll make mistakes the first person who copied the Gospel of Mark no doubt made mistakes now how was Mark copied after that well the original would have been copied but then the copy would have been copied and the problem is when somebody copied the copy they not only copied the original words they copied the mistakes that the first scribe in may and they made their own mistakes what happened then when somebody came along and copied that second copy that person replicated the mistakes of both of his rep of its predecessors and made his own mistakes and copies were made week after week year after year decade after decade copies were being made of the Gospel of Mark copies of the original in which every time a new copy was made the mistakes of the predecessors were repeated unless somebody had the bright idea of correcting the mistakes now it's not always clear with a scribe would know where there had been a mistake made it may be that in places in fact the scribe who's copying something didn't just make a grammatical error or sort of fall asleep for a second and leave out a word but maybe he actually changed the text because he thought it would make better sense if you changed to say this instead of that well if that's what he did how would his successor the next copy is know that he had made the change only if he had the original to compare it with but if he didn't have the original Barrett wit then he wouldn't know that a mistake had been made in many places and so he would copy that mistake but suppose he thought her mistake had been made but he didn't have the original to compare it with how would he correct mistake he would take his best guess at what probably the original said but what if he guessed wrong it's possible that scribes corrected mistakes incorrectly and then you've got three problems at that place you've got the original text you've got the original mistake and you've got a mistaken correction of the original mistake and so it goes for week after week after year after decade on and on on copies made of copies made of copies this went on for a very long time and eventually the original Gospel of Mark was lost we no longer have the original Gospel of Mark and we don't have the original copy of mark and we don't have a copy of the copy of the Mar of Mark or a copy of the copy of the copy of Mark now what I'm what I'm telling you now is not sort of slanted information I'm telling you facts we don't have anything like the original of Mark's Gospel or an early copy of Mark's Gospel the first copy we have of Mark's Gospel is a text that is called p45 it's called p45 because it was the 45th papyrus manuscript to be discovered papyrus is the ancient equivalent of paper so we use paper to write on in the ancient world they used papyrus to write on the oldest manuscript we have of the New Testament happened to be written on papyrus the 45th papyrus manuscript to be discovered it's called p45 and it contains a copy of the Gospel of Mark that dates from around the Year 220 now I'm not sure what mark was written some people think is written in the Year 50 in the year 60 in the year 70 I think my own opinion is written sometime around to your 70 if that's the case then our first surviving copy of Mark was produced a hundred and fifty years after the original not from the original but from copies of the copies of the copies of the copies of the copies of the copies of the original we don't have anything earlier for the Gospel of Mark this is what p45 looks like this is one page of p45 p45 has has portions of eight chapters of mark so this earliest copy of mark doesn't have the whole thing it has portions of half of the chapters of mark koep this is the earliest as you can see it's very fragmentary because it was discovered in Egypt and then eroded over the years it's written in Greek the original language of the gospel mark is the original language of all the books of the New Testament you can see probably get a good sense here there's rather hard to read this because they don't put any separation between paragraphs or between sentences or even between words they all run together one after the other making it very easy indeed to make mistakes when you're trying to copy one of these texts this then is the oldest copy of Mark p45 from around the Year 220 our next earliest copy comes from the 4th century our first complete copy of the gospel mark from beginning to end from the first verse to the last verse a copy of the New Testament has the entire mark is from 300 years after Mark was copied originally that's the situation we're facing when we're dealing with the manuscripts of the New Testament not just mark but all of our manuscripts we're in the same boat we don't have any of the originals we don't have any original copies we don't have any original copies of the copies we have copies that were made many decades in most cases many centuries later and we know that there were changes made how do we know because all of the copies differ from one another let me give you some statistics how many copies do we have well it's a little bit hard to say exactly how many copies we have of the New Testament but we have something like five thousand five hundred copies in Greek the language in which they were originally written plus we have thousands of copies in Latin and we have copies in other ancient languages that people were textual scholars learn when they're sort of inter learning dead languages they learn Syriac and they learn coptic and they learn gothic and there were old Church Slavonic and you've got manuscripts in all these languages but in Greek the original language of the New Testament there are five thousand five hundred or so manuscripts from from complete manuscripts to fragmentary copies five thousand five so that's a lot that's a lot that's more than you have for any other book in the ancient world so that part's good that's the good news is we have so many of these things the bad news is that none of them goes back to the original and all of them have mistakes in them what can we say about the ages of our copies well the oldest copy we have is another papyrus p52 it's called because it was the fifty second papyrus found this is a little scrap of the Gospel of John it looks rather large here on the screen in fact it's the size of a credit card it's a size of a credit card written on front and back which is important to know because since it's written a front back it means it came from not from a scroll the way most people wrote ancient books but from a codex from like our books where you write on both sides of the both sides of the page and bind them together into a book this it's a little bit hard to today to date a fragment like this experts in ancient handwriting who are called paleographic who do this for a living Haley ographers date this thing probably to the first half of the second century so maybe 30 40 50 years after John was originally written plus or minus 25 years don't really know exactly when something like this is written but maybe one 125 plus or minus 25 years this is from it's a very important piece that this piece whoops it's very important piece that's P 452 it's a it's an account of the trial before Pilate in the Gospel of John with a few words from the trial here at the beginning and on the backside of you to flip this over you'd see some more words and so this is a very interesting little fragment but in Fort and it's the earliest thing we have of any Frank of anything from the New Testament from maybe 30 or 40 years after John was originally written most of our manuscripts are nowhere near that early 94% of the manuscripts that we now have Greek manuscripts date from after the ninth century the ninth century well after the ninth century so eight hundred nine hundred years after the originals is when we start getting lots of copies so you'll sometimes have people tell you that the New Testament is the best attested book from the ancient world and they're absolutely right it is absolutely the best attested book in the ancient world the problem is the attestation to the book comes centuries after it was originally written many many many centuries after originally written is when most of our manuscripts come from well okay so we have all these manuscripts how many mistakes are found in those manuscripts exactly well during the Middle Ages people didn't think much about this I mean scribes who were copying the text realized that they were you know their predecessors had made mistakes and they occasionally would would notice mistakes and but they didn't think much of it people didn't start thinking much of it until the invention of printing when printers had to actually print a verse and had to decide what words to print in the verse and the problem is if they had different manuscripts with different words in each verse then they had to decide when which words are the original words and which words do we want want to print how do we know because we have all these managed groups that have differences in them and so it wasn't until the invention of printing that people started thinking about this seriously and it didn't become a real issue until almost exactly three hundred years ago here 1707 in the year 1707 there was a scholar at oxford named john mill unrelated to John Stuart Mill the Victorians some of you know about this john mill was a textual scholar of the new testament he spent 30 years of his life studying the manuscripts of the New Testament he had at he had access to about a hundred manuscripts of the New Testament and he studied them thoroughly and then he put together a book he called it the novum Testament in Greek the Greek New Testament of john