Latest / Every Church Flourishing by the Great Commission Association / Episode 20: The Dead Sea Scrolls, Why Pastors Talk about Controversial Bible Issues, Textual Criticism, and Guarana Antarctica Soda Review with Textual Criticism Expert Dr. Anthony Ferguson

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Episode 20: The Dead Sea Scrolls, Why Pastors Talk about Controversial Bible Issues, Textual Criticism, and Guarana Antarctica Soda Review with Textual Criticism Expert Dr. Anthony Ferguson · Every Church Flourishing by the Great Commission Association

0:00
Speaker0: So why should pastors talk about controversial Bible passages and difficult
0:04
Speaker0: Bible origin questions with church members?
0:08
Speaker0: Old Testament scholar, Dr. Anthony Ferguson answers.
0:12
Speaker1: You know, in the book of Proverbs, Solomon takes his son up on the roof and
0:15
Speaker1: he points out the prostitute.
0:17
Speaker1: And he says to the person who's pursuing her, that is the pathway to hell.
0:21
Speaker1: And so what I mean by that is that there is an appropriate form of exposure
0:25
Speaker1: that we can give to our church members.
0:28
Speaker1: And I think we should do that. I think we should be the ones who introduce our
0:33
Speaker1: members to the most difficult topics.
0:44
Speaker0: The north central coast of California and the beautiful Redwoods.
0:47
Speaker0: The Every Church Flourishing podcast is all about helping churches,
0:50
Speaker0: leaders, and pastors find health, encouragement,
0:54
Speaker0: practical advice, soul care, and resources that work together to build up your
0:58
Speaker0: local fellowship and the broader kingdom of God.
1:00
Speaker0: Join hosts, Pastor Chris Cole
1:02
Speaker0: and Dr. Chase Thompson from the Great Commission Association, led by Dr.
1:07
Speaker0: Mike Stewart, as they explore the frontiers of ministry and aim for the goal
1:10
Speaker0: of making every church flourish.
1:12
Speaker0: Hello, everybody, and welcome into episode number 20 of the Every Church Flourishing podcast.
1:19
Speaker0: We are a ministry of the Great Commission Association of California,
1:23
Speaker0: and we are always looking for pastors, churches, people, and groups to partner
1:29
Speaker0: with who value the Word of God and the Great Commission.
1:33
Speaker0: If you are interested in partnering with us, reach out through our website, G-C-A-S-B-C dot org.
1:42
Speaker0: That is G-C-A-S-B-C dot org. Today on the podcast, we talked to Dr.
1:47
Speaker0: Anthony Ferguson, an Old Testament textual criticism expert and pastor about
1:53
Speaker0: some pretty deep Bible nerd stuff, including how can pastors talk about the
1:59
Speaker0: background of the Bible without turning the church into a seminary?
2:03
Speaker0: Now, some of this short interview is pretty deep, but if you feel lost, never fear.
2:08
Speaker0: We're going to process through a little bit of what we discussed at the end
2:12
Speaker0: of the episode today, right after Cal Baptist ministry student JC and I review
2:18
Speaker0: Brazil's number one Coke competitor.
2:21
Speaker0: So like me, Dr. Ferguson was taught in seminary not to use Greek or Hebrew in sermons.
2:26
Speaker0: And also like me, he pretty routinely ignores this advice, which raises a question
2:31
Speaker0: that the third part of our interview today with Dr.
2:35
Speaker0: Ferguson brings up, why would we focus a whole episode on some of the more academic
2:40
Speaker0: points of the Bible, including textual variants, the Dead Sea Scrolls,
2:45
Speaker0: biblical origins, and that sort of thing?
2:47
Speaker0: Well, at least one of the answers to that question Dr.
2:50
Speaker0: Ferguson addressed in our open, and that is, if you don't, somebody else will.
2:56
Speaker0: And shouldn't a pastor be the one to shepherd the people through those issues
3:01
Speaker0: rather than somebody else?
3:02
Speaker0: Well, let's nerd out for a second. I know that you are much more than a hobbyist
3:08
Speaker0: in the field of textual criticism and
3:11
Speaker0: I think it's pretty fair to say that nearly all church members.
3:15
Speaker0: Most pastors and leaders are quite ignorant of textual criticism.
3:21
Speaker0: I guess my question is, should they be? I went to a Christian college in the
3:25
Speaker0: South in the 90s, and I was exposed to a special kind of attack on the Bible,
3:30
Speaker0: kind of spearheaded by Spong and John Dominic Cross and the Jesus seminar later
3:36
Speaker0: on by Bart Ehrman and people like that, that really used sort of academic means
3:42
Speaker0: to undermine the reliability of the Bible.
3:45
Speaker0: And one of which was just the fact that there were so many.
3:48
Speaker0: Textual variations out there. Now, I grew up in the church. I grew up in solid churches.
3:53
Speaker0: Frank Barker, Briarwood Christian, and one of the flagship PCA churches and
3:58
Speaker0: some really good large Baptist churches in the South.
