1
00:00:00,170 --> 00:00:02,830
Speaker 1: Looking back 20-some years later from the New Atheist, I

2
00:00:02,870 --> 00:00:05,939
Speaker 1: have more confidence that God exists, that the Bible's true,

3
00:00:05,960 --> 00:00:07,780
Speaker 1: that we can trust that it's been copied.

4
00:00:07,800 --> 00:00:10,000
Speaker 2: One of the things that some listeners may not know

5
00:00:10,060 --> 00:00:11,640
Speaker 2: is that, you know, the second century was known as

6
00:00:11,680 --> 00:00:13,710
Speaker 2: the golden age of apologetics, right? And when you look

7
00:00:13,740 --> 00:00:17,030
Speaker 2: back in the second century, what made Christians... better thinkers

8
00:00:17,290 --> 00:00:19,169
Speaker 2: and better articulators of their faith?

9
00:00:19,230 --> 00:00:20,700
Speaker 3: The answer was the attacks on it.

10
00:00:20,829 --> 00:00:23,780
Speaker 2: So in one weird sort of paradoxical way, we can

11
00:00:23,800 --> 00:00:26,419
Speaker 2: thank our critics because they force us to be more precise.

12
00:00:26,560 --> 00:00:28,860
Speaker 3: They force us to be more careful about what we say.

13
00:00:28,880 --> 00:00:33,050
Speaker 1: What does textual criticism allow Christians to say confidently about

14
00:00:33,090 --> 00:00:33,630
Speaker 1: the New Testament?

15
00:00:33,710 --> 00:00:35,629
Speaker 2: Testament. Think deeply about the Christian claim for a moment.

16
00:00:35,650 --> 00:00:38,290
Speaker 2: The Christian claim is that when apostles wrote, they wrote

17
00:00:38,310 --> 00:00:39,890
Speaker 2: with a certain level of authority. They wrote with a

18
00:00:39,930 --> 00:00:42,890
Speaker 2: certain level of ability to speak for Jesus. So we

19
00:00:42,930 --> 00:00:44,980
Speaker 2: really care not just what anyone wrote, we care what

20
00:00:45,000 --> 00:00:46,980
Speaker 2: the apostles wrote. And the question is, do we have

21
00:00:47,020 --> 00:00:49,080
Speaker 2: what the apostles wrote? We have the essential words of

22
00:00:49,100 --> 00:00:50,900
Speaker 2: what Paul wrote in Romans. We have what John wrote

23
00:00:50,920 --> 00:00:52,860
Speaker 2: in John's Gospel. We have what Luke wrote. But we've

24
00:00:52,880 --> 00:00:54,660
Speaker 2: got to start at the basis. And the basis for

25
00:00:54,680 --> 00:00:56,340
Speaker 2: the whole thing is that do we have the words

26
00:00:56,380 --> 00:00:56,660
Speaker 2: or not?

27
00:00:56,760 --> 00:00:57,300
Speaker 3: And I think we do.

28
00:00:58,760 --> 00:01:01,240
Speaker 1: What do the early manuscripts in the New Testament... from

29
00:01:01,270 --> 00:01:05,030
Speaker 1: the second century and beyond, revealed to us about its transmission.

30
00:01:05,650 --> 00:01:08,350
Speaker 1: How much confidence can we really have in our New

31
00:01:08,410 --> 00:01:09,750
Speaker 1: Testament text?

32
00:01:10,190 --> 00:01:10,450
Speaker 3: Dr.

33
00:01:10,490 --> 00:01:13,530
Speaker 1: Michael Kruger, I can't think of somebody more equipped and

34
00:01:13,630 --> 00:01:17,130
Speaker 1: interested to talk about this than you. You are legit

35
00:01:17,170 --> 00:01:21,030
Speaker 1: one of the experts on early Christianity and manuscripts. Thanks

36
00:01:21,050 --> 00:01:23,190
Speaker 1: for coming to Biola and be willing to sit down

37
00:01:23,220 --> 00:01:24,000
Speaker 1: with me and talk about this.

38
00:01:24,230 --> 00:01:27,800
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Love the conversation, love the topic, and looking forward

39
00:01:27,819 --> 00:01:28,000
Speaker 3: to it.

40
00:01:28,440 --> 00:01:31,140
Speaker 1: Before we jump into some details, I'd love to know, like,

41
00:01:31,160 --> 00:01:34,000
Speaker 1: of all the things you could study, what interested you

42
00:01:34,250 --> 00:01:38,390
Speaker 1: personally in the textual transmission and tradition of the New Testament?

43
00:01:38,730 --> 00:01:40,470
Speaker 2: Yeah, I get asked this a lot. It's a very

44
00:01:40,569 --> 00:01:43,530
Speaker 2: niche field. It's very sort of narrow. When people think

45
00:01:43,590 --> 00:01:46,610
Speaker 2: about what a New Testament scholar does, they normally think

46
00:01:46,650 --> 00:01:50,390
Speaker 2: about New Testament theology or biblical theology or, you know,

47
00:01:50,490 --> 00:01:52,870
Speaker 2: different types of exegetical things. But there are people like, well,

48
00:01:52,890 --> 00:01:55,420
Speaker 2: how'd you get into text and canon? Actually, I got

49
00:01:55,440 --> 00:01:59,010
Speaker 2: into text and canon as an undergraduate. I was at

50
00:01:59,110 --> 00:02:01,470
Speaker 2: UNC Chapel Hill, which was my alma mater, and I

51
00:02:01,510 --> 00:02:03,950
Speaker 2: found myself in a religion class, and it was an

52
00:02:03,970 --> 00:02:06,510
Speaker 2: introduction to the New Testament, and the professor just wanted

53
00:02:06,550 --> 00:02:09,109
Speaker 2: to talk about text and canon all the time. And

54
00:02:09,250 --> 00:02:11,040
Speaker 2: some of the listeners may know that professor's name.

55
00:02:10,960 --> 00:02:11,620
Speaker 3: Was Bart Ehrman.

56
00:02:12,120 --> 00:02:14,920
Speaker 2: So I actually have Bart Ehrman to thank for my

57
00:02:14,960 --> 00:02:16,840
Speaker 2: interest in textual and canonical issues.

58
00:02:17,500 --> 00:02:20,300
Speaker 1: That is super interesting. Now was this, just briefly, was

59
00:02:20,320 --> 00:02:23,160
Speaker 1: this like A crisis moment? A challenge moment? Like, how

60
00:02:23,180 --> 00:02:25,620
Speaker 1: was that response to somebody who clearly had different views

61
00:02:25,639 --> 00:02:26,160
Speaker 1: than you?

62
00:02:26,220 --> 00:02:26,780
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.

63
00:02:26,919 --> 00:02:28,800
Speaker 2: It was a bit of a crisis moment for me, actually.

64
00:02:28,860 --> 00:02:30,470
Speaker 2: And I tell the story in some of my books

65
00:02:31,450 --> 00:02:34,130
Speaker 2: and talk about how, you know, I found myself in

66
00:02:34,150 --> 00:02:37,399
Speaker 2: a religion class as a committed believer. I was, you know, 18,

67
00:02:37,400 --> 00:02:39,910
Speaker 2: 19 years old. I didn't know what I was in for.

68
00:02:40,590 --> 00:02:42,960
Speaker 2: And I sat down in this class. And Ehrman at

69
00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:45,080
Speaker 2: the time was pretty much a rookie professor. He had

70
00:02:45,120 --> 00:02:47,919
Speaker 2: just arrived, young guy, hadn't really made his name yet

71
00:02:47,940 --> 00:02:51,200
Speaker 2: that everyone knows now. And I just started getting bombarded

72
00:02:51,240 --> 00:02:53,919
Speaker 2: with ideas about the New Testament, that it's filled with fabrications,

73
00:02:53,940 --> 00:02:56,730
Speaker 2: that it's internally full of contradictions, that the text has

74
00:02:56,750 --> 00:02:58,910
Speaker 2: been corrupted over time, that the canon was a mess

75
00:02:58,970 --> 00:03:00,650
Speaker 2: and it didn't get solved until the fourth century. And

76
00:03:01,110 --> 00:03:03,390
Speaker 2: there I was, you know, a freshman at 19 thinking,

77
00:03:03,450 --> 00:03:06,149
Speaker 2: what in the world is going on? So I started

78
00:03:06,169 --> 00:03:08,330
Speaker 2: to probe into how to answer those questions. And then

79
00:03:08,350 --> 00:03:10,030
Speaker 2: when I probed into how to answer those questions, I

80
00:03:10,050 --> 00:03:11,850
Speaker 2: was like, you know, I really love this field. And

81
00:03:11,870 --> 00:03:12,790
Speaker 2: that's what started me on it.

82
00:03:13,200 --> 00:03:13,709
Speaker 3: Oh, I love it.

83
00:03:13,740 --> 00:03:16,200
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. Have you had discussions with him afterwards or

84
00:03:16,220 --> 00:03:18,320
Speaker 1: stayed in touch or maybe just moved separate ways?

85
00:03:18,480 --> 00:03:20,919
Speaker 2: We pretty much moved separate ways. We interact occasionally in

86
00:03:21,100 --> 00:03:25,330
Speaker 2: various ways, mostly in print. I've reviewed a lot of

87
00:03:25,370 --> 00:03:28,989
Speaker 2: his books and interact with them certainly in print, but

88
00:03:29,050 --> 00:03:30,250
Speaker 2: not so much on a personal level.

89
00:03:30,550 --> 00:03:32,290
Speaker 1: Fair enough. I had him one time on this show

90
00:03:32,310 --> 00:03:34,250
Speaker 1: to talk about his more recent book about Love Thy

91
00:03:34,310 --> 00:03:37,490
Speaker 1: Stranger and the moral argument for Jesus. One of my

92
00:03:37,530 --> 00:03:39,940
Speaker 1: favorite conversations in a while, but maybe let's take a

93
00:03:39,960 --> 00:03:42,520
Speaker 1: step back. I know many of my listeners and viewers

94
00:03:42,560 --> 00:03:46,300
Speaker 1: know what textual criticism is, but remind us of what

95
00:03:46,340 --> 00:03:49,200
Speaker 1: it is. That's two fancy words. And what is the

96
00:03:49,400 --> 00:03:52,760
Speaker 1: goal of it? Is the goal to reconstruct the original,

97
00:03:52,920 --> 00:03:54,580
Speaker 1: or is it maybe a little more complex than that?

98
00:03:55,160 --> 00:03:57,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, so textual criticism is one of those words that

99
00:03:57,360 --> 00:03:59,420
Speaker 2: when most Christians hear it, they think, that sounds scary.

100
00:03:59,660 --> 00:04:01,820
Speaker 2: We don't want to do anything as Christians that are critical,

101
00:04:01,880 --> 00:04:04,440
Speaker 2: so why would we want to do textual criticism? But actually,

102
00:04:04,580 --> 00:04:08,030
Speaker 2: it's a word that spans lots of disciplines outside New

103
00:04:08,070 --> 00:04:11,190
Speaker 2: Testament studies and biblical studies. Because we have to understand

104
00:04:11,210 --> 00:04:13,810
Speaker 2: that in the ancient world, whenever you had a document,

105
00:04:13,990 --> 00:04:17,510
Speaker 2: an historical account, any sort of literary production, you could

106
00:04:17,529 --> 00:04:19,200
Speaker 2: not produce that without copying it.

107
00:04:19,330 --> 00:04:20,630
Speaker 3: And when you would copy it, you would copy it

108
00:04:20,680 --> 00:04:21,070
Speaker 3: by hand.

109
00:04:22,089 --> 00:04:24,810
Speaker 2: And whenever scribes copied things by hand, they would make mistakes.

110
00:04:25,110 --> 00:04:28,630
Speaker 2: They would make scribal errors. This was normal, ordinary slips

111
00:04:28,690 --> 00:04:31,330
Speaker 2: of the pen that was just part of copying books

112
00:04:31,350 --> 00:04:33,670
Speaker 2: in the ancient world. So what that means is that

113
00:04:33,710 --> 00:04:35,750
Speaker 2: since we didn't have a printing press back then, by

114
00:04:35,800 --> 00:04:38,020
Speaker 2: the time we got these books to us, what we

115
00:04:38,040 --> 00:04:40,620
Speaker 2: realized is that there's probably different scribal variations in them.

116
00:04:41,020 --> 00:04:42,840
Speaker 2: So what is the goal of textual criticism? To sort

117
00:04:42,860 --> 00:04:45,800
Speaker 2: of work through those scribal variations back to the original. Now,

118
00:04:45,960 --> 00:04:48,840
Speaker 2: you mentioned, is that all that it's about? Well, historically,

119
00:04:48,880 --> 00:04:50,599
Speaker 2: that's what it's been about. We want to know what

120
00:04:50,620 --> 00:04:53,490
Speaker 2: the text originally said. But in recent years, there's been

121
00:04:53,510 --> 00:04:56,150
Speaker 2: all kinds of conversations about, well, textual criticism tells us

122
00:04:56,190 --> 00:04:59,150
Speaker 2: more about the text than just simply what it originally says.

123
00:04:59,610 --> 00:05:03,090
Speaker 2: You can learn things from the changes. And Ehrman's actually

124
00:05:03,130 --> 00:05:05,669
Speaker 2: one of the people who advocates this, which is that

125
00:05:06,050 --> 00:05:08,610
Speaker 2: by looking at the type of changes Christians made or

126
00:05:08,690 --> 00:05:10,860
Speaker 2: Christian scribes made, then we can understand a little bit

127
00:05:10,880 --> 00:05:12,460
Speaker 2: of the dynamics that were happening in the early church.

128
00:05:12,480 --> 00:05:14,760
Speaker 3: So there's those layers. But generally speaking, the goal is

129
00:05:14,779 --> 00:05:15,560
Speaker 3: to get back to the original.

130
00:05:15,900 --> 00:05:17,620
Speaker 1: Now, in some ways, in principle, we would agree with

131
00:05:17,660 --> 00:05:20,580
Speaker 1: Bart Ehrman on that, that if somebody introduces a certain change,

132
00:05:20,720 --> 00:05:23,510
Speaker 1: it might be because of certain theological motivations.

133
00:05:23,529 --> 00:05:24,250
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yeah.

134
00:05:24,290 --> 00:05:26,570
Speaker 1: Even if we differ over some of the motivations he

135
00:05:26,589 --> 00:05:28,990
Speaker 1: might ascribe to them, it seems like he's right in

136
00:05:29,029 --> 00:05:32,510
Speaker 1: principle that those are very telling. But what the question

137
00:05:32,529 --> 00:05:34,890
Speaker 1: you raised, it's similar. My father, you know, is skeptic

138
00:05:35,330 --> 00:05:38,640
Speaker 1: outside the faith, trying to disprove Christianity. Yeah. Looking at

139
00:05:38,700 --> 00:05:41,860
Speaker 1: the manuscripts in part was what drew him to the faith. Now,

140
00:05:41,900 --> 00:05:45,000
Speaker 1: he's not a PhD textual scholar in that way. Right.

141
00:05:45,310 --> 00:05:47,529
Speaker 1: But he would say, do we have what was written down,

142
00:05:48,240 --> 00:05:52,680
Speaker 1: and was what was written down true? So textual transmission

143
00:05:52,740 --> 00:05:54,779
Speaker 1: is not what was written down true primarily.

144
00:05:54,800 --> 00:05:55,500
Speaker 3: That's exactly right.

145
00:05:55,700 --> 00:06:00,099
Speaker 1: It's the first question. Has it been copied carefully over time?

146
00:06:00,820 --> 00:06:02,900
Speaker 2: So when people talk about the reliability of the New Testament,

147
00:06:02,960 --> 00:06:06,120
Speaker 2: usually it's centered around whether it's accurate, right? Whether it's

148
00:06:06,140 --> 00:06:08,580
Speaker 2: historically credible, whether these things really happened as the New

149
00:06:08,610 --> 00:06:12,170
Speaker 2: Testament said. But But there's a deeper challenge to it

150
00:06:12,250 --> 00:06:14,970
Speaker 2: that scholars have made with textual criticism. So the issue

151
00:06:15,010 --> 00:06:18,229
Speaker 2: isn't so much whether the text is true. The issue is,

152
00:06:18,310 --> 00:06:21,089
Speaker 2: do we actually have the text? In other words, is

153
00:06:21,130 --> 00:06:23,310
Speaker 2: it not so much now whether the story actually happened?

154
00:06:23,450 --> 00:06:25,260
Speaker 2: Now the question is, do we actually have the story

155
00:06:25,300 --> 00:06:27,460
Speaker 2: at all? So you can see that the textual critical

156
00:06:27,520 --> 00:06:31,700
Speaker 2: question goes deeper, and it's actually more foundational than normal questions.

157
00:06:32,160 --> 00:06:34,160
Speaker 2: So what that means is you can't really start talking

158
00:06:34,180 --> 00:06:37,140
Speaker 2: about the historical credibility of something until you first establish

159
00:06:37,160 --> 00:06:39,500
Speaker 2: you actually have the words of the historical account.

160
00:06:39,830 --> 00:06:41,870
Speaker 3: So it's a deeper, more foundational challenge.

161
00:06:42,470 --> 00:06:44,830
Speaker 2: I think we're in really good shape there, but it's

162
00:06:44,850 --> 00:06:46,270
Speaker 2: a different kind of challenge than historicity.

163
00:06:46,650 --> 00:06:47,990
Speaker 1: We're going to circle back to that because I want

164
00:06:48,010 --> 00:06:49,890
Speaker 1: to hear your case of why you think we're in

165
00:06:49,930 --> 00:06:50,630
Speaker 1: good shape there.

166
00:06:50,650 --> 00:06:51,210
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely.

167
00:06:51,240 --> 00:06:54,220
Speaker 1: But I think sometimes people misunderstand that. My dad would

168
00:06:54,240 --> 00:06:58,380
Speaker 1: make the case there's 24,000 manuscripts. In Greek, maybe 5,500, 5,600.

169
00:06:58,380 --> 00:07:04,910
Speaker 1: And because there's more, people assume, therefore, it's true. But

170
00:07:04,930 --> 00:07:10,110
Speaker 1: if we found a hidden cache of like 50,000 Odyssey manuscripts,

171
00:07:10,190 --> 00:07:12,470
Speaker 1: it wouldn't mean that it's true. It might just give

172
00:07:12,510 --> 00:07:17,130
Speaker 1: us more confidence that it's been copied carefully in principle. Okay,

173
00:07:17,410 --> 00:07:20,230
Speaker 1: that makes sense. So why do you think Christians in

174
00:07:20,290 --> 00:07:24,190
Speaker 1: general and maybe evangelicals have kind of been afraid of

175
00:07:24,250 --> 00:07:27,130
Speaker 1: textual criticism? And is it more fear or is it

176
00:07:27,210 --> 00:07:29,830
Speaker 1: more just like we don't even know about the field?

177
00:07:30,620 --> 00:07:31,890
Speaker 3: It's both those things.

178
00:07:31,950 --> 00:07:36,200
Speaker 2: So historically, very few evangelicals were actually into textual criticism.

179
00:07:36,420 --> 00:07:37,200
Speaker 3: There weren't that many.

180
00:07:37,660 --> 00:07:41,340
Speaker 2: It was sort of a world outside of most evangelical scholarship.

