1 00:00:00,709 --> 00:00:03,545 And so it's like, why would you want to build a faith 2 00:00:03,545 --> 00:00:04,921 on something that's not true? 3 00:00:04,921 --> 00:00:07,507 You know, my faith is just as strong 4 00:00:07,507 --> 00:00:11,761 and I have no problem facing the truth about the manuscripts. 5 00:00:11,761 --> 00:00:14,347 It's like I just see a brilliant God. 6 00:00:14,347 --> 00:00:16,307 You know, who, who, who... 7 00:00:16,307 --> 00:00:20,603 He knew his word was going to be translated into hundreds of languages, 8 00:00:21,021 --> 00:00:24,774 and so it couldn't be dependent on the wording in the Greek, 9 00:00:24,774 --> 00:00:28,278 the precise wording, because then the whole world, 10 00:00:28,278 --> 00:00:30,947 only a little group of people would actually have his word. 11 00:00:30,947 --> 00:00:31,322 You know. 12 00:00:37,328 --> 00:00:41,082 David Bercot welcome back to the Anabaptist Perspectives podcast. 13 00:00:41,082 --> 00:00:42,375 Good to be back on Reagan. 14 00:00:42,375 --> 00:00:42,876 All right. 15 00:00:42,876 --> 00:00:46,838 So we have done a number of episodes with you on various topics. 16 00:00:46,838 --> 00:00:51,259 And there's one that you did a, I don’t know, a lecture or something. 17 00:00:51,259 --> 00:00:52,510 It's been quite a while ago. 18 00:00:52,510 --> 00:00:54,929 I think you might still be able to find it on the, on your website. 19 00:00:54,929 --> 00:00:55,930 I'm not sure. 20 00:00:55,930 --> 00:00:59,601 And we haven't touched on this one yet just because it is fairly controversial, 21 00:00:59,976 --> 00:01:01,895 but we want to dive into it. 22 00:01:01,895 --> 00:01:03,063 So here, here we go. 23 00:01:03,063 --> 00:01:06,524 So there are some people who claim we can't trust the Bible 24 00:01:06,566 --> 00:01:09,152 because ancient manuscripts don't all say the same thing, you know, 25 00:01:09,152 --> 00:01:10,153 textual variants 26 00:01:10,153 --> 00:01:13,156 between the different manuscripts, particularly, you know, New Testament say, 27 00:01:13,198 --> 00:01:16,367 so then some people will also say, well, therefore we can't really know 28 00:01:16,367 --> 00:01:19,954 what the Bible originally said or what those texts originally meant. 29 00:01:20,663 --> 00:01:22,999 You know, really common one would be like Bart 30 00:01:22,999 --> 00:01:26,002 Ehrman or something who says, well, therefore Christianity is false. 31 00:01:26,002 --> 00:01:28,880 And so he leaves Christianity. He writes all these books about it. 32 00:01:28,880 --> 00:01:32,467 So let's let's jump into this one, and this can get a little sticky. 33 00:01:32,467 --> 00:01:34,219 And I think we should maybe qualify this 34 00:01:34,219 --> 00:01:38,306 with we're not, you know, textual variant, you know, experts. 35 00:01:38,306 --> 00:01:41,476 It's not like we, you know, study this, you know, extensively. 36 00:01:41,476 --> 00:01:42,685 But there are some, 37 00:01:42,685 --> 00:01:45,688 some principles here that that I think we should, we should tear into. 38 00:01:45,772 --> 00:01:49,025 So let's start with saying, well, what exactly are manuscripts? 39 00:01:49,025 --> 00:01:51,611 What do biblical scholars mean when they're saying these things? 40 00:01:51,611 --> 00:01:54,447 Let's let's lay some groundwork as we dig into this. 41 00:01:54,447 --> 00:01:54,781 Okay. 42 00:01:54,781 --> 00:01:59,619 So I think we're talking about New Testament manuscripts, here. 43 00:01:59,619 --> 00:02:02,831 So usually the, the term is used to mean 44 00:02:02,831 --> 00:02:06,793 a handwritten copy of the New Testament. 45 00:02:07,085 --> 00:02:10,505 In other words, before the invention of the printing press, 46 00:02:11,548 --> 00:02:14,551 or maybe before Erasmus's, 47 00:02:15,510 --> 00:02:20,682 edition of the Greek text, which was after the printing press was invented. 48 00:02:20,849 --> 00:02:24,018 So when Erasmus put together a Greek text, 49 00:02:24,435 --> 00:02:28,106 then it could be printed on printing presses, and then people 50 00:02:28,106 --> 00:02:31,568 could use it to translate the Bible, which is exactly what they did do. 51 00:02:31,985 --> 00:02:34,362 So before that, 52 00:02:34,362 --> 00:02:37,365 monks, I think, were mainly the ones who did it, 53 00:02:37,365 --> 00:02:39,659 but before the monks, it was other Christians. 54 00:02:39,659 --> 00:02:42,662 They would sit and hand copy 55 00:02:43,204 --> 00:02:46,040 The new Testament, word for word. 56 00:02:46,040 --> 00:02:49,752 And of course, what that does, I don't know if you've ever 57 00:02:49,752 --> 00:02:53,798 looked at a, copy of a New Testament Greek manuscript. 58 00:02:54,507 --> 00:02:55,925 It was all run together. 59 00:02:55,925 --> 00:02:59,679 They didn't separate their words, and they didn't use punctuation. 60 00:02:59,679 --> 00:03:02,056 They didn't have sentences. 61 00:03:02,056 --> 00:03:03,516 It's all run together. 62 00:03:03,516 --> 00:03:07,187 So imagine sitting there and copying 63 00:03:07,187 --> 00:03:10,190 the whole New Testament and, 64 00:03:10,607 --> 00:03:13,985 not missing a letter anywhere in there. 65 00:03:13,985 --> 00:03:15,028 It would be. 66 00:03:15,028 --> 00:03:18,573 I'd say, probably humanly impossible. 67 00:03:18,781 --> 00:03:22,744 Now, God, if he had chosen, could have miraculously prevented, 68 00:03:23,912 --> 00:03:25,413 changes from happening. 69 00:03:25,413 --> 00:03:27,457 But we know he didn't do that. 70 00:03:27,457 --> 00:03:30,710 There are over 5000 71 00:03:31,085 --> 00:03:33,880 Greek manuscripts in the New Testament, which the New Testament 72 00:03:33,880 --> 00:03:35,131 was written entirely in Greek. 73 00:03:35,131 --> 00:03:40,011 So we've got 5000 manuscripts now, those are not all complete. 74 00:03:40,011 --> 00:03:43,014 So some of them are just like, say, the book of John or 75 00:03:43,056 --> 00:03:45,183 part of the Book of John or something like that. 76 00:03:45,183 --> 00:03:48,186 I don't know how many we have of the entire New Testament. 77 00:03:48,811 --> 00:03:49,854 It's in the thousands. 78 00:03:49,854 --> 00:03:51,898 I'm pretty certain of of that. 79 00:03:51,898 --> 00:03:55,568 So let's just say there's, you know, 5000 80 00:03:55,902 --> 00:03:58,696 when we, count the, incomplete ones. 81 00:03:58,696 --> 00:04:01,616 It's actually closer to 6000. I know that much. 82 00:04:01,616 --> 00:04:05,954 So no, two read precisely alike. 83 00:04:06,537 --> 00:04:09,749 Out of all of that, which, again, when we look at 84 00:04:09,749 --> 00:04:12,961 how what they were working with it, that's no surprise. 85 00:04:12,961 --> 00:04:15,964 I mean, I don't I don't know how you could copy 86 00:04:16,047 --> 00:04:20,218 all of that and never make a mistake as a, as a as a human. 87 00:04:20,969 --> 00:04:23,429 And sometimes maybe someone was reading it to you 88 00:04:23,429 --> 00:04:29,644 and you're writing it down, and words often will have the 89 00:04:29,644 --> 00:04:33,481 same will sound similarly, but it's two different words. 90 00:04:33,481 --> 00:04:33,898 In English 91 00:04:33,898 --> 00:04:37,527 we call them homonyms where It sounds the same, but it's spelled differently. 92 00:04:37,527 --> 00:04:39,320 It's two different words that. 93 00:04:39,320 --> 00:04:40,655 So yeah. 94 00:04:40,655 --> 00:04:43,825 So I'm sitting here and you're reading it to me and I hear you say this. 95 00:04:43,825 --> 00:04:46,411 I might misunderstand you. 96 00:04:46,411 --> 00:04:49,205 Or it might be a case of a homonyms and I, 97 00:04:49,205 --> 00:04:52,083 I write down this word, and you meant that word. 98 00:04:52,083 --> 00:04:55,086 So that's how these variations would come in. 99 00:04:55,378 --> 00:04:59,799 So someone says, this author, I have not read him that. 100 00:04:59,799 --> 00:05:03,845 Well, see, it shows the Bible can't be of God or else it would all read the same. 101 00:05:03,845 --> 00:05:05,513 You wouldn't have these variations. 102 00:05:05,513 --> 00:05:10,226 Well, this is a remarkable thing when you think of, like I say, 5000, 103 00:05:10,643 --> 00:05:14,522 you know, or close to 6000 manuscripts or parts of manuscripts 104 00:05:15,606 --> 00:05:16,357 that with 105 00:05:16,357 --> 00:05:20,820 all of those little changes and little, you know, goofs, typos, you might say, 106 00:05:20,862 --> 00:05:23,865 said they were they weren't using a typewriter. 107 00:05:24,657 --> 00:05:25,783 The message is the same. 108 00:05:25,783 --> 00:05:30,955 I mean, there is no doctrine that is changed by any of those variations. 109 00:05:30,955 --> 00:05:36,252 I mean, it is the same message no matter which manuscript you use. 110 00:05:36,502 --> 00:05:40,506 So now you tell me if that's not of God. 111 00:05:40,923 --> 00:05:41,215 Yeah. 112 00:05:41,215 --> 00:05:42,467 How do you end up with that? 113 00:05:42,467 --> 00:05:45,303 That you you, he lets humans be humans. 114 00:05:45,303 --> 00:05:48,556 He allows them to make, you know, little mistakes. 115 00:05:49,474 --> 00:05:50,975 And yet, 116 00:05:50,975 --> 00:05:54,395 yeah, the mistakes are so few that in the end, 117 00:05:54,520 --> 00:05:58,358 you don't have several different gospels, several different New Testament messages. 118 00:05:58,358 --> 00:06:02,945 It's, you know, so right now I'm, I use the new King James. 119 00:06:02,945 --> 00:06:03,363 Okay. 120 00:06:03,363 --> 00:06:09,327 It's based on the Textus Receptus, you know, for my New Testament, I often, for, 121 00:06:11,037 --> 00:06:12,413 different reasons will compare. 122 00:06:12,413 --> 00:06:15,333 And I'll use the ESV, the English Standard version. 123 00:06:15,333 --> 00:06:20,838 You know, it is so rare that there is any difference. 124 00:06:20,838 --> 00:06:24,467 I'm usually just looking for a difference in translation of how they express it. 125 00:06:24,759 --> 00:06:28,763 But a difference in meaning, that almost never exists. 126 00:06:28,888 --> 00:06:30,848 And yet they are from two different 127 00:06:30,848 --> 00:06:33,851 text families you know, one is from the critical text, the ESV, 128 00:06:34,018 --> 00:06:36,979 and this is from the Textus Receptus, you know, so 129 00:06:37,146 --> 00:06:40,566 as I said, these variations are usually very small. 130 00:06:40,817 --> 00:06:43,820 And normally because we have this large group, 131 00:06:44,070 --> 00:06:48,658 you can usually figure it out and see where, oh, so he's copying. 