Bible Study: Can We Trust The Reliability of the Bible?

So, clearly, if you're a baptized member of the church, you believe the Bible is reliable. You know, so that's not in question. The reason for the Bible study tonight is to help us to give the answer to those who might be skeptical with those doubts.

The White Horse Inn, a watchdog group for biblical criticism, polled college students about God and religion, morality, things like that. This was 10 years ago. It's probably worse now. When they asked about the Bible, they received very similar answers on college campuses. This is just one quote that I heard from one of the college students. Personally, I think most of it is fiction. I hesitate to trust any book that has been revised that much. The English copy that we have today, compared to the original, is probably not all that similar. And that is pretty much the view, mainstream view of society today.

So is the Bible the reliable source of the Word of God? That's what we're going to show tonight. Satan doesn't need to disprove the Bible in order to be successful. The only thing Satan needs to do is create doubt. Because doubt is the enemy of faith. So he doesn't try to disprove it. He tries to create doubt. And we're going to overcome one of those doubt-creating criticisms tonight.

If you can't disprove something, and obviously, in reality, Satan cannot disprove the Bible. Because the Bible is the Word of God. What will his tactic be? Doubt. Pretty simple.

So how can you know the Bible is reliable? Well, there's a lot of different ways. There's your personal interaction with God. There's your asking God for an answer. And he blesses you with a yes answer. There's even a more effective way to know. That is to ask God for an answer. And he gives you an overwhelmingly no answer. And you know you have this personal interaction with God. But how can you know that the Bible is reliable? One of the things that Satan does to make the Bible seem like a really old book that just some old guys a long time ago wrote. But it's been passed down through so many generations. It cannot possibly even be the same book that was originally written. And if it's not the same book that was originally written, it's definitely not the work of God. But the work of men and societies and political pressures. You know, this argument that you heard from the college students has some teeth to it. Because back in the day they didn't have printing presses and copy machines and personal computers and iPhones. Everything was handwritten or orally passed down. Which gets a lot of criticism, but is actually very effective. We're not going to cover the oral tonight. We're going to cover written text tonight. But oral is actually a very valid way to pass down the Bible. And I'll explain why when we explain how the written is a very valid way to pass it down. But it was all handwritten. Okay? Here's our key scripture for tonight. It is Bible study. We should use the Bible, I suppose. Deuteronomy 19 and verse 15. This is a very important passage for proving the reliability of the Bible. One witness shall not rise against a man concerning any iniquity or any f***ing he commits. And here's the important part. By the mouth of two or three witnesses, a matter shall be established. You have to establish a witness or a matter with more than one witness. So today we're going to see a few of the things that make the Bible the most unique book on the planet. And truly the only word of God. Since this is a short Bible study, we're going to focus just on the New Testament. The Old Testament has its own version of criticism that can be more easily proved than the New Testament. Believe it or not, the New Testament is more of a challenge than the Old Testament, because the Jews did such a fantastic job of preserving it. Okay? So we're going to focus on where the critics love to hit Christianity the hardest, the New Testament. Is the text of the Bible the same thing that the original prophets of old and the original apostles of the New Testament wrote? Do we have their original words, or has it been changed? Because if it's been changed, then it's not the word of God, it's the word of man.

There was a debate more than a decade ago from two men, and I got a DVD back when they used to have these things called DVDs. They were these little discs—no, I'm just kidding. It's on YouTube now, and you can look it up. It's called, Can We Trust the Text of the New Testament? It's between Dr. Dan Wallace, who is a very renowned expert in Koine Greek. He's a professor of theology in Texas, and probably America's foremost expert on Koine Greek. It is said that people from Greece call Dan Wallace to interpret ancient Greek manuscripts. He's gone around the world and photographed in high definition as many original manuscripts as he can get his hands on, and he makes those photographs available to the public for free.

He has one of the largest libraries of New Testament manuscripts of anybody. He's managing editors of the NET Bible, the New English Translation, or the NET Bible, as we call it. This debate was between him and Dr. Bart D. Ermin. Who is Dr. Ermin?

