Latest / Brandon Fogal Evolution / #143 - Did Alex O'Connor Go Too Far With Wes Huff?

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#143 - Did Alex O'Connor Go Too Far With Wes Huff? · Brandon Fogal Evolution

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  Is Alex O'Connor, is he being overly critical of Wes Huff regarding the Isaiah Scroll?
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  And maybe things that Wes Huff might have misspoken when he was on the JRE podcast with Joe Rogan.
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  We're going to take a look at this. I'm resurrecting this conversation because
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  it's been a few months that this all happened and this all unfolded,
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  but I wanted to talk about it because it's very eye-opening.
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  I actually broke it down and was able to analyze the response that Alex O'Connor
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  had to his response video, to somebody else's response video,
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  to what Wes Huff had said.
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  Wes Huff made the clarification that he might have misspoke when he was on Rogan's
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  podcast regarding the scroll of Isaiah being word for word identical.
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  And he changes it to, I think I should have said it is nearly identical.
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  But I'm going to talk about this because I think Alex
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  O'Connor is being a little bit overly critical and he's
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  getting into the weeds way too much and
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  missing the forest for the leaves all right let's take
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  a look at the first clip that we have here and this
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  is alex's response to his response video that wes huff had to that he made a
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  clarification regarding his uh when he went on a rogan podcast so let's just
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  hear what he has to say and they're talking about did wes huff misspeak and
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  then did he is it can we give grace about that.
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  It's not that he was wrong exactly, but rather just imprecise or hyperbolic.
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  This was admittedly a hyperbolic statement that I should have been much more careful on.
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  Should I have been more careful in my statement on Rogan about the Great Isaiah
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  Scroll and used much more precise language,
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  something to the effect of nearly identical rather than word for word identical
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  in order to not bring unnecessary and unfortunate scrutiny upon my discussion with him?
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  Yes, But I hope you can see why I said what I said and forgive me for my lack of precision.
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  And to be clear, the problem is obviously not that Wes got this wrong.
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  We all do that, especially in high-pressure, unscripted environments.
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  The problem is with the response. Is it perfectly understandable that he misremembered
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  something because he was commenting on something that he was not particularly
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  well-informed about and was not his specialization?
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  And we should give people grace for that?
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  100%. I'm totally in line with that. that happens to everybody who is engaged
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  in this kind of public scholarship where we have to try to be generalists.
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  And sometimes we find ourselves commenting on things that we don't know incredibly
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  well. And sometimes we misspeak. Sometimes we misremember. That happens. But.
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  How you take accountability for it, I think, says an awful lot about what your
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  priorities are and what your ultimate goals are.
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  And I don't think accountability has been adequately taken here.
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  I think the attempt is still to salvage the apologetic goal of reassuring the
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  audience that their dogmas are safe. But OK. OK, so there's a lot there.
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  Did accountability be taken? So I don't, Wes, he's an expert in certain ways.
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  But like anybody, if you're an expert about anything, you're not an expert about everything.
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  And just to be like this, we're all still going to mess up in certain ways.
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  We're going to misspeak.
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  But I think it's an overall, what is your motivation? What is driving you to
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  kind of push these views or this information forward?
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  And I think Wes, on the Rogan podcast, he was just, it seems like it's lax and
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  everything like that. It's kind of easygoing.
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  And Joe Rogan, it makes everybody feel comfortable. But it's still,
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  it's the biggest podcast in the world. And so he he doesn't say everything perfect.
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  He's not perfect. He's not Jesus.
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  So, I mean, I think we can give him a little bit of grace for that.
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  And Alex, I think he's definitely missing the bigger boat on all this because
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  he's because this whole video, if you go and I put a link in the description,
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  it's very it's it's it's very interesting.
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  But the whole video, he goes into things that Wes said and how they don't exactly
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  line up with the manuscript evidence and all that.
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  But it doesn't change the fact that this is, it's all like 95% completely,
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  nearly identical from what we have.
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  And he doesn't bring up actually one verse or anything.