132 00:06:49,033 --> 00:06:50,368 And he looked down. 133 00:06:50,368 --> 00:06:54,664 And when he went back to the one he was using to copy from, 134 00:06:54,664 --> 00:06:56,290 he skipped a line down. 135 00:06:56,290 --> 00:06:59,544 He was, you know, the his last word was say, the. 136 00:06:59,544 --> 00:07:02,380 And he looked back down. He saw the and he skipped there. 137 00:07:02,380 --> 00:07:04,340 And by comparing it with other manuscripts, 138 00:07:04,340 --> 00:07:06,926 you can see, oh, he left that sentence out, you know. 139 00:07:06,926 --> 00:07:11,305 So most of these things we can, you know, put it back together. 140 00:07:11,305 --> 00:07:14,809 Now, do we know word for word how it was originally 141 00:07:15,101 --> 00:07:17,186 each of those, letters in the New Testament? 142 00:07:17,186 --> 00:07:19,772 No, we we do not know for a certainty 143 00:07:19,772 --> 00:07:22,108 that we will talk about the implications of that. 144 00:07:22,108 --> 00:07:24,861 And some Christians would say, oh, we we do. 145 00:07:24,861 --> 00:07:28,281 I think just being intellectually honest, we don't know. 146 00:07:29,490 --> 00:07:30,450 Now, the interesting thing 147 00:07:30,450 --> 00:07:34,412 is, as you know, my field of scholarship is not New Testament manuscripts. 148 00:07:34,412 --> 00:07:36,205 It's the early Christians. 149 00:07:36,205 --> 00:07:37,957 And they were aware of this. 150 00:07:37,957 --> 00:07:42,545 Those variations, the variations we have, the, the, the large ones, 151 00:07:42,545 --> 00:07:45,173 most of them are like I say, or just the spelling of a word, 152 00:07:45,173 --> 00:07:48,176 spelling of somebody's name, 153 00:07:48,759 --> 00:07:51,762 a word like maybe it says Lord Jesus here. 154 00:07:51,762 --> 00:07:54,765 And then this manuscript just says, Jesus is like, 155 00:07:54,765 --> 00:07:57,768 you know, it doesn't change a single thing. But, 156 00:07:59,270 --> 00:08:01,898 I mean, it would if this manuscript never has the Lord Jesus. 157 00:08:01,898 --> 00:08:05,067 But yeah, it does it just in that particular sentence, you know. 158 00:08:05,776 --> 00:08:08,779 these variations, they were all there, 159 00:08:08,821 --> 00:08:11,657 the major ones before the year 200. 160 00:08:11,657 --> 00:08:13,242 So interesting. 161 00:08:13,242 --> 00:08:14,785 So pretty early on. Okay. 162 00:08:14,785 --> 00:08:16,287 Because I was going to say that 163 00:08:16,287 --> 00:08:16,954 that was definitely 164 00:08:16,954 --> 00:08:20,041 something I wanted to ask is like, well, what did the early church think of this? 165 00:08:20,041 --> 00:08:22,084 Right. You know, so what did they say? 166 00:08:22,084 --> 00:08:25,922 Like, it's funny just how they think differently than a modern day person 167 00:08:25,922 --> 00:08:29,467 who was like, Tertullian will say, such and such. 168 00:08:29,467 --> 00:08:32,720 And he’ll say, some, some manuscripts say blah, blah, blah, you know, 169 00:08:33,804 --> 00:08:34,388 big deal. 170 00:08:34,388 --> 00:08:36,766 They didn't really big deal. 171 00:08:36,766 --> 00:08:41,145 The only one who really got into it and made a science of it was Origen. 172 00:08:41,521 --> 00:08:44,524 He's usually considered the first, 173 00:08:45,274 --> 00:08:47,985 New Testament manuscript scholar, 174 00:08:47,985 --> 00:08:51,364 because he wanted he wanted to see what was the original. 175 00:08:51,364 --> 00:08:56,536 He was hoping maybe he could figure out what was the original wording, 176 00:08:57,119 --> 00:08:59,789 but all he could do was, you know, make a list. 177 00:08:59,789 --> 00:09:02,917 Well, these ones read this way, and then these ones read this way. 178 00:09:03,125 --> 00:09:07,129 And he he talks a lot about, you know, which one he thinks is correct 179 00:09:07,129 --> 00:09:11,425 and why he's he's also considered the first textual, critic, 180 00:09:12,093 --> 00:09:14,679 but in no way affected his faith. 181 00:09:14,679 --> 00:09:16,764 It's like 182 00:09:16,764 --> 00:09:18,599 often it's, you know, a location. 183 00:09:18,599 --> 00:09:19,559 It says this town. 184 00:09:19,559 --> 00:09:22,603 Another one says this town because it's a word. 185 00:09:22,603 --> 00:09:23,813 It's a letter. Different. 186 00:09:23,813 --> 00:09:26,816 Usually it's just often like a letter, difference. 187 00:09:26,857 --> 00:09:27,775 So big deal. 188 00:09:27,775 --> 00:09:29,402 What difference does it make? 189 00:09:29,402 --> 00:09:33,239 It doesn't change the message. So 190 00:09:34,323 --> 00:09:34,782 what? 191 00:09:34,782 --> 00:09:36,784 You know, maybe I don't know 192 00:09:36,784 --> 00:09:40,663 if there was a time in my life that knowing these variations stumbled me. 193 00:09:40,955 --> 00:09:42,623 I think from childhood, I think 194 00:09:42,623 --> 00:09:46,627 from when I was very little, I knew that these manuscripts differed. 195 00:09:46,627 --> 00:09:49,797 So I don't think it ever came as a shock to me. 196 00:09:49,797 --> 00:09:53,217 But I have wondered, well, why did God allow this? 197 00:09:53,217 --> 00:09:56,429 Like I say, he didn't allow it to change any doctrine. 198 00:09:59,056 --> 00:10:03,185 But as I pondered it more and this is human reasoning, 199 00:10:03,185 --> 00:10:06,147 so I may be totally mis guessing the thing, you know, 200 00:10:07,023 --> 00:10:11,235 but if he had preserved it perfect, let's say, 201 00:10:11,235 --> 00:10:15,156 you know, each of these Greek manuscripts read exactly the same. 202 00:10:15,156 --> 00:10:17,617 Or we actually had Paul's original. 203 00:10:17,617 --> 00:10:20,286 So, you know, it was preserved somehow in a cave. 204 00:10:20,286 --> 00:10:25,207 And, and we knew for certain this was it, you know, so we knew beyond a doubt. 205 00:10:25,207 --> 00:10:29,795 This is how this, book of the New Testament originally read. 206 00:10:30,546 --> 00:10:31,088 Okay. 207 00:10:31,088 --> 00:10:34,050 What that would create would mean 208 00:10:34,050 --> 00:10:37,637 it's only God's Word if you read it in Greek. 209 00:10:39,722 --> 00:10:42,683 Because the minute you translate it, 210 00:10:42,683 --> 00:10:43,976 you have to change something. 211 00:10:43,976 --> 00:10:47,855 There are no two languages that you that are word for word. 212 00:10:47,980 --> 00:10:51,692 You know, this language has this word and this language has the exact same word. 213 00:10:52,318 --> 00:10:54,862 There are no two languages where you can do that. 214 00:10:54,862 --> 00:10:59,575 So anytime you translate, you automatically have to make decisions. 215 00:10:59,575 --> 00:11:00,117 Choices. 216 00:11:00,117 --> 00:11:03,496 What word should I use to translate this Greek word, etc.. 217 00:11:03,788 --> 00:11:07,792 So then you'd have a situation that that is God's word, 218 00:11:08,334 --> 00:11:12,797 but the minute you translate it, it's not God's word. 219 00:11:13,172 --> 00:11:14,048 Whoa. Okay. 220 00:11:14,048 --> 00:11:15,466 So that's, that's fascinating 221 00:11:15,466 --> 00:11:18,928 because that's one of the cornerstones of something like say Islam. 222 00:11:19,303 --> 00:11:23,432 And so if you pick up a copy of the Quran and it's in English, 223 00:11:23,432 --> 00:11:25,893 it won't say it's a translation, it will call it a commentary 224 00:11:25,893 --> 00:11:28,688 because they know, oh, it's been translated. Right. 225 00:11:28,688 --> 00:11:34,443 So therefore it's not the original because in their doctrine it would be this is 226 00:11:35,736 --> 00:11:36,946 I mean, exactly 227 00:11:36,946 --> 00:11:40,408 what, you know, Allah handed down and you cannot translate it. 228 00:11:40,908 --> 00:11:43,411 I never thought that of that. 229 00:11:43,411 --> 00:11:44,578 But that makes a lot of sense. 230 00:11:44,578 --> 00:11:46,330 I can see what you're saying because knowing 231 00:11:46,330 --> 00:11:49,542 human nature, I can imagine people doing the same thing. 232 00:11:49,542 --> 00:11:51,127 If you had an original. 233 00:11:51,127 --> 00:11:52,044 Yeah. Okay. 234 00:11:52,044 --> 00:11:53,713 And that happened with me with the Quran. 235 00:11:53,713 --> 00:11:58,926 I was, speaking at, it was a small group of students at, Penn State. 236 00:11:59,343 --> 00:12:04,348 It was on, how we know God exists, and anyway, several the people who attended 237 00:12:04,348 --> 00:12:09,478 were, Muslim, because they were interested in hearing, proofs for God's existence. 238 00:12:09,478 --> 00:12:11,272 The same as, you know, Christians are. 239 00:12:11,272 --> 00:12:15,985 So afterwards, oh, well, before it started, I was looking around. 240 00:12:15,985 --> 00:12:18,320 They have a building there that's like a, a religious 241 00:12:18,320 --> 00:12:21,699 building has got Buddhists and has got, you know, you know, everything. 242 00:12:22,241 --> 00:12:24,827 And so I saw it there in the hall there was a stack of Qurans, 243 00:12:24,827 --> 00:12:27,580 you know, in English. And, you know, they were to hand out. 244 00:12:27,580 --> 00:12:32,334 So I helped myself to one and I had it there, and it was just on a stack. 245 00:12:32,334 --> 00:12:34,044 I had a notebook and everything. 246 00:12:34,044 --> 00:12:37,757 So anyway, during the lunch break or whatever, I'm talking to this guy 247 00:12:37,757 --> 00:12:39,675 and he says he's, he's, Muslim. 248 00:12:39,675 --> 00:12:42,762 And and suddenly we mentioned the Quran and I looked down. 249 00:12:42,762 --> 00:12:45,723 And I know in Islam, if you've got a Quran, it's 250 00:12:45,723 --> 00:12:49,769 got to be the highest book in the room, you know, and here I have it down 251 00:12:49,769 --> 00:12:53,355 under, you know, my Bible and then some notebooks and everything. 252 00:12:53,647 --> 00:12:57,026 And I immediately said, oh, I'm sorry if that's offensive to you. 253 00:12:57,234 --> 00:12:58,569 Yeah. I didn't mean to be offensive. 254 00:12:59,904 --> 00:13:01,322 He said, that's no problem. 255 00:13:01,322 --> 00:13:02,072 That's not the Quran. 256 00:13:02,072 --> 00:13:06,994 That's just a English, you know, translation and and yeah, it's like, yeah. 257 00:13:06,994 --> 00:13:08,829 So yeah, this isn't the Bible. 258 00:13:08,829 --> 00:13:11,874 If we had Paul's original in Greek. 259 00:13:11,874 --> 00:13:14,627 Well, this isn’t the Bible, this is just a translation. 260 00:13:14,627 --> 00:13:15,628 But yeah. 261 00:13:15,628 --> 00:13:18,172 So you would have to 262 00:13:18,172 --> 00:13:19,298 but it gets more complicated. 263 00:13:19,298 --> 00:13:20,674 You'd have to know 264 00:13:20,674 --> 00:13:24,094 New Testament Greek, but you'd have to know it as a native speaker. 265 00:13:24,094 --> 00:13:27,389 I mean, you can study it now, but there's nobody today 266 00:13:27,723 --> 00:13:31,727 who speaks Koine Greek the way somebody did in the first century. 