mill in 1707 and what he did in this Greek New Testaments he printed a line or two of the Greek of a Greek verses from the New Testament Matthew chapter 1 verse 1 verse 2 verse 3 but then at the bottom of the page he listed places where the manuscript had differences for every verse to the shock and dismay of his readers John Mills Greek New Testament listed 30 thousand places where the manuscripts disagreed with one another thirty thousand places of variation among the manuscripts some of his detractors were quite upset by this and claimed that John middle had done had published his novum test and breaky in order to render the text of the New Testament uncertain they thought this was some kind of demonic plot on the part of a university professor but you know his supporters pointed out he hadn't actually invented these thirty thousand places of variation because he just noticed that they exist as they do exist in our manuscripts well that was that was that was three hundred years ago based on a study of one hundred manuscripts now we have over five thousand five hundred manuscripts which have been studied quite assiduously by scholars although they have not been thoroughly studied yet what can we say about the number of variations today among our manuscripts of the New Testament the reality is we don't know how many changes scribes made in their text of the New Testament we don't know because nobody has been able to add up all the numbers yet even with the development of computer technology we don't know how many differences there are there are scholars who will tell you that there 300,000 differences scholars who will tell you there are 400,000 differences people will come up with all sorts of numbers but the reality is we don't know we can put it in relative terms there are more differences in our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament well that's a lot of differences probably several hundred thousand so that is the situation that we face well look what kind of changes are there I mean what are these differences do they really matter for anything let me start off by saying quite emphatically most of these differences that I'm talking about don't matter for a thing they absolutely don't matter many of them you cannot translate from Greek into English so you have to do you have two differences and there's no way to translate the difference many of the changes tell us nothing more than that scribes in the ancient world could spell no better than my students can today and scribes of course you didn't have spellcheck those of you who are students I've got to tell you I don't understand why students hand in papers with misspelled words I mean the computer tells you you misspelled it I mean how hard can it get scribes they didn't have computers telling you you know with red marks that this is misspelled and scribes by the way didn't even have dictionaries and in many places they didn't eat most of the time scribes didn't care how things were spelled the reason you know that they didn't care is because sometimes you have a verse they'll have the same word two or three times and a scribe will spell it three different ways so well those are all differences but they don't matter for any most of the time spelling differences don't matter for anything those kinds of differences I would call accidental differences accidental changes where scribes simply messes something up he makes a mistake of some kind for example a misspelling or another kind of accidental mistake yeah this didn't come through on the slide here and in Luke chapter 12 alright I'll do that in Luke chapter 12 verses 8 & 9 Jesus says whoever acknowledges me for people with the Son of Man will acknowledge before the angels of God whoever denies me before humans will will be denied before the angels of God and everyone who speaks a word against the Son now the way this slide was supposed to work is that support God was supposed to be up here and this word God was supposed to be up here because I'm trying to illustrate something which is that these these words and the same way from the two lines what happens if the scribe is copying this and he's copying this and he copies these words before the angels of God and so he's writing down these words here he writes down the words before the angels of God he looks back at the manuscript he's copping and he's just written down this word before the angels of God but his eyes alight on this sequence of words before the angels of God and he keeps writing if he does that then the next thing he writes is and everyone who speaks a word against the Sun in other words he leaves out this line which in fact is what happened in a number of manuscripts that middle line is left out because scribes there I skip from the same words at the end of one line to the same words at the end of the next line now for those of you who are interested in such things I see some of your taking notes this kind of mistake actually has a name the the idea of words ending in the same way is called home Latoya Tong and when you're I skips from one line to another it's called pair of lapses so this kind of mistake is called pair of lapses occasion by homely I tell you Todd as I tell my students they don't remember it either there are other kinds of accidental mistakes scribe made serious blunders in their manuscripts sometimes scribes would leave out not just a word or line sometimes they'd leave out a whole half a page sometimes they'd leave out an entire page sometimes they would do the most amazing things mistakes that you can't believe they would make they made we have these in our manuscripts let me emphasize I'm not suggesting that scribes change their manuscripts I'm not I'm not concluding that they changed I'm telling you they change their manuscript and it's a fact because we have the manuscripts and all the manuscripts differ from one another in sometimes in very small ways sometimes in very big ways these are these changes I've been telling you up to this point or what I'm calling accidental changes but there are also changes that look at least like they remain intentionally the scribes aren't around for us to ask what their intentions were but but there are some changes that look like they're really hard to explain it's just by a scribe being too sleepy or something let me just give you a few examples of changes that look like we're probably intentionally made these are either rather more serious than accidental changes of something like spelling virtually all scholars agree today that one of the most famous stories of the New Testament was in fact inserted by scribes that it wasn't originally found in the New Testament it's the story found in the Gospel of John chapter 7 and 8 the famous story of the woman taken in adultery where the the Jewish leaders dragged his woman before Jesus and set a trap for him they say this woman's been caught in the act of adultery the law of Moses says we're supposed to stone a person like this what do you say well this is a trap because if Jesus says we yes donar then he's violating his teachings of love and mercy but if he says no forgive her then he's breaking the law of Moses so what's it going to be well Jesus Stoops down on the ground and as he has a way of getting out of these traps in the New Testament so he Stoops down the ground starts riding on the ground he looked up and it says let the woman without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her and that causes everybody to recognize their own guilt they leave one by one until he looks up there's nobody left there and Jesus says to the woman's there's no one left here to condemn you she says no Lord no one he says neither do i condemn you go and sin no more this is a beautiful story filled with with pathos want to absolutely wanted we know it's one of the best stories in the new test because it's an every Jesus movie ever made even Mel Gibson couldn't leave it out even though The Passion of the Christ is really about Jesus last hours he has a flashback to this event because you have to have this you have to have this scene in the movie if you make a movie movie about Jesus and so you have a woman taking an adultery even in Mel Gibson's version this has been a very popular account obviously in a very moving account unfortunately it was not originally in the New Testament in your New Testament there will probably be brackets placed around the story with a footnote indicating that it's not found in the oldest oldest authorities in fact it's not found in the oldest authorities and there are all sorts of reasons that if I had half an hour I would give you 4y scholars for four centuries have known that as great as the story is it did not originally belong in the Gospel of John or in fact in any other passage of the New Testament a second example the last twelve verses of mark mark is for me mark mark mark is my favorite gospel mark doesn't beat you over the head with this theology mark is very subtle and very very smart and how he constructs his gospel at the end of his gospel Jesus has been betrayed he has been denied he has been put on trial before Pontius Pilate he's been killed executed by crucifixion he's been buried and on the third day the women go to the tomb and he's not there but there's a man in the tomb and the man says you're looking for Jesus of Nazareth he's not here go tell Peter and the disciples that he'll meet them in Galilee and then we're told mark chapter 16 verse 8 the women fled from the tomb and they didn't say anything to anyone for they were afraid period it ends there that's the last thing that happens in mark the women don't tell anybody and you think whoa wait a second