4:01
Speaker0: But when I got to college, I was very ignorant of these textual variants and
4:08
Speaker0: paleography and textual criticism and all of that.
4:11
Speaker0: And so when I first started hearing German higher criticism, it shook me.
4:15
Speaker0: I went through quite a bit of doubt to hear these very smart people making fairly
4:21
Speaker0: sophisticated, and I would say sophisticated for this guy, not genuinely sophisticated,
4:28
Speaker0: arguments against the reliability of the Bible.
4:30
Speaker0: And to this day, I would say pastors and church members are largely ignorant
4:36
Speaker0: about textual criticism and the origins of the Bible.
4:41
Speaker0: And I think scholars like Wesley Huff, who's very popular, are doing things
4:46
Speaker0: to ameliorate and help that situation.
4:50
Speaker0: So what do you think, Dr. Ferguson? Is this something that pastors should talk
4:55
Speaker0: about more from the pulpit?
4:57
Speaker0: And if so, how do we do that without kind of turning the church into a seminary?
5:02
Speaker1: That's a really good question. Okay, first question, should they be ignorant?
5:06
Speaker1: No, I don't think they're able to be ignorant because of the issue that you brought up.
5:11
Speaker1: Now, can they be an expert? Absolutely not.
5:15
Speaker1: I mean, the amount of time it's taken me like reading manuscript, I'm a bit obsessive.
5:21
Speaker1: And so doing manuscripts really aligns with my personality because I want to
5:25
Speaker1: get to the bottom of things. I don't even want to read. Here's my Vulgate.
5:28
Speaker1: I don't have, whereas my tuogen is somewhere. I think it's down here somewhere,
5:32
Speaker1: but I don't even want to read a printed edition. Like I want to read a manuscript. So I'm
5:36
Speaker1: I'm obsessive. I want to get to the bottom of things. So like,
5:39
Speaker1: yeah, they shouldn't be ignorant, but we can't expect pastors and ministry leaders
5:43
Speaker1: to be experts in all things. That is really, really difficult.
5:46
Speaker1: I think the problem with, in particular, the Dead Sea Scrolls is there's many,
5:50
Speaker1: if any, experts who are evangelicals.
5:53
Speaker1: I don't know, would you call me an expert? I have a contract to publish my dissertation with TNT Clark.
6:00
Speaker1: Maybe once I publish that, then you can call me an expert. I mean,
6:02
Speaker1: I do have a PhD in the field.
6:04
Speaker1: I have academically published things in JBL and other journals.
6:09
Speaker1: There's another expert, Drew Longacre, who is a good friend,
6:13
Speaker1: but there's just not many.
6:14
Speaker1: So what you have in the field of Dead Sea Scrolls is you have a lot of non-Christian
6:19
Speaker1: who interpret the data from a non-Christian perspective, and they come up with
6:23
Speaker1: maybe coherent arguments.
6:26
Speaker1: And I would say, Chase, they might be very sophisticated arguments.
6:29
Speaker1: They don't believe the Bible. They might even have an ax to grind against the Bible.
6:33
Speaker1: So they're reading everything in terms of that worldview.
6:37
Speaker1: So who would a pastor turn to, right? I would recommend any listeners to look
6:42
Speaker1: at Texting Canon Institute.
6:44
Speaker1: Texting Canon Institute is a very helpful resource.
6:47
Speaker1: The Evangelical Textual Criticism
6:49
Speaker1: blog spot, where I blog with several others, is very, very helpful.
6:53
Speaker1: The issue with both of those is that most of the scholars there are New Testament textual critics.
6:58
Speaker1: There are very, very few Evangelical Old Testament textual critics.
7:03
Speaker1: Now, Peter Gentry is an amazing evangelical, but he was a Septuagint scholar.
7:08
Speaker1: So he produced people like John Mead, who is another great scholar,
7:12
Speaker1: but he again is Septuagint.
7:14
Speaker1: He's getting more and more involved in the Dead Sea Scrolls because of the influence
7:18
Speaker1: of Wes Huff. And he's very, very competent.
7:20
Speaker1: He does a great, great job. But there's just not a lot of experts who can synthesize
7:26
Speaker1: the data and then articulate the data in a way that's both trustworthy, like they're actually
7:33
Speaker1: Interpreting the data properly, but then also faithful.
7:37
Speaker1: And that's what I've tried to do is that, so just for example,
7:40
Speaker1: if you look at a lot of apologetic sources, they'll say things like,
7:44
Speaker1: the great Isaiah scroll proves that the book of Isaiah has been preserved letter by letter.
7:49
Speaker1: I mean, even Wes Huff mistakenly said that on the Joe Rogan show.
7:53
Speaker1: And I know Wes Huff, We've talked multiple times, and Wes Huff is great.
7:57
Speaker1: Wes Huff is doing a great, great job. Wes Huff has already admitted that was
8:00
Speaker1: a mistake. He didn't mean to say that. He was thinking of 1Q, Isaiah, B.
8:04
Speaker1: But that just illustrates the fact that it's so easy to misrepresent the Dead Sea Scrolls.