267 00:13:31,727 --> 00:13:34,980 You know, there's they study it as a second language. 268 00:13:35,314 --> 00:13:39,151 But there's a big difference between being a native speaker and, 269 00:13:40,277 --> 00:13:43,447 somebody who's learning it, particularly 2000 years later. 270 00:13:43,447 --> 00:13:48,118 So we would still not know exactly what Paul meant, because the language 271 00:13:48,118 --> 00:13:49,787 has changed over the years. 272 00:13:49,787 --> 00:13:52,206 And we'd have to be have to be guessing. 273 00:13:52,206 --> 00:13:55,501 But it would mean everybody to share the gospel. 274 00:13:55,501 --> 00:13:58,504 Yeah, they've got to learn Koine Greek. 275 00:13:58,712 --> 00:14:00,381 And see that's not what God wanted. 276 00:14:00,381 --> 00:14:05,678 So the Bible is a book that from I mean, the earliest it got translated into Latin. 277 00:14:05,803 --> 00:14:07,054 We were talking about that 278 00:14:07,054 --> 00:14:10,850 in a earlier session, how, the Latin translation of the Bible, 279 00:14:10,850 --> 00:14:14,979 one of the verses, they mistranslated a, a couple of words there. 280 00:14:15,521 --> 00:14:18,566 And, you know, we can correct it now, but it, it affected, 281 00:14:19,775 --> 00:14:22,236 some doctrine in that translation. 282 00:14:22,236 --> 00:14:24,071 So translations are imperfect. 283 00:14:24,071 --> 00:14:26,615 But he got translated right away. They never thought that. 284 00:14:26,615 --> 00:14:26,949 Okay. 285 00:14:26,949 --> 00:14:28,659 The Greek is this magical language. 286 00:14:28,659 --> 00:14:31,787 No, it got translated into Aramaic right away. 287 00:14:31,912 --> 00:14:36,250 It wasn't too long before it was in Coptic and then Armenian and and so on. 288 00:14:36,250 --> 00:14:38,627 I mean, that was a mindset from the beginning. 289 00:14:38,627 --> 00:14:40,087 This gets translated. 290 00:14:40,087 --> 00:14:42,423 We don't worship the words on the page. 291 00:14:42,423 --> 00:14:44,133 We worship the message. 292 00:14:44,133 --> 00:14:46,635 And so God's Word is his message. 293 00:14:46,635 --> 00:14:49,930 It's not the exact, precise words. 294 00:14:50,222 --> 00:14:51,181 And so that's by choice. 295 00:14:51,181 --> 00:14:55,102 And so I think it's why he didn't want any of those manuscripts to read. 296 00:14:55,102 --> 00:14:57,938 Exactly the same. Because he's trying to get across to us. 297 00:14:57,938 --> 00:15:01,358 Dude, it's the message that I want you to focus on. 298 00:15:01,442 --> 00:15:04,028 Don't be worshiping these words. 299 00:15:04,028 --> 00:15:07,698 And yet I didn't I didn't allow enough change in there 300 00:15:07,698 --> 00:15:10,618 that you have to worry about is maybe the message is different. 301 00:15:10,618 --> 00:15:13,746 No, the message is the same in all the manuscripts. 302 00:15:13,746 --> 00:15:15,748 So, you know, God's God's, 303 00:15:17,499 --> 00:15:18,083 his his 304 00:15:18,083 --> 00:15:22,296 ways are just always, you know, smarter than ours and things that we think. 305 00:15:22,504 --> 00:15:25,507 Because I always thought, well, if I was God, I would have preserved that. 306 00:15:25,591 --> 00:15:28,510 And yeah, he saw the trap that that would have created. 307 00:15:28,510 --> 00:15:30,137 Now, this is my answer. 308 00:15:30,137 --> 00:15:33,849 And, you know, I may get to heaven and say, Dave, you got that all wrong. You. 309 00:15:33,933 --> 00:15:35,351 This is the reason I didn't do this. 310 00:15:35,351 --> 00:15:38,646 So so this is just, you know, how I thought through the 311 00:15:38,646 --> 00:15:41,649 the problem and realize it wasn't a problem. 312 00:15:42,066 --> 00:15:44,735 so the ones like the King James 313 00:15:44,735 --> 00:15:48,197 only people and and you know, I'm using the new King James. 314 00:15:48,197 --> 00:15:49,239 When I did the Romans 315 00:15:49,239 --> 00:15:52,660 commentary, we were talking about that, I actually use the the King James 316 00:15:52,993 --> 00:15:55,454 because there's a copyright issue with the new King James. 317 00:15:55,454 --> 00:15:58,874 They they will not let you use it for a commentary 318 00:15:59,124 --> 00:16:01,585 unless you get written permission and pay them, 319 00:16:01,585 --> 00:16:03,379 you know, some kind of royalty or something like that. 320 00:16:03,379 --> 00:16:08,050 So I had to go back to the original King James and I did that 321 00:16:08,050 --> 00:16:11,053 with the Matthew commentary and then with the the Romans. 322 00:16:11,053 --> 00:16:15,099 And I really grew in respect for the King James. 323 00:16:15,099 --> 00:16:18,435 I mean, those translators did a tremendous job. 324 00:16:18,894 --> 00:16:20,813 now I'm not into archaic English. 325 00:16:20,813 --> 00:16:22,231 You know, I didn't grow up with the King James. 326 00:16:22,231 --> 00:16:24,566 And so the archaic English is. 327 00:16:24,566 --> 00:16:26,944 Yeah, I don't enjoy wrestling with it. 328 00:16:26,944 --> 00:16:29,488 But as far as their 329 00:16:30,948 --> 00:16:32,616 they weren't, 330 00:16:32,616 --> 00:16:33,617 inerrant. 331 00:16:33,617 --> 00:16:36,829 Some King James people would want to make the King James inerrant. 332 00:16:37,079 --> 00:16:40,124 The problem is we have several editions of the King James. 333 00:16:40,124 --> 00:16:44,044 You know, it was 1611, but then I think there was 1 in 1614. 334 00:16:44,044 --> 00:16:48,132 And the one that's usually used today is from, the 1700s. 335 00:16:48,132 --> 00:16:50,884 And then it's been, you know, changed a little bit from that. 336 00:16:50,884 --> 00:16:52,261 Yes. Yeah. 1800s. 337 00:16:52,261 --> 00:16:54,346 So it's like, well, which one 338 00:16:54,346 --> 00:16:58,142 I mean, if it's going to depend on every little word or something like, 339 00:16:58,142 --> 00:17:01,145 like that, but if it's the message, it doesn't matter. 340 00:17:01,603 --> 00:17:06,942 But I do want a Bible translation that is not loose. 341 00:17:06,942 --> 00:17:08,235 I don't like paraphrases. 342 00:17:08,235 --> 00:17:11,363 I don't like where they say, well, we're translating it. 343 00:17:11,363 --> 00:17:12,990 Thought for thought. 344 00:17:12,990 --> 00:17:16,744 Well, you don't necessarily know Paul's thought when you say thought for thought, 345 00:17:16,744 --> 00:17:17,828 what you mean is 346 00:17:18,829 --> 00:17:20,539 what I think Paul was saying. 347 00:17:20,539 --> 00:17:21,915 And that's what I'm translating. 348 00:17:21,915 --> 00:17:25,878 Well, just hey, give me the words and let me do the interpreting, you know, 349 00:17:25,878 --> 00:17:27,921 don't don't you do the interpreting for me. 350 00:17:27,921 --> 00:17:29,673 Just how did Paul say it? 351 00:17:29,673 --> 00:17:32,301 You know, and so I like the King James. 352 00:17:32,301 --> 00:17:33,469 It's fairly literal. 353 00:17:33,469 --> 00:17:36,346 You know, the ESV does a good job, too. 354 00:17:36,346 --> 00:17:39,767 They claim to be more literal than the King James, well, yeah. 355 00:17:39,850 --> 00:17:42,186 Yeah, I don't know. That's a subjective thing. 356 00:17:42,186 --> 00:17:43,937 I would say the King James is more literal, 357 00:17:43,937 --> 00:17:46,940 just from working with the two and looking at them. 358 00:17:47,066 --> 00:17:49,735 But I do appreciate a more literal translation. 359 00:17:49,735 --> 00:17:52,488 So yeah, the King James is great in that regard. 360 00:17:52,488 --> 00:17:55,491 I'm not knocking it, but to imagine that 361 00:17:56,033 --> 00:18:00,287 those translators had the precise Greek manuscript, 362 00:18:00,704 --> 00:18:06,085 because it's based on Erasmus made three different Greek New Testaments 363 00:18:06,085 --> 00:18:06,877 So he. 364 00:18:06,877 --> 00:18:10,547 okay, so what's with, this is Textus Receptus we're talking about now. 365 00:18:10,547 --> 00:18:10,798 Right. 366 00:18:10,798 --> 00:18:15,677 Which so Textus Receptus manuscript which is the Koine Greek New Testament 367 00:18:15,677 --> 00:18:17,846 which you can still buy it, you know, today. 368 00:18:17,846 --> 00:18:20,390 That's, that's what the King James is based on. 369 00:18:20,390 --> 00:18:21,391 Right. Just to make sure we get. 370 00:18:21,391 --> 00:18:23,727 Okay, make sure I got our context here. Okay. 371 00:18:23,727 --> 00:18:26,188 The Textus Receptus is is an inflated name. 372 00:18:26,188 --> 00:18:29,274 It sounds like, oh the received text or something like that. 373 00:18:29,483 --> 00:18:33,987 It's just so Erasmus, like I say, you had these handwritten ones 374 00:18:33,987 --> 00:18:37,282 and he wanted to get a Greek 375 00:18:37,282 --> 00:18:40,494 text and have it printed and, 376 00:18:41,495 --> 00:18:42,621 but when he went to do it, he 377 00:18:42,621 --> 00:18:46,834 only had like two good manuscripts to work from, and they were pretty late. 378 00:18:46,834 --> 00:18:48,961 I mean, like, I couldn't tell you the exact year, 379 00:18:48,961 --> 00:18:52,756 but let's say the 1300s and 1200, something like that, a long, 380 00:18:52,965 --> 00:18:55,843 a long ways removed from when the Bible was written. 381 00:18:55,843 --> 00:18:59,471 And I think somebody else was working on getting one printed, too. 382 00:18:59,471 --> 00:19:01,849 And so he was in a somewhat of a rush. 383 00:19:01,849 --> 00:19:04,852 I want to get this out before this other person does. 384 00:19:04,893 --> 00:19:06,979 So he took these two. 385 00:19:06,979 --> 00:19:09,982 But, he neither one of them had the, 386 00:19:10,315 --> 00:19:13,402 the last part of revelation in them. 387 00:19:13,777 --> 00:19:16,780 And so he had he then took the Latin Vulgate, 388 00:19:17,322 --> 00:19:21,243 which is a Latin translation, and he took the Latin and translated it 389 00:19:21,243 --> 00:19:24,705 back into Greek so he could, you know, make a Greek manuscript. 390 00:19:25,706 --> 00:19:26,540 He also took a 391 00:19:26,540 --> 00:19:29,710 passage in acts that's not in any Greek manuscript. 392 00:19:29,710 --> 00:19:32,838 I mean, any you know, we mentioned there's over 5000. 393 00:19:32,838 --> 00:19:35,257 None of them have this particular sentence. 394 00:19:35,257 --> 00:19:39,553 It's not theologically important in acts, but it was in the Latin Vulgate 395 00:19:39,553 --> 00:19:41,180 that Catholics were used to reading. 