181
00:07:41,380 --> 00:07:43,480
Speaker 2: So it was sort of a foreign world. Now that's changed.

182
00:07:44,180 --> 00:07:46,860
Speaker 2: I wrote an article recently for the Gospel Coalition and

183
00:07:46,880 --> 00:07:50,590
Speaker 2: the title of it was, Is Textual Criticism Cool? And

184
00:07:50,950 --> 00:07:53,590
Speaker 2: the point of that article was to sort of establish that, wow,

185
00:07:54,530 --> 00:07:56,150
Speaker 2: amazing how things have changed over the years. It used

186
00:07:56,170 --> 00:07:58,050
Speaker 2: to be that evangelicals weren't really into this at all,

187
00:07:58,470 --> 00:08:00,030
Speaker 2: and now it looks like it's a really popular thing,

188
00:08:00,290 --> 00:08:02,929
Speaker 2: and people are talking about it. So at one level,

189
00:08:03,050 --> 00:08:05,120
Speaker 2: part of the fear of a textual criticism is that

190
00:08:05,150 --> 00:08:08,720
Speaker 2: no one was doing it. The other fear, though, is

191
00:08:08,780 --> 00:08:10,340
Speaker 2: a fear I talk about quite a bit, which is

192
00:08:11,080 --> 00:08:14,100
Speaker 2: there is a thing among many evangelicals in certain spaces

193
00:08:14,120 --> 00:08:16,140
Speaker 2: that sort of have an overly pristine view of the

194
00:08:16,180 --> 00:08:19,330
Speaker 2: Bible's history. so that it's almost like it was lowered

195
00:08:19,350 --> 00:08:20,630
Speaker 2: from heaven on golden tablets.

196
00:08:20,690 --> 00:08:23,470
Speaker 3: In the King James, by the way. Yeah, exactly, in

197
00:08:23,490 --> 00:08:24,050
Speaker 3: the King James.

198
00:08:24,110 --> 00:08:26,270
Speaker 2: And like the angel Moroni in the Book of Mormon,

199
00:08:26,330 --> 00:08:27,600
Speaker 2: it's lowered from heaven on golden tablets.

200
00:08:27,620 --> 00:08:31,680
Speaker 3: There's no historical process. There's no story. There's no background.

201
00:08:32,179 --> 00:08:33,640
Speaker 2: And some people have this idea that if I believe

202
00:08:33,660 --> 00:08:36,780
Speaker 2: in inspiration, that I have to believe the Bible was

203
00:08:36,940 --> 00:08:40,070
Speaker 2: delivered that way. And what textual criticism reminds us of,

204
00:08:40,080 --> 00:08:41,640
Speaker 2: and this is a good thing, is that God decided

205
00:08:41,660 --> 00:08:44,679
Speaker 2: to deliver the Bible through normal historical channels. I think

206
00:08:44,700 --> 00:08:47,860
Speaker 2: those normal historical channels have preserved it excellently. But nonetheless,

207
00:08:47,940 --> 00:08:50,720
Speaker 2: God has worked that way. He didn't deliver on golden tablets.

208
00:08:50,760 --> 00:08:53,460
Speaker 2: And I think that's, for some people, that just doesn't

209
00:08:53,500 --> 00:08:55,240
Speaker 2: sit well. And I think that's important for us to

210
00:08:55,260 --> 00:08:58,800
Speaker 2: talk about because we want to eliminate views of inspiration

211
00:08:58,820 --> 00:08:59,380
Speaker 2: of the church that.

212
00:08:59,320 --> 00:09:02,200
Speaker 3: Are a little shallow because the more shallow those views.

213
00:09:02,080 --> 00:09:04,240
Speaker 2: Of inspiration are, the more easily picked apart they are.

214
00:09:04,679 --> 00:09:06,820
Speaker 2: So when people feel like their faith is vulnerable, it's

215
00:09:06,860 --> 00:09:08,220
Speaker 2: maybe because they had a view of it that isn't

216
00:09:08,300 --> 00:09:10,000
Speaker 2: actually historically accurate.

217
00:09:11,040 --> 00:09:12,120
Speaker 1: I'm going out on a limb here and I'm trying

218
00:09:12,140 --> 00:09:16,660
Speaker 1: to think why would Christians not be engaged in textual criticism?

219
00:09:16,780 --> 00:09:18,980
Speaker 1: And then it becomes cool. If I had to guess,

220
00:09:19,020 --> 00:09:21,099
Speaker 1: and this is purely a guess, maybe there'd be a

221
00:09:21,140 --> 00:09:26,060
Speaker 1: certain strain of fundamentalism that academia is secular and there's

222
00:09:26,120 --> 00:09:29,120
Speaker 1: a fear that's there. And I could be totally wrong

223
00:09:29,140 --> 00:09:31,610
Speaker 1: about that. What would be, and maybe I guess the

224
00:09:31,630 --> 00:09:34,050
Speaker 1: other piece would be maybe we weren't interested until like

225
00:09:34,710 --> 00:09:36,990
Speaker 1: people started really challenging the Bible and then.

226
00:09:36,970 --> 00:09:40,110
Speaker 3: Christians were forced. That's it. That's it. So there's a

227
00:09:40,110 --> 00:09:40,969
Speaker 3: number of layers to it.

228
00:09:41,520 --> 00:09:44,199
Speaker 2: But I think you can actually realize that in the

229
00:09:44,300 --> 00:09:47,920
Speaker 2: early iterations of textual criticism, there wasn't a lot of

230
00:09:47,980 --> 00:09:50,520
Speaker 2: challenge to the New Testament there because most people who

231
00:09:50,540 --> 00:09:53,250
Speaker 2: were doing textual criticism actually recognized that the evidence from

232
00:09:53,270 --> 00:09:55,209
Speaker 2: the New Testament was quite good. And so it was

233
00:09:55,230 --> 00:09:57,790
Speaker 2: sort of a neutral field of sorts. I mean, some

234
00:09:57,809 --> 00:10:01,260
Speaker 2: people had complaints about reliability. but generally speaking, there wasn't

235
00:10:01,280 --> 00:10:05,459
Speaker 2: a lot until 2005. 2005, Bart Ehrman published his book,

236
00:10:05,500 --> 00:10:09,200
Speaker 2: Misquoting Jesus. And this took the world of textual criticism

237
00:10:09,240 --> 00:10:12,610
Speaker 2: to popular audiences and challenged their integrity of the Bible,

238
00:10:12,850 --> 00:10:14,870
Speaker 2: the New Testament on that basis. And then what happened

239
00:10:14,929 --> 00:10:17,590
Speaker 2: is evangelicals felt the need to respond. And that's exactly

240
00:10:17,630 --> 00:10:20,370
Speaker 2: what happened. Now, I'm not suggesting that 2005 is the

241
00:10:20,390 --> 00:10:22,429
Speaker 2: first time evangelicals got into textual criticism.

242
00:10:22,450 --> 00:10:23,410
Speaker 3: That's not my point.

243
00:10:23,740 --> 00:10:26,460
Speaker 2: But you can actually see a shift there where people

244
00:10:26,480 --> 00:10:29,660
Speaker 2: start doing real public work on textual criticism from an

245
00:10:29,720 --> 00:10:33,160
Speaker 2: evangelical perspective designed to combat the thing that's come up,

246
00:10:33,260 --> 00:10:33,980
Speaker 2: namely Ehrman's book.

247
00:10:34,700 --> 00:10:36,760
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. When you said evangelicals weren't doing it,

248
00:10:36,760 --> 00:10:38,100
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to go back to like

249
00:10:38,120 --> 00:10:41,819
Speaker 1: the 1800s and the 19th century and some of those

250
00:10:41,900 --> 00:10:44,420
Speaker 1: challenges that came with the Enlightenment. But really, it was

251
00:10:44,679 --> 00:10:46,670
Speaker 1: Ehrman that seemed to kick it off.

252
00:10:46,770 --> 00:10:48,930
Speaker 2: In our modern day, yes. I mean, as I said,

253
00:10:48,970 --> 00:10:51,790
Speaker 2: there's a long history of TC stuff. But generally, when

254
00:10:51,809 --> 00:10:54,250
Speaker 2: you look at the world of textual criticism in those

255
00:10:54,270 --> 00:10:58,670
Speaker 2: early generations, it wasn't really saying radical things. Most of

256
00:10:58,690 --> 00:11:02,429
Speaker 2: the challenge of the New Testament's integrity and post-Enlightenment thought

257
00:11:02,809 --> 00:11:07,010
Speaker 2: has to deal more with historicity philosophical objections to the

258
00:11:07,050 --> 00:11:09,589
Speaker 2: divine and the supernatural. So what you see coming out

259
00:11:09,610 --> 00:11:11,770
Speaker 2: of the Enlightenment is really an anti-supernatural move, which is

260
00:11:11,820 --> 00:11:14,540
Speaker 2: the Bible can't be trusted because of an anti-supernatural move.

261
00:11:14,980 --> 00:11:19,719
Speaker 2: So the TC rule was largely dormant, generally speaking, until

262
00:11:19,820 --> 00:11:21,960
Speaker 2: the modern day when it started to be used to

263
00:11:22,020 --> 00:11:23,940
Speaker 2: actually challenge the integrity of the New Testament in more

264
00:11:23,980 --> 00:11:24,480
Speaker 2: overt ways.

265
00:11:24,940 --> 00:11:27,000
Speaker 1: It's fascinating that you wrote this. Around the time the

266
00:11:27,070 --> 00:11:29,970
Speaker 1: new atheists are emerging, which in many ways woke up

267
00:11:30,230 --> 00:11:34,590
Speaker 1: other areas of Christians and apologetics, whether it's science and

268
00:11:34,630 --> 00:11:37,189
Speaker 1: other areas of history to respond. So in some ways

269
00:11:37,250 --> 00:11:41,330
Speaker 1: we can thank our critics for raising challenges, which to me,

270
00:11:41,470 --> 00:11:44,150
Speaker 1: you know, looking back 20 some years later from the

271
00:11:44,190 --> 00:11:47,010
Speaker 1: new atheists, I have more confidence that God exists, that

272
00:11:47,030 --> 00:11:49,310
Speaker 1: the Bible is true, that we can trust that it's

273
00:11:49,330 --> 00:11:51,370
Speaker 1: been copied. Do you feel the same way?

274
00:11:51,670 --> 00:11:54,170
Speaker 3: I do. And in fact, I've written about this historically.

275
00:11:54,230 --> 00:11:56,600
Speaker 2: So one of the things that some listeners may not

276
00:11:56,630 --> 00:11:58,830
Speaker 2: know is that you know, the second century was known

277
00:11:58,870 --> 00:12:01,740
Speaker 2: as the golden age of apologetics, right? And when you

278
00:12:01,750 --> 00:12:04,679
Speaker 2: look back in the second century, what made Christians better

279
00:12:04,760 --> 00:12:07,380
Speaker 2: thinkers and better articulators of their faith?

280
00:12:07,940 --> 00:12:09,439
Speaker 3: The answer was the attacks on it.

281
00:12:10,059 --> 00:12:12,960
Speaker 2: And so in one weird sort of paradoxical way, we

282
00:12:12,980 --> 00:12:15,120
Speaker 2: can thank our critics because they force us to be

283
00:12:15,160 --> 00:12:18,000
Speaker 2: more precise. They force us to be more careful about

284
00:12:18,040 --> 00:12:20,840
Speaker 2: what we say and to be more persuasive about what

285
00:12:20,880 --> 00:12:23,020
Speaker 2: we say. And I think that's true now too. So

286
00:12:23,110 --> 00:12:24,830
Speaker 2: lots of things that we deal with in the world

287
00:12:24,870 --> 00:12:26,610
Speaker 2: of apologetics actually.

288
00:12:26,350 --> 00:12:28,040
Speaker 3: Is a response. That's right.

289
00:12:28,140 --> 00:12:30,460
Speaker 2: It's a response to something that someone has said or challenged,

290
00:12:30,480 --> 00:12:32,520
Speaker 2: and then we bring up an answer to that challenge,

291
00:12:32,540 --> 00:12:35,640
Speaker 2: which is totally legitimate. But some of these things would

292
00:12:35,679 --> 00:12:37,119
Speaker 2: not be discussed if it weren't so some of the

293
00:12:37,160 --> 00:12:38,370
Speaker 2: significant challenges have been raised.

294
00:12:38,470 --> 00:12:41,770
Speaker 1: So you co-edited a 2012 book called The Early Text

295
00:12:42,030 --> 00:12:45,910
Speaker 1: of the New Testament. Very academic, scholarly. You describe how

296
00:12:45,950 --> 00:12:49,270
Speaker 1: there's an influx of newer material and newer methods since

297
00:12:49,320 --> 00:12:51,020
Speaker 1: the 1980s. And that was 2012. So that's like about

298
00:12:51,020 --> 00:12:51,300
Speaker 1: 15 years ago.

299
00:12:51,320 --> 00:12:51,480
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.

300
00:12:54,420 --> 00:12:57,220
Speaker 1: I'm curious what you meant. So how have things changed

301
00:12:57,280 --> 00:13:00,380
Speaker 1: radically from the 80s, 40-some years ago, and then maybe

302
00:13:00,420 --> 00:13:03,480
Speaker 1: even like the past five years with AI? Is this

303
00:13:03,580 --> 00:13:05,540
Speaker 1: transforming textual transmission?

304
00:13:06,000 --> 00:13:11,410
Speaker 2: So textual criticism was fairly stable for generations, mainly in

305
00:13:11,429 --> 00:13:13,290
Speaker 2: the 20th century. It was built around what are called

306
00:13:13,350 --> 00:13:16,490
Speaker 2: text types, right? So you have an Alexandrian text. You

307
00:13:16,510 --> 00:13:18,510
Speaker 2: have a Byzantine text. You have a Western text. And

308
00:13:18,550 --> 00:13:21,030
Speaker 2: for our time, that's what's called a Caesarian text. This

309
00:13:21,050 --> 00:13:24,030
Speaker 2: was sort of the lore of textual criticism during this time.

310
00:13:24,590 --> 00:13:27,350
Speaker 2: And everyone sort of bought into it, generally speaking. But

311
00:13:27,370 --> 00:13:29,670
Speaker 2: then as time ticked on, more and more in-depth studies

312
00:13:29,690 --> 00:13:31,990
Speaker 2: started happening, and people realized, wait, maybe this text-type thing

313
00:13:32,030 --> 00:13:32,569
Speaker 2: doesn't work.

314
00:13:34,030 --> 00:13:36,250
Speaker 3: And over time, new methods were developed.

315
00:13:37,380 --> 00:13:41,440
Speaker 2: The latest is what's called the CBGM, the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method,

316
00:13:41,480 --> 00:13:45,000
Speaker 2: which is for those people who are deep into textual reconstructions,

317
00:13:45,040 --> 00:13:46,500
Speaker 2: this is their thing. By the way, this is not

318
00:13:46,520 --> 00:13:49,600
Speaker 2: my thing. I'm more on the codicological side. I'm more

319
00:13:49,980 --> 00:13:52,980
Speaker 2: on the papyrological side. So I look at manuscripts more

320
00:13:53,000 --> 00:13:55,310
Speaker 2: as physical artifacts. But for those who are into the

321
00:13:55,350 --> 00:13:57,550
Speaker 2: reconstruction of the text themselves, this new method is sort

322
00:13:57,570 --> 00:13:58,450
Speaker 2: of the new news.

323
00:14:00,030 --> 00:14:03,760
Speaker 3: Is everyone agree that it's better? Well, no. There's dissenters.

324
00:14:04,300 --> 00:14:07,599
Speaker 2: But generally speaking, it relies on a new method of

325
00:14:07,640 --> 00:14:10,640
Speaker 2: genealogically tracing manuscripts, and it's driven by a lot of

326
00:14:11,380 --> 00:14:15,180
Speaker 2: computer help. I don't know how much AI is factoring

327
00:14:15,200 --> 00:14:17,640
Speaker 2: into this because the AI thing is so new. Some

328
00:14:17,660 --> 00:14:19,160
Speaker 2: of my friends who are more on the forefront of

329
00:14:19,180 --> 00:14:22,090
Speaker 2: sort of the textual reconstruction side could probably speak to

330
00:14:22,110 --> 00:14:22,850
Speaker 2: the AI side.

331
00:14:22,970 --> 00:14:24,910
Speaker 3: Sure. But I think we're all worried about what AI

332
00:14:24,950 --> 00:14:25,370
Speaker 3: will do.

333
00:14:26,210 --> 00:14:27,870
Speaker 2: And, you know, is it going to help? Maybe it

334
00:14:27,910 --> 00:14:30,030
Speaker 2: will help reconstruct the text in more reliable ways.

335
00:14:30,050 --> 00:14:30,510
Speaker 3: We'll have to see.

336
00:14:30,890 --> 00:14:32,170
Speaker 1: I might have to ask you later for who that

337
00:14:32,270 --> 00:14:34,770
Speaker 1: person is because now I'm really curious because I think

338
00:14:34,810 --> 00:14:37,370
Speaker 1: of studies like Thomas Schmidt on Josephus.

339
00:14:37,570 --> 00:14:37,810
Speaker 3: Yes.

340
00:14:38,010 --> 00:14:40,310
Speaker 1: And the famous testimony in Flavianum.

341
00:14:39,770 --> 00:14:40,220
Speaker 3: Where he is.

342
00:14:40,640 --> 00:14:44,940
Speaker 1: Potentially challenging and overturning the consensus of scholarship. And part

343
00:14:44,960 --> 00:14:47,720
Speaker 1: of it, amongst other things, is arguing that the language

344
00:14:47,760 --> 00:14:52,140
Speaker 1: within that passage, when you use AI, is very much

345
00:14:52,300 --> 00:14:55,750
Speaker 1: in line with the way that Josephus would speak otherwise.

346
00:14:55,760 --> 00:14:57,320
Speaker 3: But it's really with.

347
00:14:57,160 --> 00:14:58,910
Speaker 1: AI that he made that argument. So it makes me

348
00:14:58,970 --> 00:15:01,570
Speaker 1: wonder with the manuscripts how you could apply that. Let

349
00:15:01,630 --> 00:15:03,350
Speaker 1: us know in comments if you're like, that would be

350
00:15:03,390 --> 00:15:04,830
Speaker 1: an interesting angle to go.

351
00:15:05,660 --> 00:15:07,840
Speaker 2: I'm sure people have gone down that path, and I

352
00:15:07,880 --> 00:15:10,360
Speaker 2: may not be tracking it because AI is such a

353
00:15:10,400 --> 00:15:13,710
Speaker 2: new thing. But I'm sure the future of textual criticism

354
00:15:13,730 --> 00:15:15,000
Speaker 2: will include some form of AI.

355
00:15:15,010 --> 00:15:17,950
Speaker 1: So we're going to jump into a few manuscripts. We're

356
00:15:17,970 --> 00:15:19,730
Speaker 1: going to talk about the codex and some of the

357
00:15:19,970 --> 00:15:23,760
Speaker 1: evidence that convinces you. Yes. But how does the internet

358
00:15:23,840 --> 00:15:27,290
Speaker 1: conversations change? Because I find that there's... There's kind of

359
00:15:27,310 --> 00:15:29,250
Speaker 1: a scholarly world that I live in. We'll go to

360
00:15:29,310 --> 00:15:32,840
Speaker 1: evangelical theological society and debates and discussions will take place.