8:10
Speaker1: And if you pull up any apologetic book off your shelf from an apologist who
8:14
Speaker1: isn't an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, they're going to tell you the Dead
8:17
Speaker1: Sea Scrolls prove their liability of the Bible.
8:18
Speaker1: Well, the real thing about the Dead Sea Scrolls is, yes—
8:22
Speaker1: They do prove the reliability of the Bible, but it's much more complicated than that.
8:27
Speaker1: And so one of the problems that we have is we tell our students,
8:31
Speaker1: oh, the Bible has been preserved with accuracy.
8:33
Speaker1: Or we say they counted letter by letter to make sure no letters were missing.
8:37
Speaker1: They make these arguments, and then somebody like yourself then goes to a state
8:41
Speaker1: university, and Abart Ehrman, or Eugene Ulrich, or an Emmanuel Tov,
8:46
Speaker1: rightly says, look at all the variants.
8:48
Speaker1: What do they do? So this makes me think about the book of Proverbs.
8:52
Speaker1: You know, in the book of Proverbs, Solomon takes his son up on the roof and
8:55
Speaker1: he points out the prostitute.
8:57
Speaker1: And he says to the person who's pursuing her, that is the pathway to hell.
9:01
Speaker1: And so what I mean by that is that there is an appropriate form of exposure
9:05
Speaker1: that we can give to our church members.
9:07
Speaker1: And I think we should do that. I think we should be the ones who introduce our
9:13
Speaker1: members to the most difficult topics, issues of justice and injustice,
9:17
Speaker1: textual variety, textual plurality, fluidity, all of the difficult things in
9:21
Speaker1: this world, the problem of evil.
9:22
Speaker1: I don't want the people on 11th Street to be learning the problem of evil from a non-Christian.
9:28
Speaker1: I don't want them to be learning epistemology from David Hume,
9:31
Speaker1: right? I don't want that.
9:32
Speaker1: I want them to be learning it from a biblical perspective.
9:35
Speaker1: So, yes, pastors should not be ignorant to textual criticism.
9:40
Speaker1: Yet, textual criticism is very complex, And the Dead Sea Scrolls in particular
9:44
Speaker1: has a dearth of experts who are both evangelical and experts,
9:48
Speaker1: right? So there's not a lot of information.
9:51
Speaker1: So although ignorance is no excuse, I'm very sympathetic.
9:54
Speaker1: Now, what do I do? I don't, I was told in seminary, you should never talk about
9:58
Speaker1: Greek and Hebrew from the pulpit. I do it often.
10:01
Speaker1: And I don't do it in a way that's condescending and I don't do it in a way that's prideful.
10:07
Speaker1: I try not to. So, for example, onomatopoeia, the word in English is the same word in Hebrew, sh.
10:15
Speaker1: So that would be an example where I might say, like, the Hebrew here is onomatopoeia,
10:18
Speaker1: where the word is the same as it sounds.
10:20
Speaker1: And, well, I do that often. Or if there's a textual variant and I think it's
10:24
Speaker1: significant, I'll tell the church, listen, the ESV says this,
10:28
Speaker1: but I think the ESV is wrong, and here are the reasons why.
10:30
Speaker1: And I have no—I'm exposing the people at 11th Street often to these types of topics.
10:36
Speaker1: And I try to do it in a way that's not arrogant, but also exposes them.
10:41
Speaker1: Sometimes if the issue is minor, I won't mention it. There are some times I
10:44
Speaker1: think the ESV is wrong, but I don't know exactly how the way to communicate
10:49
Speaker1: it, so I'll still preach the ESV.
10:51
Speaker1: And that, my friend, is a very interesting question that we can save for another
10:56
Speaker1: time or an academic publication in the future.
10:58
Speaker1: So, I mean, so in all of these ways, I'm exposing the church in either very
11:02
Speaker1: explicit or implicit ways to textual criticism. And I'm not afraid.
11:06
Speaker1: The people at Texting Canon Institute, John Mead, Peter Gurrie,
11:09
Speaker1: say we shouldn't be afraid of truth.
11:10
Speaker1: And I think that's exactly right. Let's give God's people the truth about the
11:14
Speaker1: Bible manuscripts, and let's also give them a faithful way to interpret the
11:19
Speaker1: data. That's what I want to do.
11:21
Speaker0: And you're not very familiar with the world of textual criticism.
11:24
Speaker0: Dr. Ferguson is not saying the Bible is wrong. He is saying the translators
11:28
Speaker0: of the ESV are not infallible in some of the translation calls they make.
11:35
Speaker0: And you know, a really good book, and Pastor Christopher is about to close us
11:38
Speaker0: out with the last question, but a really good book that I think is good for pastors.
11:42
Speaker0: Might be a little high level for some, not all church members,
11:46
Speaker0: but you've mentioned Peter Gurry a couple of times.