396 00:19:41,180 --> 00:19:42,472 So he stuck it in there, 397 00:19:42,472 --> 00:19:45,851 even though there is no Greek manuscript that has that, you know. 398 00:19:47,477 --> 00:19:50,105 So. Well, then he revised it. 399 00:19:50,105 --> 00:19:55,110 There was a second edition and that's what if and don't on on any of this. 400 00:19:55,110 --> 00:19:58,572 I'm going by memory so I may have, you know, something a little bit off, 401 00:19:58,947 --> 00:20:00,407 if my memory serves me correct. 402 00:20:00,407 --> 00:20:03,410 It was his second edition that Luther used 403 00:20:03,493 --> 00:20:06,496 and that I think Tyndale maybe used. 404 00:20:07,581 --> 00:20:10,209 But Luther, I'm almost certain, used his second edition 405 00:20:10,209 --> 00:20:14,004 and then the third one is the one that the King James is based on. 406 00:20:14,463 --> 00:20:15,505 So, Okay. 407 00:20:15,505 --> 00:20:15,714 Yeah. 408 00:20:15,714 --> 00:20:20,052 It's so you so for so I mean, since you brought it up. 409 00:20:20,052 --> 00:20:23,847 Right, we can just plow right into this King James only thing because I know 410 00:20:23,847 --> 00:20:26,850 people will be, you know, what does David Bercot think about that. 411 00:20:27,017 --> 00:20:27,809 Right. 412 00:20:27,809 --> 00:20:30,896 And again, it's not something we've talked about on the podcast before, 413 00:20:30,896 --> 00:20:36,026 but essentially for someone who would say King James, only, you would have to say 414 00:20:36,693 --> 00:20:40,697 that Erasmus was inspired when he put that manuscript together. 415 00:20:40,781 --> 00:20:44,451 Am I tracking correct or is that I mean, that feels like a pretty, 416 00:20:44,910 --> 00:20:48,163 pretty, gargantuan claim to me. 417 00:20:48,413 --> 00:20:49,998 Then you'd have to decide. 418 00:20:49,998 --> 00:20:53,001 So which of the three was he inspired on? 419 00:20:53,543 --> 00:20:59,216 So if the King James is the inspired one, then Luther's is not, 420 00:20:59,549 --> 00:21:02,261 because, you know, one was made from his third, 421 00:21:02,261 --> 00:21:05,264 the King James, if I've got it right and one was made from his second, 422 00:21:05,514 --> 00:21:07,808 so you're having to say it wasn't. What about Tyndale? 423 00:21:07,808 --> 00:21:08,850 What about Wycliffe? 424 00:21:08,850 --> 00:21:12,354 What about I mean, what do you start doing with all of this? 425 00:21:12,354 --> 00:21:13,230 If you're saying, 426 00:21:14,189 --> 00:21:14,856 well, this is 427 00:21:14,856 --> 00:21:19,945 the Bible and that the other thing is, if the King James were 428 00:21:20,237 --> 00:21:21,989 and I'm just talking about the New Testament, 429 00:21:21,989 --> 00:21:26,410 were the exact Bible, we would have to say 430 00:21:26,660 --> 00:21:31,832 there is no Greek manuscript in existence anywhere in the world 431 00:21:32,416 --> 00:21:35,961 that has the New Testament in it, because there is no Greek 432 00:21:35,961 --> 00:21:40,048 manuscript that reads exactly like the Textus Receptus. 433 00:21:40,090 --> 00:21:43,093 It was a conflation of several manuscripts. 434 00:21:43,677 --> 00:21:44,928 Oh, I see what you're saying. 435 00:21:44,928 --> 00:21:47,097 So it's not like it exists as a whole. 436 00:21:47,097 --> 00:21:49,057 He's pulling together pieces. 437 00:21:49,057 --> 00:21:51,852 There is no single manuscript that reads like the Textus Receptus. 438 00:21:51,852 --> 00:21:54,313 So you have to say it got lost. 439 00:21:54,313 --> 00:21:57,482 And like you say, you're going to have to say Erasmus was inspired by God, 440 00:21:57,774 --> 00:22:00,861 who usually the King James People don't like Erasmus, but you'd have to say 441 00:22:00,861 --> 00:22:04,906 he was inspired by God to find the exact right ones 442 00:22:04,906 --> 00:22:10,454 and put them together precisely correctly to get the original wording. 443 00:22:10,829 --> 00:22:12,080 Oh yeah. Yeah. 444 00:22:12,080 --> 00:22:14,541 Wow. So but but see here's okay. 445 00:22:14,541 --> 00:22:18,253 So one of the challenges though is 446 00:22:18,920 --> 00:22:21,548 people don't like ambiguity necessarily. 447 00:22:21,548 --> 00:22:24,176 And I'm saying this very broadly speaking. 448 00:22:24,176 --> 00:22:26,511 But you know, I have interacted quite a bit with, 449 00:22:26,511 --> 00:22:29,514 with some people on the King James only, world. 450 00:22:30,265 --> 00:22:32,768 So well, let me just read the one of the questions here. 451 00:22:32,768 --> 00:22:34,394 I think I might have it written better than than 452 00:22:34,394 --> 00:22:36,563 I can say it, but, so some people would insist 453 00:22:36,563 --> 00:22:39,232 that this kind of textual variation that we're talking about, 454 00:22:39,232 --> 00:22:41,985 means we don't have reliable access to God's teaching in Scripture. 455 00:22:41,985 --> 00:22:45,405 So those basically kind of attempting to deny 456 00:22:45,405 --> 00:22:48,575 the historical complexity that's involved in the New Testament text. 457 00:22:49,201 --> 00:22:52,496 But then you could flip it around and say that there are liberals or skeptics 458 00:22:52,496 --> 00:22:54,414 who claim that the Bible was drastically changed. 459 00:22:54,414 --> 00:22:56,750 So then we can't know what it really said either. 460 00:22:56,750 --> 00:22:58,418 And so how do we respond to those concerns? 461 00:22:58,418 --> 00:23:04,007 It's kind of like you have two wildly opposite extremes where, like you say, 462 00:23:04,007 --> 00:23:06,593 Bart Ehrman on one side is like, I'm going to leave Christianity 463 00:23:06,593 --> 00:23:08,887 because there's variation in these manuscripts 464 00:23:08,887 --> 00:23:11,431 all the way on the way other side, you have someone saying, 465 00:23:11,431 --> 00:23:13,517 if it's not the King James, it's not God's Word 466 00:23:13,517 --> 00:23:15,477 or whatever, take your pick of whatever is said. 467 00:23:15,477 --> 00:23:21,066 Yeah, what ends up, what scares me or what worries me is a young person 468 00:23:21,066 --> 00:23:25,612 hearing that, it'd be pretty easy to get pulled around with those extremes, 469 00:23:25,612 --> 00:23:26,446 and I could 470 00:23:26,446 --> 00:23:27,906 well, actually just heard of one, you know, 471 00:23:27,906 --> 00:23:31,076 just within the last week of a young person who walked away 472 00:23:31,076 --> 00:23:34,371 from Christianity because they heard some of this stuff from, oh, 473 00:23:34,496 --> 00:23:38,125 this is the only like they're like, this is the true word of God. 474 00:23:38,125 --> 00:23:41,211 And then they ran into some of the stuff from Bart Ehrman and says, well, 475 00:23:41,211 --> 00:23:43,130 there are some variations and it through them for a loop. 476 00:23:43,130 --> 00:23:45,882 And they couldn't handle that because they had been told, like, 477 00:23:45,882 --> 00:23:47,175 there can't be any variation. 478 00:23:47,175 --> 00:23:48,176 And then when they were shown, here 479 00:23:48,176 --> 00:23:51,555 is some variation in these manuscripts, they left, they lost their faith. 480 00:23:52,139 --> 00:23:52,431 Over that. 481 00:23:52,431 --> 00:23:55,475 So how do we, kind of a long, convoluted question, 482 00:23:55,475 --> 00:24:00,647 but how do we wrestle with these two pretty opposite extremes, you know? 483 00:24:00,814 --> 00:24:04,234 So you know certainly the answer isn't like a parent 484 00:24:04,234 --> 00:24:07,237 who tells their children there's a Santa Clause, you know, 485 00:24:07,237 --> 00:24:10,157 and then when the child gets older and realizes there isn't, 486 00:24:10,157 --> 00:24:11,825 then they don't trust their parent. 487 00:24:11,825 --> 00:24:12,868 You know, you tell them that. 488 00:24:12,868 --> 00:24:16,997 The truth is, I mean, I don't think we get into Santa Claus, but. 489 00:24:17,956 --> 00:24:19,332 Yeah. 490 00:24:19,332 --> 00:24:22,461 So, yeah, if you're honest with your children 491 00:24:22,461 --> 00:24:27,257 and if pastors are honest with the congregation and if we as 492 00:24:27,257 --> 00:24:31,344 a people are honest about things, then you don't have that happen. 493 00:24:31,344 --> 00:24:33,472 Like I say, I think I knew from the time 494 00:24:33,472 --> 00:24:35,515 I was a little boy that there were variations. 495 00:24:35,515 --> 00:24:39,895 So it never was an issue to me because, you know, I wasn't told, oh, 496 00:24:39,895 --> 00:24:41,146 we have the exact thing. 497 00:24:41,146 --> 00:24:45,317 And then later I found out we we didn't just hey, just be honest from the start. 498 00:24:45,901 --> 00:24:48,778 Now, in answer to the other one, well, we don't know what's true. 499 00:24:48,778 --> 00:24:51,865 Well, see, it shows there was no collusion. 500 00:24:51,865 --> 00:24:56,578 I mean, if you had 5000 manuscripts that were exactly the same, 501 00:24:56,828 --> 00:25:00,248 it would certainly look like people got in the back room and, you know, 502 00:25:00,916 --> 00:25:04,920 let's make sure this is this, you know, when they vary. 503 00:25:05,086 --> 00:25:06,796 And yet the message doesn't vary, 504 00:25:07,839 --> 00:25:08,965 then yeah, 505 00:25:08,965 --> 00:25:12,677 it shows that, okay, we can know what the message was 506 00:25:12,719 --> 00:25:15,514 because we have all of these independent witnesses. 507 00:25:15,514 --> 00:25:19,726 The fact that they don't read precisely the same shows that they're independent. 508 00:25:20,310 --> 00:25:23,563 And yet the message is the same throughout them. 509 00:25:23,563 --> 00:25:26,816 The variations are so insignificant that, 510 00:25:27,025 --> 00:25:30,779 hey, it does show we can rely on on the message. 511 00:25:31,029 --> 00:25:35,825 And again, because it doesn't depend upon the exact wording, we can translate it 512 00:25:35,825 --> 00:25:40,205 into, you know, languages that are really different than Greek. 513 00:25:40,205 --> 00:25:41,122 You know, like, you know, 514 00:25:41,122 --> 00:25:45,293 some language on an island somewhere, let's say in the South Pacific, that, 515 00:25:45,544 --> 00:25:49,130 you know, it's from a different language family that doesn't even have any roots. 516 00:25:49,130 --> 00:25:52,968 The same with Greek, but you can still translate it because it's the message. 517 00:25:53,093 --> 00:25:56,096 But the words are going to be, you know, very different. 518 00:25:56,137 --> 00:26:00,684 But see this the thing that is so silly about that is 519 00:26:01,518 --> 00:26:05,063 we have over 40,000 denominations 520 00:26:05,063 --> 00:26:09,109 and sects and, you know, these independent megachurches and all of that. 521 00:26:10,193 --> 00:26:12,320 And the majority of them 522 00:26:12,320 --> 00:26:15,323 were around when everyone used the King James. 