The Missing Scriptures

Bahnsen gives three basic tests to use when evaluating a proposition. First, consistency, is the proposition given consistent with itself? Second, arbitrariness/conjecture, is the proposition based on a premise or is it based on an unwarranted presupposition? In philosophy, Reductio ad absurdum, and in logic, the sliding slope fallacy (these are functionally the same), what are the logical consequences when the pro

position is carried out consistently (the redefinition of marriage is guilty of this)? Do they lead you to the absurd or contradiction? Then moving from the particulars to the universals, the worldview that is under girding the proposition consistent within itself? Does it cohere with reality? And is it existentially viable?

But then again, for those of you who are familiar with Van Til, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, Frame, and the like will recognize something here. One must be standing on a Christian foundation in order to even ask these questions. For we are assuming that the universe is uniform at its most basic foundation, which cannot be explained by Post-Modernism which by definition is anti-foundational.

What are The Missing Scriptures? These are texts that have now been found that before they were lost, we actually knew a lot about. For example, Irenaeus, a church father from the second century, wrote against these primarily Gnostic texts in his work called “Against Heresies”. But, in 1945 in Nag Hammadi, Egypt 52 texts were uncovered. Many of which were “gospels” or works that dealt with the life and ministry of Jesus in one w

ay or another. The Nag Hammadi Scriptures, as they are now called, created quite the stir when they were published. Starting in the late 1970's Elaine Pagels published a book called “The Gnostic Gospels”. And this was the beginning of a flood of information that was brought into the public square.

First off, titling these texts “The Missing Scriptures” is a prejudicial conjecture in itself. It, from the start, implies that we're missing something. When the fact of it is, many of the texts have been known about since the 2^nd and 3^rd Century. Also, such books as The Shepherd of Hermes, Didache, 1^st and 2^nd Clement were considered orthodox in the early church and were read, but were not canonized. So, the title, “Missing Scriptures” is misleading, therefore I will be referring to the herterodoxical texts as merely, “The Gnostic Texts”.

Define Gnosticism: Gnosticism comes from the Greek word “gnosis” which means “knowledge”. There are many varying forms of Gnosticism. Gnosticism wasn't an organized religion like Christianity. There was a pagan Gnosticism that had no Christian elements in it. There was a “Christian Gnosticism” which was derived from Christianity. So it is very difficult to define. But basically Gnostic Christianity was basically a combination of Greek philosophy and Christian symbolism (similarly to what we see in the Emergent Church today). Gnostic Christianity emphasized a dualism, specifically that ideas and the spirit were good and all matter was corrupt. It had a creation story which one of the underling gods were responsible and basically screwed up. Some versions of the Creation story involve what is called “the divine feminine” usually by the name of Sophia. These Gnostic texts deny a physical resurrection, on the contrary to the Da Vinci Code, they posit a Jesus who is completely “god” and not human.

A commitment to their presupposition that there is no personal God, therefore the Bible can be nothing more than just literature, has created a

profound inconsistency that these Scholars are guilty of. Just more liberal historical revisionism, at the root they are trying to push the date of these texts as far back as they possibly can and date the N.T. Texts as late as they can. therefore, creating a hodge-podge pluralism of multiple Christianities. These alternative Christianities deserve to have an equal hearing to what we call orthodoxy. And what this does is create a skepticism which asks, why can't these other texts give us a better explanation of who Jesus was? How to gain salvation, our origination, meaning, etc. And then based upon this new context of early Christianities they interpret the New Testament text. Thus, making our New Testament as viable as the others. The problem is, is that we don't have enough information about the formulation of Gnosticism to come to anything as conclusive as these scholars say we can. Its a lot of conjectural work on their part. But what we do know, is that this full formed Gnosticism is much later than the New Testament.

When one realizes that the problem with their hermeneutic is that they assume that the missing gospel texts are as valid as the New Testament and vis versa. And that there is no God who is there and has spoken, it makes sorting out the issues clearer, not easier, but clearer. This is why I believe we as Christians have to cultivate a discernment that can recognize the underlying philosophical presuppositional commitments of the unregenerate.

The missing gospel MSS tradition vs. N.T. Textual tradition. Scholars are very inconsistent on this point. If we can't know what the originals of the N.T. are, how is it even remotely possible that we can trust in, less than a handful of Gnostic MSS? What if the Gospel of Judas was corrupted? How about the Gospel of Thomas? If we have such a vast range of MSS for the New Testament, and we see that the scribes couldn't get it right with the kind of resources that were available to them. Why should we give any amount of credence to these? Why should we even consider interpreting the N.T. in the light of these texts when the N.T. is the best attested book in all of antiquity?