361
00:15:33,380 --> 00:15:37,760
Speaker 1: And then online, there's like completely different conversations sometimes that

362
00:15:37,780 --> 00:15:41,140
Speaker 1: are happening. How does that online dialogue, whether it's on

363
00:15:41,200 --> 00:15:44,739
Speaker 1: YouTube or on Instagram, is that raising the bar? Is

364
00:15:44,820 --> 00:15:46,900
Speaker 1: it lowering the bar? Or how does that affect kind

365
00:15:46,920 --> 00:15:48,280
Speaker 1: of what you do, if at all?

366
00:15:49,000 --> 00:15:49,380
Speaker 3: Yeah.

367
00:15:49,460 --> 00:15:52,660
Speaker 2: So one of the things about any conversation that's about

368
00:15:52,680 --> 00:15:57,410
Speaker 2: historical matters is there's people who know the field. who

369
00:15:57,430 --> 00:15:59,910
Speaker 2: are experts in the field. And then there's people who

370
00:16:00,030 --> 00:16:01,850
Speaker 2: comment on the field who may not be experts in

371
00:16:01,870 --> 00:16:03,390
Speaker 2: the field. And there's always going to be a gap

372
00:16:04,030 --> 00:16:07,500
Speaker 2: between popular level discussions and what the scholars are talking about.

373
00:16:08,160 --> 00:16:12,560
Speaker 2: And some disciplines are more susceptible to mistakes in that

374
00:16:12,600 --> 00:16:15,220
Speaker 2: gap than others. And I will say that when it

375
00:16:15,260 --> 00:16:18,840
Speaker 2: comes to canon and textual criticism, that gap is pretty big.

376
00:16:19,280 --> 00:16:21,239
Speaker 2: What I mean is it's a field that's easy to

377
00:16:21,280 --> 00:16:24,260
Speaker 2: make mistakes in. It's a field that's complex and intricate.

378
00:16:24,740 --> 00:16:28,320
Speaker 2: It's a field that people speak too assuredly about things

379
00:16:28,340 --> 00:16:30,380
Speaker 2: they don't understand. And so one of the problems with

380
00:16:30,400 --> 00:16:33,520
Speaker 2: the internet conversation and the YouTube conversation is that a

381
00:16:33,520 --> 00:16:35,060
Speaker 2: lot of people are jumping into the fray and they

382
00:16:35,100 --> 00:16:39,320
Speaker 2: just don't know the field. And that can really hamper

383
00:16:39,380 --> 00:16:41,830
Speaker 2: discussions because they end up saying things that lead people

384
00:16:41,870 --> 00:16:43,310
Speaker 2: down certain paths that just simply aren't true.

385
00:16:43,690 --> 00:16:44,950
Speaker 3: And by the way, this is on both sides.

386
00:16:45,290 --> 00:16:47,210
Speaker 2: There's people who are hyper critics of the New Testament

387
00:16:47,270 --> 00:16:49,190
Speaker 2: who are saying things that aren't true. And there's people

388
00:16:49,210 --> 00:16:51,070
Speaker 2: who are hyper defenders of the New Testament that are

389
00:16:51,110 --> 00:16:53,870
Speaker 2: saying things that aren't accurate in this area. So I

390
00:16:53,930 --> 00:16:57,400
Speaker 2: find that a lot of my academic time is spent

391
00:16:57,540 --> 00:17:00,890
Speaker 2: sort of correcting misconceptions. And I do this more on

392
00:17:00,910 --> 00:17:04,449
Speaker 2: the canon side, of course, because canon is my essential thing.

393
00:17:04,570 --> 00:17:06,570
Speaker 2: And like I said, on the world of manuscripts, I'm

394
00:17:06,590 --> 00:17:09,709
Speaker 2: more on the codicological side. But I spend a lot

395
00:17:09,730 --> 00:17:12,740
Speaker 2: of time helping people see that they don't really maybe

396
00:17:13,060 --> 00:17:15,380
Speaker 2: have an accurate perception of the way these things were.

397
00:17:15,800 --> 00:17:18,980
Speaker 1: Fair enough. That's helpful. All right, so maybe sum up

398
00:17:19,020 --> 00:17:20,919
Speaker 1: for us before we jump into the evidence. If you

399
00:17:20,940 --> 00:17:26,550
Speaker 1: were going to say, as a scholar, but in popular language...

400
00:17:27,330 --> 00:17:32,030
Speaker 1: What does textual criticism allow Christians to say confidently about

401
00:17:32,070 --> 00:17:33,530
Speaker 1: the New Testament?

402
00:17:34,790 --> 00:17:38,450
Speaker 2: Well, at a minimum, we said a little while ago

403
00:17:38,510 --> 00:17:42,700
Speaker 2: that central to the Christian claim about inspiration is not

404
00:17:42,740 --> 00:17:45,359
Speaker 2: only that we claim that these stories are true and

405
00:17:45,400 --> 00:17:48,700
Speaker 2: that they reflect reality, but that we actually have the stories.

406
00:17:49,119 --> 00:17:51,780
Speaker 2: We actually have the words of the original writer. So imagine—

407
00:17:52,580 --> 00:17:54,020
Speaker 2: Think deeply about the Christian claim for a moment. The

408
00:17:54,040 --> 00:17:56,719
Speaker 2: Christian claim is that when apostles wrote, they wrote with

409
00:17:56,740 --> 00:17:58,700
Speaker 2: a certain level of authority. They wrote with a certain

410
00:17:58,740 --> 00:18:02,080
Speaker 2: level of ability to speak for Jesus. So we really

411
00:18:02,140 --> 00:18:03,980
Speaker 2: care not just what anyone wrote. We care what the

412
00:18:04,050 --> 00:18:06,730
Speaker 2: apostles wrote. And the question is, do we have what

413
00:18:06,770 --> 00:18:08,990
Speaker 2: the apostles wrote? And we have books that are attributed

414
00:18:09,010 --> 00:18:11,070
Speaker 2: to apostles, but do we actually have their words? And

415
00:18:11,090 --> 00:18:13,230
Speaker 2: so what I want to say to anyone listening is

416
00:18:13,250 --> 00:18:18,000
Speaker 2: that if textual criticism done by New Testament scholars proves

417
00:18:18,060 --> 00:18:20,100
Speaker 2: to be reliable, and I think it does, then that

418
00:18:20,140 --> 00:18:23,840
Speaker 2: means we actually have the stories. We actually have reasonably

419
00:18:24,350 --> 00:18:27,410
Speaker 2: what was written down by these authors. And if we do,

420
00:18:27,550 --> 00:18:29,570
Speaker 2: then we can ask questions about whether those things are

421
00:18:29,590 --> 00:18:32,389
Speaker 2: in fact true, which is a secondary question. But we

422
00:18:32,430 --> 00:18:34,409
Speaker 2: can't ask that question until we actually have the stories.

423
00:18:34,810 --> 00:18:36,270
Speaker 2: But I think we can say we have those words.

424
00:18:36,350 --> 00:18:38,570
Speaker 2: We have the essential words of what Paul wrote in Romans.

425
00:18:39,070 --> 00:18:41,230
Speaker 2: We have what John wrote in John's Gospel.

426
00:18:41,270 --> 00:18:42,130
Speaker 3: We have what Luke wrote.

427
00:18:42,580 --> 00:18:43,890
Speaker 2: And now we can ask the question of whether what

428
00:18:43,950 --> 00:18:45,760
Speaker 2: Luke said was true or whether John said is true.

429
00:18:45,800 --> 00:18:46,659
Speaker 3: Those are separate questions.

430
00:18:47,240 --> 00:18:50,340
Speaker 2: But we've got to start at the basis, and the

431
00:18:50,380 --> 00:18:52,149
Speaker 2: basis for the whole thing is that do we have

432
00:18:52,170 --> 00:18:52,730
Speaker 2: the words or not?

433
00:18:52,830 --> 00:18:53,369
Speaker 3: And I think we do.

434
00:18:53,810 --> 00:18:55,870
Speaker 1: Good stuff. Well said. Okay, so let's get into some

435
00:18:55,890 --> 00:18:58,550
Speaker 1: of the evidence that would maybe support this, but we'll

436
00:18:58,570 --> 00:18:59,810
Speaker 1: start with the codex.

437
00:19:00,030 --> 00:19:00,350
Speaker 3: Yeah.

438
00:19:00,670 --> 00:19:03,510
Speaker 1: So what's a codex, and why did early Christians adopt

439
00:19:03,690 --> 00:19:06,420
Speaker 1: that in comparison to, say, scrolls?

440
00:19:06,960 --> 00:19:09,899
Speaker 2: Yeah, so one of the things I'm fascinated by when

441
00:19:09,920 --> 00:19:12,959
Speaker 2: it comes to manuscripts is asking the question about whether

442
00:19:13,119 --> 00:19:16,300
Speaker 2: early Christians that were copying books, did they know what

443
00:19:16,340 --> 00:19:16,960
Speaker 2: they were doing?

444
00:19:17,330 --> 00:19:20,030
Speaker 3: Right? Were they amateurs? Were they rookies?

445
00:19:20,130 --> 00:19:25,630
Speaker 2: Was there a sophisticated scribal culture? Or was it just random, haphazard,

446
00:19:25,690 --> 00:19:28,350
Speaker 2: make it up as you go, okay? What you'll find

447
00:19:28,410 --> 00:19:30,929
Speaker 2: in certain scholarly circles is they try to portray early

448
00:19:30,950 --> 00:19:34,330
Speaker 2: Christian scribes as just that. They're rookies, they're amateurs, they

449
00:19:34,350 --> 00:19:36,389
Speaker 2: don't know what they're doing, they have no understanding of

450
00:19:36,410 --> 00:19:40,150
Speaker 2: the way ancient books worked, and there's even some claims that, say,

451
00:19:40,190 --> 00:19:43,410
Speaker 2: certain Christian scribes maybe couldn't even read. They were just,

452
00:19:43,650 --> 00:19:45,350
Speaker 2: they were illiterate, but they were just copying the letters

453
00:19:45,390 --> 00:19:50,119
Speaker 2: on the page, So these things get said, and I

454
00:19:50,160 --> 00:19:53,180
Speaker 2: think there's reasons to doubt whether that's very accurate about

455
00:19:53,220 --> 00:19:55,000
Speaker 2: early Christianity. So what are some things that tell us

456
00:19:55,040 --> 00:19:57,659
Speaker 2: about early Christian scribal culture? Well, one of those is

457
00:19:57,700 --> 00:20:01,560
Speaker 2: the Codex. People don't realize that when Christianity burst on

458
00:20:01,600 --> 00:20:03,330
Speaker 2: the scene in the first century and then really started

459
00:20:03,369 --> 00:20:06,070
Speaker 2: expanding in the second century, there was a certain book

460
00:20:06,090 --> 00:20:08,510
Speaker 2: technology that was already in place. It was already in

461
00:20:08,530 --> 00:20:10,810
Speaker 2: place in the Greco-Roman world for literature they wrote. It

462
00:20:10,850 --> 00:20:12,550
Speaker 2: was already in place for the Jewish world and the

463
00:20:12,590 --> 00:20:14,890
Speaker 2: literature they had in their Bible and in their books.

464
00:20:15,150 --> 00:20:17,820
Speaker 3: And that was the scroll. Everybody used the roll, right?

465
00:20:17,920 --> 00:20:19,540
Speaker 2: And, you know, you roll it up on each end,

466
00:20:19,580 --> 00:20:22,840
Speaker 2: and you've seen people seeing this in different venues. And

467
00:20:22,859 --> 00:20:25,159
Speaker 2: the writing is on one side of the page. But

468
00:20:25,180 --> 00:20:28,740
Speaker 2: then along comes Christianity, and they have books too. But stunningly,

469
00:20:28,810 --> 00:20:32,010
Speaker 2: they don't use the format that their Jewish heritage had,

470
00:20:32,050 --> 00:20:34,390
Speaker 2: and they don't use the format of their surrounding Greco-Roman world.

471
00:20:34,430 --> 00:20:37,520
Speaker 2: They have a brand-new format called the Codex. Now, the

472
00:20:37,560 --> 00:20:40,360
Speaker 2: Codex is just a leaf book that opens at a spine,

473
00:20:40,400 --> 00:20:41,980
Speaker 2: and then you have writing on both sides of the page.

474
00:20:42,060 --> 00:20:44,460
Speaker 2: And as the listener will recognize, they'll think, well, that

475
00:20:44,500 --> 00:20:46,920
Speaker 2: sounds like modern books. I'm like, yes, you're still reading

476
00:20:46,940 --> 00:20:50,100
Speaker 2: Codices today. The Codex book format won the day. Now,

477
00:20:50,160 --> 00:20:52,760
Speaker 2: Christians didn't invent the Codex, but what's interesting is they

478
00:20:52,800 --> 00:20:57,500
Speaker 2: adopted it for their writings widely and universally and inexplicably

479
00:20:57,540 --> 00:21:00,109
Speaker 2: at some level in contradistinction from their surrounding culture.

480
00:21:00,570 --> 00:21:02,969
Speaker 3: So why would they do that? Well, we can come

481
00:21:03,010 --> 00:21:03,810
Speaker 3: back to why they did it.

482
00:21:04,210 --> 00:21:06,390
Speaker 2: I want to simply point out here that the uniformity

483
00:21:06,410 --> 00:21:08,689
Speaker 2: of that is really telling. That tells you you have

484
00:21:08,750 --> 00:21:13,359
Speaker 2: a scribal culture that is unified, coherent, and networked. Like

485
00:21:13,400 --> 00:21:15,619
Speaker 2: who sent out the memo that says every time you

486
00:21:15,640 --> 00:21:17,620
Speaker 2: write a Christian book, you should put it on a codex?

487
00:21:17,640 --> 00:21:20,560
Speaker 2: In fact, it became so associated with Christianity that people

488
00:21:20,580 --> 00:21:22,060
Speaker 2: could look at a book visually and know it was

489
00:21:22,100 --> 00:21:23,840
Speaker 2: Christian just by virtue of the fact it was on

490
00:21:23,859 --> 00:21:24,600
Speaker 2: the codex.

491
00:21:25,070 --> 00:21:26,050
Speaker 3: That's a remarkable fact.

492
00:21:26,750 --> 00:21:30,990
Speaker 1: Oh, that's especially important because we're told there's such disunity

493
00:21:31,650 --> 00:21:36,139
Speaker 1: and disconnection. And yet who would have the power to

494
00:21:36,220 --> 00:21:40,490
Speaker 1: maintain like the common message of using the codex? And

495
00:21:40,510 --> 00:21:43,030
Speaker 1: that's not even saying it's a top-down power move.

496
00:21:43,270 --> 00:21:43,650
Speaker 3: Correct.

497
00:21:43,710 --> 00:21:46,150
Speaker 1: But you're saying this suggests that not only if they're

498
00:21:46,190 --> 00:21:50,590
Speaker 1: concerned about writing on the codex, they're probably concerned about

499
00:21:50,750 --> 00:21:52,889
Speaker 1: preserving the message as well.

500
00:21:53,060 --> 00:21:53,619
Speaker 3: Correct.

501
00:21:54,420 --> 00:21:56,919
Speaker 2: What it tells you is that Christians had a defined

502
00:21:57,200 --> 00:22:00,179
Speaker 2: and rather sophisticated book technology.

503
00:22:00,780 --> 00:22:02,820
Speaker 3: They understood the way books worked in the ancient world.

504
00:22:03,200 --> 00:22:05,439
Speaker 2: And there's a number of scholars, not evangelical scholars, that

505
00:22:05,460 --> 00:22:07,570
Speaker 2: have noticed this about early Christian scribal culture, is that

506
00:22:07,590 --> 00:22:09,629
Speaker 2: they seem to know how books work. We can get

507
00:22:09,670 --> 00:22:12,629
Speaker 2: back later to the scribal hand itself and what that

508
00:22:12,670 --> 00:22:14,950
Speaker 2: looks like in manuscripts and how that also.

509
00:22:14,770 --> 00:22:18,250
Speaker 3: Shows a level of sophistication. But the use of the

510
00:22:18,290 --> 00:22:19,570
Speaker 3: Codex suggests.

511
00:22:19,170 --> 00:22:24,920
Speaker 2: A degree of uniformity and organization and coherence among early

512
00:22:24,960 --> 00:22:28,100
Speaker 2: Christian scribes, which, as you indicated, would also suggest that

513
00:22:28,260 --> 00:22:30,460
Speaker 2: when they copy the text itself, they're not just a

514
00:22:30,480 --> 00:22:32,520
Speaker 2: bunch of amateurs making things up, that they understood the

515
00:22:32,540 --> 00:22:34,970
Speaker 2: way books work. That should be reassuring for us as

516
00:22:34,990 --> 00:22:36,530
Speaker 2: we think about early Christian textual culture.

517
00:22:36,550 --> 00:22:38,609
Speaker 1: Was it more expensive? Is it more difficult to use

518
00:22:38,670 --> 00:22:40,710
Speaker 1: a codex than a scroll? Is it the same? Like

519
00:22:40,730 --> 00:22:43,580
Speaker 1: were they sacrificing to put it onto the codex?

520
00:22:43,640 --> 00:22:45,739
Speaker 3: Okay, so now we're into the question of why. So

521
00:22:45,780 --> 00:22:46,619
Speaker 3: this is fascinating.

522
00:22:47,100 --> 00:22:50,660
Speaker 2: So when scholars ask, there's no doubt Christians did this.

523
00:22:50,900 --> 00:22:52,760
Speaker 2: Everyone agrees on that. The question that they don't agree

524
00:22:52,820 --> 00:22:57,120
Speaker 2: on is why. What could explain this really anomaly, really

525
00:22:57,140 --> 00:23:00,869
Speaker 2: significant historical anomaly in early Christianity? And as you can imagine,

526
00:23:00,900 --> 00:23:02,690
Speaker 2: theories all over the map. People have a bunch of

527
00:23:02,710 --> 00:23:06,950
Speaker 2: different views on this about why Christians did this. And

528
00:23:07,670 --> 00:23:11,530
Speaker 2: I think multiple different theories have merit. But many of

529
00:23:11,570 --> 00:23:15,670
Speaker 2: the theories originally suggested that Christians did it out of convenience, right?

530
00:23:16,450 --> 00:23:21,379
Speaker 2: Codices are more easily navigable than rolls or cheaper to

531
00:23:21,420 --> 00:23:24,160
Speaker 2: make than rolls. Those have all been challenged, and they've

532
00:23:24,180 --> 00:23:25,180
Speaker 2: been challenged in lots of ways.

533
00:23:26,119 --> 00:23:26,980
Speaker 3: But think about it for a moment.

534
00:23:27,450 --> 00:23:29,609
Speaker 2: Why were Christians the only ones interested in something that

535
00:23:29,650 --> 00:23:32,510
Speaker 2: was more easily navigable? Why were Christians the only ones

536
00:23:32,550 --> 00:23:34,250
Speaker 2: that cared about saving money when they wrote books?

537
00:23:34,310 --> 00:23:36,980
Speaker 3: This doesn't explain. You have to have something that's distinctively Christian.