523 00:26:16,283 --> 00:26:19,286 So, in other words, what difference does it make, 524 00:26:19,452 --> 00:26:22,455 even if you had the precise Bible, 525 00:26:22,664 --> 00:26:26,042 if people interpret it differently, it's not going to change how you interpret it. 526 00:26:26,418 --> 00:26:29,296 You still going to have so 527 00:26:29,296 --> 00:26:34,509 and unless we have Paul with us to say this is how you should interpret it, 528 00:26:34,843 --> 00:26:37,929 we're still in the same situation because the variation 529 00:26:37,929 --> 00:26:43,602 isn't because they use different translations, it's because they interpret 530 00:26:43,602 --> 00:26:46,896 the existing one different, even Jehovah's Witnesses, 531 00:26:47,188 --> 00:26:50,108 you know, now they have this, you know, their own translation and stuff. 532 00:26:50,108 --> 00:26:52,694 But when they started, they were using the King James. 533 00:26:52,694 --> 00:26:54,738 That was yeah, that was their Bible. 534 00:26:54,738 --> 00:26:57,616 And their doctrinal all was developed using the King James. 535 00:26:57,616 --> 00:27:00,201 So maybe this is a bit of a, 536 00:27:01,202 --> 00:27:04,331 a smokescreen or or or something. 537 00:27:04,331 --> 00:27:06,416 I don't know, I'm trying to think the right terminology. 538 00:27:06,416 --> 00:27:09,711 If we get fixated on, oh, there can't be 539 00:27:09,711 --> 00:27:13,214 any variation in manuscripts when really you're saying, hey, you know, 540 00:27:13,214 --> 00:27:16,551 there's a lot of diversity just in humans interpreting things differently. 541 00:27:17,010 --> 00:27:18,470 I mean, 542 00:27:18,470 --> 00:27:20,847 I honestly, I hadn't really thought about that before. 543 00:27:20,847 --> 00:27:22,390 That makes a lot of sense though. 544 00:27:22,390 --> 00:27:25,935 then and also with translation, you know, so, 545 00:27:26,936 --> 00:27:29,105 it's like I say 546 00:27:29,105 --> 00:27:32,484 we need to focus that God's Word is his message. 547 00:27:32,776 --> 00:27:34,861 It's not the exact thing. 548 00:27:34,861 --> 00:27:40,367 And yet there's so little variation, even with 5000 plus manuscripts, 549 00:27:40,700 --> 00:27:45,914 that we can be confident what we have is very similar to what the apostles wrote. 550 00:27:46,206 --> 00:27:49,501 And so that, you know, to me is comforting. 551 00:27:49,793 --> 00:27:53,046 One reason I use, you know, the, 552 00:27:54,005 --> 00:27:55,215 I use the new King James because, 553 00:27:55,215 --> 00:27:58,385 again, archaic English is not I didn't grow up with it. 554 00:27:59,094 --> 00:28:01,763 Is it's the fullest. 555 00:28:01,763 --> 00:28:04,766 So with all these manuscripts, 556 00:28:05,308 --> 00:28:08,311 some of them contain incidents like the woman who was caught in 557 00:28:08,311 --> 00:28:11,314 adultery has become really famous. 558 00:28:11,314 --> 00:28:14,109 None of the early Christians mentioned that incident. 559 00:28:14,109 --> 00:28:14,609 Really. 560 00:28:14,609 --> 00:28:18,988 And none of the early Bible, none of the the earliest manuscripts don't mention it. 561 00:28:18,988 --> 00:28:21,908 Okay. It's now become one of the most popular 562 00:28:21,908 --> 00:28:24,744 because people like Jesus saying, you know, 563 00:28:24,744 --> 00:28:27,622 you know, whoever has no sin cast the first stone. 564 00:28:27,622 --> 00:28:28,790 We like that part. 565 00:28:28,790 --> 00:28:31,167 And I'm, you know, I don't know, 566 00:28:31,167 --> 00:28:35,171 but what I like about the Textus Receptus or the majority text. 567 00:28:35,171 --> 00:28:37,340 Right now, there's a group of Anabaptists, 568 00:28:37,340 --> 00:28:40,802 working on translating the Bible using the majority text Interesting. 569 00:28:41,094 --> 00:28:43,304 Wait, is that similar to the Textus Receptus? 570 00:28:43,304 --> 00:28:45,515 Very similar So the Textus Receptus would be 571 00:28:46,683 --> 00:28:48,601 in the majority text family. 572 00:28:48,601 --> 00:28:52,856 It's just it's taking a few of those manuscripts and it's based on that, 573 00:28:52,856 --> 00:28:55,817 where the majority text would be taking the large group 574 00:28:55,817 --> 00:28:57,944 and saying how how did the majority read? 575 00:28:57,944 --> 00:29:01,156 And then majority doesn't always follow the Textus Receptus. 576 00:29:01,448 --> 00:29:04,284 There's so little variation it doesn't matter. 577 00:29:04,284 --> 00:29:07,287 But the nice thing with the majority text or the Textus Receptus is 578 00:29:08,955 --> 00:29:11,791 let's say that that wasn't originally part of the Bible, 579 00:29:11,791 --> 00:29:15,712 about the woman caught in adultery, it might still be a true account. 580 00:29:15,712 --> 00:29:17,338 In other words, it may be a true narrative. 581 00:29:17,338 --> 00:29:21,593 It just wasn't originally in, John's Gospel, but it was true. 582 00:29:21,593 --> 00:29:24,596 And so somebody added it later. 583 00:29:24,721 --> 00:29:27,098 So how does that change my Christian? 584 00:29:27,098 --> 00:29:29,559 How I live from day to day? 585 00:29:29,559 --> 00:29:30,977 It doesn't change anything. 586 00:29:30,977 --> 00:29:31,436 What is it? 587 00:29:31,436 --> 00:29:32,979 How does it change my view of salvation 588 00:29:32,979 --> 00:29:35,815 or my view of the Trinity, or the view of anything? 589 00:29:35,815 --> 00:29:39,486 It has no effect on it, you know, and that's one of the larger things 590 00:29:39,486 --> 00:29:42,197 that there's I mean, usually it's just, you know, one word 591 00:29:42,197 --> 00:29:45,158 that's that's different. That's the whole episode. 592 00:29:45,158 --> 00:29:46,785 But even something that large 593 00:29:46,785 --> 00:29:49,788 and that's probably the largest, you know, single episode, 594 00:29:50,246 --> 00:29:53,124 it makes no difference in how we live as Christians, 595 00:29:53,124 --> 00:29:57,420 that's the irony of it, that people worry about all of these things 596 00:29:57,796 --> 00:30:01,257 that don't affect how we live, don't affect, you know, 597 00:30:01,257 --> 00:30:03,218 the fundamentals of Christianity. 598 00:30:03,218 --> 00:30:07,806 But I was saying so in with the majority text or the Textus Receptus, okay. 599 00:30:07,806 --> 00:30:09,349 It may have some things in there 600 00:30:09,349 --> 00:30:12,769 that weren't in the original, I don't know, but I can feel 601 00:30:13,186 --> 00:30:17,065 fairly confident that I have everything that was there. 602 00:30:17,065 --> 00:30:20,026 I may have a little bit more than was there, but I've got it all. 603 00:30:20,026 --> 00:30:21,319 Nothing's missing. 604 00:30:21,319 --> 00:30:24,614 Whereas with some of the others like who don't have that in there, 605 00:30:24,781 --> 00:30:27,575 well, maybe they're missing it and maybe that was part of it, 606 00:30:27,575 --> 00:30:29,577 but usually the other Bibles they put it in. 607 00:30:29,577 --> 00:30:31,788 And then just say the early manuscripts don't have that. 608 00:30:31,788 --> 00:30:33,706 So either way you read it 609 00:30:33,706 --> 00:30:34,958 and and maybe I should maybe 610 00:30:34,958 --> 00:30:37,168 that's going to stumble someone that I brought that up. 611 00:30:37,168 --> 00:30:40,129 But again, hey, we should be on 612 00:30:40,129 --> 00:30:43,341 truth is never something a Christian should be afraid of, you know? 613 00:30:43,716 --> 00:30:48,346 And so if we create these fake things, then when we're hit with truth, it’s 614 00:30:48,346 --> 00:30:49,556 going to stumble us. 615 00:30:49,556 --> 00:30:53,268 So we're talking about the Textus Receptus and the King James. So, 616 00:30:54,561 --> 00:30:56,813 I know when we were talking in, 617 00:30:56,813 --> 00:31:00,441 in private, you were mentioning it, you grew up reading Jack Chick tracks and 618 00:31:00,733 --> 00:31:04,696 and things and, and I've read I've had them handed to me 619 00:31:04,696 --> 00:31:08,950 jack chick tracks on the, Textus Receptus and the King James. 620 00:31:08,950 --> 00:31:11,870 Yeah. The. Oh, yeah, he's got a whole bunch of stuff. 621 00:31:11,870 --> 00:31:13,204 But there's one of them. 622 00:31:13,204 --> 00:31:16,165 One of his and Jack chick was brilliant. 623 00:31:16,165 --> 00:31:20,545 I mean, I dislike his dishonesty and stuff, 624 00:31:21,087 --> 00:31:25,216 but if there's a jack chick track there, I'm likely to pick it up. 625 00:31:26,092 --> 00:31:27,260 You know, he knew how to. 626 00:31:27,260 --> 00:31:31,306 That people are drawn to animation, you know, and you just pick them up. 627 00:31:31,306 --> 00:31:35,351 I mean, you know, I, I will give, you know, give him his due that that he, 628 00:31:35,560 --> 00:31:40,607 he was a genius at communicating truths using that. 629 00:31:40,607 --> 00:31:43,610 The problem was he did not have a high standard of 630 00:31:44,193 --> 00:31:47,780 I'm only going to put out what I know is true and I mean a lot of his stuff. 631 00:31:47,780 --> 00:31:49,532 He just makes up absolute lies. 632 00:31:49,532 --> 00:31:51,701 And he does on the one about the Textus Receptus. 633 00:31:51,701 --> 00:31:55,622 So I was reading it, it was given to me and according to it, 634 00:31:56,164 --> 00:32:00,710 okay, the early Christians had this, and they had the real Bible. 635 00:32:00,710 --> 00:32:01,419 Okay. 636 00:32:01,419 --> 00:32:02,962 Now it's interesting because like you say, 637 00:32:02,962 --> 00:32:05,965 when you read the early Christians, you find all of these variations 638 00:32:06,215 --> 00:32:10,386 are there before the year 200 or nearly all of Yeah, I did not know that. 639 00:32:10,386 --> 00:32:11,512 That is interesting. 640 00:32:11,512 --> 00:32:12,263 Anyways, sorry. 641 00:32:12,263 --> 00:32:16,309 Continue and so then when Constantine created the Catholic Church and all that, 642 00:32:16,601 --> 00:32:20,521 then the true Christians, they went and they had the, the original manuscripts 643 00:32:20,521 --> 00:32:21,648 and he hid them in a cave. 644 00:32:21,648 --> 00:32:22,440 Okay. 645 00:32:22,440 --> 00:32:25,902 And and, you know, they kept watch so that that would be preserved. 646 00:32:25,902 --> 00:32:29,197 And then the Waldensians got that, and then they translated 647 00:32:29,197 --> 00:32:32,283 the Bible, you know, from the real thing. 648 00:32:32,283 --> 00:32:35,870 And then that's also what you know, came down to the King James. 649 00:32:36,412 --> 00:32:39,082 Well, that is an absolute lie. 650 00:32:39,082 --> 00:32:40,792 Nothing like that happened. 651 00:32:40,792 --> 00:32:43,419 Absolutely nothing like that happened in the 652 00:32:43,419 --> 00:32:46,965 what is so absurd is we have the Waldensian Bible. 