11:49
Speaker0: Elijah Hickson and Peter Gurry came out with a very short and helpful book,
11:53
Speaker0: Myths in New Testament Textual Criticism, that I think helps inoculate pastors
11:58
Speaker0: from sharing, I don't know, apologetics myths, like you were mentioning earlier.
12:03
Speaker0: Some of the things that people smooth over a little bit that Emmanuel Tove,
12:09
Speaker0: Herb Bart Ehrman, would not smooth over so much. And I think it's very helpful, as you say, for
12:14
Speaker0: church members, pastors, leaders to know truth and to promote truth.
12:18
Speaker0: Okay, over to you, Pastor Christopher.
12:20
Speaker1: Anthony, we're so glad that you've been on the show with us.
12:22
Speaker1: You've got such a broad range of expertise, and we can't wait to have you back.
12:26
Speaker1: I want to have you back just for an episode to talk about how pastors can apply
12:32
Speaker1: the Old Testament when they're preaching it to people in current contexts,
12:38
Speaker1: and love to hear you unpack that.
12:41
Speaker1: So hopefully we get you to come back on our show and do that with us.
12:46
Speaker1: Just, you've got your average church members listening to this podcast,
12:50
Speaker1: sort of people who say, I'm not an expert.
12:53
Speaker1: Other people who say, yeah, I'm a church leader or I'm a biblical scholar.
12:56
Speaker1: Other people, pastors, maybe others that are listening.
13:00
Speaker1: So real quick, maybe you could do it this way.
13:03
Speaker1: Top three or four recent takeaways that the average church member would just
13:09
Speaker1: be so blessed or encouraged by from recent Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship that
13:15
Speaker1: you would just say, hey, here's some really cool things.
13:17
Speaker1: They're just fun to know, or they might be life transformative.
13:21
Speaker1: So Wes Huff said 1QISA is word for word identical to the Masoretic text.
13:26
Speaker1: So that was a mistake. But I would say there are some Dead Sea Scrolls that
13:30
Speaker1: are letter by letter identical to the empty text. So I think that can be an encouragement.
13:35
Speaker1: The second thing I would say is the best way to interpret the data is to see
13:38
Speaker1: that some scribes approached copying with a more dynamic approach and the ability
13:44
Speaker1: to make adjustments to the text.
13:46
Speaker1: But alongside that approach, there is a very conservative approach to copying.
13:51
Speaker1: So really the goal, my goal in textual criticism is to identify the conservative approach to copying.
13:57
Speaker1: And often what happens is the evangelicals only think about the conservative approach.
14:02
Speaker1: And then the mainline news articles only focus on the dynamic approach.
14:08
Speaker1: Nobody, some people, but the goal is to bring those things together, right?
14:11
Speaker1: So I would say amid the diversity of readings in the Old Testament,
14:15
Speaker1: there is a unity that is very, very close to the Masoretic text.
14:20
Speaker1: And that's what my book is attempting to show and what my dissertation showed as well.
14:24
Speaker1: So there are letter for letter. When you put it all together,
14:27
Speaker1: there is, we see God's sovereignty in it all.
14:29
Speaker1: I would say also to the average person who's watching this, maybe who's somebody
14:34
Speaker1: who's like in Chase's situation, what if God in his sovereignty and providence
14:38
Speaker1: only preserved the diversity?
14:40
Speaker1: Ask the question, what if in God's sovereignty, he only preserved manuscripts
14:45
Speaker1: in the Dead Seas that are wild and non-aligned?
14:48
Speaker1: And there was no evidence of a conservative approach to copy.
14:51
Speaker1: He could have done that, but he didn't.
14:53
Speaker1: So in my mind, I am very grateful to God and I rejoice in God that he allowed
14:58
Speaker1: us to see a conservative approach all the way back.
15:01
Speaker1: I would finally say that Dead Sea Scroll scholarship, I think one of the problems
15:05
Speaker1: is there's an absence of practitioners who are also Dead Sea Scroll experts,
15:10
Speaker1: and that's kind of hard, right?
15:12
Speaker1: Drew Longacre, he's a pastor as well, and I would highly recommend him.
15:16
Speaker1: The people at Qumran loved the Bible. They believed that if you disobeyed the
15:20
Speaker1: Bible, you would be kicked out of their community. They even thought if you
15:23
Speaker1: disobeyed it in the smallest of details, you'd get kicked out.
15:26
Speaker1: So they thought they could obey the Bible.
15:28
Speaker1: And yet, when you look at their copies of the Bible, they had different versions of Isaiah.
15:32
Speaker1: And what I mean is that there's differences in their Isaiahs.
15:35
Speaker1: And yet, they believed they could obey Isaiah completely.
15:39
Speaker1: So what I would say to the listener is that I think the people in Qumran are
15:43
Speaker1: doing to the Bible the same thing we're doing.
15:46
Speaker1: Use my Bible. I sing my Bible. I adapt my Bible to be a Jesus storybook Bible
15:50
Speaker1: Bible. I adapt my Bible to be a new mother's Bible Bible, right?