how could they not tell anybody well scribes who copied the Gospel of Mark copied the gospel mark got to that point where it says women didn't tell anybody and the scribes said exactly the same thing whoa how could they not tell anybody and the scribe added 12 verses where the women do go tell the disciples disciples do go to Galilee they do meet Jesus and Jesus tells them to go make disciples that people be baptized in his name if people who baptized in his name will speak and forth will speak in tongues that they will they will be able to handle snakes they would drink poison and it won't harm them these are the verses that are are very important my part of the country of this is my part of the South where we have the Appalachian snake handlers they get their theology from these last 12 verses of Mark I've often thought that in the ha and the ambulance on the way to the hospital maybe one of the paramedics ought to say you know actually those verses weren't originally in the Gospel of Mark but but anyway that's that's where the that's where the idea of handling snakes comes from those verses not originally in the Gospel of Mark not found in our oldest and best manuscripts and again lots of reasons that scholars have known for a very long time they don't don't belong there I think on these two points I'll be very surprised James disagrees with this because this is the sort of thing that's textual scholars have known for a very long time a couple of other quick examples before I close one of Jesus most memorable lines is in Luke chapter 23 verse 34 it's found only Luke he's being nailed to the cross and Jesus praise Father forgive them for they don't know what they're doing but the verses are not found in some of our oldest and best manuscripts were the was that verse originally did Jesus originally say the prayer or not it depends which manuscript you read so to my final example Matthew chapter 24 Jesus is talking about that should be chapter 25 I think Matthew chapter 25 Jesus is talking about the end time 25 or 24 24 we're going to say 24 this may be a scribal mistake but we think it was 24 in Matthew chapter 24 Jesus is telling his disciples what's going to happen at the end of time and then he says that no one knows that they are the hour when these things will take place not the angels in heaven not even the Sun in other words not even the Son of God knows when these things will take place scribes copying has found this rather confusing how could the Son of God not know when the end is going to come how did scribe deal with that problem they took out the words in a number of manuscripts the words are omitted what did Jesus say that or not well depends Matthew's Gospel it depends which manuscript you read let me come to a very quick conclusion do we have a reliable text of the New Testament are there places where the Bible missed quotes Jesus the short answer is there is no way to tell we don't have the originals or the original copies or copies of the copies there are passages that scholars continue to debate is this the original text or not and there are some passages where we will never know the answer thank you good evening and welcome I wish to thank you all for coming this evening and I especially thank dr. airman for being with us this evening as well we gathered to discuss a vitally important topic can we trust the New Testament we possess today accurately reflects what was written nearly 2,000 years ago does the Bible misquote Jesus few topics are more important more central than this one less than a year ago at the Greer heard forum in Louisiana an audience participant asked Bart Ehrman wouldn't want the most important reasons to study New Testament textual critisism need to defend its integrity against critics like you dr. Ehrman responded wryly good luck well I'm a good Calvinist and I don't believe in luck but let's dive in anyway dr. Ehrman has already laid out his case for us I would like to focus upon the key issues he presents by quoting him from a recent radio debate he did with Peter Williams of Cambridge University dr. Ehrman seem very intent upon making sure this particular statement made it into the record right at the end of the program he said my book isn't questioning at all whether God is true or not the question is well the New Testament can give us access to this truth of God and my question is how can it do so if we don't know what words were in the scriptures and the reality is there are places what we don't know what the New Testament books originally said so if we don't know what they said how can they be authoritative that strikes me as a pressing question one that eventually led me away from my beliefs in the inspiration of the scripture interviewing the Bible as still a terrific important and valuable book but not as delivering the words of God now these words echo with dr. Ehrman said in a radio interview in October of 2007 I thought at one time the God had inspired the very words the Bible we actually have thousands of manuscripts the New Testament in the original Greek language but most of the copies are hundreds of years after the original z' and they all have differences in them these thousands of manuscripts have hundreds of thousands of differences among them and after a while I started thinking that it didn't make much sense to say the God had inspired the words the text since it was pretty obvious to me that he hadn't preserved the words the text because there are places where we don't know what the text originally said so it started making less sense to me to think that God had inspired the words because if he had done the miracle of inspiring the words in the first place then it seemed like he would have performed the miracle of preserving the words after he had inspired them he obviously had preserved them because we didn't have them and that made me then doubt the doctrine of inspiration we need to understand this evening that as dr. Ehrman has stated over and over again there isn't anything really new in his book misquoting Jesus any person with sufficient interest and vail ability of scholarship has known about the factual issues he raises all along but it is the conclusion dr. Ehrman reaches that is unusual unlike Tischendorf Bengal Warfield Carson Silva or Wallace all of whom were or are fully conversant with the entire range of New Testament readings dr. Ehrman has found this information irreconcilable with evangelical faith part of his reasoning flows from his assertion that particular particular textual variants changed the entire meaning of books the Bible he has said did Jesus get angry at a leper who wanted to be healed it depends on which manuscript to read did he die apart from God it depends on which manuscript you read does the New Testaments specifically refer to the doctrine of the Trinity it depends on which manuscript you read did Jesus confront this woman taken in adultery it depends on which manuscript you read so let's summarize the argument this evening we have been told there are more textual variants in a New Testament than there are words in a New Testament that is true there are places where we do not know what the New Testament regionally said flows from that argument and therefore the New Testament cannot be the authoritative Word of God I would like to offer a faithful response to dr. Ehrman's position this evening given first of all that there are as of November of 2008 five thousand seven hundred and fifty-two catalogued and written New Testament manuscripts and given that there are approximately four hundred thousand textual variants amongst these Greek manuscripts leaving off the Latin Coptic Syriac etc graphically we can see the situation as presented by dr. Ehrman like this sadly for the majority of those who hear these numbers or see a graph like this it is assumed that this means that there are three options for every single word in the New Testament this is the conclusion of many atheists and Muslims with whom I've had dialogue but is this the case surely not the repetition of the bear fact there are more variants in the New Testament than there are words in the New Testament without proper historical context is grossly misleading the fact is that the vast majority of these variants are utterly irrelevant to the proper understanding and translation of the text let's know the truth of the matter the more manuscripts you have the more variants you will have amongst them if you only have a small number of manuscripts you have fewer variants you likewise have less certainty of the original readings these go hand in hand obviously having manuscripts coming from different areas at different times yet all testifying to the same text is strong evidence that you possess the document in its original form the more manuscripts you have and the earlier they are is important the fewer manuscripts you have the higher possibility of major emendation editing and corruption the New Testament has more manuscripts than any other work of antiquity approximately 1.3 million pages of handwritten text so while at first glance the number of variants intimates a horribly corrupt textual tradition this is not the case instead when we recognize that the vast majority of variants are simply meaningless they are as noted spelling differences such as whether you spell John with one new or 2news and especially the concept of the moveable knew the bane of the existence of the first-year Greek student and the scribe alike it seems the actual number of meaningful textual variants the New Testament presents a very different picture here we see a more meaningful comparison that of the number of words in New Testament in comparison