When comparing the Gnostic texts with the Old and New Testament we see a very clear line of distinction. There is no continuity between the Old Testament and the Gnostic texts. But there is an amazing amount of continuity between the 27 books of the New Testament and the Old. The Gnostic texts are also, completely antithetical from a systematical standpoint. Gnosticism is polytheistic and the N.T. is monotheistic. Beyond, the reliability of the New Testament which we looked at last time, I mentioned earlier that Gnosticism wasn't an organized religion, this is important. But one aspect that we didn't have time to look into, is the oral tradition, the memory in community of the New Testament in conjuncti

on with the written tradition contained within the body of believers and the role of the eye witnesses. We see a body of texts in the N.T. that are set in history, and coherent within the body of believers in the early church. But when we set this against the Gnostic texts, these texts are primarily esoteric teachings that were delivered secretly to one individual, and only some of the followers of Christ will attain to this true gnosis. Not even the apostles reached this state of enlightenment. This shows us that they are lacking any kind of historicity. The best way to describe the Gnostic texts, if I may borrow the liberals terminology, a historical revision of Christianity.

I'm going to give a basic summary of some of these Gnostic texts and notice the differences between them and the Bible

The Coptic Gospel of Thomas, one of the Nag Hammadi texts, which has 114 sayings of Jesus. You'll find that 25 percent of it sounds very familiar because its very much like the Synoptics and John, you have the parable of the mustard seed, saying like, blessed is the poor for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, or the saying, if a blind man l

eads another blind man they both fall into a pit. Another 25 percent of it is sort of like the Synoptics and John. And then another 50% of it, you read and think, this is weird, because its not at all like the Synoptics and John. Such as, “If the flesh came into being because of Spirit its a wonder, but is spirit came into being because of the body, its a wonder of wonders. Indeed I am amazed at how this great wealth has made its home in this poverty.” Or how about, “Jesus said, who has ever come to understand the world has found only a corpse, and whoever has found a corpse, is superior to this world.” This is very gnostic as it teaches that whoever finds that this world is a corpse then they have reached true gnosis and are saved, and there are several more like these sayings.

Thomas clearly has some of its origin in the traditions of the church. Some of it, obviously doesn't come from the Synoptics and John. In the end this is why this book was not read in the early church. Even Origin, from the early 3^rd century, when listing the Gospels that we don't read in the Churches because they are not recognized, he mentioned the Gospel of Thomas by name. In one section of the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, “I am the all, split a piece of wood and I am there, lift up a stone and I am there.”

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, this is one of the earlier gospels that we have outside of the four Gospels in the N.T. This book is called an infancy gospel because deals with a time in Jesus' life that the canonical gospels are virtually silent about, namely his young life. The Synoptics and John do not talk much at all about Jesus' young life. In this book, Jesus had all the power that he did as an adult but as a young boy had a mischievous streak in him. He used this power sometimes in order to hurt those who bugged him.

The gospel starts out with Jesus as a five year old boy. In the first episode, we're told that Jesus was playing by the ford of a stream, and he gathers into a pool the waters that are rushing through the stream. He then orders these waters to become pure, and they're cleansed immediately. Jesus then takes some mud beside the stream, and he forms twelve sparrows. Unfortunately it was the Sabbath when he did this and a Jewish man walks by and sees what Jesus has done. Jesus has done work on the Sabbath. So the man goes o

ff to tell Joseph, Jesus' father, and reports to him, “look! Your child at the stream has taken mud and formed twelve sparrows. He's profaned the Sabbath.” When Joseph came to the place and saw what had happened, he cried out to Jesus, “why are you doing what is forbidden on the Sabbath.” but Jesus clapped his hands and cried to the sparrows, “be gone!” And the sparrows took flight and went off chirping. Thus, Jesus has destroyed all evidence of his wrong doing.

Jesus is playing with another little boy by the pool. The son of Anis the Scribe, takes a willow branch and scatters the water that Jesus has collected into this pool. Jesus is irritated with him after seeing him do this, and says to him (five years old), “You unrighteous, irreverent idiot! What did the pools of water do to harm you? See now you also will be withered like a tree, and you will never bear leaves, or root, or fruit!” And immediately that child was completely withered. Jesus left and returned home, but the parents of the withered child carried him away, mourning his lost youth, they brought him to Joseph and began to accuse him, “What kind of child do you have who does such things?”

On another occasion another kid is running through the street, and he runs up to Jesus and he bangs him on his shoulder. This also irritates Jesus, and Jesus turns to him and says, “You'll go no further on your way!” The child falls down dead.

At some point the parents in the village get upset, especially with Joseph and Mary for having a kid like this who is out of control, so they urge them to do something. Joseph decides, well what we need to do is to give the boy an education (this is the Gnostic element to the book). So Joseph and Mary send Jesus off to a teacher. This teacher knows about Jesus' reputation so he's a little bit nervous. So he decides, first I'll teach him Greek and then I'll teach him Hebrew. So he goes to teach him how to read, first he needs to learn the alphabet. So he says, “ok Jesus repeat after me, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon. Repeat after me, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon.” Jesus doesn't say anything, and the teacher gets upset, and asks, “Jesus why don't you reply?” Jesus says to him, “You tell me the power of alpha and I'll tell you the power of beta,” the teacher thinks this is a smart aleck reply, smacks him upside the h

ead. Jesus withers him on the spot.