653 00:32:46,965 --> 00:32:51,177 I mean, it's still around and it doesn't follow the, the Textus Receptus. 654 00:32:51,177 --> 00:32:54,889 I mean, it's like it's like, this is so absurd. 655 00:32:55,098 --> 00:32:56,474 You're just you're just lying. 656 00:32:56,474 --> 00:32:58,685 You you don't even care about the truth. 657 00:32:58,685 --> 00:33:02,897 So when people are moved to that extent that I've got to believe this 658 00:33:02,897 --> 00:33:06,651 and I will lie to do it, well, then that should tell you then. 659 00:33:07,151 --> 00:33:08,903 Okay, there's something seriously wrong. 660 00:33:08,903 --> 00:33:11,864 Because when we have the actual truth, 661 00:33:11,948 --> 00:33:14,409 then we're not scared of new facts that go against it. 662 00:33:14,409 --> 00:33:15,076 You know? 663 00:33:15,076 --> 00:33:18,746 And we don't make up lies to try to cover them and all of that. 664 00:33:18,746 --> 00:33:23,126 We just look things in the face and the, like I say to me, 665 00:33:23,126 --> 00:33:26,629 the good news is that, wow, I can be very confident. 666 00:33:26,629 --> 00:33:30,008 When I read the New Testament that I'm reading God's Word, you know, 667 00:33:30,008 --> 00:33:32,093 and there may be a question about, you know, 668 00:33:33,261 --> 00:33:35,847 you know, the woman caught in adultery or something like that. 669 00:33:35,847 --> 00:33:40,643 And it doesn't make one lick of difference on what I, you know, practice 670 00:33:40,643 --> 00:33:44,522 what I believe about God and any of the fundamentals of the faith 671 00:33:44,981 --> 00:33:47,984 and whether it was in John's account, 672 00:33:47,984 --> 00:33:50,778 it could still be an absolutely true story, you know? 673 00:33:50,778 --> 00:33:53,740 And so, yeah, it could still be true. 674 00:33:53,740 --> 00:33:57,952 And let's just say it's, you know, someone made up a a good sounding story. 675 00:33:57,952 --> 00:33:58,745 Okay. 676 00:33:58,745 --> 00:34:01,748 Hasn't done me any harm either, you know? So, 677 00:34:02,874 --> 00:34:06,169 yeah, it's actually just looking at the truth 678 00:34:06,169 --> 00:34:10,423 and not being scared of it has, you know, definitely worked in my favor. 679 00:34:10,423 --> 00:34:12,884 And, of course, I would have discovered all that the minute 680 00:34:12,884 --> 00:34:15,136 I started reading the early Christians, I would have noticed. 681 00:34:15,136 --> 00:34:17,930 Wow. They quote these things a lot of different ways. 682 00:34:17,930 --> 00:34:20,683 You know, they weren't the least bit bothered by that. 683 00:34:20,683 --> 00:34:23,436 You know, it's just like, but that's that's so interesting though, 684 00:34:23,436 --> 00:34:27,023 because so many people are bothered by that now, you know, because like, 685 00:34:27,023 --> 00:34:31,986 if you if you grow up in a church setting that's like, this is God's word 686 00:34:31,986 --> 00:34:36,240 and you're never told that there's any kind of variation in the Greek 687 00:34:36,240 --> 00:34:39,786 and all this stuff, and then let's say you go take a college course 688 00:34:39,786 --> 00:34:42,914 or whatever, and the professor says, oh, and by the way, duh duh duh, this. 689 00:34:43,206 --> 00:34:46,959 You know, that could be extremely disorienting, you know? 690 00:34:46,959 --> 00:34:52,173 And so how how do we how do we walk through that? 691 00:34:52,173 --> 00:34:53,508 Like how? 692 00:34:53,508 --> 00:34:54,217 Yeah, I don't know. 693 00:34:54,217 --> 00:34:56,344 I feel like this could be kind of a real challenge, actually. 694 00:34:56,344 --> 00:34:59,430 Like for, for pastors and, and people looking into this and. 695 00:34:59,514 --> 00:35:02,975 Yeah, it's just I just feel like I'll just say it again, you know, 696 00:35:04,435 --> 00:35:07,438 a Christian should never have to be afraid of the truth. 697 00:35:07,438 --> 00:35:11,359 And if we if we start from the beginning of being honest and, 698 00:35:11,359 --> 00:35:15,696 and having a high regard for intellectual and spiritual honesty, 699 00:35:15,863 --> 00:35:18,199 then we don't get into these things where, 700 00:35:18,199 --> 00:35:21,369 like I said, I hope you don't get a bunch of people angry with you, 701 00:35:21,577 --> 00:35:24,789 but if they are, it's like, so what are you angry about? 702 00:35:24,789 --> 00:35:28,835 Do you have some facts that are different than what we've just shared here tonight? 703 00:35:28,835 --> 00:35:30,503 I can guarantee you they don't. 704 00:35:30,503 --> 00:35:33,214 They'll have jack chick tracks and they'll have some books, 705 00:35:33,214 --> 00:35:36,217 you know, published by him and by other people. 706 00:35:36,425 --> 00:35:39,554 They will have no facts that are that are different. 707 00:35:41,055 --> 00:35:44,016 And so it's like, why would you want to build a faith 708 00:35:44,016 --> 00:35:45,393 on something that's not true? 709 00:35:45,393 --> 00:35:47,979 You know, my faith is just as strong 710 00:35:47,979 --> 00:35:52,233 and I have no problem facing the truth about the manuscripts. 711 00:35:52,233 --> 00:35:54,819 It's like I just see a brilliant God. 712 00:35:54,819 --> 00:35:56,779 You know, who, who, who? 713 00:35:56,779 --> 00:36:01,075 He knew his word was going to be translated into hundreds of languages, 714 00:36:01,492 --> 00:36:05,246 and so it couldn't be dependent on the wording in the Greek, 715 00:36:05,246 --> 00:36:08,749 the precise wording, because then the whole world, 716 00:36:08,749 --> 00:36:11,419 only a little group of people would actually have his word. 717 00:36:11,419 --> 00:36:12,295 You know, and would have to be trying to get all these people to learn 718 00:36:12,295 --> 00:36:15,131 You know, and would have to be trying to get all these people to learn 719 00:36:15,590 --> 00:36:18,134 Greek, including David Bercot, you know, and, and. 720 00:36:21,053 --> 00:36:23,264 And I've studied it, but wow. 721 00:36:23,264 --> 00:36:25,933 It's I'm, I don't take to it easily. 722 00:36:25,933 --> 00:36:28,936 That's that's for sure. It's, it's, 723 00:36:29,187 --> 00:36:32,648 So yeah, I appreciate that God made his word. 724 00:36:32,857 --> 00:36:36,152 So there's enough flexibility 725 00:36:36,444 --> 00:36:40,740 that the message can be translated, into different languages. 726 00:36:41,032 --> 00:36:44,660 And it's still God's Word because it's still his message. 727 00:36:44,785 --> 00:36:46,913 Unless somebody just really messes with it. 728 00:36:46,913 --> 00:36:49,582 Like I say, I don't like these these paraphrases. 729 00:36:49,582 --> 00:36:52,835 Now that I have a big problem with, you know, give me God's word. 730 00:36:52,877 --> 00:36:54,337 Translate it. 731 00:36:54,337 --> 00:36:57,340 Yes, you might have some errors in your translation, 732 00:36:57,381 --> 00:37:01,052 but at least try to translate it fairly literally. 733 00:37:01,052 --> 00:37:03,387 You can’t translate it absolutely literally. 734 00:37:03,387 --> 00:37:06,098 But but as literal as possible. 735 00:37:06,098 --> 00:37:08,392 And yeah, then let me work from there. 736 00:37:08,392 --> 00:37:10,895 And it's nice that we have several translations. 737 00:37:10,895 --> 00:37:15,149 Well, I mean, we have hundreds of them, but we have good ones we can compare 738 00:37:15,149 --> 00:37:19,028 and, and see and oh, okay, that can often shed light. 739 00:37:19,028 --> 00:37:24,533 And like I say, I also like looking at how the early Christians quoted things 740 00:37:24,742 --> 00:37:28,246 and how they understood the Greek, because often it is very different than, 741 00:37:28,246 --> 00:37:29,789 than even the King James. 742 00:37:29,789 --> 00:37:32,792 I mean, there's things in the King James that are, 743 00:37:33,251 --> 00:37:35,211 well, I, you know, working on the Romans commentary. 744 00:37:35,211 --> 00:37:36,462 Do we have time to go into this? 745 00:37:37,463 --> 00:37:38,381 So I'm working on it. 746 00:37:38,381 --> 00:37:40,132 And this really surprised me because, like I said, 747 00:37:40,132 --> 00:37:43,594 I really have a lot of respect for for the King James translators. 748 00:37:43,886 --> 00:37:48,224 And, you know, I was I was using them and comparing with the early Christians 749 00:37:48,224 --> 00:37:51,978 and, you know, it just yeah, this is great how the King James has it, 750 00:37:51,978 --> 00:37:53,062 you know, and I would compare 751 00:37:53,062 --> 00:37:55,189 sometimes with the NIV or something is like, no, 752 00:37:55,189 --> 00:37:56,816 the King James translators got it right. 753 00:37:56,816 --> 00:37:59,652 You know, because this is how the early Christians are understanding it. 754 00:37:59,652 --> 00:38:01,988 And I can't quote it, 755 00:38:01,988 --> 00:38:04,991 the chapter and verse, but in there. 756 00:38:05,658 --> 00:38:09,495 Paul says that he's quoting actually from I think it's 757 00:38:09,495 --> 00:38:13,958 Isaiah that, God would make a short word on the earth. 758 00:38:14,166 --> 00:38:17,003 Okay. Is what he says. 759 00:38:17,003 --> 00:38:20,673 But the King James says he would make a short work on the earth. 760 00:38:21,257 --> 00:38:22,842 Okay, now 761 00:38:24,135 --> 00:38:26,095 that sounds more reasonable than word. 762 00:38:26,095 --> 00:38:29,390 It's short work, and it's like I'm reading the early Christians 763 00:38:29,390 --> 00:38:32,893 and they're saying word and they they go into an explanation. 764 00:38:32,893 --> 00:38:36,314 There's no, you know, wondering, did they maybe is that just a typo? 765 00:38:36,480 --> 00:38:38,566 Because they talk about what that word is, you know, 766 00:38:38,566 --> 00:38:41,569 it's the gospel, that it's a short thing compared to the law 767 00:38:41,569 --> 00:38:42,903 that has all these commandments. 768 00:38:42,903 --> 00:38:44,113 And the gospel is very short. 769 00:38:44,113 --> 00:38:47,116 So the short word was the, the gospel. 770 00:38:48,075 --> 00:38:49,577 And it's like the King James says, work. 771 00:38:49,577 --> 00:38:50,077 Okay. 772 00:38:50,077 --> 00:38:54,081 I look at the Textus Receptus, I look at the text and it's the Greek word, 773 00:38:54,498 --> 00:38:57,126 there is Logos, which is word. 774 00:38:57,126 --> 00:38:58,836 It's not Ergon, which is work. 775 00:38:58,836 --> 00:39:00,796 And it's like, what in the world? 776 00:39:00,796 --> 00:39:03,174 You had it right in front of you and you changed it. 777 00:39:03,174 --> 00:39:07,303 Now Then I looked at the Tyndale, which was before the King James. 778 00:39:07,303 --> 00:39:10,306 It has a short word. I looked at Geneva. 