15:54
Speaker1: I take verses about greed and I put it into a different form of the Bible,
15:59
Speaker1: excerpted Bible, so I don't have all the passages about greed together,
16:02
Speaker1: right? Why am I doing this?
16:04
Speaker1: Why do we like Chosen? For those of you who like Chosen, I know that's a bit,
16:07
Speaker1: you know, everybody likes that.
16:09
Speaker1: But what are they doing? They're reworking the Bible. Why? Because they love
16:13
Speaker1: the Bible. Here's my final example.
16:15
Speaker1: Shane and Shane, if you don't know who Shane and Shane is, they have a song
16:18
Speaker1: called Psalm 23. But when you listen to Psalm 23, it's not Psalm 23.
16:23
Speaker1: Redone Psalm 23. They've added words and reworked words and done all these things.
16:27
Speaker1: But why have they done that? Is it because they don't believe in the authority of the Bible?
16:31
Speaker1: Is it because there's not an authoritative, canonical Psalm 23?
16:34
Speaker1: No, it's because they love the Bible.
16:36
Speaker1: And I would say, I think what's the best way to interpret the evidence from
16:40
Speaker1: the Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran is just that.
16:42
Speaker1: You have people who love the Bible and are using the Bible and believe you can
16:46
Speaker1: obey the Bible. and that they're doing the same thing that we're doing today.
16:49
Speaker1: So I think amid a diversity, the best argument is that when we talk to the people
16:55
Speaker1: Who made the changes in the second, first century BC, they were people who believed
17:01
Speaker1: that the Bible was stable, steadfast, and that you could obey it.
17:05
Speaker1: They knew what it was. So I think that's an encouragement.
17:08
Speaker0: Well, that is a great ending point. Dr. Ferguson, we have soaked up almost 90
17:14
Speaker0: minutes of your time and I have enjoyed every second of it. Thank you for your
17:19
Speaker0: time. Thank you for your insights.
17:21
Speaker0: Thank you for pastoring and being a scholar. We don't have enough of those.
17:24
Speaker0: And God bless you and your family.
17:27
Speaker0: You guys have been great to us on the podcast and we really appreciate you.
17:30
Speaker1: Absolutely. See you guys.
17:32
Speaker0: Okay, that was short, but pretty deep. Some of you might have some fried brains right now,
17:37
Speaker0: so let's hit a refreshing South American beverage really quick to perk us up,
17:42
Speaker0: and then we're going to talk about the deep academic world of the Bible and
17:46
Speaker0: why it's important for regular church members to know these sorts of things.
17:51
Speaker0: So today, we are reviewing an interesting soda from Brazil, Guarana, Antarctica Zero.
18:02
Speaker0: The diet version of Brazil's national soft drink. Have you ever tried this before, JC?
18:08
Speaker0: I have not. It looks good. I like the colors. Solid green right there.
18:12
Speaker0: Yeah, it's really pretty. That's a Guadagnac fruit on the front of it,
18:17
Speaker0: which reminds me of some Guadagnac trivia.
18:20
Speaker0: Number one, it is made from the Amazonian Guadagnac plant,
18:25
Speaker0: which is called the eyeball fruit, because the cherries-looking things,
18:30
Speaker0: The fruits of the Guadagnac plant look exactly like creepy bloodshot eyeballs when you cut them open.
18:37
Speaker0: Number two, the Guadagnac berry has twice the jolt of caffeine,
18:42
Speaker0: maybe as much as four times because Guadagnac berries and coffee berries both have caffeine,
18:49
Speaker0: but Guadagnac has two to four times more caffeine than coffee berries.
18:55
Speaker0: And finally, as I mentioned earlier, this is Brazil's Coca-Cola killer.
19:00
Speaker0: In fact, it was so popular in Brazil that Coca-Cola had to make a competitor
19:06
Speaker0: called Kuat just to try to get into the Guadagnar market.
19:10
Speaker0: So what do you think this is going to taste like, JC? Honestly,
19:14
Speaker0: this is the first time I've ever heard about this drink, but it has been a long
19:17
Speaker0: day at work and hearing about caffeine, that's exciting.
19:21
Speaker0: I'm looking forward to this. I have no idea what that fruit tastes like,
19:25
Speaker0: but that's, that's going to be cool.
19:26
Speaker0: Okay. Let's open her up and give it a shot. Let's do it.
19:31
Speaker0: It's a nice, crisp open. I like that.
19:35
Speaker0: It's definitely got more of a smell than our soda from last week,
19:39
Speaker0: the liquid death billionaire drink.
19:42
Speaker0: Yeah, I like that smell. That's appealing.
19:46
Speaker0: Okay, let's give her a drink.
19:48
Speaker0: Wow. Wow. That is a really interesting, different flavor.
19:56
Speaker0: What is that?
19:58
Speaker0: That's insane. That's good. That is really good.
20:02
Speaker0: It is good, but I don't even know what to compare it to.
20:07
Speaker0: Yeah, I don't even know how to describe that. I don't either.
20:11
Speaker0: It's a really interesting taste that's very uncommon for an American.