He is probably America's foremost teacher of theology. He writes the textbooks of most American seminaries today. This man trains America's ministry with his textbooks. He's the prodigy of Bruce Metzger, the former textual critic who was not a believer in God.

Bruce Metzger, when he took Bart Ermin under his wings, corrupted Bart Ermin, and now Bart Ermin does not believe in God either. So, we're not going to call him the bad guy, but we are going to discredit his argument tonight.

Dr. Ermin, in this debate—and I don't have rights to the debate, or I would just play it for you— his argument is so effective. His argument is so convincing that I actually would love for you to hear the argument from him. Because even though you're a believer, you would listen to that and go, that's actually a pretty good argument. But it's not. It's just a clever argument. Pretty much, he picks on the book of Mark in this debate, and he says, we don't know who Mark was. We don't even know if there was a mark. How did we get the Gospel of Mark? He says. Everything was written by hand, and most people were illiterate, he says. It was copied by hand, and when the copies were made, mistakes were made. So, when someone copied the copy, they duplicated the mistake, and they made mistakes of their own. We don't have the original copy of Mark. We don't even have a copy of the copy of the original copy of Mark. We don't even have a copy of the copy of the copy of the copy of the copy of the original copy of Mark, which is called the autograph. The first copy we have of the book of Mark comes from maybe the 9th century. It's called P45 or Papyrus 45, and that's the first copy we have of Mark, centuries after the book of Mark was written.

And there is no way to know, according to Dr. Erman, what the original manuscript of Mark actually said. After hundreds of years of copy and copy and mistake and copy, and you're writing it by hand, by candlelight at night, and you're getting tired, and you miss an entire page, and it's just gone.

Or you don't like something that was written, so you rewrite it, and somebody else copies that. How can you possibly know? That's a pretty good argument, if it were true.

According to Dr. Erman, we have no way to know if the Bible that is in your lap even resembles closely anything that the original apostles wrote. And by the way, Dr. Erman is a very intelligent man. He knows that Jesus existed. It can be proven historically.

He knows that the apostles existed. So he doesn't argue things from a ridiculous point of view. He's a very intelligent man, as you can tell. Here is Papyrus 45, P. Chester Beatty, number one. This is a manuscript, and you notice it's only segments of it. It's torn up. This is the oldest version of the New Testament, not, I mean, complete version of the New Testament. That contains the Book of Mark. This is it, P. 45. You can see words are missing, entire pages are missing. How can we possibly know?

And you can see, just from what I just told you, how Dr. Erman or anybody can put doubt in the minds of people to discredit the Bible. And it's doubt. That's all you need is doubt. What I want to do today is help us to not have any doubt in our own minds, but to be able to show people there's no cause for doubt.

Zero. None. We do have the perfect Word of God.

Dr. Erman's claim is like playing the telephone game. How many of you, when you were kids, played the telephone game? Okay. Let's play the telephone game right now, and we're going to make Dr. Erman's point for him.

How do I turn the mic off so that I don't make it pull it down?

For those of you online, I'm going to pass a message through the audience. It's going to take a moment, but everybody online will hear the ridiculous thing that comes out the other side. So just stick with me.

If this were the original manuscript, what do you think the chances are of that actually making through to that gentleman at the end?

I'm going to pass through the audience right now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Mr. Light, for time's sake, I think I'm going to stop it with you. I'm fairly convinced it's corrupted enough.

Would you come up here?

Don't read this. Please say what. Give us the verse and mark that I...

I had the funny money bunny in the canyon is what I heard.

Believe it or not, I'm actually impressed.

The funny money bunny in the can isn't that far off. I mean, it totally corrupted the Scripture, but it was actually the funny bunny hid the color candy in the colored can. So you guys didn't lose that much, but you lost quite a bit. But for time's sake, I cut it off. Had I got it back there, there would have been elephants and giraffes. It's literally happened before.

Okay, let's move on.

So you can see that was an effective argument that Dr. Erman makes. Right? How can we know one guy copies it and makes a mistake, the next guy copies it and makes another mistake? All these mistakes get copied, and all of a sudden we have more mistakes than we have.

You know, words in the Bible.