779 00:39:10,306 --> 00:39:13,225 All the ones before the King James have word. 780 00:39:13,225 --> 00:39:15,436 The Wycliffe, they all have word. 781 00:39:15,436 --> 00:39:18,439 And then King James translators put work in there, and it's like, 782 00:39:18,564 --> 00:39:20,191 why did you guys do this? 783 00:39:20,191 --> 00:39:23,027 Now, the funny thing is then when you go to modern ones that they say 784 00:39:23,027 --> 00:39:26,655 a fresh translation from the Greek, then they have short work. 785 00:39:26,655 --> 00:39:29,241 It's like, no way. Yeah, I'm not kidding. 786 00:39:29,241 --> 00:39:30,034 I'm not kidding. 787 00:39:30,034 --> 00:39:32,203 which ones do you know of any off the top of your head? 788 00:39:32,203 --> 00:39:34,872 I'm pretty sure the NIV, ESV, I think. 789 00:39:34,872 --> 00:39:37,291 Yeah, check them out. I mean, All right. 790 00:39:37,291 --> 00:39:40,002 You're just. This is very important. 791 00:39:40,002 --> 00:39:42,171 Do we have any idea which chapter verse this is? 792 00:39:42,171 --> 00:39:43,130 Oh, yeah. That's right. 793 00:39:43,130 --> 00:39:44,507 Oh, man. 794 00:39:44,507 --> 00:39:46,967 Someone's going to dig it up in the comments. And, 795 00:39:47,927 --> 00:39:49,220 Well, no, hold on, hold on. 796 00:39:49,220 --> 00:39:50,137 Let's let's let's do it. 797 00:39:50,137 --> 00:39:51,097 Let's do a quick, 798 00:39:51,097 --> 00:39:55,309 let's do a quick search here because, I mean, this is way too important here. 799 00:39:55,851 --> 00:39:56,352 My point wasn’t criticism, It's just that 800 00:39:56,352 --> 00:39:59,522 I don't think that these translators were infallible. 801 00:39:59,522 --> 00:40:03,526 Just, hey, they did an admirable job, but they were not infallible. 802 00:40:03,526 --> 00:40:06,695 You know, they they, change things, not just there. 803 00:40:06,695 --> 00:40:08,739 They were several other things as well. 804 00:40:08,739 --> 00:40:11,325 You just changed it. There was no reason to change it. It's. 805 00:40:11,325 --> 00:40:12,410 I don't think it's a typo. 806 00:40:12,410 --> 00:40:15,579 It's just you thought this doesn't make sense. 807 00:40:15,579 --> 00:40:17,498 And so we're going to change this okay. 808 00:40:17,498 --> 00:40:20,793 But I can just see the comments coming through already. 809 00:40:20,793 --> 00:40:25,089 Like someone is going to still find a way to defend that and be 810 00:40:25,131 --> 00:40:27,174 and be like the King James is still the right 811 00:40:27,174 --> 00:40:30,678 when you get that comment, forward it to me because I'd like to see 812 00:40:31,262 --> 00:40:34,265 I want them to go to the the Textus Receptus 813 00:40:35,141 --> 00:40:38,686 where it says word there Logos. 814 00:40:38,686 --> 00:40:41,897 And yeah explain that to me how that can mean work. 815 00:40:42,022 --> 00:40:42,815 Okay. 816 00:40:42,815 --> 00:40:46,110 That I would like to see I'd like to see someone defend that. 817 00:40:46,193 --> 00:40:46,610 All right. 818 00:40:46,610 --> 00:40:49,905 If, if you're a King James only person or something who would like to. 819 00:40:49,905 --> 00:40:51,282 Because I would. Yeah. 820 00:40:51,282 --> 00:40:53,534 Because I know there are cases like that. 821 00:40:53,534 --> 00:40:56,829 I have a friend who's does some stuff with Greek and blah, blah, blah. 822 00:40:56,829 --> 00:40:58,497 And they say, oh yeah, there, 823 00:40:58,497 --> 00:41:00,583 there are different points where it's just like, oh yeah, they just 824 00:41:00,583 --> 00:41:02,626 they kind of messed up there. Like you can read in the Greek. 825 00:41:02,626 --> 00:41:04,128 It's like, yeah, it pretty clearly means this. 826 00:41:04,128 --> 00:41:07,423 And they, you know, they just and some of that is, you know, 827 00:41:07,423 --> 00:41:09,633 maybe it was a mistake, maybe it was this, that whatever. 828 00:41:09,633 --> 00:41:14,054 But it was just interesting because if you grow up hearing this is God's word. 829 00:41:14,054 --> 00:41:18,184 And then if you have someone later on tell you, oh, yeah, they messed up, 830 00:41:19,018 --> 00:41:20,102 depending on who you are, 831 00:41:20,102 --> 00:41:22,813 could actually rattle you because if you're not taught this stuff. 832 00:41:22,813 --> 00:41:24,064 So anyway, that's kind of why I was like, 833 00:41:24,064 --> 00:41:25,816 I feel like this is an important enough topic. 834 00:41:25,816 --> 00:41:29,028 You know, we're going to dive into it and, and and it's not again, 835 00:41:29,653 --> 00:41:33,324 somebody who has been raised with a King James is and is using it. 836 00:41:33,741 --> 00:41:34,408 Hey fine. 837 00:41:34,408 --> 00:41:35,868 Again I'm saying 838 00:41:35,868 --> 00:41:40,039 I think it is great now personally, you know, working on these commentaries, 839 00:41:41,415 --> 00:41:43,292 when I do see something different 840 00:41:43,292 --> 00:41:44,084 in what's in our, 841 00:41:44,084 --> 00:41:47,171 you know, like, say the King James or New King James like that, then 842 00:41:47,171 --> 00:41:50,174 I always go back to trying to figure out why is it different? 843 00:41:51,008 --> 00:41:54,553 And, of course, I haven't done this with the whole New Testament, 844 00:41:54,553 --> 00:41:58,390 so I can't say that this rule applies equally. 845 00:41:58,724 --> 00:42:01,519 I have personally found that more often than not, 846 00:42:01,519 --> 00:42:04,522 Wycliffe translates it 847 00:42:04,647 --> 00:42:07,733 more similar to the early church than anyone after him. 848 00:42:07,983 --> 00:42:10,986 So you have Wycliffe, which is the oldest English translation, 849 00:42:11,320 --> 00:42:14,740 and I have personally found it to be the most accurate. 850 00:42:15,032 --> 00:42:18,035 Even though he didn't translate from Greek, he translated from Latin. 851 00:42:18,410 --> 00:42:22,039 And yeah, and it's really I know and I was always told how terrible, 852 00:42:22,039 --> 00:42:23,374 you know, that was. 853 00:42:23,374 --> 00:42:26,585 And then Tyndale usually is better 854 00:42:26,585 --> 00:42:29,630 than the King James and he's, you know, he's earlier. 855 00:42:29,630 --> 00:42:30,589 So it seems like. 856 00:42:30,589 --> 00:42:33,592 And then the King James is almost always better than the NIV. 857 00:42:34,176 --> 00:42:36,804 So it is interesting. 858 00:42:36,804 --> 00:42:39,640 That's just what what I have found going back, you know. 859 00:42:39,640 --> 00:42:42,601 And so I like if it matters. 860 00:42:42,601 --> 00:42:46,647 But these things only mattered because I was doing a commentary and I, 861 00:42:46,939 --> 00:42:48,274 you know, I had to discuss it. 862 00:42:48,274 --> 00:42:49,024 I had the 863 00:42:49,024 --> 00:42:52,486 the running text had to fit the comments from the early Christians, you know, 864 00:42:52,861 --> 00:42:57,283 and when what they were saying didn't fit the text of the King James or whatever. 865 00:42:57,491 --> 00:42:59,243 Then then that's when I started digging. 866 00:42:59,243 --> 00:43:02,246 It's like, well, okay, so why are they saying something different here? 867 00:43:02,329 --> 00:43:05,249 And then I would find out, oh, they're following the Greek. 868 00:43:05,249 --> 00:43:07,293 And for some reason the King James changed it 869 00:43:07,293 --> 00:43:11,088 or whomever that's, that is that is just bizarre. 870 00:43:11,130 --> 00:43:13,674 Like it's again, it is a small percentage. 871 00:43:13,674 --> 00:43:16,844 I mean, you know, I don't when I read the The King James, 872 00:43:16,844 --> 00:43:18,887 I don't normally feel like, oh, I better check this, 873 00:43:18,887 --> 00:43:21,265 make sure it's right, you know, because it's, it's it's 874 00:43:21,265 --> 00:43:25,728 a very small percentage, but it's enough I think that we should be honest. 875 00:43:25,728 --> 00:43:27,563 Look, these guys were not infallible. 876 00:43:27,563 --> 00:43:30,608 And they were very dedicated, very learned, 877 00:43:30,608 --> 00:43:33,110 but they were not infallible. 878 00:43:33,110 --> 00:43:36,363 And for us as Anabaptists, I never understood this coming in 879 00:43:36,363 --> 00:43:39,366 when I saw these people, King James only it's like, now, wait a minute. 880 00:43:39,742 --> 00:43:43,120 One of the key teachings of the Anabaptists was 881 00:43:43,120 --> 00:43:45,080 you cannot have a state church. 882 00:43:45,080 --> 00:43:48,083 That's wicked that a state church is automatically corrupt. 883 00:43:48,459 --> 00:43:51,670 Well, the King James Bible was a state Bible. 884 00:43:51,670 --> 00:43:57,217 It was commissioned by King James and it was done with his permission, 885 00:43:57,217 --> 00:44:00,262 with his backing, with his money, the state money. 886 00:44:00,638 --> 00:44:04,308 And it was made the official the only Bible allowed 887 00:44:04,308 --> 00:44:06,143 in the English churches. 888 00:44:06,143 --> 00:44:07,394 So it was a state Bible. 889 00:44:07,394 --> 00:44:10,397 So it's like, so why would we as Anabaptists 890 00:44:10,689 --> 00:44:15,736 latch on to a state Bible, a Bible that's the product of a state church? 891 00:44:16,070 --> 00:44:20,866 Now, again, I use it because it's it's like I say, an admirable translation, 892 00:44:20,991 --> 00:44:25,454 or I use a modernized version of it, but it's like I don't worship it 893 00:44:25,454 --> 00:44:29,041 as the Bible, because if God did give us the Bible, 894 00:44:29,041 --> 00:44:32,211 that we have it absolute, he wouldn't do it to a state church. 895 00:44:32,461 --> 00:44:36,590 I mean, unless he wants us, unless unless we're all wrong as Anabaptists 896 00:44:36,590 --> 00:44:38,217 and that God wants a state church. 897 00:44:38,217 --> 00:44:40,219 You know, I don't think he would work that way. 898 00:44:40,219 --> 00:44:44,390 So it is an odd thing, you know, that Anabaptists ought to step back and like, 899 00:44:44,723 --> 00:44:48,185 why are we that's a it's kind of a good point. 900 00:44:48,185 --> 00:44:49,937 Like, yeah, maybe we should kind of whoa. 901 00:44:49,937 --> 00:44:50,688 Okay. Step back. 902 00:44:50,688 --> 00:44:52,898 Look at some of the broader context that's going on. 903 00:44:52,898 --> 00:44:57,111 Also, I well before we were recording this and we were talking through this episode 904 00:44:57,111 --> 00:44:58,278 and things you'd mentioned. 905 00:44:58,278 --> 00:44:58,904 Well, it's like also to keep in mind the Anabaptist movement had been going on 906 00:44:58,904 --> 00:45:01,281 Well, it's like also to keep in mind the Anabaptist movement had been going on 907 00:45:01,281 --> 00:45:04,910 for like 90 years before the King James translation even existed. 