538
00:23:37,840 --> 00:23:39,840
Speaker 2: In order to explain the adoption of the Codex, you

539
00:23:39,859 --> 00:23:41,560
Speaker 2: have to ask the question this way. What did Christians

540
00:23:41,600 --> 00:23:43,240
Speaker 2: want to do that really no one else really wanted

541
00:23:43,260 --> 00:23:45,879
Speaker 2: to do? Or what did they have that was a

542
00:23:45,920 --> 00:23:49,010
Speaker 2: distinctive need that perhaps explains why Christians adopted it earlier?

543
00:23:49,670 --> 00:23:51,430
Speaker 2: By the way, it should be noted that eventually everybody

544
00:23:51,450 --> 00:23:54,010
Speaker 2: adopted the Codex. Christians were just ahead of the game.

545
00:23:54,790 --> 00:23:58,310
Speaker 2: And the most common answer given... It has to do

546
00:23:58,330 --> 00:24:01,390
Speaker 2: with canon, is that Christians with a collection of books,

547
00:24:01,770 --> 00:24:04,210
Speaker 2: in particular four gospels that they saw as a unit,

548
00:24:04,530 --> 00:24:06,730
Speaker 2: perhaps wanted to combine them into one volume, and a

549
00:24:06,780 --> 00:24:07,880
Speaker 2: scroll could never do that.

550
00:24:08,520 --> 00:24:10,619
Speaker 3: A scroll could never hold all four gospels in one volume,

551
00:24:10,640 --> 00:24:11,360
Speaker 3: but a codex could.

552
00:24:11,780 --> 00:24:14,180
Speaker 1: Okay, so I was going to answer something. I realize

553
00:24:14,240 --> 00:24:16,780
Speaker 1: I'm talking to the canon guy. When you were saying

554
00:24:16,820 --> 00:24:19,619
Speaker 1: there's got to be something that distinctly explains it, I

555
00:24:19,640 --> 00:24:23,389
Speaker 1: would have said the ease of spreading the message to

556
00:24:23,430 --> 00:24:26,650
Speaker 1: the world because the evangelism is built in Great Commission,

557
00:24:26,670 --> 00:24:30,270
Speaker 1: Matthew 28. But you're saying it's even further than that,

558
00:24:30,350 --> 00:24:33,290
Speaker 1: that we need at least the four gospels together to

559
00:24:33,369 --> 00:24:34,330
Speaker 1: spread that message.

560
00:24:34,690 --> 00:24:34,970
Speaker 3: Right.

561
00:24:35,050 --> 00:24:38,100
Speaker 2: So you're suggesting one possibility of the codex is that

562
00:24:38,130 --> 00:24:40,459
Speaker 2: when you do evangelism, perhaps you can easily flip to

563
00:24:40,480 --> 00:24:41,480
Speaker 2: different pages or something.

564
00:24:41,540 --> 00:24:43,280
Speaker 3: Maybe that's what you're hinting at there. And that idea

565
00:24:43,320 --> 00:24:43,680
Speaker 3: has been floated.

566
00:24:43,700 --> 00:24:46,520
Speaker 1: Or maybe it's easier to copy and spread because it's

567
00:24:46,560 --> 00:24:48,060
Speaker 1: more efficient or am I reading.

568
00:24:47,960 --> 00:24:49,330
Speaker 3: Too much into it? No, no.

569
00:24:49,340 --> 00:24:51,560
Speaker 2: There's not any indication that it's easier to copy. In fact,

570
00:24:51,680 --> 00:24:53,340
Speaker 2: codices are harder to construct than rolls.

571
00:24:54,050 --> 00:24:55,670
Speaker 3: Okay. So they're more complicated.

572
00:24:55,730 --> 00:24:58,050
Speaker 2: So it's not an issue of convenience of construction.

573
00:24:59,350 --> 00:25:03,700
Speaker 3: Actually, scrolls are much easier to construct. So what you need.

574
00:25:03,619 --> 00:25:07,220
Speaker 2: Is an explanation that is distinctively Christian, and as I suggested,

575
00:25:07,640 --> 00:25:09,800
Speaker 2: the idea of combining multiple books into one volume would

576
00:25:09,820 --> 00:25:11,760
Speaker 2: have been at the center of this. And scholars have

577
00:25:11,780 --> 00:25:13,840
Speaker 2: suggested that it could have been the four Gospels that

578
00:25:13,880 --> 00:25:15,399
Speaker 2: Christians really wanted to combine, or it could have been

579
00:25:15,460 --> 00:25:17,919
Speaker 2: Paul's letter collection they wanted to combine.

580
00:25:18,240 --> 00:25:20,110
Speaker 3: And here's where you highlight something interesting about the early

581
00:25:20,130 --> 00:25:20,930
Speaker 3: Christian book. Wow.

582
00:25:21,530 --> 00:25:23,660
Speaker 2: The early Christian book I know we know this intuitively,

583
00:25:23,680 --> 00:25:26,020
Speaker 2: but it's just worth saying it's not like other books.

584
00:25:26,119 --> 00:25:27,620
Speaker 2: When you read a book, you open up the front

585
00:25:27,660 --> 00:25:31,469
Speaker 2: cover and you read it straight through. But the Christian

586
00:25:31,490 --> 00:25:34,649
Speaker 2: book is really more of an anthology. It's a collection

587
00:25:34,670 --> 00:25:37,630
Speaker 2: of little books, smaller writings. And once you realize that,

588
00:25:37,670 --> 00:25:39,609
Speaker 2: you realize you need maybe a book technology that can

589
00:25:39,630 --> 00:25:43,780
Speaker 2: help you get to those individual pieces. And that would

590
00:25:43,800 --> 00:25:45,439
Speaker 2: have also been an advantage of the Codex. It would

591
00:25:45,460 --> 00:25:47,640
Speaker 2: allow you to find individual books easier.

592
00:25:47,800 --> 00:25:51,320
Speaker 1: So this doesn't. answer which books were in the canon,

593
00:25:51,359 --> 00:25:54,270
Speaker 1: but the idea of the canon and the importance of

594
00:25:54,310 --> 00:25:57,710
Speaker 1: having multiple books together built in early and is the

595
00:25:57,750 --> 00:26:02,050
Speaker 1: best explanation of the Codex use that explode on scene

596
00:26:02,090 --> 00:26:04,040
Speaker 1: amongst Christians as far as you see it.

597
00:26:04,390 --> 00:26:06,879
Speaker 2: I think so, and what's particularly interesting is to observe

598
00:26:06,970 --> 00:26:07,760
Speaker 2: when that happened.

599
00:26:08,200 --> 00:26:08,679
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell me.

600
00:26:08,780 --> 00:26:11,700
Speaker 2: So almost everyone agrees that Christians had adopted the Codex

601
00:26:11,720 --> 00:26:12,540
Speaker 2: by the turn of the century.

602
00:26:13,100 --> 00:26:14,760
Speaker 1: So that means by the turn of the second century.

603
00:26:14,780 --> 00:26:16,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, so by the time the first century was over

604
00:26:16,619 --> 00:26:19,680
Speaker 2: and the second century started, It's clear that this was

605
00:26:19,820 --> 00:26:23,250
Speaker 2: now the book format for Christianity. If it were chosen

606
00:26:23,290 --> 00:26:26,210
Speaker 2: for canonical reasons, that means that there was a canonical

607
00:26:26,270 --> 00:26:29,570
Speaker 2: consciousness by the end of the first century that would

608
00:26:29,590 --> 00:26:32,409
Speaker 2: have motivated people to pick the Codex, which puts the

609
00:26:32,520 --> 00:26:35,600
Speaker 2: idea of canon significantly earlier in the mix.

610
00:26:36,160 --> 00:26:38,960
Speaker 1: Very interesting. We could pick up on that one later,

611
00:26:39,000 --> 00:26:40,820
Speaker 1: but tell me about something else you studied on that—

612
00:26:41,920 --> 00:26:43,040
Speaker 1: Nomina Sacra?

613
00:26:43,060 --> 00:26:43,460
Speaker 3: Yeah.

614
00:26:43,580 --> 00:26:44,520
Speaker 1: I might have mispronounced that.

615
00:26:44,560 --> 00:26:45,159
Speaker 3: Nomina Sacra, yeah.

616
00:26:45,180 --> 00:26:48,060
Speaker 1: Okay. What is it, and how do they appear in

617
00:26:48,100 --> 00:26:48,600
Speaker 1: the Scripture?

618
00:26:48,740 --> 00:26:51,420
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is also a little fascinating thing about early

619
00:26:51,440 --> 00:26:55,399
Speaker 2: Christian book technology. So the average person who reads the

620
00:26:55,440 --> 00:26:57,200
Speaker 2: Bible doesn't understand why we have a codex.

621
00:26:57,220 --> 00:26:58,080
Speaker 3: We've just answered that.

622
00:26:58,140 --> 00:27:00,100
Speaker 2: But the other thing they don't know, because there's no

623
00:27:00,140 --> 00:27:02,050
Speaker 2: way to know this just reading English Bibles, is that

624
00:27:02,140 --> 00:27:06,110
Speaker 2: in the ancient Christian scribal culture, there's certain abbreviations they used.

625
00:27:07,010 --> 00:27:09,010
Speaker 2: And these are called, in Latin, the Nomina Sacra. It

626
00:27:09,050 --> 00:27:12,520
Speaker 2: literally means sacred names, okay? what we realize is that

627
00:27:12,580 --> 00:27:15,140
Speaker 2: as far back as we can see, there was four

628
00:27:15,180 --> 00:27:18,820
Speaker 2: names in particular that Christian scribes abbreviated. And they were

629
00:27:18,840 --> 00:27:22,980
Speaker 2: the Greek words for God, Lord, Jesus, Christ. Okay, those

630
00:27:23,010 --> 00:27:26,210
Speaker 2: were the four names that were abbreviated. And they are

631
00:27:26,230 --> 00:27:28,510
Speaker 2: abbreviated in a very unique way, and we won't need

632
00:27:28,530 --> 00:27:30,130
Speaker 2: to get into this fully, but they would basically take

633
00:27:30,710 --> 00:27:33,990
Speaker 2: effectively the first Greek letter, the last Greek letter, and

634
00:27:34,030 --> 00:27:35,970
Speaker 2: eliminate the other letters in the middle, and then put

635
00:27:36,010 --> 00:27:37,950
Speaker 2: those two letters together and put a line over the top.

636
00:27:38,590 --> 00:27:40,800
Speaker 2: So for Kyrios, for example... It'd just be the Kappa

637
00:27:40,820 --> 00:27:42,020
Speaker 2: and the Sigma with a line over the top.

638
00:27:42,060 --> 00:27:42,840
Speaker 1: Which is the Lord.

639
00:27:42,920 --> 00:27:45,219
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is Lord. Or for Theos, it would be

640
00:27:45,500 --> 00:27:47,200
Speaker 2: Theta and a Sigma with a line over the top.

641
00:27:47,420 --> 00:27:48,869
Speaker 2: And then if it's in the genitive, it would be

642
00:27:48,930 --> 00:27:51,350
Speaker 2: Theta Upsilon, right, with a line over the top. So

643
00:27:51,450 --> 00:27:54,050
Speaker 2: regardless of the word, those were the four words that

644
00:27:54,090 --> 00:27:56,409
Speaker 2: started out as. And what's interesting about the Nomen of

645
00:27:56,430 --> 00:27:59,379
Speaker 2: Sacra is that these are very distinctively Christian abbreviations for

646
00:27:59,400 --> 00:28:00,040
Speaker 2: the divine name.

647
00:28:00,920 --> 00:28:04,280
Speaker 3: And they apply to both God and Jesus.

648
00:28:04,300 --> 00:28:04,440
Speaker 1: Right.

649
00:28:04,830 --> 00:28:07,290
Speaker 2: So built into the Nomen of Sacra is a recognition

650
00:28:07,350 --> 00:28:09,710
Speaker 2: that there's a view of early Christology here, that they

651
00:28:09,730 --> 00:28:12,469
Speaker 2: put Jesus and the Lord, Jesus and God, as the

652
00:28:12,490 --> 00:28:15,310
Speaker 2: same level of divine abbreviation. The other thing about the

653
00:28:15,350 --> 00:28:17,590
Speaker 2: Nomen of Sacra that's fascinating is how uniform it was.

654
00:28:17,609 --> 00:28:21,290
Speaker 2: Just like the Codex, it's everywhere. We can hardly find

655
00:28:21,390 --> 00:28:24,109
Speaker 2: a Christian manuscript without it, as far back.

656
00:28:23,990 --> 00:28:25,310
Speaker 3: As we can go. It's stunning.

657
00:28:25,930 --> 00:28:27,730
Speaker 2: We can't even find hardly a Christian manuscript that's not

658
00:28:27,780 --> 00:28:31,080
Speaker 2: on a Codex, interestingly. There's maybe a couple possible exceptions

659
00:28:31,119 --> 00:28:33,260
Speaker 2: out of the many we have. But in terms of

660
00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:36,109
Speaker 2: the Nomen of Sacra... We can hardly even find a

661
00:28:36,140 --> 00:28:37,710
Speaker 2: single manuscript that doesn't have it. I mean, we do

662
00:28:37,750 --> 00:28:40,570
Speaker 2: have some exceptions, but it's everywhere very early. So once again,

663
00:28:40,610 --> 00:28:42,390
Speaker 2: what's the question? Who decided this?

664
00:28:42,430 --> 00:28:44,330
Speaker 3: Yeah, why? And how does a.

665
00:28:44,370 --> 00:28:47,900
Speaker 2: Christological commitment to Jesus as Lord dominate the Christian manuscripts

666
00:28:48,080 --> 00:28:49,220
Speaker 2: as far back as we can see?

667
00:28:49,240 --> 00:28:50,220
Speaker 3: That's a remarkable fact.

668
00:28:51,140 --> 00:28:53,680
Speaker 1: Okay, so what does this tell us about how early

669
00:28:53,740 --> 00:28:56,360
Speaker 1: Christians viewed the identity of Jesus then?

670
00:28:57,080 --> 00:28:59,190
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this is a remarkable piece of the

671
00:28:59,250 --> 00:29:05,310
Speaker 2: Christological puzzle. So when you talk about how Christians view Jesus' identity, right,

672
00:29:05,490 --> 00:29:08,290
Speaker 2: was he viewed as God, was he viewed as divine?

673
00:29:08,990 --> 00:29:11,090
Speaker 2: Usually we go to the classic text, right? You go

674
00:29:11,110 --> 00:29:13,390
Speaker 2: to John 8, you know, before Abraham was born, I am.

675
00:29:13,410 --> 00:29:15,410
Speaker 2: You go to John 1, in the beginning was the Word.

676
00:29:15,760 --> 00:29:18,900
Speaker 2: You could look at even various passages in the Synoptic

677
00:29:18,920 --> 00:29:22,440
Speaker 2: Gospels where the Son of God clearly has divine connotations.

678
00:29:22,860 --> 00:29:24,240
Speaker 2: Or you could go to, like, the book of Hebrews,

679
00:29:24,260 --> 00:29:24,940
Speaker 2: chapter 1, and.

680
00:29:24,900 --> 00:29:27,060
Speaker 3: Where it talks about Jesus as God. But here's a

681
00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:28,260
Speaker 3: whole other level of evidence, right?

682
00:29:29,030 --> 00:29:31,510
Speaker 2: What if you could sort of ascertain early Christian beliefs

683
00:29:31,570 --> 00:29:34,230
Speaker 2: about Jesus' divine identity by looking at how they abbreviate

684
00:29:34,810 --> 00:29:37,910
Speaker 2: the name? Now, of course, this goes back to Jewish culture.

685
00:29:38,530 --> 00:29:40,810
Speaker 2: We know that in Old Testament mainstream. they would have

686
00:29:40,850 --> 00:29:43,550
Speaker 2: their own way of setting apart the divine name in

687
00:29:43,610 --> 00:29:46,150
Speaker 2: Jewish Old Testament manuscripts called the Tetragrammaton, which is a

688
00:29:46,170 --> 00:29:48,930
Speaker 2: way of writing the name Lord without vowels or using

689
00:29:49,010 --> 00:29:53,330
Speaker 2: Paleo-Hebrew or what have you. So that whole concept of

690
00:29:53,390 --> 00:29:55,800
Speaker 2: doing something distinctive with God's name as a way to

691
00:29:55,900 --> 00:29:59,280
Speaker 2: honor it is now switched over to Jesus. And that,

692
00:29:59,380 --> 00:30:02,070
Speaker 2: I think, shows you that they view Jesus as Lord,

693
00:30:02,250 --> 00:30:04,610
Speaker 2: as God, in a way that they would have viewed

694
00:30:05,050 --> 00:30:06,470
Speaker 2: the Lord of the Old Testament as God.

695
00:30:06,670 --> 00:30:08,150
Speaker 1: That's amazing. I want to make sure people are making

696
00:30:08,170 --> 00:30:12,330
Speaker 1: this connection. So Yahweh, the most personal name of God,

697
00:30:12,490 --> 00:30:15,840
Speaker 1: Exodus chapter 3, they wouldn't write out his full name.

698
00:30:15,960 --> 00:30:18,600
Speaker 1: Either maybe later in Masoretic text it would be four dots,

699
00:30:18,720 --> 00:30:20,720
Speaker 1: as I understand, or they would have the abbreviation.

700
00:30:20,740 --> 00:30:22,760
Speaker 2: There's lots of ways they would set it apart. And

701
00:30:22,800 --> 00:30:24,940
Speaker 2: they would sometimes write it in what's called Paleo-Hebrew, which

702
00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:26,830
Speaker 2: is an older Hebrew. Sometimes the vowel pointing would be

703
00:30:26,870 --> 00:30:29,430
Speaker 2: left out. sometimes there was other things they would do

704
00:30:29,450 --> 00:30:30,270
Speaker 2: to set apart the divine name.

705
00:30:30,370 --> 00:30:33,270
Speaker 1: Uniquely to God's name from other things.

706
00:30:33,370 --> 00:30:35,030
Speaker 3: It was a sign of honor and devotion.

707
00:30:35,110 --> 00:30:35,229
Speaker 2: Right.

708
00:30:35,250 --> 00:30:35,470
Speaker 3: Okay.

709
00:30:35,490 --> 00:30:39,050
Speaker 1: Which makes sense of the highest honor and devotion for

710
00:30:39,070 --> 00:30:42,930
Speaker 1: the record. So the earliest manuscripts we have dating in

711
00:30:42,970 --> 00:30:46,150
Speaker 1: the second century. Yes. Do the same thing with Jesus

712
00:30:46,370 --> 00:30:47,730
Speaker 1: or with Jesus Christ.

713
00:30:48,390 --> 00:30:48,710
Speaker 3: It's remarkable.

714
00:30:48,730 --> 00:30:52,620
Speaker 1: And it's unanimous. And so the best guess of being unanimous,

715
00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:55,000
Speaker 1: just as you gave your best, I wouldn't call it

716
00:30:55,020 --> 00:30:57,740
Speaker 1: a guess, but your, theory, whatever you want to call it,

717
00:30:57,760 --> 00:30:59,820
Speaker 1: for why the codex exploded on the scene.

718
00:30:59,840 --> 00:31:00,900
Speaker 3: Yeah, a hypothesis, yeah.

719
00:31:00,960 --> 00:31:03,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, a hypothesis, you would say, is just such a

720
00:31:03,600 --> 00:31:08,140
Speaker 1: high view of Jesus early across the different manuscripts and

721
00:31:08,180 --> 00:31:11,960
Speaker 1: conversations that it was so natural to do this abbreviation.