with the variants that actually impact the meaning of the text and when you then add viability in that is whether these variants have a chance to be original the situation changes even more perhaps a different view will help illustrate relationship a little bit better sadly this is probably not what most people have in mind when they hear modern critics on NPR assuring us that the New Testament is hopelessly corrupted now let's look a little closer at the kinds of variants that we are talking about as we noted the vast majority of the variants are non meaningful they simply cannot be translated from Greek into English or any other language for that matter they do not impact the meaning of the text next we have non viable variants that is there is simply no possibility that this variant was original a particular spelling error in a 15th century manuscript that otherwise is pretty much nondescript doesn't really have much of a chance of being the original reading of the New Testament but then we have those variants that are meaningful and viable they change the meaning of the text and they could possibly be original they have a sufficient manuscript attestation of these we have scribal errors and scribal errors as human beings we make certain kinds of errors that can be identified in catalog these include errors of sight such as home wait Elliot on which dr. Ehrman rectory free to refer to confusing words with similar endings as well as errors of hearing in cases when the original is being read in a scriptorium then we have harmonizations whenever you have parallel accounts in a New Testament such as the synoptic Gospels or between Ephesians and Colossians where you have similar materials it was very common for the scribes to harmonize either purposely or simply because they knew the other text better and it was a mistake of the mind and then we have purposeful changes the majority of these are innocent as well with a scribe thinking there is an error in the text but being himself ignorant of the backgrounds and hence making a mistake on his own there are about 1500 to 2,000 viable meaningful textual variants that must be examined carefully comprising may be at most one percent of the entire text in the New Testament of these historically scholars have believed the vast majority are scribal errors of sight hearing let me quote one scholar and this most of these differences are completely immaterial and insignificant in fact most the change is found our early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology far and away the most changes the result of mistakes pure and simple slips the pan accidental omissions inadvertent additions misspelled words blunders of one sort or another when scribes made intentional changes sometimes their motives were as pure as the driven snow and so we must rest content knowing - getting back to the earliest attainable version is the best we can do whether or not we have reached back to the original text the oldest form the text is no doubt closely very closely related to what the author originally wrote and so does the basis for our interpretation of his teaching the gentleman that I'm quoting is Bart Ehrman in misquoting Jesus now one of the assertion that the text of the New Testament was corrupted before our earliest manuscript evidence we have a dozen manuscripts within the first 100 years after the writing of the New Testament all are fragmentary but grand total they represent a majority of the books of New Testament and about four tenths of the text of the New Testament we have more than 120 manuscripts within the first 300 years now a key fact must be kept in mind regarding the new testament manuscript written is the existence of multiple lines of transmission let's illustrate what we mean the earliest manuscripts in our possession demonstrate the existence not of a single line of corrupt transmission but multiple lines of transmission of varying accuracy many of these lines intersect and cross defying easy identification but the important thing to remember is that multiple lines are a good thing they ensure a healthy manuscript tradition that is not under the control of any central editing process one of the examples often noted relating the early transmission of the text is a relationship between this manuscript p75 from around ad 175 and this manuscript Codex Vaticanus from 80 325 these two manuscripts are clearly very closely related in their tack indeed they may be more alike than any other two ancient manuscripts in the portions where Vaticanus contains the same sections of Scripture as p75 Vaticanus is a much larger manuscript obviously but remember 150 years separates the copy of these two manuscripts and yet we know that Vaticanus is not a copy of P 75 for it actually contains readings that are earlier than some in P 75 this means we have a very clean very accurate line of transmission illustrated by these two texts that goes back to the very earliest part of the second century itself what this illustrates needs to be kept in mind the burden of proof lies upon the skeptic who asserts corruption of the primitive New Testament text since the extant manuscripts demonstrate multiple lines of independent transmission the skeptic must explain how the New Testament texts can appear in history by a multiple lines of transmission and yet each line presents the same text yet without any controlling authority as time is short let us now compare the two extremes of the complete manuscript spectrum to see just how wide the range of readings really is the Byzantine text platform would be considered the right side of the spectrum while the Westcott port text of 1881 would be on the left side those of you familiar with these issues the Byzantine versus Alexandrian text types what happens when we ask a computer to mark out the differences between the two ends the spectrum of the manuscript tradition for us now please keep in mind we are looking here at printed text not manuscripts and this is not a comparison of textual variants but of representative collations of the two ends of the manuscript spectrum here we have Hebrews chapter 4 verses 9 through 15 there is exactly one difference between the two ends of the spectrum at this point here is hebrews chapter 6 verse 15 through chapter 7 verse 3 there are no differences between the two ends of the spectrum here's blasians chapter 1 verses 6 through 15 here we have to and the verb form there we'll see here in a moment ox you put up the textual data for that is a pretty messy textual variant but as you can see the vast majority of the text has no variation between these two ends the spectrum now the Gospels we have 3,500 copies of the 5750 to 3,500 or gospel collections so they get copied a whole lot more isn't there give you a whole lot more there well there can be here's Mark chapter 5 verses 25 to 36 and yet notice even here where you have these two words here you loose the difference between youth loose and youth that owes which is not exactly going to change the meaning of the text whatsoever in fact if you tally up the total of differences between the majority text which of course is Byzantine in nature and the critical text and that's Gian United Bible societies types you would find just under 6600 differences or a total of 95 percent plus agreement at the widest point in the spectrum but are there not some very challenging difficult variants certainly there are I just mentioned this one here's a pretty messy very Galatians chapter 1 verse 8 and here's the textual data provided to you and there are six different readings for this particular verb 6 different ways to read it yet even here all the difference in translation would be whether you say proclaim to you or just proclaim and what tends the verb you use that's all the difference these variations make at this particular point in time it is vital to understand a basic truth about the manuscript tradition of the New Testament to quote Curt and Barbara Allen the transmission of the New Testament textual tradition is characterized by an extremely impressive degree of tenacity once a reading occurs it will persist with obstinacy it is precisely the overwhelming mass the New Testament textual tradition which provides an assurance of certainty in establishing the original text basically what this means is that once a reading appears in two manuscripts it stays there that includes scribal errors and even nonsense errors why would this be a good thing because of what it means on the other side the original readings are still in the manuscript tradition this is key when we have a variant with three possibilities a B and C we do not have to worry about D none of the above there is every reason to believe that our problem is not having 95% of what was originally written but instead having 101 percent as Rob Bowman has put it is like having a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle but you have one thousand and ten pieces in the box the task is weeding out the extra the originals are there this is important to emphasize the light of dr. Ehrman's repeated assertion that we don't know what the original New Testament said I would like dr. Ehrman to explain this assertion is he saying that he is willing to demonstrate that there are variants of New Testament where none of the exit readings could possibly be original or is he applying the impossible standard of absolute certainty on every single variant which would require absolute perfection of copying which would mean of course that scripture could not even have been revealed until at least the printing press or more likely the photocopier we quoted dr. Ehrman's speaking of the miracle of inspiration