20:19
Speaker0: It's almost like a citrus grape.
20:23
Speaker0: If a grape had a little bit of that lemon taste, almost, something close to that.
20:30
Speaker0: Yeah. I'm getting a little bit of maybe cherry.
20:35
Speaker0: I don't know. It's sort of like a cherry ginger
20:38
Speaker0: ale but even there it's not it's
20:41
Speaker0: just different there there's nothing in america that
20:45
Speaker0: i'm aware of and i've drank a lot of soft drinks
20:48
Speaker0: that's like this one this is good it's
20:51
Speaker0: a good it's a zero it's a guadalas zero
20:54
Speaker0: which means no calories which does mean artificial
20:57
Speaker0: sweeteners but it doesn't have any aftertaste it's really good
21:00
Speaker0: hmm what do you think what are you going to give it jc honestly
21:04
Speaker0: this one's going to be really high i i drink a coke
21:07
Speaker0: zero probably almost every single day thanks to
21:10
Speaker0: your wonderful supply of them and this might
21:13
Speaker0: be a competitor with my beloved coke
21:16
Speaker0: zero i'm gonna have to give that a four point
21:20
Speaker0: i i like that that's good
21:23
Speaker0: i'm going to dial it back just a bit but still very high for me as well 4.5
21:29
Speaker0: so bravo brazil for your wonderful job good job guadalanta antarctica zero yeah
21:39
Speaker0: i think i'm gonna finish this whole thing this is this is good,
21:42
Speaker0: Okay, well, we'll see you next week for more Soda Reviews.
21:46
Speaker0: Thanks for your time, JC. Hope you can sleep tonight.
21:50
Speaker0: And we've already discussed one reason why we had a discussion with Dr.
21:55
Speaker0: Ferguson today on textual criticism.
21:58
Speaker0: Bible variants, all the Bible nerd stuff, the origin of the Bible.
22:02
Speaker0: Let me give you one more reason that I alluded to earlier. This is very personal.
22:06
Speaker0: I grew up going to two great churches in my youth, Hilldale Baptist Church in
22:11
Speaker0: Centerpoint, Alabama, and Briarwood Presbyterian in the Altadena-Cahaba Heights area of Birmingham.
22:17
Speaker0: Both those churches had pastors who taught me in no uncertain terms to value
22:22
Speaker0: the Word of God, obey it, and live by it. They honored the Word with their teaching
22:28
Speaker0: and they taught it well, and I am so grateful for that.
22:32
Speaker0: However, and this is not a complaint at all about either of those two churches,
22:36
Speaker0: I may have simply missed what I'm about to talk about because young Chase was
22:40
Speaker0: an ADHD rascal that would rather read a book in church than listen to the pastor.
22:45
Speaker0: So it is that I might have just flat missed any discussions on the origins of
22:51
Speaker0: the Bible, on manuscript transmission, on paleography, textual criticism.
22:57
Speaker0: Textual variance, all that sort of thing.
23:00
Speaker0: And when I finally began to learn about those things in college and grad school,
23:04
Speaker0: they kind of blew me away.
23:06
Speaker0: I was initially overwhelmed by the origins of the Bible.
23:10
Speaker0: We don't have Paul's original letters or the original gospels.
23:14
Speaker0: Some of the handwritten Bible manuscripts have variants.
23:18
Speaker0: The story of the woman caught in adultery and the longer ending of Mark isn't
23:22
Speaker0: in the earliest and most reliable Bible manuscripts.
23:26
Speaker0: What about for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
23:31
Speaker0: That also isn't in the earliest and most reliable Bible manuscripts,
23:35
Speaker0: but I grew up saying that every week in church.
23:40
Speaker0: So finding these things out in rapid succession shook my faith,
23:46
Speaker0: and it led me to a time of deep, dark doubt that I shared with no pastor or
23:50
Speaker0: friend, because I reasoned if my pastors growing up never mentioned this stuff.
23:55
Speaker0: Maybe they didn't know about it.
23:57
Speaker0: So I was alone and eaten up with doubt, and it was really a deep dive academic study,
24:03
Speaker0: actually, of the resurrection of Jesus and all of the many evidences that point
24:08
Speaker0: towards that event happening in historical reality that God used to bring me
24:13
Speaker0: out of that doubting period and largely made me who I am today,
24:17
Speaker0: a pastor who cares deeply about the Word of God and the origins of the Word
24:22
Speaker0: of God too, and a guy who wants to equip church members to not go through the same experience I had.
24:29
Speaker0: So let's talk briefly about the science and academics of biblical study,
24:34
Speaker0: Starting with a basic question, what is textual criticism and why does it not
24:40
Speaker0: mean criticizing the Bible?
24:42
Speaker0: Well, Dr. Michael Kruger is a New Testament textual criticism expert.
24:46
Speaker0: He's written a great beginner's article on the topic, which is on the gospelcoalition.org
24:52
Speaker0: website, but I also have it linked on our website, everychurchflourishing.com,
24:58
Speaker0: under the episode notes for this episode, episode 20.