Another instance, Jesus is playing with a bunch of kids on top of a roof. One of the kids trips and falls off the roof and lands on the ground and dies. The other children see this and are frightened and run off. But Jesus goes over to the edge of the roof and looks down and sees the dead boy there. Just then, of course, the dead child's parents come up and they see their dead child, Zenon, and they see Jesus on the roof and think, he's at it again, so they start accusing Jesus. So Jesus leaps off of the roof, lands next to the dead child and yells, “Zenon, rise up, tell me, did I throw you down?” Zenon rises from the dead and says, “No Lord, you did not throw me down, you have raised me up.” From then on, Jesus starts using his powers for the good. He heals those that he has withered, he gives sight back to those that he has blinded, he raises those that have died. The Gospel of Thomas ends with Jesus arguing in the temple with the teachers of the law, the story that we have in Luke 2. (Summary taken from Dr. Bart Ehrman, The Other Gospels)

The Gospel of Judas, creation is the task of a thir

d level underling god. He messes up and then god has to go about the process of recovering what has been done. And the way he does it is he puts this divine spark/ spirit in people and the only thing that lives, in the redemption process is this divine spark. There is no concept of sin, no concept of even responsibility. It also presents a Jesus who laughs frequently at the foolishness of his disciples, that is except Judas.

The Gospel of Peter, this gospel comes to us in a fragment, it is not complete. But it was found in a tomb with a dead monk. It begins in the middle of a sentence and ends in the middle of a sentence. It begins in the middle of the passion narrative where Jesus is on trial. It then goes on to give an account of the resurrection. But during the crucifixion, it says that Jesus was silent as if he had no pain. An early church father noted that this book had a docetic Christology. He wasn't really human, he only appeared to be human. This is very Gnostic. The part where this is really evident is its account of the resurrection. There was a guard posted at the tomb of Roman Soldiers. Right before dawn, the skies open up and two angelic beings descend from heaven, and as they descend, the stone in front of the tomb rolls away by itself. The two angels go into the tomb. Then there comes out of the tomb, three people, two of them supporting the other, with a cross following behind them. So the three of them walk out and

a cross emerges behind them. The heads of the two supporting the other reached up to the sky but the head of the one they were leading, went up above the skies. They heard a voice from the skies, “have you preached to those who are asleep.” and the cross replied, “Yes”.

The Apocalypse of Peter, Peter has a vision of the crucifixion scene, and he sees a figure laughing in heaven while the crucifixion is taking place. So Peter asks Jesus about this, and Jesus' response is, “what's going on is, is that the spirit that occupied Jesus' body departed before the crucifixion. And it was actually the substitute that was crucified.” Meanwhile, Jesus is laughing in heaven because he has tricked them. They think they're crucifying Him but in fact, they haven't. The spirit of Jesus occupies a body but there is no true incarnation.

If society wants us to accept these other tex

ts, then they're going to have a huge problem, as these texts present an exclusively deified Jesus than the Synoptics and John. But I am sure they have their reasons why they still won't worship him.

A central element to this whole topic is the issue of the Canonization of Scripture, to which I will be discussing next week. The New Perspective on Paul is very important, but its too complex for a 30-45 minute lecture.

An Introduction to Textual Criticism and

the Reliability of the New Testament

Definitions: Textual Criticism does not mean that you are putting the Bible under judgment. It does not mean that you're putting the Bible under a skeptical eye. Unfortunately, this area of study has developed a bad name because of the amount of liberals that are thriving in this field. Everybody does textual criticism just not everybody does it well. The conclusion whether or not the Bible is reliable, is itself a textual critical judgment.

There are two kinds of Textual Criticism: Higher and Lower

• Lower Textual Criticism involves the study of the biblical manuscripts, written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, as well as ancient translations into other languages like Latin or Sahidic or Coptic. The goal of lower criticism is to reproduce the original biblical text from this vast wealth of information. When practiced consistently, this kind of criticism should not involve subjective theories regarding authorship, alleged editors of the text, etc. It deals with the text and the facts. (The King James Only Controversy, Dr. James R. White)
  

• Higher Textual Criticism is not concerned primarily with the manuscripts but with questions of the form of the text and what this allegedly can tell us about the process of the text's writing and transmission. Unfortunately, higher criticism is often very subjective. (The King James Only Controversy, Dr. James R. White)

The kinds of reactions amongst Christians when somebody suggests there mere topic of Textual Criticism is usually something along these lines, “I have my Bible and if this was good enough for Paul, its good enough for me.” My question is, how did you get your Bible in its present form? Through textual critics.

If we really have the truth, then we have nothing to fear. It is because of this that Christians through out the centuries have dealt with the hard things of the faith. If we're willing to ask the hard questions of the Incarnation and how exactly that works and the being and function of the Trinity, yet none of us truly understands it. Why is it we hesitate at a topic such as this? I do firmly believe that a true study of the field will help one's growth and one's appreciation for God and who He is. Our present day definition of inerrancy is an anachronism upon history. What do I mean by this? Before the printing press, the church fathers and such did not have a concept of perfect word for word preservation that we do today. They knew of variants and yet, still held to it as the Word of God. I do believe that we can too.

The fact of it is, the Bible didn't float down from heaven wrapped in celestial blue silk on gold plates. But yet, that is how the Bible is treated today. Which in my assessment, dishonors church history, dishonors God's working in history through godly men. It dishonors the men who, through persecution, copied these books. Scripture, preservation, and canonization came to us, by God's Sovereign control over history, in a very natural way. Has God worked in History any other way?