722
00:31:12,120 --> 00:31:12,580
Speaker 1: Is that fair?

723
00:31:12,640 --> 00:31:14,360
Speaker 2: That's right, and there's so many layers to that because

724
00:31:14,400 --> 00:31:17,170
Speaker 2: not only does it show common theology, but it also

725
00:31:17,250 --> 00:31:20,130
Speaker 2: shows common scribal practice. In other words, you might have

726
00:31:20,170 --> 00:31:22,230
Speaker 2: guessed that they would abbreviate the divine name differently in

727
00:31:22,250 --> 00:31:25,030
Speaker 2: different places. They have different kinds of abbreviations, but the

728
00:31:25,070 --> 00:31:28,060
Speaker 2: uniformity of these is remarkable. Now, over time, they expand,

729
00:31:28,080 --> 00:31:30,980
Speaker 2: by the way. They start off with God, Lord, Jesus,

730
00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 2: and Christ, and then they begin to get further down

731
00:31:34,180 --> 00:31:36,740
Speaker 2: the tracks from that. As you might imagine, the other

732
00:31:36,760 --> 00:31:39,640
Speaker 2: things that are associated with Jesus start getting abbreviated. Weos, son,

733
00:31:39,680 --> 00:31:44,670
Speaker 2: gets abbreviated, right? Anthropos gets abbreviated, son of man. And

734
00:31:45,110 --> 00:31:47,190
Speaker 2: lots of different other words are added to the list

735
00:31:47,210 --> 00:31:47,570
Speaker 2: down the road.

736
00:31:47,970 --> 00:31:50,470
Speaker 1: And it's never done with an angel, never done with Moses,

737
00:31:50,530 --> 00:31:53,650
Speaker 1: never done with a human being. No, it is uniquely. God,

738
00:31:53,750 --> 00:31:57,850
Speaker 1: theos in the Old Testament, or Yahweh, obviously, and then

739
00:31:58,150 --> 00:32:00,090
Speaker 1: the person of Jesus in the New Testament.

740
00:32:00,150 --> 00:32:00,450
Speaker 3: Correct.

741
00:32:00,890 --> 00:32:02,910
Speaker 1: That's powerful. Okay, so I want to jump in a

742
00:32:03,030 --> 00:32:05,910
Speaker 1: few particular manuscripts. Yeah. But first, I actually have something

743
00:32:05,970 --> 00:32:06,250
Speaker 1: for you.

744
00:32:06,270 --> 00:32:06,690
Speaker 3: Oh, wonderful.

745
00:32:06,710 --> 00:32:10,010
Speaker 1: I asked ahead of time if you know what P45 is.

746
00:32:10,110 --> 00:32:12,410
Speaker 3: Of course. Yeah, third century manuscript.

747
00:32:12,490 --> 00:32:16,020
Speaker 1: I started to work with a company that makes facsimiles. Oh, my.

748
00:32:16,180 --> 00:32:17,920
Speaker 1: Because of early manuscripts.

749
00:32:17,960 --> 00:32:18,600
Speaker 3: Can I open this?

750
00:32:18,700 --> 00:32:19,000
Speaker 1: Please.

751
00:32:19,020 --> 00:32:19,510
Speaker 3: This is for you.

752
00:32:19,520 --> 00:32:22,040
Speaker 1: You're actually the first person that I've given one to

753
00:32:22,060 --> 00:32:24,980
Speaker 1: because we just kind of started this partnership. And I

754
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:27,680
Speaker 1: was thrilled. I told my team, I'm like, Michael Kruger,

755
00:32:27,720 --> 00:32:30,900
Speaker 1: the man is coming to Biola's campus. And they made

756
00:32:30,940 --> 00:32:32,090
Speaker 1: this uniquely for you.

757
00:32:32,220 --> 00:32:40,530
Speaker 3: Oh, my. Look at that. Look at that. Mark eight

758
00:32:40,690 --> 00:32:46,680
Speaker 3: and nine. That is amazing. So this facsimile was made

759
00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:47,720
Speaker 3: by who? Who made this?

760
00:32:48,220 --> 00:32:52,510
Speaker 1: So I work with a team at ManuscriptShop.com and the

761
00:32:52,550 --> 00:32:55,070
Speaker 1: same one that Wes Huff works with. And they just

762
00:32:55,130 --> 00:32:58,110
Speaker 1: started making them to give as gifts, making them to

763
00:32:58,130 --> 00:33:01,530
Speaker 1: display for conversation pieces. And they reached out to me.

764
00:33:01,980 --> 00:33:03,440
Speaker 1: And first off, I was like, can I get a

765
00:33:03,480 --> 00:33:05,350
Speaker 1: few from my office? Like, just like I have a

766
00:33:05,370 --> 00:33:08,230
Speaker 1: P52 that's set up, a P66 that we'll talk about.

767
00:33:08,250 --> 00:33:09,650
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll talk about that today, yeah.

768
00:33:09,730 --> 00:33:11,810
Speaker 1: People come in and are like, wait, what is that?

769
00:33:11,830 --> 00:33:13,450
Speaker 1: And I get to talk about, this is the early

770
00:33:13,490 --> 00:33:16,150
Speaker 1: copy of the New Testament. And it's just such, it's

771
00:33:16,170 --> 00:33:17,090
Speaker 1: an amazing gift to me.

772
00:33:17,110 --> 00:33:19,790
Speaker 3: Oh, that's so nice. That is beautiful.

773
00:33:19,830 --> 00:33:21,150
Speaker 1: Conversation piece.

774
00:33:21,330 --> 00:33:24,630
Speaker 2: And I don't know if the viewers can see the

775
00:33:25,090 --> 00:33:27,150
Speaker 2: fragmentary nature of the manuscript here, but this is what

776
00:33:27,530 --> 00:33:30,410
Speaker 2: papyrus does when it wears out. It breaks off into

777
00:33:30,540 --> 00:33:35,200
Speaker 2: clumps and In lines, because it gets brittle. And P45

778
00:33:35,420 --> 00:33:38,850
Speaker 2: is one of those manuscripts that does get brittle.

779
00:33:38,870 --> 00:33:41,150
Speaker 3: And we have all four Gospels in P45. It's a

780
00:33:41,250 --> 00:33:42,690
Speaker 3: 3rd century text. And Acts, too.

781
00:33:43,310 --> 00:33:45,230
Speaker 2: It's actually one of our earliest four Gospel codices, and

782
00:33:45,250 --> 00:33:46,450
Speaker 2: we'll talk more about that in a minute when we

783
00:33:46,470 --> 00:33:47,450
Speaker 2: get to the other manuscripts.

784
00:33:47,710 --> 00:33:49,209
Speaker 3: Amazing. So very kind. Thank you.

785
00:33:49,290 --> 00:33:50,070
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.

786
00:33:50,110 --> 00:33:50,469
Speaker 3: Enjoy.

787
00:33:50,870 --> 00:33:53,430
Speaker 1: When I ask you what are three of your earliest

788
00:33:54,090 --> 00:33:57,330
Speaker 1: specific manuscripts that you find most interesting that you want

789
00:33:57,350 --> 00:34:00,060
Speaker 1: to talk about, You gave me three. Let's start with

790
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:06,100
Speaker 1: the first one. You said P4, P64, and P67. Yes.

791
00:34:06,600 --> 00:34:07,420
Speaker 1: Tell us about that.

792
00:34:07,760 --> 00:34:11,719
Speaker 3: Yeah, so for the listeners, P stands for papyrus. We

793
00:34:12,030 --> 00:34:13,489
Speaker 3: have these labels for manuscripts.

794
00:34:13,550 --> 00:34:18,330
Speaker 2: P4, 64, and 67 are thought to be.

795
00:34:17,750 --> 00:34:19,750
Speaker 3: Fragments from the same codex.

796
00:34:20,469 --> 00:34:23,770
Speaker 2: What's interesting about it is that 64 and 67 are

797
00:34:23,810 --> 00:34:26,950
Speaker 2: copies of Matthew, and P4 is a copy of Luke.

798
00:34:27,890 --> 00:34:30,250
Speaker 2: and there was a widespread sense that these probably came

799
00:34:30,270 --> 00:34:32,790
Speaker 2: from at least the same scribe and probably from the

800
00:34:32,810 --> 00:34:33,510
Speaker 2: same codex.

801
00:34:35,170 --> 00:34:36,730
Speaker 3: Originally, this was.

802
00:34:36,250 --> 00:34:38,690
Speaker 2: Suggested by Kurt Allant, who suggested this, and then that

803
00:34:38,730 --> 00:34:39,710
Speaker 2: was backed up by C.H.

804
00:34:39,770 --> 00:34:41,350
Speaker 3: Roberts. And then T.C.

805
00:34:41,410 --> 00:34:45,569
Speaker 2: Skeet wrote a very famous article arguing that this combination

806
00:34:45,650 --> 00:34:49,230
Speaker 2: of Matthew and Luke was actually originally a four-gospel codex.

807
00:34:50,150 --> 00:34:54,370
Speaker 2: So it also included Mark and John. So this is interesting,

808
00:34:54,410 --> 00:34:56,010
Speaker 2: and the reason I brought it up as a manuscript

809
00:34:56,030 --> 00:34:59,489
Speaker 2: that's a talking point is It's been dated possibly to

810
00:34:59,510 --> 00:35:02,989
Speaker 2: the late 2nd century. Some have suggested a 3rd century date,

811
00:35:03,030 --> 00:35:05,390
Speaker 2: and these dates have fudge room in them because we

812
00:35:05,410 --> 00:35:09,370
Speaker 2: don't have any precision on that. But the earliest look

813
00:35:09,510 --> 00:35:11,790
Speaker 2: at those manuscripts actually dated to the late 2nd century,

814
00:35:12,310 --> 00:35:14,510
Speaker 2: and T.C. Skeet dated it to the late 2nd century.

815
00:35:15,090 --> 00:35:17,000
Speaker 2: So what you have is the possibility of having a

816
00:35:17,080 --> 00:35:21,200
Speaker 2: four-gospel codex by the late 2nd or 3rd century. And

817
00:35:21,219 --> 00:35:24,279
Speaker 2: this is actually part of the discussion point we raised

818
00:35:24,320 --> 00:35:26,910
Speaker 2: a minute ago with the codex. is that we think

819
00:35:26,969 --> 00:35:30,270
Speaker 2: that one of the motivations possibly for why Christians adopted

820
00:35:30,290 --> 00:35:31,890
Speaker 2: the Codex is the idea that it can hold all

821
00:35:31,930 --> 00:35:34,960
Speaker 2: four Gospels in one volume. This manuscript may be one

822
00:35:34,980 --> 00:35:39,020
Speaker 2: of our earliest glimpses of a four-Gospel Codex. And that,

823
00:35:39,080 --> 00:35:41,980
Speaker 2: I think, is quite interesting. Now, there's dissenters out there.

824
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:43,880
Speaker 2: We don't have time to get into those who challenged it.

825
00:35:45,280 --> 00:35:47,750
Speaker 2: There's scholars who've said, no, this isn't a four-Gospel Codex,

826
00:35:47,790 --> 00:35:50,290
Speaker 2: and they've tried to say Skeet was wrong, and then

827
00:35:50,330 --> 00:35:52,450
Speaker 2: others have said no, Skeet was right. But for our

828
00:35:52,469 --> 00:35:54,549
Speaker 2: purposes in this conversation, I think there's good reasons that

829
00:35:54,570 --> 00:35:57,830
Speaker 2: these manuscripts are from the same same codex. And I

830
00:35:57,850 --> 00:35:59,990
Speaker 2: think it's at least third century, if not late second.

831
00:36:00,570 --> 00:36:02,969
Speaker 2: And so this is an early glimpse at the combination

832
00:36:02,989 --> 00:36:06,750
Speaker 2: of gospels in one codex. And this is a point

833
00:36:07,650 --> 00:36:10,050
Speaker 2: that really affects canon. And let me explain why. Not

834
00:36:10,550 --> 00:36:13,990
Speaker 2: only does this affect textual criticism because you're preserving these gospels,

835
00:36:14,750 --> 00:36:16,450
Speaker 2: but one of the things people don't realize is that

836
00:36:16,530 --> 00:36:18,950
Speaker 2: in the early Christian centuries, as early as the second century,

837
00:36:19,010 --> 00:36:21,920
Speaker 2: we began to combine multiple gospels into a single manuscript.

838
00:36:22,590 --> 00:36:24,430
Speaker 2: which is interesting, because as soon as you combine multiple

839
00:36:24,450 --> 00:36:26,210
Speaker 2: Gospels in a single manuscript, that scribe must think they

840
00:36:26,230 --> 00:36:29,450
Speaker 2: belong together, right? But here's what you don't find. You

841
00:36:29,469 --> 00:36:32,460
Speaker 2: never find a mix of canonical and apocryphal Gospels in

842
00:36:32,560 --> 00:36:34,880
Speaker 2: one manuscript. So there's never an instance where you have

843
00:36:34,940 --> 00:36:38,319
Speaker 2: a copy of Matthew, Mark, and Thomas, or Matthew, Luke,

844
00:36:38,360 --> 00:36:40,899
Speaker 2: and Peter, or something like that in a codex. Whenever

845
00:36:40,920 --> 00:36:42,960
Speaker 2: you find more than one Gospel in a codex, it's

846
00:36:43,020 --> 00:36:44,100
Speaker 2: always Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

847
00:36:44,800 --> 00:36:45,440
Speaker 3: That's fascinating.

848
00:36:45,580 --> 00:36:47,870
Speaker 1: Okay, so there might be a dig where people find

849
00:36:47,969 --> 00:36:52,770
Speaker 1: Gospel of Thomas and Gospel of, say... not only Peter,

850
00:36:52,810 --> 00:36:56,830
Speaker 1: but gospel of Luke, but on the same manuscript itself

851
00:36:56,850 --> 00:36:58,990
Speaker 1: is the key point that you're saying.

852
00:36:59,230 --> 00:37:01,149
Speaker 2: So, for example, at the site of Oxyrhynchus, we find

853
00:37:01,190 --> 00:37:03,590
Speaker 2: manuscripts from all over the place. We're not suggesting that

854
00:37:03,610 --> 00:37:05,950
Speaker 2: you never find an apocryphal gospel and a canonical gospel

855
00:37:05,969 --> 00:37:09,089
Speaker 2: in the same dig, so to speak. But we're talking

856
00:37:09,110 --> 00:37:12,250
Speaker 2: about in the same codex, actually in the same physical

857
00:37:12,330 --> 00:37:14,870
Speaker 2: manuscript that holds more than one gospel. We never find

858
00:37:15,150 --> 00:37:17,330
Speaker 2: canonical and apocryphal gospels combined together.

859
00:37:17,830 --> 00:37:18,690
Speaker 3: That's just stunning.

860
00:37:19,370 --> 00:37:22,720
Speaker 2: If the canon was as much in disarray as people claim,

861
00:37:23,060 --> 00:37:25,320
Speaker 2: where everyone was reading Gospels, no one knew what Gospels

862
00:37:25,340 --> 00:37:27,620
Speaker 2: to read. How do we explain the fact that whenever

863
00:37:27,640 --> 00:37:29,680
Speaker 2: we see them combined, even as early as the second century,

864
00:37:29,700 --> 00:37:30,830
Speaker 2: it's always Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?

865
00:37:30,850 --> 00:37:31,430
Speaker 3: That's just stunning.

866
00:37:32,110 --> 00:37:35,130
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. That brings us back to your teacher

867
00:37:35,290 --> 00:37:38,190
Speaker 1: back at UNC who has suggested there was a lot

868
00:37:38,250 --> 00:37:42,549
Speaker 1: more disarray amongst what was read and considered authoritative. And

869
00:37:42,590 --> 00:37:44,879
Speaker 1: here's one piece that pushes back on that. Let's say

870
00:37:44,900 --> 00:37:47,860
Speaker 1: at the end of the second century, arguably, you have

871
00:37:47,880 --> 00:37:51,719
Speaker 1: the four Gospels together. And there's no examples on the

872
00:37:51,780 --> 00:37:55,640
Speaker 1: same papyri of, say, Gospel Peter and Gospel Luke together

873
00:37:56,160 --> 00:37:56,859
Speaker 1: in the same way.

874
00:37:57,100 --> 00:37:57,480
Speaker 3: That's right.

875
00:37:57,520 --> 00:37:58,060
Speaker 1: Can I capture that?

876
00:37:58,100 --> 00:37:58,920
Speaker 3: No, that's exactly right.

877
00:37:59,300 --> 00:38:01,950
Speaker 2: And I'll add to that that we have very few

878
00:38:02,030 --> 00:38:04,090
Speaker 2: copies of Apocryphal Gospels from this time period.

879
00:38:05,090 --> 00:38:08,129
Speaker 3: In fact, it depends on how you measure this.

880
00:38:08,370 --> 00:38:13,229
Speaker 2: There's really no examples we have of— Like the Gospel

881
00:38:13,250 --> 00:38:15,529
Speaker 2: of Thomas, you have some fragmentary Greek copies of, but

882
00:38:15,690 --> 00:38:17,850
Speaker 2: their earliest dates to those is 3rd century. So if

883
00:38:17,870 --> 00:38:19,410
Speaker 2: you go back to the 2nd century, you really look

884
00:38:19,450 --> 00:38:22,270
Speaker 2: mainly at canonical texts that early.

885
00:38:22,630 --> 00:38:28,630
Speaker 1: Okay, so you mentioned apocryphal Gospels. What about the apocrypha? Yes. Now,

886
00:38:28,650 --> 00:38:31,310
Speaker 1: what's the difference there, and do they ever appear on

887
00:38:31,370 --> 00:38:33,270
Speaker 1: the same kind of physical manuscript?

888
00:38:33,510 --> 00:38:35,610
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the term gets confusing to people, and I

889
00:38:35,650 --> 00:38:40,020
Speaker 2: totally get it, because you have the noun– capitalized apocrypha,

890
00:38:40,080 --> 00:38:42,359
Speaker 2: you have the noun lowercase apocrypha, and then you have

891
00:38:42,380 --> 00:38:44,739
Speaker 2: the adjective apocryphal. And you're like, well, could someone make

892
00:38:44,760 --> 00:38:47,340
Speaker 2: their mind up here about the nomenclature?

893
00:38:47,360 --> 00:38:48,420
Speaker 3: So I get the confusion.

894
00:38:49,040 --> 00:38:53,480
Speaker 2: But the short version is the term apocryphal just means hidden,

895
00:38:53,640 --> 00:38:57,320
Speaker 2: and it's become attached to documents that look like the

896
00:38:57,410 --> 00:38:58,969
Speaker 2: ones that almost made it into our Bibles but were

897
00:38:58,989 --> 00:39:01,790
Speaker 2: left out. And that term applies to both the New

898
00:39:01,810 --> 00:39:04,130
Speaker 2: Testament side and the Old Testament side. On the New

899
00:39:04,170 --> 00:39:06,090
Speaker 2: Testament side, something like the Gospel of Thomas would be

900
00:39:06,110 --> 00:39:09,080
Speaker 2: called an apocryphal gospel or also part of what we

901
00:39:09,100 --> 00:39:12,020
Speaker 2: call the New Testament apocrypha, which means books that look

902
00:39:12,040 --> 00:39:14,360
Speaker 2: like they could have made it in but didn't. In

903
00:39:14,380 --> 00:39:18,060
Speaker 2: the Old Testament side, usually this is stated with a

904
00:39:18,080 --> 00:39:21,299
Speaker 2: definite article. The apocrypha refers to Old Testament books that

905
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:23,969
Speaker 2: were included by the Roman Catholic Church but not Protestants.