You can see how people are swayed by this argument.

The problem with Dr. Erman's argument is it's only half-true.

It's filled with half-truths. That's one of Satan's biggest tactics. In the Garden of Eden, Satan told a half-truth. Right? If you eat of this, you will not surely die, which was a lie. And your eyes will be open that you'll be like God, which was actually true. God said that in Genesis, you know, I forgot to look up which verse it was, but...

Their eyes were opened like God. So it was true. So Satan mixed the truth with a lie. And that was an incredibly effective lie. And that's what Dr. Erman is doing. He's giving you a half-truth, and that's what's creating doubt. He's not trying to disprove anything. He's not trying to prove anything. He's just creating doubt. Remember our key scripture, Deuteronomy 19, verse 15, One witness shall not rise against another concerning the iniquity or sin that he commits, but by the mouth of two or three witnesses, a matter shall be established. There was not a single line of transmission like the telephone game with the Bible, and that's what's untrue about Dr. Erman's argument.

He makes it seem like there was one copy of Mark, and when it was copied, it wasn't anything like the original, and then that one was thrown away, and then that one single copy of Mark, it passed down to somebody else and somebody else, and eventually the copy of the copy of the copy of the copy of the copy isn't anything like the original autograph, the original manuscript. But that's not the truth.

The Bible was passed down by many more than three witnesses, as we're going to see tonight. The matter is very well established. There's another supporting scripture, Proverbs 11 and verse 14, for where there is no counsel, the people fall. But in the multitude of counselors, there is safety.

So what we need are a lot of witnesses to say the Bible is accurate. Are there a lot of witnesses? Yes, there are. More than any other book on planet Earth. Way more. According to Dan Wallace and Bart Ehrman, both— now this might seem staggering to you, but stay with me— there are 300 to 400,000 textual variances— mistakes or misspelled words—in New Testament manuscripts. Three to 400,000. The problem is, there are only about 140,000 words in the New Testament. There are more variances between the manuscripts than there are words. Dr. Ehrman loves this fact. Dr. Wallace is very comfortable with this fact. Because there are over 20,000 manuscripts, ancient copies, of the New Testament. 20,000. That's more than two witnesses. That's more than three witnesses. That's a lot of witnesses. Let's look at some facts. Approximately 15% of the Greek New Testament manuscripts are from the 8th century or earlier. Seems like a low number. Only 15% are actually ancient manuscripts. Which means 85% are newer manuscripts, closer to our age. Only 15% of the surviving manuscripts are actually from the time close to when the apostles wrote them. Seems like a low number, doesn't it? It's not a low number. That means there are around 600 manuscripts from the 9th century or earlier. Dan Wallis says it's close to the 2nd century. What does that mean, 2nd century? Jesus and the apostles were in the 1st century. They died out approximately in the 90s AD, close to the turn of the 2nd century. Which means we have copies of the New Testament within 10 or 15 years of when the apostles died. That's pretty amazing, given the fact that these things were stored in dirt and clay jars. Not in the desert like in Egypt, where some were preserved, but in humid areas like Syria and Turkey, where there's a lot of rain and moisture that make things decay.

It's amazing that we even have manuscripts from the 2nd century, but we do.

That's a very comforting number. 600 witnesses of ancient manuscripts. 600, not 2 or 3.

Here's another very encouraging fact. Do you remember that statistic? 300 to 400,000 mistakes in New Testament manuscripts between them, the variances, and there's only 140,000 words?

Less than 1%, in fact, one quarter of 1%.

Of New Testament variances manuscripts, actually are meaningful or viable. Which means those manuscripts are actually 99.9% the same. Let me explain.

Most of those errors between the manuscripts that the critics like to create doubt with are spelling errors.

According to Dan Wallace, over 70% of the errors are spelling differences. Most of the common errors is one called the moveable you, which looks, it's at the end of the word, and it's the difference between the word a and the word an.

It doesn't really change a sentence. If you misspell the moveable new, if it's there or not there, it would look like bad grammar, but it would not change the meaning of the sentence. And that's the vast majority of those 400,000 variances, is this little moveable new.