requiring the miracle of preservation I would like to assert that the issue is not if God preserved his word but how dr. Ehrman seems to have concluded many years ago that preservation require perfection of copying something not seen in any ancient document but is this the only way or even the best way to preserve Scripture ironically the idea of a single perfectly preserved version is indeed a very popular concept amongst Muslims this is in fact their view of the Quran that it has never been the view of informed Christianity in fact the Islamic assertion of a single preserved version leads the inevitable question of those who produced it such as booth mom the third colleague who burned the sources that he used but if preservation is not to be found in a single manuscript tradition with no variants how then has the text been preserved it has been preserved as the very mechanism that produce the majority of the text variants the rapid uncontrolled widespread explosion of manuscripts during the early centuries of the Christian era let's look at how it happened the initial Gospels and epistles the New Testament were written at various places at various times some were written for distribution within the community such as the Gospels and others were epistles sent to specific locations then copies would be made and sent elsewhere often Christians traveling from one place to another would encounter a book they had not heard of before and hence would make a copy to bring back their own fellowship and though a graphic that would represent how many different lines of transmission there were and how often they were interconnected would rapidly become useless due to the number of manuscripts that would be on the screen the fact of that complex history of transmission should be kept in mind over time single books would be gathered into collections this was especially true of the Gospels and the epistles of Paul hence we have P 75 and P 66 gospel collections in P 46 containing the epistles of Paul all dating from the middle to the end of the second century these collections would then come together until finally after the Peace of the church in 313 you could have entire copies of the scriptures such as we find in Codex Ani Atticus and codex Vaticanus but the important point to note is the multi Folk ality of this process multiple authors writing at multiple times to multiple audiences produced a text that appears in history already displaying multiple lines of transmission this results in the textual variants we must study but it also results and illustrates something else there was never a time when any one man or group of men had control the text of the New Testament there was never a Christian with mom all assertions regarding adding doctrines changing theology removing teachings etc are without merit the Christian church was a persecuted minority without power to enforce a uniform textual transmission as in Islam textual variation then is an artifact of the method used to preserve the text as an entire textual tradition the relatively small amount of meaningful variation is a small price to pay to avoid the impossible position of having to defend an edited controlled text that can make no claim to representing the original this has surely been the primary viewpoint of Christian scholars for centuries and as such the mere presence of textual variation does not substantiate dr. Ehrman's repeated assertion that we do not know what the New Testament originally said perfection of transmission is not relevant to the historical reality of the New Testament I believe the evangelistic command of Christ contained the Gospels was taken seriously by the church hence the church wanted the message of Christ to go out into all the world and quickly the result was that the Scriptures that the church treasure would likewise be distributed far and wide not in a controlled fashion the idea of paralleling the Christian scriptures was say the 10th century mazarites who were not in any way trying to distribute their scriptures all around the world is utterly fallacious the method of preservation would have to match the purpose of the early church and the idea of having a controlled non distributed ngayon to photocopy text flies in the face of the reality of the early church time precludes a full demonstration of the fact that the New Testament manuscript written is deeper wider and earlier than any other relevant work of antiquity the worst attested New Testament book revelation has earlier fuller attestation than any other work of its day including Suetonius Tacitus Josephus Pliny etc in fact while we have fragments that you test from the date within decades the original writings the average classical work has a 500 year gap between its writing and its first extant manuscript evidence the New Testament as a whole has thousands of times the documentary evidence as the average classical work and consider how often you hear any skeptic noting the horrific textual foundation of such works as the Gospel of Thomas not only from a single Coptic manuscript and some Greek fragments why do you not hear a constant drumbeat of weed have any idea what the Gospel of Thomas actually said at least with the Gospel of Thomas that would be quite probable since we have such scant textual evidence for it and there are tremendous differences between the Greek fragments and the single Coptic manuscript what about the claim that textual variants change the entire message of the book dr. Ehrman says that seems to say that if we read Argos theis angry at mark 141 that this will somehow change the entire Gospel of Mark yet as urban himself notes Jesus's treatment of the man is consistent with such a reading and it is not the only time in mark when Jesus shows his true humanity through anger such as mark 3:5 and 1014 likewise does whether he read by the grace of God or apart from God or is theö in a sub clause and Hebrews 2:9 changed the entire message of the Epistle of the Hebrews once occur once again Erman has argued that apart from God is consistent with the theology of Hebrews to begin with and I agree so how can the variant itself change the entire message of the book of Hebrews most Christians have never had the privilege of studying the textual history of the scriptures from my first days in Greek class I have been fascinated by the field the irony of our encounter this evening is that you have two speakers who have both examined the same data and yet come to polar opposite conclusions one sees the end of faith the other it's very foundation p52 is one of the earliest fragments we possess the New Testament dr. Ehrman showed it to you I have a tire that both sides fully readable part of I want you to notice right here see okay good when it was first identified last century was sent to four papper ologist three of the four dated as early as 100 as late as 150 the fourth placed it in the late 90s it contains portions of John 18 31 through 33 and 37 to 38 which is ironic both because that is where Jesus is speaking about truth with Pilate as well as the fact that Germans scholarship was convinced for a long time that John was not written until about AD 170 but here we have an ancient text which if it was as early as 100 could conceivably be a first or second-generation copy of the original which surely would have still been around in its day one way or the other here we see how the text would have flowed around this particular fragment these words then were copied and recopied over the centuries here is how they appear around the Year 400 in codex Alexandre nos they are the same words the same message the same story three centuries later the unsealed text the first eight centuries gave way the miniscule form and here from the 12th century we have the same text the same words the same message being transmitted faithfully finally in 1516 the first printed and published Greek New Testament appeared the work of Desiderius Erasmus here in his third edition the same words found in P 52 up here on the sacred page we can move from there to the 19th century and the more modern critical text of tribulus finally on to the 20th century and the 21st edition of the Nessie all in text 1949 this scan came from the text of my father who used it to study Greek under Kenneth wheezed and Luga Bible Institute in Chicago and finally on into the modern Nestle Ahlan text in electronic format from the stuttgart electronic study bible replete with textual notes and sigla same words same message one text written during a time of persecution upon papyri 1,900 years ago most probably at the risk of the scribes life transmitted through the years faithfully to our very day the story of P 52 could be repeated over and over in great treasures of history that testified the ancient transmission of the words the apostles include tiny scraps like these fragments from P 60 from the Gospel of John or this portion of P 20 from the Epistle of James chapters 2 & 3 or this page I saw myself a number of years ago from p72 the earliest manuscript we have of first and second Peter in Jude I confess I felt a tremendous connection to this ancient fellow believer who not only loved the word so much he invested the time to handwrite these words but who likewise risked his life to possess these words I likewise feel a connection because here in this priceless treasure are words I live by one of the earliest testimonies to the deity of Christ an example of Granville sharps rule 2nd Peter 1 1 where Jesus is called our God and Savior or the great treasure of p66 containing major portions of the Gospel of John here we have the famous passage in the prologue of john john 1:1 here the last