25:02
Speaker0: And I want to use his definition of textual criticism here and his explanation of it.
25:09
Speaker0: Dr. Kruger writes, Outside of archaeology, the only way we can know what might
25:13
Speaker0: have happened during a period of human history is because someone somewhere wrote about it.
25:19
Speaker0: While people wrote on a wide range of materials from stone to pottery to wood,
25:24
Speaker0: the most common were papyrus or parchment, which are essentially ancient versions of paper.
25:30
Speaker0: If a person wrote a historical or literary document and wanted to see that document
25:35
Speaker0: distributed, then copies would have to be made.
25:38
Speaker0: Copies were done by hand, usually by trained scribes, although sometimes by amateurs.
25:45
Speaker0: As documents wore out over time, and they do wear out because they're made of
25:50
Speaker0: paper and animal skin and papyrus,
25:55
Speaker0: more copies would have to be made so that the text could be preserved for future generations.
26:01
Speaker0: During the copying process of any ancient document, scribes occasionally made mistakes.
26:08
Speaker0: Most were just ordinary slips of the pen or spelling differences or word order changes,
26:15
Speaker0: accidental omissions or doubling of letters or whatever, but now and then scribal
26:21
Speaker0: changes would be more significant.
26:23
Speaker0: This means that when we compare copies of any historical document,
26:27
Speaker0: there are likely to be points where the text is different.
26:30
Speaker0: Unlike books published by a printing press where all copies are usually exactly
26:36
Speaker0: the same, hand-copied manuscripts have inevitable textual variations and
26:42
Speaker0: Pretty much every copy of the Bible, every copy of every book of the Bible was
26:47
Speaker0: hand-copied up until almost 1500.
26:51
Speaker0: So essentially nearly 1500 years of church history, our scriptures were copied by hand.
27:00
Speaker0: Here we come to the core purpose of the discipline of textual criticism,
27:04
Speaker0: which is to restore as much as possible the original wording of any historical
27:10
Speaker0: document in this case. the Bible.
27:13
Speaker0: Other aspects of the discipline are important, but there are debates about how
27:18
Speaker0: accessible the original text is and whether we can ever really reach it after hundreds,
27:26
Speaker0: over a thousand years of manual copying.
27:29
Speaker0: Regardless, neither of these things changes the main goal of the discipline
27:34
Speaker0: of textual criticism, which again is working towards.
27:39
Speaker0: Reconstructing the original text that came off of the pen of Paul,
27:44
Speaker0: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.
27:46
Speaker0: The core purpose of the discipline of textual criticism is to restore,
27:51
Speaker0: as much as possible, the original wording of any historical document.
27:57
Speaker0: Now, that reveals that this discipline doesn't just pertain to the study of
28:02
Speaker0: the New Testament or the Old Testament.
28:04
Speaker0: Every ancient text is in the same boat. It's a good reminder that the presence
28:09
Speaker0: of textual variance is not
28:11
Speaker0: anything scandalous or shocking or unusual.
28:15
Speaker0: On the contrary, it's natural and ordinary. It's an inevitable part of studying any historical text.
28:22
Speaker0: Now, that's not to suggest, says Dr. Kruger, that all ancient documents are
28:27
Speaker0: transmitted with equal degrees of fidelity.
28:30
Speaker0: Some are preserved better than others.
28:33
Speaker0: And a number of scholars have argued that the New Testament has been transmitted
28:37
Speaker0: with an impressive degree of faithfulness. And I wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Kruger there.
28:44
Speaker0: Now, from what he said, I'd like to share with you pastors and teachers four
28:48
Speaker0: ways to shepherd your flock through these issues, all of which come from a great
28:53
Speaker0: article by Justin Dillehay,
28:55
Speaker0: who is a pastor and a scholar, that is also linked on our site and that offers these four tips.
29:02
Speaker0: Number one, pastor or leader, know your flock. How well you can shepherd them
29:08
Speaker0: through these academic discussions of the Bible will vary depending on the size of your church.
29:13
Speaker0: But as much as possible, know what kind of people sit in your congregation.
29:18
Speaker0: What are their backgrounds?
29:19
Speaker0: What Bible translations are they using?
29:22
Speaker0: He says that in his context, some of my older hearers use the King James Version.
29:28
Speaker0: Others come from a fundamentalist King James only background or have friends in those circles.
29:34
Speaker0: Be aware that some people have been trained to believe that it is a satanic
29:39
Speaker0: conspiracy when modern translations remove passages and phrases in the King
29:45
Speaker0: James Version because they don't appear to represent the original text of the Bible.
29:51
Speaker0: You may have found this argument easy to laugh about with your seminary buddies
29:55
Speaker0: back in the day, but you'll feel differently when you're dealing with a troubled
29:59
Speaker0: or angry parishioner who actually believes it.
30:02
Speaker0: When you assume everyone listening to you shares all your assumptions.
30:07
Speaker0: It's easy to speak about the idiots out there who believe stupid things.