In other words, it's nothing.

Of the less than 1% estimated 1 quarter of 1% of variances that are actually meaningful and viable, none of them zero change any doctrine. Not one variance changes doctrine.

I'm going to give you an example right now of a variance that is meaningful and viable. Meaningful, in other words, it changes the meaning of the sentence. And viable meaning, it's probably not the way it's written in your Bible, but probably it should be translated something different. And notice how it doesn't change the doctrine at all. Here is a meaningful and viable variance. We're not sugarcoating this. We're going to look at the facts here. This is a meaningful and viable variance. It's in Mark 1, verse 41. It says, "...and Jesus was moved with compassion, stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, I am willing be cleansed." Older manuscripts, which is debatable. I don't have time to discuss that. But older manuscripts actually have a different word than compassion. In other words, it says he's moved with passion. Stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, I am willing be cleansed. The difference is, compassion is something tender felt in the heart. Passion means anger. So Jesus wasn't moved with compassion. He was moved with anger in the older manuscripts. Well, what on earth could he have been angry about? Obviously, the sins that caused this poor man to suffer. And he healed him. It doesn't change the verse at all. And this is only one quarter of one percent of the variances in the manuscripts. Which means all of those 20,000 manuscripts are 99.975 percent the same. That's amazing for having that many manuscripts and having that much accuracy. No other book on the planet like it. Here's an example of a variance that's meaningful but is not viable. In other words, this one would change doctrine majorly. And it's in your King James Bible, and you're probably very well aware of it. It's called the Kama Johanna. It was in the Latin Vulgate. A monk named Erasmus tried to eliminate it. The Catholic Church wouldn't allow it. In addition, it was put back in. So that's why the German Bibles, Martin Luther had Erasmus' first edition. That's why the German Bibles don't have this. And the King James does. 1 John 5, verse 7, In your King James or new King James, reads, For there are three that bear witness. And then there's this little insert. In heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. And these three are one. And there are three that bear witness on earth. The Spirit, the Water, and the Blood. And these three agree as one. But you know what? The section that says, in heaven, the Father, the Word, the Holy Spirit, are one. And there are three that bear witness on earth. That was added in the Latin Vulgate. And it was added, eventually, under pressure by the monk Erasmus. So that's not viable. And if that's meaningful, that would make the Trinity doctrine right there come alive. And that's the purpose of that. The purpose of it was to make the Trinity doctrine because there was no scripture that upheld the Trinity doctrine. So they put it in. But we know who put it in and when they put it in, and we know it's not viable. Yes, that's a meaningful variance. By the way, your NIV Bible doesn't have that. Because the NIV was not based off the text that Erasmus wrote. So it doesn't have that variance in it. But the point is, the more manuscripts you have, the more differences in text you're going to find. That's actually a good thing, not a bad thing.

Dr. Wallace said this, quote, The reason that there are so many variances in manuscripts is precisely that we have so many manuscripts. And that's a good thing. All of these manuscripts were copied identically. If they were all copied identically, if there were no variances in them, we would know that there was collusion later in history.

That somebody took all those manuscripts and rewrote them. If there were absolutely no mistakes, it would prove that there were fakes. The fact that there are 400,000 variances proves that there was no collusion. Okay. Let's just get some facts, because this is really interesting. It might be boring. Hold with me. You will find it fascinating. The Bible, in the case of the New Testament, is the most accurate, preserved document in human history. There are 5,500 Greek manuscripts. There are another 10,000 Latin manuscripts done as early as the second century.

Why does that matter? Because the Greeks and the Latins didn't necessarily always get along. Those who spoke Latin, which would be the Roman Empire. There are thousands more. Coptic, Syriac, Georgian, Gothic, Armenian, Arabic, Slavic, and another of other ancient manuscripts. And here's the encouraging thing about that. These were warring people. They were enemies with each other. Borders changed. But they have a 99.975% accurate Bible. No matter which language it is, the manuscripts match across the languages, across borders, where people didn't get along with each other and there's no way they could have colluded with each other.