906
00:39:24,489 --> 00:39:26,810
Speaker 2: So this would be 1st, 2nd Maccabees, Judith, Tobit, and

907
00:39:26,850 --> 00:39:29,549
Speaker 2: so on. So that's a totally different field than mine.

908
00:39:29,570 --> 00:39:29,969
Speaker 3: That's Old Testament.

909
00:39:30,840 --> 00:39:34,200
Speaker 2: And it's also a very different phenomenon because those aren't

910
00:39:34,400 --> 00:39:36,660
Speaker 2: books that pretend to be written by famous people in

911
00:39:36,700 --> 00:39:40,660
Speaker 2: the same way. They're generally historical books but later considered

912
00:39:40,700 --> 00:39:41,969
Speaker 2: canonical by the Roman Catholic Church.

913
00:39:42,170 --> 00:39:44,549
Speaker 1: So we wouldn't expect them, given that they were written

914
00:39:44,630 --> 00:39:47,219
Speaker 1: so much earlier and have a different focus— to be

915
00:39:47,500 --> 00:39:49,580
Speaker 1: on the same kind of manuscript as we would some

916
00:39:49,600 --> 00:39:51,110
Speaker 1: of these apocryphal gospels.

917
00:39:51,610 --> 00:39:55,310
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we do find Greek Old Testament manuscripts with

918
00:39:55,330 --> 00:39:56,340
Speaker 2: some apocryphal books in it.

919
00:39:56,710 --> 00:39:57,250
Speaker 3: That is true.

920
00:39:57,690 --> 00:39:59,290
Speaker 2: But on the New Testament side, which was the point

921
00:39:59,330 --> 00:40:02,640
Speaker 2: I was making, we find multiple gospels in the same codex.

922
00:40:02,660 --> 00:40:04,880
Speaker 3: You never find a mix of canonical and apocryphal.

923
00:40:04,920 --> 00:40:05,479
Speaker 1: Okay, fair enough.

924
00:40:05,500 --> 00:40:05,700
Speaker 3: Got it.

925
00:40:06,090 --> 00:40:09,219
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's jump to P66. Yes. One of my

926
00:40:09,360 --> 00:40:14,460
Speaker 1: personal favorites. Yes. And we're starting to make facsimiles of

927
00:40:14,500 --> 00:40:14,960
Speaker 1: these as well.

928
00:40:14,980 --> 00:40:16,420
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want that. Next time I come back, I

929
00:40:16,460 --> 00:40:17,600
Speaker 3: want P66. You know what? This is great.

930
00:40:17,660 --> 00:40:19,900
Speaker 1: If you come back to campus, we will get you

931
00:40:19,940 --> 00:40:20,200
Speaker 1: a P66.

932
00:40:20,440 --> 00:40:21,080
Speaker 3: There you go.

933
00:40:21,080 --> 00:40:24,259
Speaker 1: I have one sitting on my desk, but tell us

934
00:40:24,300 --> 00:40:25,760
Speaker 1: why this one is so significant.

935
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:28,859
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think P66 is fascinating. I picked these three

936
00:40:28,880 --> 00:40:30,460
Speaker 3: manuscripts not randomly.

937
00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:33,160
Speaker 2: There's so many wonderful manuscripts, but I picked each one

938
00:40:33,180 --> 00:40:34,969
Speaker 2: because I want to highlight something. I wanted to talk

939
00:40:35,010 --> 00:40:38,319
Speaker 2: about P-464-67, because I wanted to talk about the four

940
00:40:38,340 --> 00:40:43,900
Speaker 2: gospel codex phenomenon, which, of course, interestingly, you anticipated with P-45, interestingly.

941
00:40:45,200 --> 00:40:49,610
Speaker 2: P-66 is fascinating because it is one of our earliest

942
00:40:49,670 --> 00:40:53,430
Speaker 2: copies of John and is nearly complete. This is what

943
00:40:53,489 --> 00:40:57,589
Speaker 2: makes it so fascinating. The dating game around P-66 has

944
00:40:57,630 --> 00:41:03,020
Speaker 2: been massive. The upshot is it's probably 3rd century. Some

945
00:41:03,040 --> 00:41:05,620
Speaker 2: have put it late 2nd century. Some have suggested it's

946
00:41:05,640 --> 00:41:08,820
Speaker 2: as late as 4th century in some recent discussions. I

947
00:41:08,840 --> 00:41:12,129
Speaker 2: think it's reliably 3rd century for a number of codicological

948
00:41:12,170 --> 00:41:15,110
Speaker 2: and paleographical reasons, actually, in particular the way the Omicron,

949
00:41:15,150 --> 00:41:16,890
Speaker 2: the small Omicron, sits high above the line as a

950
00:41:16,910 --> 00:41:19,509
Speaker 2: common 3rd century feature. There's a number of other things

951
00:41:19,530 --> 00:41:22,980
Speaker 2: about P66 we could talk about. But I think it's

952
00:41:23,020 --> 00:41:25,200
Speaker 2: reliably 3rd century. But what makes it noteworthy and why

953
00:41:25,219 --> 00:41:26,980
Speaker 2: I wanted to talk about it is that we can

954
00:41:27,660 --> 00:41:31,219
Speaker 2: see the very first page. Now, people don't realize how

955
00:41:31,320 --> 00:41:34,640
Speaker 2: rare this is. When books wear out and they're in

956
00:41:34,660 --> 00:41:37,560
Speaker 2: the form of a codex, the pages you lose first

957
00:41:37,719 --> 00:41:40,319
Speaker 2: are obvious, the beginning and the end, right? It's like

958
00:41:40,360 --> 00:41:41,980
Speaker 2: a book you stick in your book bag all the time.

959
00:41:42,320 --> 00:41:43,040
Speaker 3: Maybe even your Bible.

960
00:41:43,060 --> 00:41:45,160
Speaker 2: Like if you have a favorite book you always stick

961
00:41:45,180 --> 00:41:46,839
Speaker 2: in your book bag and it gets worn out over time,

962
00:41:47,480 --> 00:41:48,299
Speaker 2: what pages do you lose?

963
00:41:48,360 --> 00:41:50,640
Speaker 3: It's obvious. Not the ones in the middle. Those are preserved.

964
00:41:50,989 --> 00:41:53,210
Speaker 2: It's the ones on the end that get lost first, right?

965
00:41:53,730 --> 00:41:56,629
Speaker 2: And so P66 is remarkable because we have the very

966
00:41:56,650 --> 00:41:57,850
Speaker 2: first page. We don't have the end, but we have

967
00:41:57,870 --> 00:42:00,430
Speaker 2: the first page. Why does that matter? Because we have

968
00:42:00,469 --> 00:42:04,990
Speaker 2: the title, okay? We can see the title, The Gospel

969
00:42:05,050 --> 00:42:07,730
Speaker 2: According to John. Now, we can have a further conversation

970
00:42:07,750 --> 00:42:09,830
Speaker 2: about gospel titles, which I think is its own fascinating

971
00:42:09,870 --> 00:42:12,510
Speaker 2: conversation and how early they were added and how reliable

972
00:42:12,550 --> 00:42:15,370
Speaker 2: they are. But this shows us a very early example

973
00:42:15,570 --> 00:42:18,230
Speaker 2: of the title in its full form, which has got

974
00:42:18,250 --> 00:42:19,670
Speaker 2: its own idiosyncrasies about it.

975
00:42:20,700 --> 00:42:22,219
Speaker 3: And that is noteworthy in its own right.

976
00:42:22,660 --> 00:42:25,140
Speaker 2: The other thing that's wonderful about P66 is that you

977
00:42:25,160 --> 00:42:27,340
Speaker 2: can also see the entire prologue, which is such a

978
00:42:27,420 --> 00:42:28,560
Speaker 2: beloved text for Christians.

979
00:42:29,280 --> 00:42:30,160
Speaker 3: I have an elective.

980
00:42:30,219 --> 00:42:31,879
Speaker 1: And this is 1.1 through, say, 18.

981
00:42:31,880 --> 00:42:32,940
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right.

982
00:42:33,260 --> 00:42:34,600
Speaker 2: So, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was

983
00:42:34,620 --> 00:42:36,920
Speaker 2: with God, the Word was God, a very famous text.

984
00:42:37,700 --> 00:42:40,610
Speaker 2: In one of my electives at Reformed Theological Seminary, I

985
00:42:40,770 --> 00:42:43,469
Speaker 2: actually take my students through a photographic facsimile of this

986
00:42:43,550 --> 00:42:45,290
Speaker 2: opening page, and we just read it through in Greek.

987
00:42:45,950 --> 00:42:51,270
Speaker 2: And it's just fascinating how well-preserved the prologue is, how

988
00:42:51,410 --> 00:42:55,689
Speaker 2: faithful it is to the text. And students regularly comment, wow,

989
00:42:55,790 --> 00:42:58,420
Speaker 2: it's the same wording as our Greek text now, and

990
00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:00,640
Speaker 2: they're always amazed at how consistent it is, and that's

991
00:43:00,700 --> 00:43:03,359
Speaker 2: exactly right. I mean, it gives a glimpse at the

992
00:43:03,400 --> 00:43:04,160
Speaker 2: textual fidelity.

993
00:43:04,580 --> 00:43:08,110
Speaker 1: What about the connection to the end of Luke towards

994
00:43:08,120 --> 00:43:10,670
Speaker 1: the beginning of John on P66?

995
00:43:11,830 --> 00:43:13,090
Speaker 3: What, say more about that now?

996
00:43:13,230 --> 00:43:16,009
Speaker 1: Is the end of... the end of Luke on the

997
00:43:16,110 --> 00:43:19,950
Speaker 1: first page that we have of P66 where John begins

998
00:43:20,050 --> 00:43:20,450
Speaker 1: as well.

999
00:43:20,469 --> 00:43:21,649
Speaker 3: No, we don't see the end of Luke there.

1000
00:43:21,830 --> 00:43:22,590
Speaker 1: That's P75.

1001
00:43:22,630 --> 00:43:27,469
Speaker 3: That's P75. So P75 is another possible four-gospel codex. Okay, good.

1002
00:43:27,510 --> 00:43:28,110
Speaker 3: Talk about that.

1003
00:43:28,130 --> 00:43:30,330
Speaker 2: Yeah, which was not on our radar, but that's also

1004
00:43:30,350 --> 00:43:34,960
Speaker 2: a fascinating four-gospel codex. It's probably 3rd century too. And

1005
00:43:35,280 --> 00:43:38,259
Speaker 2: P75 has the transition between Luke and John on the

1006
00:43:38,300 --> 00:43:40,600
Speaker 2: same page, as you noted. So what's great about that

1007
00:43:40,640 --> 00:43:42,259
Speaker 2: is we have the title for Luke and the title

1008
00:43:42,280 --> 00:43:44,419
Speaker 2: for John right next to each other. It also tells

1009
00:43:44,540 --> 00:43:46,520
Speaker 2: us about the way titles work. You typically have them

1010
00:43:46,540 --> 00:43:47,940
Speaker 2: at the beginning and end of documents, and you can

1011
00:43:47,960 --> 00:43:50,140
Speaker 2: see it there. But it also tells you, interestingly, that

1012
00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:53,000
Speaker 2: they were pretty committed to saving space on the page.

1013
00:43:53,060 --> 00:43:54,610
Speaker 2: Like when you ended Luke, you didn't wait until the

1014
00:43:54,640 --> 00:43:57,190
Speaker 2: next page to start John. You just started John. The

1015
00:43:57,210 --> 00:43:58,989
Speaker 2: other thing P75 tells us about is the order of

1016
00:43:59,010 --> 00:44:03,610
Speaker 2: the Gospels. Okay, and actually all these have interesting things.

1017
00:44:03,770 --> 00:44:08,920
Speaker 2: That's the traditional sort of classical order, which would be Matthew, Mark, Luke,

1018
00:44:08,940 --> 00:44:10,719
Speaker 2: and John. There's a few variants in the manuscripts of

1019
00:44:10,739 --> 00:44:13,709
Speaker 2: different orders. But it shows you that the order is very,

1020
00:44:13,989 --> 00:44:16,790
Speaker 2: very typical Luke, then John, which is why many think P.

1021
00:44:16,790 --> 00:44:19,109
Speaker 2: 75 was a four gospel codex. Even though we only

1022
00:44:19,150 --> 00:44:22,109
Speaker 2: have Luke and John, almost everyone thinks that P. 75

1023
00:44:22,110 --> 00:44:23,450
Speaker 2: probably originally had Matthew and Mark.

1024
00:44:23,969 --> 00:44:27,770
Speaker 1: So both of those are maybe late second, reliably third century.

1025
00:44:27,790 --> 00:44:30,689
Speaker 1: If you have John 1.1, and then you skip down

1026
00:44:30,730 --> 00:44:34,870
Speaker 1: to John 1.15 into John 1.18, you have very clear

1027
00:44:34,969 --> 00:44:36,860
Speaker 1: claims of the deity of Jesus.

1028
00:44:36,880 --> 00:44:38,410
Speaker 3: Yes. Early.

1029
00:44:38,450 --> 00:44:40,790
Speaker 1: Yes. So the claims, more popular ones that we hear,

1030
00:44:40,830 --> 00:44:44,590
Speaker 1: it was like invented at the Council of Nicaea, 325,

1031
00:44:44,590 --> 00:44:47,049
Speaker 1: 4th century. I mean, this is one or two, in

1032
00:44:47,090 --> 00:44:50,680
Speaker 1: this case, solid reasons to reject that kind of claim.

1033
00:44:50,880 --> 00:44:52,460
Speaker 3: Right. And of course, we think John was published in

1034
00:44:52,480 --> 00:44:53,100
Speaker 3: the 1st century.

1035
00:44:53,160 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 2: So even though our copy is 2nd century, we would

1036
00:44:55,100 --> 00:44:56,640
Speaker 2: argue that view of Jesus goes all the way back

1037
00:44:56,660 --> 00:44:59,860
Speaker 2: to the 1st century. Now, critical scholars would say, yeah,

1038
00:44:59,880 --> 00:45:01,839
Speaker 2: but John's the last gospel written, and therefore the deity

1039
00:45:01,860 --> 00:45:03,060
Speaker 2: of Christ has been magnified.

1040
00:45:03,160 --> 00:45:04,820
Speaker 3: We could come back to that if you want.

1041
00:45:04,840 --> 00:45:08,200
Speaker 2: I think that argument doesn't work for a But yes,

1042
00:45:08,239 --> 00:45:10,360
Speaker 2: you have a very clear claim to deity here in

1043
00:45:10,380 --> 00:45:13,250
Speaker 2: John 1. And back to our earlier conversation, in that

1044
00:45:13,310 --> 00:45:16,569
Speaker 2: opening page of P66, there's the Nomen of Sacra right there.

1045
00:45:16,950 --> 00:45:19,330
Speaker 2: And it's used all throughout that first page and all

1046
00:45:19,350 --> 00:45:22,270
Speaker 2: throughout the whole codex of P66.

1047
00:45:22,830 --> 00:45:27,299
Speaker 3: So it is a remarkable manuscript. It's well-preserved. It's beautifully copied.

1048
00:45:27,820 --> 00:45:30,580
Speaker 2: The hand is not, the scribal hand is not the

1049
00:45:30,620 --> 00:45:32,140
Speaker 2: kind of hand that you would expect in the major

1050
00:45:32,300 --> 00:45:35,880
Speaker 2: 4th century codices that are sort of, you know, almost

1051
00:45:36,100 --> 00:45:39,890
Speaker 2: elegant and artistic and But it's a very reliable and

1052
00:45:40,219 --> 00:45:43,670
Speaker 2: competent scribal hand, and there's reasons to think that it

1053
00:45:43,750 --> 00:45:46,850
Speaker 2: would have reliably copied the text. There's discussions about how

1054
00:45:47,190 --> 00:45:49,290
Speaker 2: the text of P66 is a more free text.

1055
00:45:49,350 --> 00:45:50,210
Speaker 3: That's a word we use.

1056
00:45:51,230 --> 00:45:52,670
Speaker 2: But what you do find in the midst of that

1057
00:45:52,730 --> 00:45:55,450
Speaker 2: free text is a lot of scribal corrections. Someone is

1058
00:45:55,489 --> 00:45:57,600
Speaker 2: going back and fixing the text whenever a mistake is made.

1059
00:45:57,640 --> 00:45:59,740
Speaker 2: So someone's working hard to make sure the text is accurate.

1060
00:46:00,340 --> 00:46:02,480
Speaker 1: So do you think the story of John 7.53 through

1061
00:46:02,480 --> 00:46:02,880
Speaker 1: 8.11 was in John?

1062
00:46:05,540 --> 00:46:08,100
Speaker 2: Well, it's funny you mention that because P66 does not

1063
00:46:08,140 --> 00:46:08,780
Speaker 2: have that story.

1064
00:46:08,800 --> 00:46:09,440
Speaker 1: There you go.

1065
00:46:09,640 --> 00:46:12,180
Speaker 3: And this is also why I go over with my students.

1066
00:46:12,239 --> 00:46:15,100
Speaker 2: I take them to the folio that includes the ending

1067
00:46:15,660 --> 00:46:19,580
Speaker 2: of John 7, goes right from 52 to 812, and

1068
00:46:19,620 --> 00:46:23,100
Speaker 2: you realize, wait a second, where's the story of Jesus

1069
00:46:23,120 --> 00:46:25,420
Speaker 2: and the adulterous woman? So I don't know how far

1070
00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:27,509
Speaker 2: down this rabbit hole you want to go, but I

1071
00:46:27,530 --> 00:46:29,759
Speaker 2: don't think it was original to John. We can have

1072
00:46:29,780 --> 00:46:33,210
Speaker 2: that conversation, but it doesn't affect the overall integrity of

1073
00:46:33,230 --> 00:46:33,730
Speaker 2: the New Testament.

1074
00:46:33,940 --> 00:46:34,859
Speaker 1: Fair enough. Totally agree.

1075
00:46:34,980 --> 00:46:35,180
Speaker 3: All right.

1076
00:46:35,260 --> 00:46:38,899
Speaker 1: One more that you mentioned, P77 and P103.

1077
00:46:39,480 --> 00:46:39,820
Speaker 3: Yes.

1078
00:46:40,460 --> 00:46:44,779
Speaker 2: So P77 and P103 are thought to possibly be from

1079
00:46:44,820 --> 00:46:45,620
Speaker 2: the same codex.

1080
00:46:46,480 --> 00:46:47,500
Speaker 3: I don't know that I'm convinced.

1081
00:46:47,560 --> 00:46:49,860
Speaker 2: So P77 is really the main one I want to

1082
00:46:49,900 --> 00:46:52,360
Speaker 2: talk about. This seems like a random text for me

1083
00:46:52,390 --> 00:46:54,700
Speaker 2: to mention. If someone was watching this podcast, he knows

1084
00:46:54,739 --> 00:46:57,969
Speaker 2: about manuscripts, and they think, so Mike picked P77?