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  He doesn't like to say, this verse says this, this verse says this.
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  So is that, there's a contradiction here. There's something that doesn't,
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  it's changing fundamental beliefs.
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  And I think that's the biggest thing, because when we get down to the manuscript
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  evidence, it's the autographs, the autographers, the original writings,
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  those were completely inspired.
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  Those were 100% inspired. And God has, he has sufficiently preserved the manuscript evidence.
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  He's, throughout the centuries, and that we have so much of it because those
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  autographs were inspired and then everybody wrote a copy of a copy of a copy
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  of a copy of, but it's like they weren't just whimsically just writing, what the heck?
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  I'll just, I'm just going to write over here while I'm watching a TV over here.
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  No, they were, especially the Old Testament, they were very acute.
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  If everything didn't line up perfectly, every letter, they would count the letters.
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  And if it didn't line up perfectly, they would toss it out.
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  They would go and bury it because it had the holy name of God written on it.
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  Because it, and these are, they're not typing it up, you know, in this backspace.
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  Oh, I messed up a little bit. No, they're being extremely careful in what they
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  are doing and writing it.
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  But it's still, they don't got
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  a printing press. They don't got a printing press in what they're doing.
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  So I think we can just, like, they're,
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  It is a little, it's pretty dang miraculous that we have, that has been preserved this well.
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  And the Isaiah scroll that got brought up, you know, when the,
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  you know, the Dead Seas, the Dead Sea Scrolls and all that, Qumran,
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  when they found that, it did push, it just.
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  Revalidated that what we have is good evidence and strong evidence that the Bible didn't change.
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  It's been the way since Moses.
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  It's been the way since Moses. He didn't write the whole Bible,
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  but he wrote the first five books.
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  And I know people are going to, some people disagree with that and they have,
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  but the thing is when you got to disagree with that and say,
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  Moses couldn't have written this is because you understand that it is inspired scripture.
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  Like it is something we got to take serious look at as something we can't just
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  skate over and just say, oh, a committee,
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  we have to fabricate this committee or these editors had to get in there because
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  one man couldn't have wrote this, but the first five books are attributed to
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  Moses. Even Jesus said that.
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  But there's many other books in the Bible. But I want to skip forward to another
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  thing that Wes said and that Alex wanted to kind of critique him on.
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  And when he basically, if we need to reevaluate everything that we look at the
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  Bible, and it doesn't completely, it has to be 100% word for word.
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  You know, in a heated environment, And Wes, he said word for word.
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  He wasn't thinking straight when he said that, but it's nearly identical.
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  And a lot of the mistakes or the differences is just a matter of spelling.
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  It's a matter of one word being another place of the sentence.
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  It doesn't fundamentally change the sentence. You can say the same sentence
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  over and over in a different way. You can say the same thing.
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  Ask any politician. They say the same thing over and over, but use different
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  words, different inflections. And that's what a lot of the Bible is. It's just different.
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  That's the differences they're finding out. But nothing in this video that Alex
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  talked about brought up any differences of this versus this, this. And even if it did.
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  It would just be the different way of saying that same thing.
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  It doesn't change any fundamental beliefs.
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  It doesn't change any doctrinal issues that we have.
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  Isn't it still just amazing to find a possibly 92.5% fidelity between the two texts?
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  Remember, the overwhelming agreement between the Isaiah scroll and the later
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  Masoretic text is shocking despite orthographic and minor scribal differences.
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  Isn't it still a wow moment? Rogan's reaction to the correction of wording should be exactly the same.
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  It is a wow moment. Isn't it still just amazing and unheard of for an ancient
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  text to be so well preserved? But here's the thing.
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  There's nothing special about 1Q Isaiah A or any biblical manuscripts in terms
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  of their fidelity or how close they are to later copies of the Old Testament.
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  You could do the same thing with manuscripts of pretty much anything from antiquity.
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  So why are we so shocked and so excited when the Bible, when biblical manuscripts
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  basically just look like all other ancient manuscripts?