How did that happen? The Bible was carefully transmitted. You see, you can't compare the transmission of the Bible through history to the telephone game. You can't do that because there wasn't just one copy. Let's take the original autograph of Mark. Let's take Mark. And let's say that was passed to somebody in Thyatira, and they copied it. And then it was passed to Laodicea, and they copied it. And it was passed to Philadelphia, and they copied it.

And then it was passed to Rome, and then it was passed to, you know, all over the place, Corinth, you name it. And then those copies were copied. Here's the point. If somebody made a mistake, and they would have made a mistake, if somebody made a mistake, there were other copies to compare to. For people to go, oh, wait a minute, that's not the word. This is the word. And you could look at all the copies and use Deuteronomy 19.15.

It takes two witnesses or three to establish a matter. And you could find out which one was what Mark originally wrote. But there weren't four or five or two or three. We know for a fact there were hundreds, because there are hundreds still surviving, ancient manuscripts. Which means there were thousands of copies originally. So let's take the preamble to the Constitution, in order to form a more perfect union.

Now, what if that Constitution was copied over and over and over again, and the guy who was copying it got a little tired, and the candle started flickering, and instead of saying union, he changed the U to an O, and he wrote onion. And he sent that out, right? From Philadelphia, and that copy made it to Richmond, Virginia.

And they said, in order to form a more perfect onion, would they go, I'm out. These guys don't know what they're talking about. No! They would simply ride to another city, grab the copy, look at it and say, union, and they'd say, that makes some sense. And they would change it back to a more perfect union. And that's exactly how the Bible was carefully transmitted through history. Multiple lines of transmission create a safety net of accuracy.

And that's how we have a 99.975% accurate manuscript history in the world. So that telephone game is actually a half-truth. It's not completely true. So what we're going to do tonight, just to burn this in our minds about multiple lines of transmission, is we're going to recreate, sort of, P45.

I'm going to take a passage out of Mark, and I'm going to ask for volunteers from the audience to come up and copy down this passage of Mark. And then we're going to simulate that passage going through time, from the original autograph all the way to the 9th century P45. Okay? And in order to do that, it's going to be a bumpy road. We're not going to sugarcoat it. And you'll see how the Bible is accurately transmitted. So, I need five at a time. I would like to ask for five volunteers who can write to come up, and I have a passage from the book of Mark.

And you are going to come copy that for me. So, may I see five people? Please, come up. Come on up. Okay.

. Here's what I want you to do. You're going to take P45. Well, this is actually the manuscript. I shouldn't have called that P45. This is the autograph. We're going to pretend exactly what Mark wrote. And I want you to copy this. You're an early 1st century Christian. This is the words about Jesus Christ and salvation. So, it was very important to you, and you were very careful how you copied it. Word for word. You can write in cursive. It was Syriac, Gothic, Latin, Greek. Write in cursive. Word for word. Nothing out of place. Because these are the words of salvation. You'll see some are writing big, and some are writing small. This is exactly how the manuscripts were transmitted.

Okay, I'm going to pass this around, and I want you to compare it and make sure it's the same.

Don't do the P45. That was a mistake. Okay.

Let's pass it around. Are you satisfied? Okay, satisfied? Are you satisfied? Yep. Okay, please take a seat. Let's leave it there. Now, what happens is, the original gets copied so much that it deteriorates and eventually is lost. So we don't have the autograph. I'm going to save it. Just for example, say, on my laptop. But we do have the copies of the manuscripts floating around in the first century. The problem is, they get used a lot. They get copied past the different cities, past the different congregations. It's kind of like loaning your mower out. You never get it back. And what happens is, they get beat up over time.

Time is very hard on paper.

That's what manuscripts look like.

Okay, I need five more people from the third century. Please, come on up.

There you go. And please take a sheet of paper. There you go. Now again, you are Christians. This is important to you. These are the words of salvation. So, you're taking it seriously, and you want to copy this exactly word for word. However, I need to take you off to the side.

We're creating a variance. We're putting the wrong thing in, and we're going to see if the manuscript survives.

Now, just copy your paper, because that would be the only one you would have back in ancient times. You would have that copy. Okay. Take your time.