908 00:45:05,202 --> 00:45:09,623 So this is it's not even part of our story as a people, which is fascinating. 909 00:45:09,623 --> 00:45:12,626 Which what would have they read just out of curiosity? 910 00:45:12,710 --> 00:45:14,128 Okay. Luther's translation interesting. 911 00:45:14,128 --> 00:45:17,256 So this is what the Amish use today is Luther's Bible. 912 00:45:17,339 --> 00:45:20,134 Oh, okay. That makes sense. Yeah. 913 00:45:20,134 --> 00:45:23,137 So yeah, the Anabaptists, I mean, they were still doing 914 00:45:23,637 --> 00:45:25,264 German services, you know. 915 00:45:25,264 --> 00:45:26,849 Well into the 1800s. 916 00:45:26,849 --> 00:45:27,516 So, yeah, they didn't 917 00:45:27,516 --> 00:45:31,603 start using the King James until, you know, the last half of the 1800s. 918 00:45:31,603 --> 00:45:33,731 So it's like this is very new in our movement. 919 00:45:33,731 --> 00:45:36,817 And now we're already worshiping it as the infallible word of God. 920 00:45:36,817 --> 00:45:37,943 And it's like, wait a minute. 921 00:45:37,943 --> 00:45:41,613 You know, our people were using Luther's Bible for centuries 922 00:45:41,739 --> 00:45:44,742 before we started even using the the King James. 923 00:45:44,908 --> 00:45:45,617 Yeah. Wow. 924 00:45:45,617 --> 00:45:49,997 This this is just this is this is, an interesting story 925 00:45:49,997 --> 00:45:51,248 with a lot of different pieces 926 00:45:51,248 --> 00:45:53,667 kind of weaving together, and there's so many different things, 927 00:45:53,667 --> 00:45:56,670 and even like the psychology involved in it and how people 928 00:45:57,045 --> 00:45:59,923 perceive the Bible and, and, Wow. 929 00:45:59,923 --> 00:46:01,467 Yeah, it's kind of a lot to think about. 930 00:46:01,467 --> 00:46:05,095 And I'm really curious what the responses are going to be for starters. 931 00:46:05,721 --> 00:46:10,517 But I think one of the takeaways from this is, is maybe taking a step back 932 00:46:10,517 --> 00:46:13,687 from some of our biases and actually looking at more of the context. 933 00:46:13,687 --> 00:46:16,690 It feels like that's what you've been doing a lot with 934 00:46:16,690 --> 00:46:19,568 comparing with some of these other earlier, like pre King James 935 00:46:19,568 --> 00:46:22,738 and then even some of this stuff with where the Textus Receptus comes from. 936 00:46:22,738 --> 00:46:23,489 That was interesting. 937 00:46:23,489 --> 00:46:25,949 I didn't I hadn't really thought about some of that before. 938 00:46:25,949 --> 00:46:26,909 Yeah that's really good. I 939 00:46:27,534 --> 00:46:28,619 what is a piece you would 940 00:46:28,619 --> 00:46:33,040 want to leave our audience with when we think about these things? 941 00:46:33,040 --> 00:46:34,541 Because they are going to run into this. 942 00:46:34,541 --> 00:46:37,002 I'm sure the variations between different manuscripts 943 00:46:37,002 --> 00:46:39,046 and people will probably be out there trying to convince them. 944 00:46:39,046 --> 00:46:43,592 Therefore, Christianity is not real or therefore King James only, or whatever 945 00:46:43,926 --> 00:46:44,802 the case may be. 946 00:46:44,802 --> 00:46:46,970 There's lots of ideas and opinions. 947 00:46:46,970 --> 00:46:49,306 What's something you can that we can leave our audience with? 948 00:46:49,306 --> 00:46:50,766 Let's leave them on solid ground. 949 00:46:50,766 --> 00:46:53,018 Yeah. So, 950 00:46:53,018 --> 00:46:55,938 years ago. Wow. 951 00:46:55,938 --> 00:47:00,150 About 18 years ago, I, I was sharing a message at, 952 00:47:00,275 --> 00:47:05,531 with a group of people, in California, and it got into Bible manuscripts, 953 00:47:05,531 --> 00:47:07,699 and I thought I was sharing something that they would enjoy. 954 00:47:07,699 --> 00:47:09,701 I did not know they were King James, only. Okay. 955 00:47:11,078 --> 00:47:14,623 Wow. Did I jump into a hornet's nest. 956 00:47:15,457 --> 00:47:17,876 And one of the brothers, I mean, he stood up and said, 957 00:47:17,876 --> 00:47:21,505 I want to be able to tell my daughter, you show her the Bible 958 00:47:21,880 --> 00:47:24,925 and say, This is God's word. 959 00:47:25,050 --> 00:47:28,053 I want to be able to do that. You know? 960 00:47:28,345 --> 00:47:30,806 And so I think the message that I would want to leave 961 00:47:30,806 --> 00:47:33,684 with our listeners is, you can do that. 962 00:47:33,684 --> 00:47:37,396 You can pick it up whether it is the new King James 963 00:47:37,396 --> 00:47:41,441 or the King James or the Tyndale or the Wycliffe, and say, 964 00:47:41,441 --> 00:47:45,487 This is God's Word, because God's Word 965 00:47:46,154 --> 00:47:48,824 is the inspired message 966 00:47:48,824 --> 00:47:54,037 that is in there, and that you can change a word or two here 967 00:47:54,037 --> 00:47:57,040 and there, you can translate it differently. 968 00:47:57,165 --> 00:47:59,042 It's still God's word. 969 00:47:59,042 --> 00:47:59,084 It's still God's word. 970 00:47:59,084 --> 00:48:00,335 Yeah, you can corrupt it. 971 00:48:00,335 --> 00:48:04,214 I think some of the translations do corrupt it, but as long as you are being 972 00:48:04,506 --> 00:48:08,927 relatively faithful to the manuscripts, it is God's Word. 973 00:48:09,219 --> 00:48:13,140 It is a message that is as was prophesied. 974 00:48:13,140 --> 00:48:14,308 It's a short word. 975 00:48:14,308 --> 00:48:18,478 You know, his his his message to us didn't depend on all these words. 976 00:48:18,478 --> 00:48:19,229 We have them. 977 00:48:19,229 --> 00:48:21,565 We have things that often we can't understand. 978 00:48:21,565 --> 00:48:24,693 Like like Romans, you know, they they're, you know, people going in 979 00:48:24,693 --> 00:48:28,071 different directions, but, you know, God's word is there. 980 00:48:28,363 --> 00:48:30,908 And it's really a relatively simple message. 981 00:48:30,908 --> 00:48:32,242 You know, I think actually most Christians, 982 00:48:32,242 --> 00:48:35,287 you know, get that, that, you know, we don't have to understand all of that. 983 00:48:35,287 --> 00:48:36,872 And it doesn't depend on all these verses. 984 00:48:36,872 --> 00:48:39,166 It really does come down to a few things. 985 00:48:39,166 --> 00:48:42,544 So yeah, this should not weaken someone's faith 986 00:48:42,544 --> 00:48:45,255 unless they've been told something that's false. 987 00:48:45,255 --> 00:48:48,216 I mean, always tell your people the truth. 988 00:48:48,216 --> 00:48:51,094 And you know, we can be confident when I pick it up and read it. 989 00:48:51,094 --> 00:48:55,891 I have every bit of feeling I am reading the Word of God, 990 00:48:56,308 --> 00:48:59,061 even though I know I'm reading a human translation. 991 00:48:59,061 --> 00:49:00,187 And yes, a word or two. 992 00:49:00,187 --> 00:49:03,690 Maybe wrong, but the message is not going to be wrong. 993 00:49:05,317 --> 00:49:06,902 That's that's powerful. 994 00:49:06,902 --> 00:49:07,235 Yeah. 995 00:49:07,235 --> 00:49:11,448 And I hope people after listening to this can can come away 996 00:49:11,448 --> 00:49:15,035 with a lot of new information and not like you're saying don't be afraid 997 00:49:15,035 --> 00:49:18,246 to, to look at the truth of these things because 998 00:49:18,997 --> 00:49:20,958 I'm sure they're going to run into it. You know, like I did. 999 00:49:20,958 --> 00:49:21,625 You know, I went 1000 00:49:21,625 --> 00:49:24,628 I was in my library and, oh, here's a book about Bible manuscripts. 1001 00:49:24,628 --> 00:49:25,921 And it was by Bart Ehrman. 1002 00:49:25,921 --> 00:49:28,090 And he's here saying, oh, you shouldn't believe in Christianity, 1003 00:49:28,090 --> 00:49:31,134 because these variations and fortunately, I didn't go down that street. 1004 00:49:31,259 --> 00:49:34,054 But, you know, maybe somebody else will, you know, and that's unfortunate. 1005 00:49:34,054 --> 00:49:37,599 And hopefully we can give them some tools 1006 00:49:37,599 --> 00:49:40,978 that they can still trust and, you know, have faith in what God has preserved. 1007 00:49:41,144 --> 00:49:44,314 and if any of this has bothered them now, here's where they can do 1008 00:49:44,815 --> 00:49:46,984 a lot of digging, that there are a lot of books 1009 00:49:46,984 --> 00:49:51,029 written out there by Bible believing Christians who acknowledge 1010 00:49:51,029 --> 00:49:55,492 that there's these manuscripts who don't, who don't lie, who none of this has upset 1011 00:49:55,492 --> 00:49:58,829 them, you know, I mean, you can go and dig this out for you, for yourself. 1012 00:49:59,037 --> 00:50:01,957 Very few people have walked away from God because of that. 1013 00:50:01,957 --> 00:50:05,794 Now, even that person who says that's the reason I really wonder. 1014 00:50:06,086 --> 00:50:10,340 My own experience is usually been the hypocritical conduct of Christians. 1015 00:50:10,924 --> 00:50:14,553 It's caused people, if they're going to turn away, it's yeah, 1016 00:50:14,553 --> 00:50:19,016 that's it more than oh, it's because, you know, there's various manuscripts. 1017 00:50:19,224 --> 00:50:21,643 I'd say very few have been stumbled over that. 1018 00:50:21,643 --> 00:50:24,938 A whole lot of people have been stumbled by Christians 1019 00:50:25,272 --> 00:50:27,774 who don't walk in the teachings of Christ. 1020 00:50:27,774 --> 00:50:30,777 So I think that's what we really need to focus on. 1021 00:50:31,319 --> 00:50:34,322 That's that's a powerful one to, to leave with is 1022 00:50:34,489 --> 00:50:37,492 we can get fixated on manuscripts and this little variation here and there, 1023 00:50:37,784 --> 00:50:41,580 but you keep bringing it back to, what's the message that this text, 1024 00:50:41,788 --> 00:50:43,457 the the Bible is telling us? 1025 00:50:43,457 --> 00:50:44,916 And then how do we live that out? 1026 00:50:44,916 --> 00:50:46,710 And how do we be gracious and humble 1027 00:50:46,710 --> 00:50:49,796 and love our neighbors and all of these other things, too? 1028 00:50:49,796 --> 00:50:53,508 That's so easy to forget when we want to, insist on our way, I guess. 1029 00:50:54,301 --> 00:50:57,554 Yeah, that's that's a powerful piece to leave us with. And, 1030 00:50:58,680 --> 00:51:00,265 I just want to say thanks for coming on 1031 00:51:00,265 --> 00:51:03,060 and being willing to tackle this topic because it's controversial. 1032 00:51:03,060 --> 00:51:05,312 So yeah. Okay. 1033 00:51:05,312 --> 00:51:05,645 Thank you. 1034 00:51:05,645 --> 00:51:06,104 David.