When we teach we must be prepared, when preparing a study, to remember that with such a wide variety of translations today, the text that you are going to be teaching out of, might not be in one of the Bibles that someone in the congregation has. I've heard entire sermons on texts that were not in the body of passage of the translation that I had in front of me. Today, in this day and age, it is not good to teach on a text that, for the rest of the congregation might not be in their Bibles. This can be very disturbing to people. This area of study has huge practical implications.

Last week I presented various Textual objections such as:

• We can't be sure of how reliable the New Testament is because we don't have the copies of the copies of the copies

• Amongst the manuscripts that we have there are over 400,000 variants, there are only 138,162 words in the entire New Testament. That's nearly 3 variants per word. We have three possibilities for every word, how can we believe the Bible to be reliable?

Non Christians mock us for our ignorance, and this should not be why they should be mocking us.

So, let's start out with a balanced look at the facts:

• Yes, it is true that no two manuscripts are identical, and that there are over 400,000 variants. We must recognize this. But what else are we not being told?

• 99% of all of the variants do not impact the meaning of the text. The majority being spelling errors, non-translatables, and word order.

For example, there are 16 ways one could say “Peter loves Paul” in Koine Greek. Just imagine, if there are 16 ways to say a three word sentence, and there are 138,162 words in the new testament, what are the possibilities of variation? You have over a million possibilities for variation just in word order alone. Within the spelling, this includes the movable “v” and capitalization.

So 1% of 400,000 equals to 4,000 meaningful textual variants out of 138,162 words, is 2.9% or, 1 meaningful variant every three pages. That's a totally different picture then what Dr. Bart Ehrman paints, and Ehrman does know this.

What they also don't tell you, is that the more manuscripts you have for a particular text, the more variants you will have. If we had only one manuscript, how many textual variants would there be? None. But if you only had one manuscript of the New Testament then how much confidence would we have? So, the more manuscripts you have, the more variants you will have also since they are hand written documents. Reliability and variants go hand in hand. The first printed edition of the Bible didn't come into being until 1516, even then it took awhile for it to become the predominant mechanism to be utilized for publication. That is over 1,500 years of hand written copies, and the errors are predominantly spelling and word order. That sounds like divine providence to me.

We have, as of Nov. '08, 5,752 manuscript copies of the Greek New Testament. And there are roughly 3 new MSS being discovered each year, (this doesn't mean discovered in the sense of unearthed). Each roughly containing 200 pages. That adds up to be about 1.2 million pages of hand written text. 4,000 meaningful variants in 1.2 million pages of text. Are you starting to get the real picture?

As Doctor James White noted, “A fact outside of its context is a weapon for destruction.”

The question becomes, do we have the originals? Scholars for centuries have been saying yes. I completely agree. We have the originals. When you have per se three variants to any specific reading you can be sure that one of those is the original. Its just that sometimes we're not sure which one it is. The reason for this, is that when a variant entered the text, it stayed there. This is called the tenacity of the text.

So what happens? Critics of Christianity will regularly present our copying tradition as the phone game. But the fact of it is, is that this is gross ignorance of history. Instead of one line of transmission we have multiple lines of transmission covering large areas of land and even intersecting. Early Christians found the spreading of the Gospel to be essential. So there were no controlling elements of the text. It exploded.

So when you have a specific reading you compare it with other lines of transmission to verify whether or not the reading in front of you is authentic and vis-versa . I am over simplifying things, therefore verging on error. But anyways, that is why in your Bibles, when you see a footnote number, it'll take you to a portion of the text that reads something like, “other mss read.....” The reason for this is that the textual critics aren't sure which one has better attestation. Dr. Robert Bowman gives an illustration that describes our present condition. It's like a 1000 piece puzzle, with 1010 pieces in the box. The work becomes putting the pieces together to show the big picture and figure out which pieces are extra.

Comparing the rich history of the New Testament to three other popular religions:

What a religion looks like under a controlling rule.

Jehovah's Witnesses – The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, being Jehovah's voice on earth, came out in 1950 with their own translation of the New Testament called “New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures”. Not only are there massive changes between the KJV and ASV to their NWT but there are even changes between the 1950 edition and the 1984 edition. They even invented a Greek tense in order to justify their rendering of John 1:1.

Mormonism – Not only did Joseph Smith write his own version of the Bible, called, “The Inspired Version” where Joseph Smith added himself in a prophecy in Genesis, but between the first 1830 BOM and the 1981 ed. there are roughly 4,000 purposeful changes.