You satisfied with your copies? Okay. Okay, please take your seats. Now, over time, these copies of the original deteriorate and eventually disappear in history. We don't have them, so they're gone. Also, sometimes we don't even have the entire document. We only have fragments of the document.

Okay, he told me there's only three left, so I've got to be careful. Okay, so now we have a variance and we have a fragment. Will the original message survive? But time passes. Okay, let's jump to the fifth century. I need five more people to come up. All right. Love it. Now, I want you to make sure, whether you have a variance or a fragment, that you copy exactly what you see. Do not make any changes intentionally to the document. It's fine. No changes. That's right. This principle in the Bible works. It takes two or three witnesses to establish a matter. That's why in the ministry, when somebody comes up and says, so-and-so did something, and we don't budge, why don't we respond like you want us to? Because we have to go get the other side of the story. It's the law of God, and it works. It really works. It's fine. Satisfied you got it? I know it's just a fragment, but hey, you go with what you've got. You satisfied? Okay. You good? All right. You can go on back. Okay. Now, we're not going to drag this out too long. We have crumpled them, stomped on them, torn them, cheated on them. And this is what Dr. Erman said, there is no way to know whether or not you actually have the original of what Mark wrote. So these have gone away. Don't worry, I'll clean up later. And we have fifth century copies of the Book of Mark. Can we uncover these copies and, using multiple witnesses, recreate the original? I would like to call one brave person to come up here and recreate P45. Where's my slide? Recreate P45, the ninth century copy of the Book of Mark. Does it represent the original autograph? Okay. So, I see a hand. You brave man, let's get her done. All right. I'm going to write P45 on here. It stands for Papyrus 45, the oldest copy of the New Testament that we have. What I'd like you to do is take multiple witnesses and compare them. And I would like you to recreate the original. Now, remember, it takes two or more witnesses to establish a matter. So, if you do not find two witnesses, the matter is not established. I want you to go through this and actually do it or see it being done so that you won't forget this argument that Dr. Erman makes because it's a really common argument to discredit the Bible. It's not even similar to the original. It's the argument. And that doesn't prove or disprove anything. It just creates doubt.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, he's confident. So, here's P45.

So, they ate and were filled, and they took up seven large baskets of leftover fragments. That's P45. Here's the original. In your view. So, they ate and were filled, and took up seven large baskets of leftover fragments. No variance whatsoever. We cheated. We crumpled them. We fragmented them. How did we get the original passed exactly the way it was through time? Multiple lines of transmission. It's not the telephone game. Multiple witnesses, multiple copies. The precise reason that we don't have the original is the reason we can be confident that we have the original. Because it was copied so much that it was destroyed. And all of those copies, all of those multiple lines of transmission survived.

The telephone game theory is meant to corrupt the story and create doubt. The translation of the New Testament was done much more carefully than what those who don't want to be told what to do by the Word of God would like you to believe. It's not just a single line of transmission. Bart Ehrman likes to say, we don't have the originals because they wore out. But they wore out because they were copied so many times. And with that many witnesses, you're going to have an accurate representation of what the original said. Someone in Rome makes a copy. He gets Mark's original letter. He sends it to Thyatira. He gets Mark's original copy. Then someone in another city and so on and so on. And after a while, yeah, the autograph wears out.

Time, wear and tear cannot destroy the message because there are so many copies. Those manuscripts can be compared and errors can easily be detected.

Okay, are there any questions? I would love to field questions. Yes?

Question for the author of P45.

Let her rip.

Let's get a mic on him. So the question was, how was that?

Check. There were five copies. Two of them had variances in them. One of them was missing words. And all I did was I looked for similarities. Any time there was a variance, there was always more than three witnesses that agreed. So I went with the majority. I just picked the majority word from each one of the copies.

A matter is not established by one witness, but by two or three witnesses a matter is established. The Word of God is established by over 20,000 witnesses in different countries from people who hated each other with a 99.975% accuracy.

Mr. Garcia.