1085
00:46:58,030 --> 00:46:58,610
Speaker 3: Why in the world?

1086
00:46:59,110 --> 00:47:02,890
Speaker 2: It's a fragmentary manuscript. It has copies of portions of Matthew.

1087
00:47:03,750 --> 00:47:08,230
Speaker 2: What's noteworthy about this? What's noteworthy about P-77 is its size.

1088
00:47:09,570 --> 00:47:11,940
Speaker 2: P-77 is what we call a miniature codex.

1089
00:47:12,300 --> 00:47:12,900
Speaker 3: It's tiny.

1090
00:47:13,719 --> 00:47:16,100
Speaker 2: Now, you can see P-45 is shrunk down here on

1091
00:47:16,140 --> 00:47:20,839
Speaker 2: this image. It's fragmentary. But a miniature codex would be

1092
00:47:21,100 --> 00:47:25,440
Speaker 2: probably about this size in totality. So about 10 centimeters wide,

1093
00:47:25,760 --> 00:47:29,799
Speaker 2: about 15 centimeters high is P-77. And it is the

1094
00:47:29,840 --> 00:47:32,360
Speaker 2: beginning of our knowledge of what we would call miniature

1095
00:47:32,390 --> 00:47:33,950
Speaker 2: codices or pocket Bibles.

1096
00:47:33,969 --> 00:47:36,030
Speaker 3: And these are shrunk down small books.

1097
00:47:37,130 --> 00:47:38,810
Speaker 2: And I've done a lot of work on miniature codices,

1098
00:47:38,830 --> 00:47:40,569
Speaker 2: which is why I wanted to talk about it because

1099
00:47:40,710 --> 00:47:42,569
Speaker 2: I think they really give us another window into the

1100
00:47:42,590 --> 00:47:43,730
Speaker 2: early Christian textual culture.

1101
00:47:44,660 --> 00:47:47,100
Speaker 3: Christians would carry these books.

1102
00:47:47,140 --> 00:47:49,339
Speaker 2: They would travel with these books and we have them

1103
00:47:49,380 --> 00:47:52,700
Speaker 2: as early possibly as the second century. And we also

1104
00:47:52,760 --> 00:47:55,060
Speaker 2: have evidence that they would wear these books on their bodies.

1105
00:47:55,920 --> 00:47:58,140
Speaker 2: They would wear them around their neck. They would sleep

1106
00:47:58,180 --> 00:48:00,270
Speaker 2: with them in their bed. They would carry them from

1107
00:48:00,290 --> 00:48:01,190
Speaker 2: a belt on their waist.

1108
00:48:01,370 --> 00:48:02,170
Speaker 3: Wow.

1109
00:48:02,350 --> 00:48:04,610
Speaker 2: And they were so committed to the word that it

1110
00:48:04,690 --> 00:48:08,260
Speaker 2: was with them all the time. Now, what you have

1111
00:48:08,280 --> 00:48:12,400
Speaker 2: in some of these instances is, and this is an

1112
00:48:12,500 --> 00:48:14,440
Speaker 2: unfortunate part of it, is that some Christians sort of

1113
00:48:14,520 --> 00:48:16,260
Speaker 2: use them magically, like an amulet.

1114
00:48:16,520 --> 00:48:18,500
Speaker 3: And we would be uncomfortable with that.

1115
00:48:19,200 --> 00:48:23,830
Speaker 2: But what we do see here is that the books, though,

1116
00:48:23,870 --> 00:48:25,469
Speaker 2: were valued by Christians in such a way that they

1117
00:48:25,489 --> 00:48:26,870
Speaker 2: always wanted to have the word with them at all times.

1118
00:48:27,570 --> 00:48:29,910
Speaker 2: And P77 is one of our earliest examples of this

1119
00:48:29,950 --> 00:48:30,910
Speaker 2: miniature codex phenomenon.

1120
00:48:30,969 --> 00:48:32,690
Speaker 1: Now, I saw that you have that book with Oxford

1121
00:48:32,750 --> 00:48:34,430
Speaker 1: Press on miniature codices.

1122
00:48:34,469 --> 00:48:36,020
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. And I talk about this in there.

1123
00:48:36,080 --> 00:48:39,060
Speaker 1: Have you popularized some of those arguments in articles or

1124
00:48:39,100 --> 00:48:39,560
Speaker 1: in other areas?

1125
00:48:39,580 --> 00:48:40,660
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question.

1126
00:48:40,719 --> 00:48:42,580
Speaker 2: So, you know, I have friends of mine that are like, okay,

1127
00:48:42,600 --> 00:48:44,560
Speaker 2: so you wrote this technical monograph with OUP.

1128
00:48:44,620 --> 00:48:47,180
Speaker 3: No one's going to read this thing. And they're not wrong.

1129
00:48:47,200 --> 00:48:50,650
Speaker 2: You know, you don't write a book with OUP and expect, well,

1130
00:48:50,670 --> 00:48:52,750
Speaker 2: you know, to be on the New York Times bestseller

1131
00:48:52,770 --> 00:48:55,739
Speaker 2: list in terms of copies sold. And it also wouldn't

1132
00:48:55,780 --> 00:48:59,500
Speaker 2: be anyway because it's just too technical. It's too micro.

1133
00:49:00,920 --> 00:49:02,739
Speaker 2: And so, yes, there needs to be a way to

1134
00:49:02,820 --> 00:49:05,670
Speaker 2: take the popular level of this and sort of say,

1135
00:49:05,710 --> 00:49:07,650
Speaker 2: why does it matter to the masses? So, yes, I

1136
00:49:07,670 --> 00:49:10,130
Speaker 2: have a blog series on my website. So some might

1137
00:49:10,170 --> 00:49:12,230
Speaker 2: know I have a website called Canon Fodder, which, of course,

1138
00:49:12,270 --> 00:49:15,650
Speaker 2: is a pun. It's just michaeljkruger.com. But I talk about

1139
00:49:15,690 --> 00:49:17,089
Speaker 2: canon issues on there. And I have a whole series

1140
00:49:17,130 --> 00:49:19,350
Speaker 2: on why the miniature codex matters. What does it tell

1141
00:49:19,370 --> 00:49:22,110
Speaker 2: us about early Christianity? and early scribal culture? And I

1142
00:49:22,160 --> 00:49:23,859
Speaker 2: think it tells us a lot of fascinating things about

1143
00:49:23,950 --> 00:49:29,080
Speaker 2: book technology, textuality, the importance of physical text. I think

1144
00:49:29,120 --> 00:49:32,719
Speaker 2: it also tells us possibly about private reading. We tend

1145
00:49:32,739 --> 00:49:34,339
Speaker 2: to think about everybody in the ancient world not being

1146
00:49:34,360 --> 00:49:36,279
Speaker 2: able to read, and that's true largely, but Christians had

1147
00:49:36,320 --> 00:49:37,960
Speaker 2: a lot of these private books. What were they doing

1148
00:49:38,000 --> 00:49:40,060
Speaker 2: with them? I think that raises interesting questions.

1149
00:49:40,660 --> 00:49:42,420
Speaker 1: And this would take us, we can have a whole

1150
00:49:42,460 --> 00:49:44,299
Speaker 1: nother conversation this way, but I do want to circle

1151
00:49:44,320 --> 00:49:46,239
Speaker 1: back and give me kind of your basic take on

1152
00:49:46,320 --> 00:49:50,190
Speaker 1: the naming of the gospels. You mentioned P66. Yes. We

1153
00:49:50,230 --> 00:49:54,009
Speaker 1: have the title, which may be third century reliably. What

1154
00:49:54,050 --> 00:49:57,069
Speaker 1: would be your case that the gospels we have now, Matthew, Mark, Luke,

1155
00:49:57,090 --> 00:50:00,669
Speaker 1: and John are correctly titled? Yeah.

1156
00:50:00,730 --> 00:50:03,960
Speaker 2: So the titles of these gospels is a fascinating thing

1157
00:50:04,040 --> 00:50:06,440
Speaker 2: to explore. Most people don't realize that the titles aren't

1158
00:50:06,480 --> 00:50:09,660
Speaker 2: really what they think they are. So even in this conversation,

1159
00:50:09,800 --> 00:50:11,920
Speaker 2: when we talk about the Gospels, we use the word of,

1160
00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:15,319
Speaker 2: Gospel of Mark, Gospel of Luke. Nothing wrong with that,

1161
00:50:15,580 --> 00:50:18,259
Speaker 2: and that's totally fine to talk about them that way,

1162
00:50:18,300 --> 00:50:21,730
Speaker 2: and we do in print, and we do in popular conversations.

1163
00:50:22,510 --> 00:50:24,370
Speaker 2: What people don't realize, though, is that that wasn't the

1164
00:50:24,390 --> 00:50:27,750
Speaker 2: technical title of the Gospels. The Gospels title was actually

1165
00:50:27,969 --> 00:50:30,230
Speaker 2: not the Gospel of Luke or the Gospel of Mark.

1166
00:50:30,250 --> 00:50:33,480
Speaker 2: It was the Gospel according to Mark or according to Luke.

1167
00:50:34,200 --> 00:50:36,160
Speaker 2: So whenever these titles were added, and we'll come back

1168
00:50:36,180 --> 00:50:38,009
Speaker 2: to that in a minute, they were added in such

1169
00:50:38,030 --> 00:50:39,950
Speaker 2: a way that they wanted to communicate to the reader

1170
00:50:40,010 --> 00:50:42,790
Speaker 2: that this was one iteration of the gospel, but there

1171
00:50:42,810 --> 00:50:45,950
Speaker 2: were other valid iterations too. So what that means is

1172
00:50:45,969 --> 00:50:48,029
Speaker 2: that whenever the titles were added, it had a sense

1173
00:50:48,090 --> 00:50:50,069
Speaker 2: of the plurality of the gospels, that you're reading the

1174
00:50:50,110 --> 00:50:51,810
Speaker 2: gospel according to Mark, but it implies that there's other

1175
00:50:51,830 --> 00:50:54,210
Speaker 2: gospels out there too. Now, it doesn't mean that there

1176
00:50:54,230 --> 00:50:56,170
Speaker 2: was exactly four. We can't get that from the title,

1177
00:50:56,210 --> 00:50:58,720
Speaker 2: but it does give you the sense that there's one

1178
00:50:58,760 --> 00:51:01,220
Speaker 2: gospel of Jesus Christ, but you're reading the one according

1179
00:51:01,260 --> 00:51:03,399
Speaker 2: to Mark, and implicitly there's one gospel of Jesus Christ

1180
00:51:03,420 --> 00:51:06,080
Speaker 2: according to Luke, and so on. So the titles tell

1181
00:51:06,180 --> 00:51:08,859
Speaker 2: us that built into the title conceptually is that there's

1182
00:51:08,900 --> 00:51:09,600
Speaker 2: more than one gospel.

1183
00:51:09,700 --> 00:51:10,260
Speaker 3: Isn't that interesting?

1184
00:51:11,600 --> 00:51:13,520
Speaker 2: How early were they added? I think there's a great

1185
00:51:13,540 --> 00:51:14,860
Speaker 2: case we made. They were added by the end of

1186
00:51:14,880 --> 00:51:20,839
Speaker 2: the first century. And if the gospels had circulated anonymously,

1187
00:51:21,360 --> 00:51:22,940
Speaker 2: we would expect there to be a variety of titles

1188
00:51:22,980 --> 00:51:25,340
Speaker 2: attached to them. We would expect there to be disagreements

1189
00:51:25,380 --> 00:51:27,779
Speaker 2: over what to call them. Actually, we don't find that anywhere.

1190
00:51:28,260 --> 00:51:30,650
Speaker 2: Every time we find a title... and we can see it,

1191
00:51:30,850 --> 00:51:32,310
Speaker 2: it's always the same title.

1192
00:51:32,350 --> 00:51:34,250
Speaker 3: Isn't that interesting? Mark's never called anything else but Mark.

1193
00:51:34,350 --> 00:51:35,489
Speaker 3: Luke's never called anything else but Luke.

1194
00:51:35,950 --> 00:51:39,060
Speaker 2: That suggests a deep heritage in those titles, and I

1195
00:51:39,080 --> 00:51:40,180
Speaker 2: think they reliably go back to.

1196
00:51:40,180 --> 00:51:40,560
Speaker 3: Who wrote them.

1197
00:51:41,080 --> 00:51:42,160
Speaker 1: So if I were to sum it up, it would

1198
00:51:42,180 --> 00:51:45,920
Speaker 1: be that we have early physical manuscripts with the titles.

1199
00:51:46,100 --> 00:51:46,400
Speaker 3: Correct.

1200
00:51:46,520 --> 00:51:49,700
Speaker 1: We have consistency with the titles. Yes. But then we

1201
00:51:49,750 --> 00:51:52,649
Speaker 1: could go to the church fathers citing them. Do they

1202
00:51:52,950 --> 00:51:54,930
Speaker 1: add in some ways to the titles, or do they

1203
00:51:54,969 --> 00:51:57,729
Speaker 1: just often cite the Scripture without saying, according to Mark,

1204
00:51:57,790 --> 00:51:58,570
Speaker 1: according to Matthew.

1205
00:51:59,300 --> 00:52:03,080
Speaker 2: No, they do cite these Gospels by name sometimes, and

1206
00:52:03,120 --> 00:52:06,380
Speaker 2: they talk about them by name. And this is very early.

1207
00:52:06,580 --> 00:52:08,279
Speaker 2: I'll give you an example of this. So we have

1208
00:52:08,320 --> 00:52:10,040
Speaker 2: a church father by the name of Papias. He was

1209
00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:13,969
Speaker 2: a bishop of Heriopolis and quite a significant player in

1210
00:52:13,989 --> 00:52:14,530
Speaker 2: the early church.

1211
00:52:14,550 --> 00:52:16,350
Speaker 3: He's friends with Polycarp. He knew a lot of people.

1212
00:52:16,989 --> 00:52:21,630
Speaker 2: We actually have Papias' writings preserved for us in various ways.

1213
00:52:22,230 --> 00:52:25,210
Speaker 2: And when Papias talks about the Gospels, he actually cites

1214
00:52:25,250 --> 00:52:26,010
Speaker 2: an earlier source.

1215
00:52:26,090 --> 00:52:26,690
Speaker 3: This is interesting.

1216
00:52:27,050 --> 00:52:30,319
Speaker 2: Papias cites a source called the Elder. who's this mysterious

1217
00:52:30,380 --> 00:52:32,520
Speaker 2: elder guy? Okay, we could come back to that. But

1218
00:52:32,620 --> 00:52:34,340
Speaker 2: what's interesting about it is almost all scholars agree that

1219
00:52:34,360 --> 00:52:36,340
Speaker 2: whoever this elder is, he's probably from the first century.

1220
00:52:36,360 --> 00:52:38,100
Speaker 3: He's probably like around 90 AD.

1221
00:52:38,600 --> 00:52:41,620
Speaker 2: So this testimony that Papias preserves is from like 90 AD,

1222
00:52:41,739 --> 00:52:44,629
Speaker 2: and two gospels are mentioned by name, Matthew and Mark.

1223
00:52:45,550 --> 00:52:46,690
Speaker 3: So if someone thinks that.

1224
00:52:46,610 --> 00:52:48,830
Speaker 2: The names are attached later to these gospels, we have

1225
00:52:48,870 --> 00:52:50,989
Speaker 2: a first century evidence that they were there and that

1226
00:52:51,010 --> 00:52:52,450
Speaker 2: people knew who they were associated with.

1227
00:52:52,489 --> 00:52:53,090
Speaker 3: That's remarkable.

1228
00:52:53,360 --> 00:52:55,009
Speaker 1: I love that. I can't tell you how tempted I

1229
00:52:55,050 --> 00:52:57,530
Speaker 1: am to jump into the elder in Papias.

1230
00:52:57,730 --> 00:52:58,150
Speaker 3: I know.

1231
00:52:58,330 --> 00:53:01,710
Speaker 1: Because I did my work on the death of the apostles,

1232
00:53:01,890 --> 00:53:05,779
Speaker 1: and his testimony is vital to that. But we'll leave

1233
00:53:05,800 --> 00:53:06,520
Speaker 1: that for another time.

1234
00:53:06,540 --> 00:53:08,440
Speaker 3: That takes a lot of willpower for you to resist that.

1235
00:53:08,520 --> 00:53:12,380
Speaker 1: I get it. I'll bite the bullet on that one.

1236
00:53:12,400 --> 00:53:14,410
Speaker 1: Keep going. So I just have a couple last questions

1237
00:53:14,450 --> 00:53:17,129
Speaker 1: for you. So you're confident that the text has been

1238
00:53:17,190 --> 00:53:22,029
Speaker 1: copied faithfully. You're confident that the four gospels minimally were

1239
00:53:22,130 --> 00:53:26,279
Speaker 1: meant to go together. They're titled correctly. Give me an

1240
00:53:26,300 --> 00:53:29,580
Speaker 1: example of a textual challenge. You think this still remains

1241
00:53:29,640 --> 00:53:31,700
Speaker 1: that you'd say, you know what, here's something we're working

1242
00:53:31,800 --> 00:53:34,840
Speaker 1: on and I'm not quite satisfied yet. If there is

1243
00:53:34,880 --> 00:53:37,120
Speaker 1: such a thing and how would that make you think

1244
00:53:37,200 --> 00:53:39,890
Speaker 1: about your trustworthiness of the text?

1245
00:53:41,580 --> 00:53:45,180
Speaker 2: Well, there's so many to choose from here. Textual criticism

1246
00:53:45,320 --> 00:53:48,420
Speaker 2: is a messy affair, right? And there's some texts that

1247
00:53:48,460 --> 00:53:50,980
Speaker 2: are more well-preserved than others. There's some texts that have

1248
00:53:51,020 --> 00:53:54,200
Speaker 2: a number of variations that we wish were more easily

1249
00:53:54,280 --> 00:53:55,100
Speaker 2: resolved than others.

1250
00:53:56,000 --> 00:53:57,510
Speaker 3: And these have been well-studied.

1251
00:53:58,160 --> 00:54:00,649
Speaker 2: One of the texts that's had a lot of different

1252
00:54:00,690 --> 00:54:03,370
Speaker 2: variations is the text of the Lord's Prayer, which has

1253
00:54:03,410 --> 00:54:05,609
Speaker 2: a bunch of different versions with it, and it gets

1254
00:54:05,630 --> 00:54:08,290
Speaker 2: a little bit messy at points. Sometimes you have to

1255
00:54:08,310 --> 00:54:10,680
Speaker 2: just work your way back as best you can. We

1256
00:54:10,719 --> 00:54:12,400
Speaker 2: also have a number of places in the New Testament

1257
00:54:12,420 --> 00:54:15,149
Speaker 2: of what we call conjectural emendations, where it looks like

1258
00:54:15,750 --> 00:54:18,029
Speaker 2: the text, even in its original form, sometimes looks like,

1259
00:54:18,050 --> 00:54:19,370
Speaker 2: I don't know that that makes sense.

1260
00:54:19,969 --> 00:54:23,190
Speaker 3: Are we missing something here? Or is there something left out?