Islam - A committee was chosen by Abu Bakr, one of those closest to the Prophet, to collect the Qur'an after Muhammad's death. The initial collection was made after the Battle of Yamama, fought in late AD 632... To that point the Qur'an existed mainly as memorized body of Surahs (Chapters). Men called the Qurra (reciters) collected the divine revelation as it came from Muhammad, committing the words to memory. But many of these men died at [the battle of] Yamama, and Umar was concerned that if any if any more died, “a large part of the Qur'an could be lost.” So the collection under the guidance of Zaid bin Thabit was made, and a mushaf (manuscript) was produced and entrusted to Abu Bakr. Even in this collation some materials were found with only one person, raising the important questions of whether portions of the Qur'an already had perished with the Qurra at Yamama. One last thing to note, the third caliph, Uthman, for various reasons called for all copies of the Qur'an to be collected. He then produced an official Qur'an. There were people against this but Uthman had the authority and the military to do it. (The King James Only Controversy, Dr. James R. White)

Post Modernity and the Reliability of the New Testament

Scripture is true by necessity. It is what Bahnsen called the preconditions for intelligibility. The Triune God of Scriptures must exist, and His Word must be true for without it, for without it you cannot make sense of anything. One must have faith in order to reason about that which he is trying to debunk. As Van Til illustrated, its like a little child having to sit in his father's lap in order to slap his father.

When the disciples were struggling with some difficult things, they were asked, "will you leave too?" by Jesus, and they responded "where would we go". The disciples understood that there was nothing else to stand on other than Christ, even under such an extreme difficulty. They didn't understand Jesus' teaching but yet their trust still remained in Him. The presuppositionalist looks at his foundation when asked to give it up and should ask, "where do I go then?" to use a popular line from Luther, "Here I stand I can do no other."

For if Post-Modernism is true, then by necessity it is therefore false. For Post-Modernity claims that we must be skeptical and agnostic about everything. If this is true, then I should be agnostic and skeptical about Post-Modernity. For that matter, I should be skeptical about skepticism and agnosticism, and agnostic about skepticism and agnosticism. This reveals one critical element, specifically that there is a certain amount of certainty that is attainable.

Therefore, if Dr. Bart Ehrman's Post-Modern agnosticism is false we need to bring under harsh scrutiny his usage of facts, his conclusions, and the consistency of his methodology. And when we do so, we find a very biased presentation.

Post-Modernism and the Dethroning of Jesus-

A Presentation of Objections to Christianity

Disclaimer: a large portion of this presentation was taken from various sources to which I'm greatly indebted to. Please see the bottom for the list. Also, in this presentation, I was pretending to be the average loud-mouth critic/hostile college professor, so I was not trying to be entirely accurate on every point, I was trying to be biased and bigoted. The following is not a trascript per se, they're my notes that I used for my teaching, so I didn't follow word for word in the audio to the notes.

“If it weren't for heresy, Christians wouldn't have to defend their faith, nor define (or refine) their doctrines” ~Me

“The Second most important person in the church today, besides the pastor, is the apologist.”

~Matthew Slick, M.Div., Westminster Theological Seminary

The church today at large is loosing it. It has laid down its weapons at the feet of its foes so as to not get hurt anymore. Inevitably, the church has laid down in the lap of Delilah, and the knife is at the Church's roots. We have given up the war to lay down and be pampered by luxury and pleasure. And in doing so have delivered subsequent generations into bondage. We are seeing the fruit of our own actions today as we see the judgment of God come upon us. May we truly repent and get back into the war, and obey, by God's grace and mercy, His divine commands to, as

1 Peter 3:15 says, “in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” and as

Jude 3,4 says, “Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

(Mock Class: Religion)

What are your kids learning today in our high school and college classrooms? I need you to listen closely to my presentation today. I'm going to bombard you with long words and all kinds of information. I'm going to do this as to hopefully confuse you, frustrate you, and overwhelm you because this is what your children and your grand children will be getting in the world today. So let's just jump right in.

I'm going to practically read this specific presentation, and I'm going to do it fast. I want you to please listen carefully. I want you to feel the weight of the presentation. I don't have 1 or 2 semesters to spend with you in order to eat away at you. So I have to present a lot in a small period of time.

Read 2 Peter 2:1 “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.”

What does this mean to you?

1. Hermeneutics

We, as finite knowers bring our own biases to the text. For example:

List physical traits, then contrast with what you are not

• Male not female

• White not black

• Over twenty not a teenager or elderly

List educational background, then contrast with where you didn't learn

• Public, Private, and Home schooled not just one

• I went to a Christian Language School, I didn't go learn Russian from a Marxist University

• I went to Peru for Bible College, I didn't go to Indonesia for Islamic Studies

This inevitably effects how I look at things. So the questions I ask the the text are a function of who I am. Aren't they? This also means that the kinds of answers the text gives back to me, are shaped in part by who I am. So, is the text a reflection of the author's thought, and you just ask the text certain questions, it gives you certain answers so that you can know what he was trying to say? But how can this be, because the kinds of questions that you ask of the text will be shaped by who you are. You will ask certain questions and you won't ask others. You are not omniscient and you can only ask one question at a time. And that question might be the result of whether or not you had a good night sleep, what kind of education you have, if you've suffered, how hungry you are.

So many things shape how you raise questions, what you can understand, what you can absorb, what you know how to apply.

So is the meaning really in the author at all? You have no way of questioning Paul directly. Did Paul really say everything he wanted to say, and say it perfectly in Romans, of course not. Paul was limited by his time, his, culture, and the place in which he was raised.