30:12
Speaker0: You need to be aware that some of those people are probably sitting in your
30:16
Speaker0: audience and they're not idiots.
30:18
Speaker0: They're sheep in the flock of Jesus and they deserve to be taught and shepherded, not belittled.
30:25
Speaker0: Number two, textual criticism may sound bad. Who wants a pastor who criticizes
30:30
Speaker0: the text of scripture, right?
30:31
Speaker0: But it's actually not. Textual criticism, strange name I know,
30:36
Speaker0: is the unavoidable process of evaluating different manuscript readings in order
30:42
Speaker0: to determine what the authors originally wrote.
30:45
Speaker0: Maybe you've heard that there are thousands of ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.
30:50
Speaker0: Well, what do we do with those manuscripts, especially when there are different things written on them?
30:57
Speaker0: And there are sometimes extra spaces, extra letters, extra mistakes,
31:02
Speaker0: whatever, because these things were hand copied.
31:06
Speaker0: And I know, Pastor, you're not an expert in textual criticism and you shouldn't
31:11
Speaker0: pretend to be, but that doesn't mean you can't learn from the experts.
31:16
Speaker0: And today we have more resources than we ever have before. For instance,
31:22
Speaker0: evangelical textual critic Daniel Wallace, I'm a big fan of his,
31:27
Speaker0: has entire courses available for free online.
31:30
Speaker0: There is a new book we mentioned earlier in the interview by Peter Gurry and
31:35
Speaker0: Elijah Hickson, Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism that Can
31:40
Speaker0: Help Pastors Out, and James R.
31:44
Speaker0: White has done a great job of teaching why a Christian should not be King James
31:51
Speaker0: Only in his book, The King James Only Controversy.
31:56
Speaker0: These kinds of teachings don't have to be boring.
31:59
Speaker0: Christians want to know why their Bibles differ from each other,
32:03
Speaker0: and you can teach them the basics.
32:05
Speaker0: Number three, assure them these issues are not new.
32:09
Speaker0: Christians who worry about the omissions in new translations are usually the
32:13
Speaker0: kind of people who have a respect for the old and reservations about the new.
32:17
Speaker0: That's why it can be helpful to assure them that though these issues might be
32:21
Speaker0: new to them, they are not new to the church.
32:25
Speaker0: For example, while recently studying the missing ending of the Lord's Prayer,
32:29
Speaker0: I discovered that William Tyndale didn't include it in his first English translation
32:34
Speaker0: of the Bible all the way back in 1526.
32:38
Speaker0: Knowing that Tyndale is someone who my congregation reveres as a godly martyr
32:43
Speaker0: as well as a good Bible translator, I made sure to share that fact with them.
32:48
Speaker0: And I've also found it useful to point out that the original King James Version
32:53
Speaker0: included textual variants in the margin, and the translators defended this practice
32:59
Speaker0: against the same objections that some people still have.
33:02
Speaker0: If it was good enough for the King James translators, it'll likely be good enough for them.
33:08
Speaker0: These things are not new to the church. They have been discussed on paper since at least the 300s,
33:16
Speaker0: probably much earlier. Finally, number four, pastor, leader.
33:21
Speaker0: Bible teacher, model faithfulness to the word of God.
33:24
Speaker0: Your congregation doesn't just need to trust God's word. They need to be able to trust you.
33:30
Speaker0: You can say all the right things, but it won't matter if they're not convinced
33:33
Speaker0: that you trust the Bible and would never dream of tampering with it.
33:37
Speaker0: Hopefully, they'll charitably grant you their trust at the beginning,
33:41
Speaker0: but over time, you need to earn it. You need to model both theological integrity
33:45
Speaker0: and also intellectual virtue.
33:48
Speaker0: I can't promise that everyone will like you, and you won't convince everyone,
33:52
Speaker0: but over time, your example, and hopefully your integrity,
33:57
Speaker0: will exert influence, and people will see that the presence of textual variance
34:02
Speaker0: in the Bible doesn't need to shake anyone's faith.
34:06
Speaker0: And perhaps when young people in your church get to college and they read Bart
34:10
Speaker0: Ehrman, they'll be able to say, hey, this is nothing new.
34:14
Speaker0: I learned about this sort of thing in youth group or Sunday school or even on Sunday morning.
34:20
Speaker0: Well, amen to all that. I hope this will equip you pastor and leader in the
34:24
Speaker0: church to better shepherd and lead the people you have been entrusted with.
34:29
Speaker0: And I hope that our non-pastor listeners have learned a bit more about the Bible as we have discussed it.
34:34
Speaker0: The deeper I go into an academic study of the Bible, the more convinced I am
34:40
Speaker0: that the Bible accurately and powerfully preserves the Word of God,
34:44
Speaker0: and it contains everything we need for life and godliness.
34:48
Speaker0: That's all for now. Next week, Pastor Christopher and I sit down with Dr.
34:52
Speaker0: Kathy Smith for a wide-ranging conversation that centers on helping women in the church flourish.
34:59
Speaker0: Stay tuned. Good day to you, and God bless you.