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  We're not like, we don't worship the Bible. We don't worship the Bible like
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  any, like any Bible that we have.
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  It's been, we obviously know it's not in the same language that it's written.
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  If you have an English Bible, Jesus wasn't speaking, you know, American.
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  He wasn't speaking, you know, good English that the Britons speak,
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  you know, he wasn't speaking that language. He was speaking more than likely Aramaic.
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  And most of the Bible is not in Aramaic. There's like maybe a fraction of it.
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  And not even that was when in the New Testament, it was written in Hebrew and primarily Greek.
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  So it's a translation of, of his, even his words, but it's still conveying the
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  thought. The point of the Bible is God used men, regular people.
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  But he used them and he orchestrated it by every word, every letter was being
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  written, inspired and communicated by God.
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  It was being breathed out by God through their writings.
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  And that takes faith. You have to have a little bit of faith to accept that.
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  But anybody, these scholars out there, like, and there could be people that
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  believe in all this and then people that just come at it with a skeptical view.
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  I think either way, you are in one camp or the other. You are coming to the
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  Bible and you are almost settled in your position one way or the other.
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  No reasoning that somebody talks to you is going to just convince you immediately.
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  You're going to be more entrenched and more settled in your position with what you came to the table.
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  Me saying this, I bet I haven't changed one person's viewpoint out there.
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  And more than likely, any video you watch is not going to change it.
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  It's just going to just dig you in more to what you already believe.
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  But so when we think of the manuscript evidence that is out there,
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  like I am not like if I understand there are places in the Bible.
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  I don't think the end of end of Mark was actually in the original. I think it was added.
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  But these were but we have so much evidence that we are of manuscripts that
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  we're able to catch that.
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  We're able to see all of them. We see so many that we can pinpoint.
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  That's why if you look at any Bible, it has like brackets around everything.
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  You say this word wasn't actually there. This probably didn't say this.
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  But it doesn't ever change any foundational belief.
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  And in this whole video that they go through this, and Alex went through this
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  with Wes, none of it actually went to any verse and said, this one said this,
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  this one said that it changes any viewpoint that we have about God's nature,
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  about redemption, about salvation,
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  about who Jesus is. Nothing changes.
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  It doesn't, like just for any, like any New Testament scholar out there,
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  there are the places in the New Testament that people can point to and say,
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  We don't know if that meant our or your,
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  we don't, we don't know if this, if this definite article was there and definite
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  articles can definitely be a huge deal.
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  But either way, it doesn't ever fundamentally change anything. It doesn't ever.
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  And if you point to something, it never passes the smell test of being strong
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  evidence to overthrow Christianity.
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  And I know the guy that we, the last person we saw on there that he was talking
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  to, Alex was talking to, he brings up the only thing that we know is pristinely,
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  perfectly intact from the original that we have is the Quran.
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  And you could say was because everything else was burned and thrown away.
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  They did not allow any other evidence or any other manuscript to survive.
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  The thing about the Bible is we have a plethora of manuscripts to choose from
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  and look at and be able to get down to what was the original author's writing.
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  So I just would love to hear what Alex would say about the specifics because
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  he didn't bring up one verse. He didn't say this one said this.
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  He says there's differences in all these manuscripts, but he did come to the
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  conclusion that it's 95% the same.
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  So you could say that's the nearly identical that maybe Wes didn't say it whenever
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  he was on JRE, the podcast with Rogan.
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  But either way, it doesn't change anything.
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  It's all, it's no fundamental belief of Christianity has been altered.
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  So I think, I think Alex is being definitely overly critical when he's doing this.
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  And it's probably to get a reaction out of Wes, probably to see how much he,
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  maybe he can heat him up so that they can have a conversation.
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  Cause I want to see that. I want to see Alex and Wes talk this through. That would be amazing.
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  And I think Wes is kind of holding off on that. He doesn't want to debate anyone.
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  He doesn't want debate, you know?
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  All right. If you've enjoyed this video, hit this link and I will see y'all on the other side.