We know this because people interpret Romans differently all the time because they bring different presuppositions to the text. Is the meaning really in Romans at all or is the meaning really in the knower who is studying Romans? Which means ultimately that the knowledge, whatever knowledge is, is not necessarily what Paul thinks at all.

For a start, I'm thinking in English of a kind, I'm not thinking in Common Greek and I have no way of questioning him, so maybe in fact the real meaning is not in Paul the real meaning is not really in Paul's text, the real meaning is in what I come up with. If I come up with something a bit different from you well that's the way it is. Because in fact, when you read the text, you're not necessarily reading it directly, you merely come at it from an angle, and I from mine and each time we look at the text, it comes back at me differently from you. Then each time we read the text, it reshapes me and reshapes you. So no longer am I the same as before I read the text and neither are you.

So that means each time I approach the text I will bring a slightly different set of presuppositions from the “me” that I brought yesterday. This sideswiping continues on day after day. Isn't that someway true from your own experience? So is the meaning really in the text or is it in you? So is there really any truth in any objective sense in the text?

2.Linguistics

Words do not have intrinsic meanings. Words develop functional meanings in their polarities with other words. For example take the word trees, T.R.E.E.S. What does “trees” mean? Does “trees” mean those organic things growing outside with branches and leaves. Does “trees”, T.R.E.E.S., that is the written form or the oral form does it intrinsically mean that?

(write the word “TREES” on the white board and ask, “what is that?” Then erase it, and say, “I just wiped all trees from existence.

Is there truly anything intrinsic to the word that makes it mean “trees”. Absolutely not, its arbitrary. Its meaning is only established by its usage. Its meaning is established by its distinction from other similar words. When you go to another culture those hunks of growing wood and leaves outside aren't “trees” they're “arboles” or what have you. For that matter what's to stop you from understanding “TREE” to be better expressed as “flimshineses” provided that everybody knew what you meant when you referred to those hunks of wood as “flimshinesses”. There is nothing intrinsic to “trees” or to “flimshinesses” to mean what we make it to mean.

For that matter, there is no true meaning in sentences, or in paragraphs. The only way you can even understand what I am saying now is because we are part of an interpretive community. If anyone else from came in that was not part of this interpretive community they would not understand what I am saying. Therefore meaning is determined by your interpretive community, don't you see? The other problem to this is that language is totalizing. Every time someone speaks, they are explicitly or implicitly imposing a perspective upon you. Even what I am saying now. Its a part of the human dilemma, therefore we must be skeptical about everything that comes our way. Everything that is said is coming from somebody with presuppositions from their own cultural milieu. Those who argue for the fact that they have the truth are merely ignorant of their own background. How many of you have ever said, or heard your parents say, “If I could only go back in time, I'd sure do such and such differently.” but yet, when they were in that period of time, they were so certain of what they were doing. So since you really can't be certain of anything, just do what you know, do what seems to be true and right for you.

3.Sociology

In the light of this, when we take a sociological look at knowledge and religion. We see, what I referred to before, how interpretive communities function. You understand things a certain way because of the interpretive community that you were raised in. Supposing you had been brought up over in India, would you think the same as you do now? Of course not, matter in fact you'd probably be Buddhist or Hindu. We are all socialized into a frame of reference aren't we? You are a shaped product of your interpretive community in which you were raised. So who's right, who's wrong, should we care? I mean, we really can't know for sure. In the end, he thinks his way, she thinks her way, I think my way because of the particular backgrounds that we have. Culture determines what you know. Truth and certainty are obtainable, I don't think so, its impossible, therefore why should we even desire it? Its much more desirable to celebrate the diversity and learn from each other and unite under one interpretive community. Therefore those who think they have the truth are merely being arrogant, prideful, and destructive. They're just some group trying to impose their way onto some other group.

New Testament Textual Criticism

How many of you would claim to be Bible believing Christians? How many of you know the background to the manuscripts? How many of you know how we got the Bible that we have today?

This may not have occurred to you because when you buy an NIV in California or In Florida, its the the same. No matter what Bible you buy it's always the same books and in the same order smashed between two covers. But this has not always been so.

Before the invention of printing there was no way to reproduce manuscripts accurately time after time after time. Printing wasn't invented until the 16^th century. So what what happening in the 1500 years before that to the New Testament.

Let me start with an example, the book of Mark, we don't really know if Mark wrote this but let's just assume it for now. We don't even know where the book of Mark was written, but traditionally its said that it was written in Rome, so let's assume this too. Mark wrote down a Gospel, an account of the life of Jesus, his ministry, his death, and his resurrection. Mark wrote this account for his own community, he didn't originally plan that his book was going to become part of the Bible.

How was this book actually published? If you wanted to publish a book it meant that you put it into circulation, if the person you lent it to wanted a copy, they had to make a copy. They did this by hand, or by having somebody else copy it by hand. There was no other way to reproduce a book, you had to copy it one page, one chapter, one sentence, one word, one letter at a time. It was a very slow and painstaking process, even if you were professionally trained to do it.

The earliest Christians evidently were not among the intellectual elite of their day. And at that time, as most people in the Roman Empire, most Christians were illiterate. So who was copying this copy of the Gospel of Mark? It would be whoever was in his community in Rome, who was able to copy a text, more than likely for his own house church, and then this copy would get sent to somebody else who wanted a copy for his church and so on.