Could you comment on the inverse of that? That a lot of modern history relies on single manuscripts for Herodotus or Socrates or Plato or some others that don't have the same sort of anchoring that the Bible has, yet society tends to give it just as much credence. What a great comment. Bible is the most unique manuscript in the world. If you took all of the manuscripts, all of the sermon notes—by the way, we could reproduce almost 100% of the New Testament from quotes in people's sermon notes and other writing notes. Just from their quotes, we could almost completely reproduce the New Testament. Not 100%, but almost. If you took all of those ancient manuscripts of the Bible and stacked them on top of each other, they would go almost to the outer atmosphere. The next closest historical ancient manuscript that has anything near that number of copies. Who would like to take a guess? Not my kids. The Iliad and the Odyssey. Homer. Nobody doubts, Homer wrote, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Nobody doubts we have the original. If you stacked all of the manuscripts of the Iliad and the Odyssey, it would come up to about your thigh. That's how many we have. The Bible would go very, very high up into the atmosphere. The closest other ancient manuscript, not Plato, not Socrates, not Jerome, Homer's Iliad would come this high. Why doesn't anybody doubt Homer's, that Homer wrote, the Odyssey and the Iliad? Why does nobody doubt that? It doesn't tell them what to do. There's no reason to doubt it. The carnal mind has no motivation to doubt that. There's enough copies there to know what Homer wrote. We have way more witnesses on the Bible. Why do people doubt that? Romans 8 verse 7.

The carnal mind is enmity against God, not subject to his law, nor indeed can be. There's this motivation to say, I don't want to listen to the Bible. So there's overwhelming proof that we have the original words that the apostles wrote. There's overwhelming proof that we have the words that Moses wrote thousands of years ago. Because there are not two or three lines of transmission. There are literally millions of lines of transmission of this word. And they all match each other. Any more questions? Yes, in the back.

So you mentioned that less than 1% of the variances are meaningful and viable. Or even less than a quarter of 1% of 100,000 variances that are in the New Testament. That still could be up to a thousand variances that are meaningful and viable. So if somebody wanted to look each of those up to prove for themselves that none of them have doctrinal changes, where could they find that? So there's an interesting book by a man named Dr. Bart Ehrman. And Dr. Ehrman, that's a great question, by the way. So you know how I kind of presented Dr. Ehrman in a dark light here? He's actually a very smart guy, and I don't agree with his theology, but I respect his intellect. And he wrote a book that's really hard to read. It's not written for the public. It's written for his fellow scholars, and it's called The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. And in that, he maps out the variances and where they are. The vast majority of variances seem to be—okay, now, I'm stepping out of fact and into theory now, all right? But they seem to be centered around the Trinity doctrine. And let me give you an example, and I don't have the verse, but it's where Mary and Joseph went on, and Jesus stayed back, you know? And they found him teaching in the temple, and I must be about my father's business, that passage. Okay. In the original manuscripts, here's one of the big variances you'll see, and it seems subtle, but it's kind of a big deal. It says, his mother and father returned and found him teaching in the temple, something like that.

But in your Bible, it says, his parents came back and found him teaching in the temple. Now, why would they do that? Because the sensitivity is, it takes away the deity of Jesus Christ by naming Joseph his father.

But it doesn't really mean Joseph was his paternal father genetically. It means it was his father in the household who raised him. Okay? So there was no problem in the way it was written, his father and his mother. But the Orthodox, I'll just leave it there, Orthodoxy, if you will, demanded the defense of the Trinity doctrine.

That was a major political issue, if you've ever studied the Trinity doctrine. It's how the East and the West Catholic churches split. Okay? The Muslim...it's in Luke chapter 2. Thank you.

The Muslim horde was coming up against Constantinople, which was one center of the church and used to be one of the capitals of the Roman Empire. It was the capital of the Eastern side.

And Rome had the power to defend Constantinople. And so the bishops came to the Pope in Rome and asked for help.

But the Pope had changed the Trinity doctrine, which was not an ecumenical decision. It was a singular, you know, hierarchical decision, which was kind of a big deal to them.

So the Pope said, all you have to do is accept the new Trinity, the new version of the Trinity, the new Nicene Creed. He changed the Nicene Creed.