1261
00:54:24,050 --> 00:54:26,060
Speaker 2: A very famous example of this is in 2 Peter 3,

1262
00:54:26,050 --> 00:54:29,000
Speaker 2: where there's thoughts that maybe we need a conjectural emendation there.

1263
00:54:29,520 --> 00:54:32,000
Speaker 2: So there's a few of these sort of loose ends,

1264
00:54:32,020 --> 00:54:34,700
Speaker 2: you could say, kind of hovering around. But what I

1265
00:54:34,739 --> 00:54:37,700
Speaker 2: want to tell the listener is, These are just so

1266
00:54:37,739 --> 00:54:40,140
Speaker 2: much the minimal part of the story, right?

1267
00:54:40,160 --> 00:54:41,339
Speaker 3: They're not the main part of the story.

1268
00:54:41,360 --> 00:54:43,780
Speaker 2: The main part of the story is that, generally speaking

1269
00:54:43,840 --> 00:54:46,149
Speaker 2: and collectively as a whole, we have such good records.

1270
00:54:46,180 --> 00:54:48,710
Speaker 3: Of these texts. We can think about it for a moment.

1271
00:54:48,730 --> 00:54:51,270
Speaker 2: We have a text from the first century that we

1272
00:54:51,310 --> 00:54:54,630
Speaker 2: can get a glimpse at in the second century. You

1273
00:54:54,650 --> 00:54:56,670
Speaker 2: just got to let that sink in as a listener

1274
00:54:56,710 --> 00:54:58,489
Speaker 2: for a moment. So here we are in 2026, and

1275
00:54:58,530 --> 00:55:00,690
Speaker 2: we're trying to ask what the text of a first

1276
00:55:00,710 --> 00:55:03,150
Speaker 2: century document is and actually can get a look at

1277
00:55:03,190 --> 00:55:05,170
Speaker 2: that text as early as the second century.

1278
00:55:05,210 --> 00:55:05,850
Speaker 3: That's stunning.

1279
00:55:06,660 --> 00:55:08,960
Speaker 2: Hardly, there's not that many documents in the ancient world

1280
00:55:08,980 --> 00:55:11,160
Speaker 2: that let you do that. Most of the time, the

1281
00:55:11,180 --> 00:55:13,830
Speaker 2: gap between when a document was published in our earliest copies,

1282
00:55:13,890 --> 00:55:16,050
Speaker 2: not that far from 500 to even a thousand years.

1283
00:55:16,130 --> 00:55:17,950
Speaker 2: And we can look at a good chunk of the

1284
00:55:17,969 --> 00:55:19,989
Speaker 2: New Testament, some of it in the second and a

1285
00:55:20,110 --> 00:55:20,930
Speaker 2: good chunk in the third.

1286
00:55:21,250 --> 00:55:23,250
Speaker 3: That's remarkably early. And that gives us a lot of confidence.

1287
00:55:23,650 --> 00:55:24,049
Speaker 3: That's awesome.

1288
00:55:24,070 --> 00:55:26,049
Speaker 1: I appreciate the way you frame that, that we don't,

1289
00:55:26,570 --> 00:55:28,170
Speaker 1: it seems like we can err on the side of

1290
00:55:28,190 --> 00:55:31,910
Speaker 1: saying we have too much confidence, Bible floated from heaven.

1291
00:55:31,930 --> 00:55:32,569
Speaker 3: Yeah, not at all.

1292
00:55:32,880 --> 00:55:36,339
Speaker 1: And these small differences really rock somebody. On the other hand,

1293
00:55:36,400 --> 00:55:38,680
Speaker 1: people can take the small differences and tell a whole

1294
00:55:38,780 --> 00:55:42,080
Speaker 1: story about that that misses. No, this book has been

1295
00:55:42,180 --> 00:55:46,860
Speaker 1: preserved very carefully and early. How would you compare it

1296
00:55:46,940 --> 00:55:49,180
Speaker 1: as best you can to other ancient works that are

1297
00:55:49,260 --> 00:55:52,500
Speaker 1: contemporary of that time? Now, you gave the gap of, say,

1298
00:55:52,500 --> 00:55:55,040
Speaker 1: 400 or 500 years, but are there any other ways

1299
00:55:55,100 --> 00:55:58,520
Speaker 1: you'd just compare the Gospels and the New Testament with

1300
00:55:58,640 --> 00:56:00,379
Speaker 1: other texts roughly of that time?

1301
00:56:00,860 --> 00:56:02,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the most important

1302
00:56:02,780 --> 00:56:04,580
Speaker 2: things is what's the earliest glimpse we get? I just

1303
00:56:04,620 --> 00:56:06,200
Speaker 2: talked about that. That's one of the things that really

1304
00:56:06,260 --> 00:56:09,529
Speaker 2: sets the New Testament apart. A very common part of

1305
00:56:09,570 --> 00:56:12,730
Speaker 2: the conversation is number of manuscripts, right? That's commonly raised.

1306
00:56:13,030 --> 00:56:15,609
Speaker 2: I'd be very careful there because, yes, we do have

1307
00:56:15,650 --> 00:56:17,670
Speaker 2: a lot more manuscripts of the New Testament and other documents.

1308
00:56:17,730 --> 00:56:19,660
Speaker 2: Most of them, though, are from the Middle Ages, right?

1309
00:56:19,739 --> 00:56:21,680
Speaker 2: So when we go back into the early centuries, we

1310
00:56:21,700 --> 00:56:24,940
Speaker 2: don't have nearly as many. Although, even as early as

1311
00:56:24,980 --> 00:56:26,820
Speaker 2: the second and third century, we have well over 60

1312
00:56:26,820 --> 00:56:29,320
Speaker 2: manuscripts from the second and third century. So that alone

1313
00:56:29,380 --> 00:56:32,069
Speaker 2: is Pretty remarkable. And you compare that to any documents

1314
00:56:32,110 --> 00:56:34,810
Speaker 2: of antiquity. The other thing I would say is that

1315
00:56:34,870 --> 00:56:36,390
Speaker 2: when we look at a lot of ancient texts, we

1316
00:56:36,430 --> 00:56:39,990
Speaker 2: do see significant scribal differences between them when we compare copies.

1317
00:56:41,469 --> 00:56:43,109
Speaker 2: And when we look at the New Testament, yes, there

1318
00:56:43,130 --> 00:56:45,790
Speaker 2: are scribal differences. We do see that. And we talked

1319
00:56:45,810 --> 00:56:48,960
Speaker 2: about this earlier. It's inevitability. We do see scribal variation.

1320
00:56:48,540 --> 00:56:49,160
Speaker 3: From time to time.

1321
00:56:50,040 --> 00:56:52,380
Speaker 2: But generally speaking, the New Testament was copied with a

1322
00:56:52,400 --> 00:56:53,520
Speaker 2: remarkable amount of fidelity.

1323
00:56:53,580 --> 00:56:56,770
Speaker 3: You could tell they really cared. about getting it right.

1324
00:56:56,790 --> 00:56:59,540
Speaker 2: They had correctors. They had people going back over it.

1325
00:56:59,570 --> 00:57:01,860
Speaker 2: You had lots of steps to make sure that the

1326
00:57:01,890 --> 00:57:05,839
Speaker 2: text was well-preserved. I think, again, that bodes well for

1327
00:57:06,140 --> 00:57:09,080
Speaker 2: having a trust in the text. So, no, it wasn't

1328
00:57:09,120 --> 00:57:11,339
Speaker 2: dropped from heaven on golden tablets, but at the same time,

1329
00:57:11,360 --> 00:57:13,610
Speaker 2: it wasn't in complete disarray either. And I think what

1330
00:57:13,650 --> 00:57:17,010
Speaker 2: we have is the essence of those stories we can

1331
00:57:17,070 --> 00:57:17,770
Speaker 2: confidently hold to.

1332
00:57:18,300 --> 00:57:20,240
Speaker 1: Even if we go back to the King James, as

1333
00:57:20,280 --> 00:57:23,240
Speaker 1: much as we've learned and improved since then, still a

1334
00:57:23,440 --> 00:57:26,540
Speaker 1: good copy of the New Testament to know God.

1335
00:57:26,660 --> 00:57:28,980
Speaker 2: Yeah, even if you went with the Byzantine text type,

1336
00:57:29,080 --> 00:57:32,100
Speaker 2: or you mentioned the Texas Receptus, that's the line behind

1337
00:57:32,120 --> 00:57:33,260
Speaker 2: the King James. Even if we just said, well, that's

1338
00:57:33,300 --> 00:57:35,740
Speaker 2: all we have, we still have the story, and we

1339
00:57:35,780 --> 00:57:39,610
Speaker 2: have it quite reliably. And so we're not, therefore, suggesting

1340
00:57:39,650 --> 00:57:42,490
Speaker 2: these textual differences don't matter. We care about them because

1341
00:57:42,510 --> 00:57:44,790
Speaker 2: we care about the words. But you also have to

1342
00:57:44,970 --> 00:57:47,750
Speaker 2: ask the question, has the New Testament been sufficiently preserved

1343
00:57:48,250 --> 00:57:51,210
Speaker 2: So the message is reliably intact, and the answer to

1344
00:57:51,250 --> 00:57:52,920
Speaker 2: that is yes in spades.

1345
00:57:53,440 --> 00:57:53,730
Speaker 3: Love it.

1346
00:57:53,780 --> 00:57:56,180
Speaker 1: Now let's bring this full circle. We started with your

1347
00:57:56,260 --> 00:58:01,480
Speaker 1: interest in textual criticism. kind of being rocked in religion

1348
00:58:01,500 --> 00:58:04,460
Speaker 1: class or Bible class back in college. Now that you've

1349
00:58:04,480 --> 00:58:07,050
Speaker 1: studied this X number of years, you don't have to

1350
00:58:07,070 --> 00:58:08,790
Speaker 1: fill in the blank on that one, but presumably a

1351
00:58:08,830 --> 00:58:13,270
Speaker 1: few decades, how does this shape you personally? And before

1352
00:58:13,310 --> 00:58:15,050
Speaker 1: you answer this, you gave a talk yesterday to the

1353
00:58:15,090 --> 00:58:18,860
Speaker 1: Biola Tawa faculty that you said there's exterior evidence we

1354
00:58:18,880 --> 00:58:20,440
Speaker 1: can look to to show the Bible is the Word

1355
00:58:20,460 --> 00:58:25,450
Speaker 1: of God. but also just this self-authenticating nature of the Scriptures,

1356
00:58:25,550 --> 00:58:29,590
Speaker 1: its beauty, its excellency, its power. So there is that

1357
00:58:29,670 --> 00:58:32,710
Speaker 1: piece that you have apart from the evidence you've looked at.

1358
00:58:32,730 --> 00:58:33,229
Speaker 3: Of course.

1359
00:58:33,390 --> 00:58:36,030
Speaker 1: But I'd be curious how this study in textual transmission

1360
00:58:36,090 --> 00:58:38,510
Speaker 1: has just affected you personally and your confidence in the

1361
00:58:38,530 --> 00:58:38,930
Speaker 1: Word of God.

1362
00:58:39,980 --> 00:58:44,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's two things that happen in studies, and

1363
00:58:44,560 --> 00:58:46,980
Speaker 2: both are really important to say, and I've experienced both these.

1364
00:58:47,640 --> 00:58:48,939
Speaker 2: One thing that happens when you do a deep study

1365
00:58:48,960 --> 00:58:51,890
Speaker 2: of something, you realize it's often a lot more complicated

1366
00:58:51,910 --> 00:58:52,570
Speaker 2: than you thought it was.

1367
00:58:52,850 --> 00:58:56,770
Speaker 3: Totally true. And that's humbling.

1368
00:58:57,550 --> 00:59:00,090
Speaker 2: And it's also a time to say we want to

1369
00:59:00,130 --> 00:59:04,850
Speaker 2: avoid pat answers, overly simplified answers, answers that don't acknowledge

1370
00:59:04,870 --> 00:59:07,689
Speaker 2: the complexity of things. So on one level, the deeper

1371
00:59:07,730 --> 00:59:10,020
Speaker 2: I dive, I realize, you know, there's hard things. there's

1372
00:59:10,060 --> 00:59:12,400
Speaker 2: complex things, there's things that aren't always easy. And there's

1373
00:59:12,420 --> 00:59:16,400
Speaker 2: nothing unchristian about acknowledging that. The idea of like, you know,

1374
00:59:16,560 --> 00:59:19,480
Speaker 2: pretending that everything's just easy peasy all the time is

1375
00:59:19,560 --> 00:59:21,860
Speaker 2: not helpful. Sometimes you just have to live in the

1376
00:59:21,900 --> 00:59:23,400
Speaker 2: real world and say those are those are things that

1377
00:59:23,460 --> 00:59:25,180
Speaker 2: are hard. So that that happens when you go deeply.

1378
00:59:25,780 --> 00:59:27,380
Speaker 2: But there's a second thing that happens too. And this

1379
00:59:27,460 --> 00:59:30,510
Speaker 2: is really important. The deeper I go, the more encouraged

1380
00:59:30,590 --> 00:59:33,530
Speaker 2: I am. Yes, things are more complicated than you think,

1381
00:59:33,890 --> 00:59:35,890
Speaker 2: but I continue to see all kinds of things as

1382
00:59:35,950 --> 00:59:38,320
Speaker 2: I dive deep that just continue to encourage me, and

1383
00:59:38,760 --> 00:59:39,780
Speaker 2: I find just remarkable.

1384
00:59:40,720 --> 00:59:42,080
Speaker 3: We've talked about a couple of those today.

1385
00:59:43,140 --> 00:59:45,420
Speaker 2: One of the things that I find just as a

1386
00:59:45,460 --> 00:59:48,520
Speaker 2: studying piece of data that remains particularly encouraging to me

1387
00:59:48,560 --> 00:59:50,880
Speaker 2: is the use of the Nomen of Sacra. The reason

1388
00:59:50,920 --> 00:59:52,600
Speaker 2: I like the Nomen of Sacra as an encouraging data

1389
00:59:52,640 --> 00:59:55,430
Speaker 2: point is because it's both technical and theological.

1390
00:59:56,310 --> 00:59:57,470
Speaker 3: It's a form of worship.

1391
00:59:58,290 --> 01:00:00,950
Speaker 2: You realize that to set apart a divine name as

1392
01:00:01,030 --> 01:00:03,410
Speaker 2: sacred is a form of devotion. So you have this

1393
01:00:03,430 --> 01:00:06,970
Speaker 2: sort of devotional aspect in the midst of scribal activity,

1394
01:00:07,030 --> 01:00:08,380
Speaker 2: which people don't think of it that way.

1395
01:00:08,390 --> 01:00:12,710
Speaker 3: They think scribal activity is technical. It's mechanical. You're just

1396
01:00:12,730 --> 01:00:12,950
Speaker 3: in there.

1397
01:00:13,610 --> 01:00:15,970
Speaker 2: No, these guys were, in a sense, doing worship this way.

1398
01:00:16,570 --> 01:00:18,810
Speaker 2: So I find it interesting and encouraging on that point,

1399
01:00:18,830 --> 01:00:21,470
Speaker 2: but also the reliability factor. It shows the scribal culture

1400
01:00:21,510 --> 01:00:26,020
Speaker 2: was not random, haphazard amateurs. it was sophisticated in a

1401
01:00:26,060 --> 01:00:27,880
Speaker 2: way that I think gives us extra levels of confidence

1402
01:00:27,900 --> 01:00:28,420
Speaker 2: about the text.

1403
01:00:28,760 --> 01:00:31,060
Speaker 1: It's very similar to how I answer the question when

1404
01:00:31,100 --> 01:00:35,510
Speaker 1: people ask me how did studying the apostles shape my confidence?

1405
01:00:35,570 --> 01:00:38,010
Speaker 1: And one, I'm like, I have more questions than when

1406
01:00:38,070 --> 01:00:38,550
Speaker 1: I started.

1407
01:00:38,650 --> 01:00:39,370
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.

1408
01:00:39,390 --> 01:00:42,350
Speaker 1: There's nuances about dating this and this scholar and debates

1409
01:00:42,410 --> 01:00:44,950
Speaker 1: I wasn't even aware of. But as a whole, I

1410
01:00:44,970 --> 01:00:47,830
Speaker 1: have more confidence in the resurrection, more confidence in the

1411
01:00:47,910 --> 01:00:50,650
Speaker 1: testimony of the apostles. And it's like we can walk

1412
01:00:50,770 --> 01:00:54,170
Speaker 1: and chew gum at the same time. I'm grateful for

1413
01:00:54,210 --> 01:00:55,850
Speaker 1: your work. I mean, I was shaped a lot by

1414
01:00:55,870 --> 01:00:59,950
Speaker 1: textual transmission, just the work my dad did going back to, gosh,

1415
01:01:00,350 --> 01:01:03,650
Speaker 1: maybe researching manuscripts in the 50s at that time as

1416
01:01:03,750 --> 01:01:08,510
Speaker 1: a layperson before he'd even really studied theology and grew

1417
01:01:08,630 --> 01:01:12,250
Speaker 1: up hearing on a more popular level the importance of manuscripts.

1418
01:01:12,770 --> 01:01:15,230
Speaker 1: But have somebody do a deep dive and keep doing

1419
01:01:15,270 --> 01:01:18,110
Speaker 1: it is just invaluable. So I hope you'll keep it up.

1420
01:01:18,490 --> 01:01:20,310
Speaker 1: If you come back, I will have a P66.

1421
01:01:20,590 --> 01:01:23,270
Speaker 3: That's right. I need a sister to this one right here.

1422
01:01:23,330 --> 01:01:26,190
Speaker 1: Or a P75, whichever one you want. But hold that

1423
01:01:26,290 --> 01:01:28,200
Speaker 1: up for folks. If people want, they just hold that

1424
01:01:28,240 --> 01:01:28,820
Speaker 1: up in their cameras.

1425
01:01:28,880 --> 01:01:30,180
Speaker 3: If people want. It's beautiful.

1426
01:01:30,320 --> 01:01:34,800
Speaker 1: I'm so thrilled. I only have two sponsors this channel.

1427
01:01:34,840 --> 01:01:37,880
Speaker 1: One is Logos because I use Bible software every single day.

1428
01:01:37,900 --> 01:01:40,700
Speaker 1: I use what Logos does. And second, started working with

1429
01:01:41,200 --> 01:01:43,320
Speaker 1: Man's Trip Shop. And people can find the link below.

1430
01:01:43,380 --> 01:01:45,400
Speaker 1: But just to me, just to hold it in my

1431
01:01:45,440 --> 01:01:48,440
Speaker 1: hand and show people. is super cool. But folks, make

1432
01:01:48,480 --> 01:01:51,760
Speaker 1: sure you hit subscribe. We've got some other conversations coming

1433
01:01:51,800 --> 01:01:55,000
Speaker 1: up on manuscripts and other stuff coming up on apologetics

1434
01:01:55,020 --> 01:01:56,580
Speaker 1: you won't want to miss. If you want us to

1435
01:01:56,620 --> 01:01:58,700
Speaker 1: have Mike back, tell us. We could do a deep

1436
01:01:58,740 --> 01:02:01,550
Speaker 1: dive into canon or some other topic up your lane.

1437
01:02:01,990 --> 01:02:04,530
Speaker 1: We would do that in a heartbeat. Thanks for the conversation.

1438
01:02:04,550 --> 01:02:05,410
Speaker 3: Thank you.