What happens when somebody copies a document by hand, slowly, painstakingly, one letter at a time. Well, if you don't know what happens, try it yourself sometime. I will tell you what will happen, you'll make mistakes. There will be a time where your mind will wander, you'll get tired, you'll get bored, you'll get uncomfortable and you'll make mistakes.

The first person who copied Mark invariably made mistakes, then how was Mark copied after that? Well, the original would have been copied, then the copy would have been copied, and the problem is, when somebody copied the copy, they not only copied the copy of the original words, they copied the mistakes the first scribe had made. And they made their own mistakes, what happened when someone came along and copied that second copy? That person replicated the mistakes of both of its predecessors, and, made his own mistakes. Copies were made, week after week, year after year, decade after decade.

Unless someone had the bright idea of correcting the mistakes. With the help of technology, we can read various manuscripts with ultra violet light and we can see underlying texts where the scribe has scratched out what he thinks to be an error. So, scribes would make corrections and many times they guessed wrong. So now the errors have multiplied.

This went on for so long that eventually the original book of Mark was lost forever. We no longer have the original Gospel of Mark, nor do we have the copies of the original book of Mark, matter of fact, we don't even have copies of the copies of Mark, to be more blunt, we don't even have copies of the copies of the copies of Mark.

We don't even have an early copy of Mark, the first copy of Mark's Gospel is a text called Papyrus 45 (P45). This Papyrus dates from around the year 220 A.D. We don't exactly know when Mark was written, some think 50 A.D., some think 60 or 70 A.D. If we took the middle, the year 60, that places our first surviving copy of Mark, 160 years after the original. Not from the original, but from the copies of the copies of the copies of the copies of the copies of the original. Even then, P45 has only eight chapters of Mark. So the earliest copy of Mark that we have, doesn't even have the whole thing. It has portions of half of the chapters of Mark.

Our first complete copy of Mark comes from the 4^th century, 300 hundred years after the original. Another problem that I haven't told you yet, is that the earliest form of Koine Greek writing is called Uncial text, it's all capitals and there are no paragraphs, no sentences, no punctuation, matter in fact all the words are smashed together, making it VERY easy to make mistakes. This is the situation that we are facing with all of the books of the New Testament, some even worse. We know that there were mistakes and changes made, how do we know, because all of the copies differ from one another.

We have roughly 5,700 manuscripts in Greek, this includes fragments to complete books. This is a very good thing, the problem is, is that none of them go back to the original because all of them have mistakes in them.

-When a manuscript differs from another manuscript this is called a variant. How many variants do you think there are?

There are more than 400,000 variants, that's more than triple the amount of words in the New Testament. Do these variants matter? Christians often tell me, but the variants don't matter, they don't change anything. I beg to differ, even though the majority don't matter worth a thing, they just demonstrate that scribes back then spell as well as middleschoolers can today. However, there are many variants that matter a lot. Some variants can change the whole mood of a book. Some variants even change the character of Jesus of Nazareth.

Example of Paralepsis Occasioned by Homoeoteleuton

Luke 12:8-9 "And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, 9 but the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.

10. And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.

In many manuscripts this occurs with this specific passage. All of verse 9 is missing. Some scribes would leave out a half of a page, some would leave out a whole page. So, I am not merely suggesting that scribes changed the text, I am saying emphatically that they did and we have the manuscripts to prove it.

Now, how about an example of an intentional change?

Scribal Correctors

One of our best Codices is Codex Vaticanus, Codex Vaticanus contains most of the New Testament and in Hebrews 1:3 we read, “he upholds the universe by the word of his power”. The first scribe that wrote Vaticanus accidentally wrote the word “manifests” instead of “upholds”, the difference between “φέρων” and “φανερων”. So a later scribe noticing this, crossed out “manifest” and put “upholds”. A few centuries later, another scribe came a long and saw what the previous scribal corrector had done, he erased the word “upholds” and wrote back in the error, “manifest” and then wrote a marginal note, in between two of the three columns, and I paraphrase, “fool and nave, leave the old reading don't mess with it.” If two scribes were willing to correct a reading, how many other corrected readings are there that we don't know about?

John 7:53-8:11

Scribes early on took two popular stories and combined them into one. Its a story in John chapter 7:53-8:11, the Pericope Adulterae, or as we know it, the woman caught in adultery. If you look at your Bibles you will see notes that read something like “not in the earliest manuscripts”. So why do they leave this story in, because the publishers want to sell their Bibles. This story is in every Jesus film, even in Mel Gibson's, its such a heart wrenching, so moving that Mel had Jesus flash back to it, and is the favorite of many women, and they know where it is, so it's better not to take it out. They don't want people calling them up and harassing them. But the fact of the matter is, its an invention. Its not in the New Testament, and scholars have known about this for centuries.