clause Kaitaia saying hallow goes and the Word was God - this early collection of Paul's writings P 46 witnesses to a faith it is endured to our very day this picture is of the end of Galatians and the beginning of Philippians showing that the earliest evidence supports the historic acceptance of Pauline authorship of these works think about these handwritten papyri written by persecuted believers slated for destruction by the decree of Caesar himself and yet despite 250 years of persecution the destruction of countless copies this body of writing is a new Testament today boasts the broadest and earliest manuscript tradition of any comparable ancient writing you will forgive me please for seeing in this the very hand of God itself so does the New Testament coke Jesus and by these words we are referring simply to the expected reality that there are variations in the handwritten manuscript tradition of the New Testament as there would be with any ancient document then we have to ask did we expect the Apostles to use photocopy earth for if the standard to avoid accusation of this quotation is absolute perfection of copying then God would have been precluded from giving his revelation to mankind until 1949 when the first photo copiers were built but that simply cannot be accepted instead we have seen the New Testament manuscript tradition faithfully provides to us the writings of the Apostles the variants while important do not change the message of the new test the vast majority of cases we are able to determine the original form truly it must be said that if we cannot know what the New Testament says then we cannot know what any historical source outside of inscriptions on stone originally said either if the most widely documented ancient literary collection with the earliest attestation is insufficient to accurately communicate to us the words of men of the past then clearly we must throw out everything we have claimed to know about history the onus is on the skeptic the New Testament sets the standard in providing clear evidence of its trustworthy if that is not enough is it possible the skeptic has set a standard that is unreasonable and if so why that is the question this evening thank you very much ok thank you very much and thank you James for that very energetic and intelligent of opening statement I appreciate it very much let me speak frankly I don't know how much of what James just said could sink in did people who aren't in the field so I don't know how much of what he said actually registered and how much was instead sounded really intelligent well I can tell you it was very intelligent but I do want to make a plea with all of you I have been asked a number of times over the last several weeks by friends and colleagues why I am spending three days that I could otherwise been spending on my own research coming to Florida to have this debate with James knowing that the audience would be by and large evangelical Christians and I am not and why would I why would I take my time to do that the reason I wanted to take my time to do that is be I hope that through these presentations both James in mind people will open their minds to other possibilities from the ones that they are naturally inclined to accept it is very very difficult to change your mind about something that is a deeply held conviction it is emotionally traumatic and most people aren't willing to do it most of you here won't be willing to do it my plea is that you think at least about an alternative point of view what James has just done has given a 30-minute presentation that was in part rhetorically functioning in order to assure you that smart people can hold on to the points of view that you hold fair enough there are a lot of very smart of angelical Christians in the world absolutely but there are other points of view and you shouldn't write them off because they're uncomfortable they might be right and you should not be afraid to go where the truth takes you I think that there may be only two or three people here who are really willing to open up to the possibility that there might be other views that other than the ones that they personally subscribe to that James is just affirmed by giving an intelligent talk I'm just asking you for the possibility of opening up and thinking that it might be different I used to believe everything that he just said I used to agree a hundred percent with the entire presentation but I changed my mind I didn't change my mind willingly I prayed about it a lot I thought about it a lot I went down kicking and screaming but I ended up thinking that the truth was other than what I had believed before and I hope some of you can do the same thing because I can tell you it is worth following the truth let me summarize what I take to be the feces of my of my book misquoting Jesus I'm sick I don't have a time around it's okay is that timer going good thank you all right this says I still have 25 minutes left thank you it's a textural mistake let me tell you what I think are the theses of my book misquoting Jesus these are the feces I'm going to state these because I think that there are nine of them and I think that James only disagreed with half of one of them but I might be wrong feces first we don't have the originals of any of the books of the New Testament second the copies we have were made much later in most instances many centuries later third we have thousands of these copies just in the Greek language in which the New Testament books were all originally written for all of these copies contain mistakes either accidental slips on the part of the scribes who made them or intentional alterations by scribes wanting to change the text to make it say but they already wanted it to me or thought that they thought that it did me five we don't know how many mistakes there are among our surviving copies but they appear to number in the hundreds of thousands it's safe to put the matter in comparative terms there are more differences in our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament since that vast majority of these mistakes are completely insignificant in material and unimportant a good portion of them show us nothing more than that scribes and antiquity could spell no better than people can today seven some of the mistakes however matter a lot some of them affect how a verse a chapter or an entire book is to be interpreted this is the point of which I think he disagrees others of them revealed the kinds of concerns that were affecting scribes who sometimes altered the text in light of debates and controversies going on in their own contexts 8 the task of the textual critic people like me is to figure out what the author of the text actually wrote and to see why scribes modified what he wrote have 9 despite the fact that scholars have been working diligently at these tasks for 300 years there continue to be heated differences of opinion there are some passages where serious and very smart scholars disagree about what the original text said and there are some places where we will probably never know if James wants to insist that we have the original text then I want to know how does he know in any given place and I can cite dozens of them he will have differences in opinion not only with me who happy who's an expert in this field but with every other expert in the field if God preserved the original text intact where is it why don't we have it and why doesn't he know where it is I don't know the answer to that where he disagrees is in the statement that differences actually can matter a lot he points out most of them different is don't matter for much of very anything and that is something that I myself have said my point here now I'll tell you my rhetorical point I have nine theses in this book and he agrees with eight and a half of them so so let's deal with the half that he disagrees with that these differences actually can matter for a lot well just over during the break I just decided to drop a few things down just off the top of my head without knowing in advance what he was going to say or what I was going to say in response so there's one textual bearing in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus got angry at a leper who wanted to be healed in another variant of the same passage it says Jesus loved him is there a difference between loving him and getting angry I'd say there's a difference did Jesus feel anxiety going to his cross in the Gospel of Luke or did he that's a big difference is Jesus ever called the unique God in the New Testament it depends which manuscripts you read and it's a big difference is the doctrine of the Trinity explicitly taught in the New Testament it depends which manuscript you read and it's a big difference did Jesus pray for those killing him Father forgive them for they don't know what they're doing it's a big difference whether he did or not did the voice of the baptism indicate that it was on that day that Jesus became the son of God it depends which manuscripts you read these differences matter don't let James's assurances otherwise make you sort of lull you into thinking that in fact there's not a big deal here there is a big deal here these differences matter yes most of the hundred thousand of hundreds of thousands don't matter but many of them do matter there are places where we don't know what the text originally said let me respond to a couple of specific comments that you made this is difficult to do because we are getting into the realm of scholarship and it's hard to simplify what this is about in my 5 minutes and 43 seconds at one point he pointed out that we have an early manuscript p75 from the late 2nd century early