And he said, all you have to do is accept the new Nicene Creed, and we will send the army, and we will protect Constantinople.

One bishop, out of all the bishops that came from the East, one held out and said no. And it had to be, you know, unanimous for them, or they would not agree.

They had to have a unanimous decision. And when that one man held out, he's the enemy in the West, and he's the hero of the East, of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

But that's how big a deal the Trinity is. So if you read that book, the Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, you will find out that there are more than a thousand, more than a thousand variances.

And he documents them in that book, and the vast majority of them are little changes to support the Trinity.

So while we prefer the King James Bible, because it accurately upholds the law of God, we need to be careful and realize it was written by people that made variances to support the Trinity.

Like the Kama Jhana, which I read tonight, there are three who bear witness, and then they added the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

You have to be careful when you're reading it that way. And that book, the Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, points out those variances that you were asking about.

Okay, in the back. Hello? Oh, there we go. I was just going to make a comment. So 233 was what you were quoting. And some Bibles in mine, if you look at the bottom, it says, "'N' you' text reads, and his father and mother." So you can see the variances in the bottom of your body.

And some Bibles, I don't know if every Bible has it, but mine has the one I heard just speaking of.

Okay, so I just want to comment on that. What does "'N' you' mean? That's the Alexandrian text. I'm not a fan of the Alexandrian text. Okay. Scholars lean towards the Alexandrian text because they are older than the Syrian text or the Byzantine text.

The Byzantine text, up in Syria and Turkey in that area, were stored in clay jars, mostly written, usually not in papyrus, but on sheepskins. And they deteriorated over time, so we have far fewer of those. They didn't last as long.

So the ones we have are newer than the ones that were saved in the dirt, the desert, in the sand of Egypt, Alexandria, Egypt, which is very dry, which preserves that papyrus that they were written on, right? A very, very long time.

So we have older manuscripts in Alexandria than we have in the Byzantine text, in the wet areas that were stored.

But here's the thing. We have far more copies of the Byzantine. We have far fewer copies of the Alexandrian, and the Alexandrian texts are incomplete.

They're largely incomplete. So the theory that being in the dirt longer makes it the better translation is not an accurate theory.

If you use the principle of more than one witness, there are far more witnesses in the Byzantine text than there are in the in you that's in your Bible.

The in you says this. So if you ever see that, the in you says this. I'm not saying don't believe it. It might be accurate, but I have a lot of skepticism towards it. Just FYI.

There are far more witnesses in the Byzantine text, and there are far more complete manuscripts than the Alexandrian text.

So to that point, the word parent might be the original word. It might be, but Dr. Erman's book is still a good book because there are changes to support the Trinity.

Any more questions? Okay, right here. And this will be the last one. We need to get to bed. We've got two services tomorrow.

In your opinion, what is the accurate translation? And do you think that translations that are coming out, more modern ones, are maybe becoming more accurate or less accurate? All of the above. All of the above. So I use the principle found in the scripture Deuteronomy 19 and verse 15, which says that a matter is established with two or more witnesses.

So I don't rely on one translation. We have such a blessing of having computers that you can now go online and not only view multiple translations, but also an interlinear. What an interlinear does is it puts the English word above the Greek word. So you can see the original Greek and how it interacts with how the translation translated it into English.

That can be very helpful if there's some discrepancy between the NIV and the New Revised Standard Version, the New King James, and the Net Bible, and they're all different. Which one is the same? That can be very frustrating. You can go to an interlinear. You have to be careful because one interlinear will be of the Alexandrian text and another will be of the Byzantine text. You need to know which one is which. You don't need that much skill to read an interlinear. Don't be intimidated by it. There are a few codes, a few rules to follow just to interpret it, and once you've got them down, it's actually fairly possible to go through them. So if my answer to you is use multiple witnesses to find the original.

And that's why you'll notice a lot of the ministry does that already. You'll notice, well, from this I'm going to use the NET version, or the whatever version of the Bible, and they drift away from the King James for a little bit, and then they come back to it.

So that's that principle in Deuteronomy 19 and verse 15. Multiple witnesses establish a matter.

Okay. That's Bible study for tonight.