third century and codex Vaticanus quoted to be 150 years later that are very similar to one another so he plays therefore because there's a cure copying between P 75 and B we know that there were no primitive corruptions this is a completely bogus argument you can take other manuscripts from the same date as P 75 and put them up against codex Vaticanus and they differ a lot he put a manuscript on the screen that was the oldest manuscript that he said that he had studied I actually looked at this manuscript held it in my hand for two hours one afternoon two summers ago P 52 and he pointed out that this is very similar to the wording that you find in the trial of John before Pilate and got John's Gospel the trial Jesus before Pilate John's Gospel in later manuscripts he doesn't point out that there's a significant textual variant even in this credit card-sized fragment of a manuscript a significant textual variant involving the addition or subtraction of certain words we don't know how often the earliest scribes changed their text let me bring up one datum that has not been brought up yet the later scribes of middle ages don't disagree from one another very much because their trains fries the earliest copyists were not trained scribes the fact that later manuscripts agree a lot don't tell you what the early manuscripts did did the earliest manuscripts agree a lot with themselves or with the originals as it turns out most of the variants that we have in our textual tradition are from the earliest manuscripts that means that the earliest copies were the least copyists were the least qualified copyists what about the copyists who were copying earlier than the surviving copyists are we to believe that all of a sudden they were virtually perfect I don't think so I think that in fact they probably changed their manuscripts a lot what's the evidence the surviving early manuscripts differ a lot James came up with a very strange statistic that I don't understand where he said that there's some kind of 95 percent agreement at different ends of the spectrum so that virtually were certain about the entire text of the New Testament I don't know if James has ever actually looked manuscripts before but I can tell you that it isn't that simple when people try to classify manuscripts to group them together so that you've got say you've got a thousand manuscripts and you want to know which manuscripts are most like other manuscripts you compare them all with one another if manuscripts agree in 70% of their variations you count that as extremely high because it doesn't happen very often so I don't know where this 95% figure came from but you shouldn't rest assured that these manuscripts are all like one another because they're not all like one another let me end in my final 2 minutes and 20 seconds with the issue that he really does want to talk about the issue of preservation he thinks that the point of my book misquoting Jesus is that God did not preserve the text therefore God not inspire the text that is not the point of my book it is not the point of any of the major chapters in my book it is simply the point that I begin and end the book with to explain why this matters to me personally it matters to me personally that it's it's there scholars who disagree but it's not the main point of the book at all as you'll see if you simply read the chapters where I don't even mention the issue I found his discussion of preservation to be convoluted and obscure and I didn't really understand it so let me put it to you in simple terms and see if this makes sense this is the way I look at if God did inspire the words of the Bible to make sure that the human authors wrote what he wanted to be written that's the doctrine of inspiration why did he not preserve the words of the Bible making sure that the human scribes who copied the text wrote what he wanted to be written james replies well they didn't have photocopy machines i know they didn't have photocopy machines but if if god can inspire people to write his text why can't he inspire people to preserve his texts i don't know the answer to that if you want to say that God inspired the Bible which Bible did he inspire the one that you read in English the Greek manuscripts on which it is based which Greek manuscripts all of them are different from another which ones did he inspire were they all inspired so that the different versions of Jesus words and all these manuscripts even though they're all different they're all inspired how would you know which words are inspired if you don't know which words are originally in the Bible I don't have good answers for that these are the reasons I gave up my view of inspiration but it's not the point of misquoting Jesus and it's not really the subject of this debate the debate is does the Bible misquote Jesus and I'm afraid the answer is yes it is a little bit difficult for me to understand why dr. Ehrman misunderstood so many of the things that I presented to you first of all I do believe that all of you are fully capable of understanding what I was saying I call Christians to a higher level to understand issues of textual criticism I did that in 1995 when I published a book that is used in seminaries and Bible colleges across the land called the King James only controversy which is an introduction to textual criticism Herman has often said that his book was the first book for laymen on that subject it was not I was out in 1995 is used at Southern Seminary and masters College and places like that and if you've read that then you probably followed everything I was saying because it really wasn't anything new dr. Ehrman has just pointed out that look why does this matter has to do is you know James once talked about preservation well you know when a a statement when statements are made in the beginning of your book the conclusion of your book you raise them yourself and the debates you do against Dan Wallace and almost every single talk you give I think that means it's probably something that's fairly important and when the people out in the world like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and and all my Muslim apologist friends grab on to those words and assume that you are giving a scholarly conclusion yeah I think that's something worth debating if I put something in the conclusion of my book and people take that and run with it I think I'm responsible for that and so I think it is something that we should be examining this evening now it's interesting those of you who were here this afternoon noticed that some of the verses that dr. Ehrman noted were the very verses that we looked at mark 141 Luke chapter 22 we talked about Hebrews 2:9 and others that he raised evidently he doesn't understand what it is I just tried to assert to you he says how does James know he has the original once again I honestly do believe I'm not telling you anything that is unusual for believing textual critics to have said for a long period of time we believe that the originals exist in the manuscript tradition not a single manuscript but in the manuscript tradition so that when we look at mark 1:41 and we look at the evidence that is the difference between Jesus with compassion reaching forth his hand or with anger reaching forth his hands font the size versus orga size we can look at the manuscript evidence and one of those two is the original that's the point the idea that we have to have absolute unanimity of opinion has never been held by anybody as a basis for believing God has preserved his word yet that is the standard that dr. Ehrman presents and no work of antiquity can ever meet that that's why I keep saying that the only way then that you could have a handwritten communication would in essence be that if a scribes about to misspell a word or about to make an edit all of a sudden he'd burst into flames or god transports him off the off the off of the rock here called Earth or he all sudden takes over an automatic writing and makes him write the right word this kind of assertion is just simply without merit there is no reason to believe that that's why I presented to you the idea of how God has preserved his word and he has preserved it through the entire manuscript tradition so there's never a controlling Authority that can change or edit the text put in doctrines take out doctrines etc etc the result of that is we have to look at textual variants but the fact is that is the best way to preserve the text especially given the evangelical mandate of the early church and so what I have said is exactly what Kurt and Barbara Allen said and saw it asked him to respond to what they said in their works does tenacity exist does the manuscript tradition provide us with the original readings yes or no that is the question that we need to look at he accused me of trying to lull you into not considering these things obviously if you were to pick up the books I've written on this subject and see that I have addressed these textual variants that I talk to everybody about John 7 53 through 8 11 longer ending of mark and these textual variants when much more depth in my book on these subjects then you would know I'm not trying to lull anyone I've been beating this drum for a long time we need to know about the history of the New Testament I'm not trying to lull anybody anything I'm trying to say look I think there is a grossly imbalanced presentation being made by dr. Bart Ehrman and he's getting all the media in the world on it but the other side doesn't get any calls from NPR the other side doesn't get to be on The Daily Show only one side gets to be on those programs and I think it's time for the other side to be known he totally misunderstood what I was trying to present to you and I got this feeling when Dan Wallace presented the same information I never heard dr. Herman respond to it then either I was simply trying to demonstrate when I looked at P 75 in codex Vaticanus that while these two manuscripts are extremely close to one another in their readings they are not copies of one another they have different readings and therefore because you have that happening not just with them but with other manuscripts as well the issue is you have multiple lines dr. Ehrman keeps presenting it like it's the phone game where you have one copy of one copy of one copy of one copy in a straight line adding up all these errors that's not how it worked not only that they sometimes have multiple copies you sometimes has scriptorium where people were reading and so you'd have one copy and sometimes they would switch the copy in between and so on and so forth so you have text with mixed a textual nature to them it's much more complicated than that and there are multiple lines of transmission so the idea that well you know if if there was these primitive corruptions before the manuscript tradition is found in history therefore we can never know what the originals were when you have multiple lines how do all those multiple lines end up having the same readings in them not identical readings but it's still the same New Testament is still teaching the same things he also did not understand whatsoever of the the graphics that I put up where I asked a computer program to compare for us two different texts the Westcott and Hort text and the byzantine majority platform text I was not saying that there was 95% agreement in comparison manuscript carrying a script in fact I said clearly roll the tape back and listen I said very clearly we are looking at printed texts here that is what does the Byzantine manuscript tradition look like what does the Alexandrian lookout look like and let's compare them in various places using computer technology to do so and I gave you the exact number it's just under 6600 differences between the Byzantine majority text and the modern critical text that's a number put it into the math math for yourself it's about 95 percent agreement there's about a 4.7 percent variation between those printed collation I try to be very clear about that and dr. Ehrman has misunderstood what I was saying calling it a completely bogus argument he has simply misunderstood what it is that I was saying now I would like to take your attention back to the examples that he just gave mark 141 dr. Ehrman believes he knows the original he believe it is the reading of cozec codex Bezeq and approach ANSYS codex d even though people like åland and Metzker and even DC parker have pointed out that when bez a is alone against the earlier manuscript tradition that it probably should not be given much weight only when it degrees the earlier tradition should it be given weight in those situations again I present a paper on that earlier today we looked at the bloody sweat he didn't mention Hebrews 2:9 but I will because he believes he knows what the original there is to the unique gob and organized a AUSA John 1:18 he actually at that point takes I think a rather unusual view I think would be a great thing that many people have disagreed with him on this on this particular reading a majority today believe that the Naga nice they are unique God is the best reading at that point the Kama Johan iam no serious textual scholar believes that has any viability as being original it is not even a part of the New Testament manuscripts edition first on 5/7 until maybe the 15th century at the earliest it comes over from the Latin very very clearly it is not a viable variant at that particular point each one of these variants I've mentioned many sitting over there on my desk I have the na 27n et die Glocke and if we make that available I encourage people to purchase that so that you can look at the textual evidence yourself and you will see these various variants you'll be able to see what the manuscript evidence is and here's the point if the standard is that there can be no disagreement for the Bible to be the authoritative Word of God and these are things that dr. Ehrman has said he even made sure at the end of the radio program just a few weeks ago in London probably sitting the same studio i sat in November on the same program to insert into the discussion his thesis statement that we'll look if we how can this the authoritative Word of God when we don't know what it originally said what he's saying is if scholars can disagree then it's impossible no but it originally said no I say let everybody know what the variants are look at how it would impact the meaning of the text and recognize that none of the New Testament books are changed by this any of these readings that's why I challenge dr. would show us where your reading of Hebrews 2:9 changes Hebrews is a book show us we're reading angry at mark 141 changes the meaning of the gospel of water what went to any of these John John clearly presents the deity of Christ in multiple places whether John 1:18 reads they assert we ask where do any of these actually do what dr. Ehrman says change an entire book of the Bible he has said that many many times I must say to you that his opening statement is a statement that I've heard at least 25 times myself because I've listened to all of his classes have listened to all of his debates over on my table I have all of his books including his doctoral dissertation and his drill compilation of all of his scholarly writings I don't get the feeling that dr. airman has looked at anything that I've written on this subject whatsoever and that is led unfortunately to his rebuttal being filled primarily with the misunderstanding of what I actually presented to you and I'm sorry for that but the fact the matter is here's the issue that we must get to in the cross examination does he or does he not agree with Curt and Barbra Island Dan Wallis and others who believed in the tenacity of the text that is that once a reading enters into the text it stays there even if it's silly he loves to tell the story of manuscript 109 where the scribe copied across columns in the genealogy of Jesus and ended up really making everything a pretty messy because he just I don't know if he was asleep needed contact lenses or something I don't know but he made a mess but it's still there there are nonsense readings in the manuscript edition they stay there we still have them that means the original readings are still there as well now are there times are there a small number of places where we have to look at those variants and sometimes when it seems like the internal and external evidence is very very close should we not do exactly what modern Bible Translators have done and put notes in the column that say some early manuscripts say this and some early manuscripts say this those of you have ever heard me preach know that when I preach on something like that I raise those issues I don't believe that Christians should be quote/unquote protected from those things because there's no reason to do so that has been part and parcel of my emphasis all along and so do the original readings continue to exist this day that's the first question and is the standard that is being presented this evening reasonable I submit to you that if your standard is that God is supposed to somehow strike scribes dead before they make a mistake or somehow work some sort of miracle where they want to write one word because they don't really have spell the word and all of a sudden their hand has taken over and they're writing something else I suggest to you that is unreasonable it is not scholarly there is no grounds for it and I wasn't trying to lull you into not thinking by presenting to you a very different way of understanding how the New Testament has been preserved over time that will be the issue this evening that is what we we must look at where do these variants actually change the meaning of entire book do we believe that tenacity of the original text is it still there and can we make it a reasonable thing to say that if the New Testament was inspired the somehow God must work a second kind of miracle where every scribe even if he's if he's huddled in fear of the Romans in the first few centuries copying by candlelight on a scrap of papyrus that somehow he must be transformed into a perfect dictation machine I submit to you that was not the standard that even Jesus and the Apostles used Jesus and the Apostles look at look at look at look at the the Gospels what are they quote from vastly during the time they quote from the Greek Septuagint translation the Old Testament not the Hebrew Old Testament and there are times when the New Testament writers actually quote textual variants between the septage in' and the hebrew they didn't follow dr. Ehrman's standard in regards to these things the question this evening is why should we many have been those Tischendorf just to name one dan wallace Moises Silva Gordon feat who don't follow this idea that well you know unless there's absolute perfection of copying we just don't know this is a form of radical skepticism that would cause us to reject every other ancient works accuracy as well do we really need to do that I submit to you we do not thank you very much

Channel: Bart D. Ehrman

Views: 530,474

Rating: 4.6596165 out of 5

Keywords: Misquoting Jesus, James White, Agnostic, Atheism, Bart Ehrman, Christianity, Jesus Christ, Apologetics, James R. White, Bart D. Ehrman (Author)

Id: moHInA9fAsI

Length: 89min 19sec (5359 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 22 2014