Another example of purposeful change: interpolation/redaction

The Last Twelve Verses of Mark, Mark 16:9-20

The book of Mark ends with the women going to the tomb and Jesus isn't there. There's a man in the tomb, and he asks, “are you looking for Jesus of Nazareth, he's not here go tell Peter and the disciples that he'll meet them in Galilee.” And then we're told, Mark 16:8, the women fled from the tomb and they didn't say anything to anyone, for they were afraid. Period, it ends there. The women don't tell anybody, but how can this be, this doesn't make any sense. This is exactly what scribes said too. The Scribes added twelve verses, where the women do go tell the disciples. So within a couple verses you have a complete contradiction. But at least the book ends on a happy note where the women tell the disciples, they go meet Jesus, Jesus rebukes them for their unbelief, they go making disciples, baptizing them in Jesus name, you have weird verses about drinking poison, and snake handling, but at least all's well that ends well. But even if you wanted to debate whether or not these were original, which version? Amongst the later manuscripts there are five versions of this text and they all radically differ from one another.

A couple other problems real quick.

Luke 23:34 “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” is not in the earliest manuscripts, it was added later. But yet it still appears in your Bibles. Did Jesus originally say the prayer or not? It depends on which manuscript you read. This one changes theology big time if it is supposed to be there. For Christ is interceding on behalf of people who will not be forgiven. Therefore the Father doesn't listen to the Son.

Matthew 24:36 where Jesus is supposedly to have said, “nobody knows the day or the hour not even the Son.” Jesus who's supposedly God doesn't know? Well, it depends on which manuscript you read. How can Jesus not know when He's coming back? This is exactly what Scribes thought too, they thought it to be heretical. So how did they deal with it? They corrected it by leaving it out. But yet, this is another example of a verse that people would be familiar with so they left it in the Bible as not to upset anyone.

1 John 5:7 “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” The only explicit text on the Trinity and it's a fraud. Just look at any Bible other than the KJV and NKJV and it's not there. Variants matter, were the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost all God? It depends on which manuscript you read.

But are there verses that have been explicitly omitted from the Bible? Yes.

For example:

• Matthew 12:47

• Matthew 17:21

• Matthew 18:11

• Matthew 23:14

• Mark 7:16

• Mark 9:44

• Mark 9:46

• Mark 11:26

• Mark 15:28

• Luke 17:36

• John 5:4

• Acts 8:37

• Acts 15:34

• Acts 24:7

• Acts 28:29

• Romans 16:24

• 1 John 5:7

The Other Gospels

So, can rely upon the Bible as inspired? If God wanted to inspire the text why didn't he preserve it? Is it inerrant, you tell me. If the Bible is inspired and inerrant, then WHICH ONE? Which manuscript? Which translation? Which denomination? Which Christianity? Yes, you heard me right. Which Christianity? No I'm not talking about those groups that call themselves Christians today. But I'll get back to this in a second.

However, before you completely throw out the Bible, it needs to be said that there are many great things we can learn from the Bible. Whether or not Jesus was God or not we can't know because the only explicit verse on the Trinity is a hoax. However, we can truly learn some great things from this teacher of wisdom. But in recent days we have discovered many Gospels:

• The Gospel of the Nazareans

• The Gospel of the Ebionites

• The Gospel According to the Hebrews

• The Gospel According to the Egyptians

• The Coptic Gospel of Thomas

• Papyrus Egerton 2: The Unknown Gospel

• The Gospel of Peter

• The Gospel of Mary

• The Gospel of Philip

• The Gospel of Judas

• The Gospel of Truth

• The Gospel of the Savior

• The Infancy Gospel of Thomas

• The Proto-Gospel of James

• The Epistle of the Apostles

• The Coptic Apocalypse of Peter

• The Second Treatise of the Great Seth

• The Secret Gospel of Mark

There are other Acts:

• The Acts of John

• The Acts of Paul

• The Acts of Thecla

• The Acts of Peter

There are other Epistles:

• Paul's Letter to the Laodiceans

• The Letter of 1^st Clement

• The Letter of 2^nd Clement

• The “Letter of Peter to James” and its “Reception”

• The Homilies of Clement

• Ptolemy's Letter to Flora

• The Treatise on the Resurrection

• The Didache

• The Letter of Barnabas

• The Preaching of Peter

• Pseudo- Titus

Other Revelations:

• The Shepherd of Hermas

• The Apocalypse of Peter

• The Apocalypse of Paul

• On the Origin of the World

• The First Thought in Three Forms

• The Hymn of the Pearl

There are also five other lists of Canonized books (Bibles) that have been found:

• The Muratorian Canon

• The Canon of Origen of Alexandria

• The Canon of Eusebius

• The Canon of Athanasius of Alexandria

• The Canon of the Third Synod of Carthage

These sources amongst others reveals a long list of other Lost Christianities: Ebionites, Marcionites, Gnostic Christians, etc., people who followed the teachings of Jesus but came to different conclusions. But as the saying goes, “History is written by the winners.” so this is how our modern Christianity became the predominant religion. Its not because it was inherently true, because history works with probabilities, its because it out won and outlasted the others. The survival of the fittest as we know it.

Since we can't know what the Bible originally said, and there's very good reason to think that several of Paul's letters are pseudepigraphies (ghost written). Individuals would write pseudepigraphas in order to combat the other competing Christianities (just look at how many of the New Testamental books are written to combat other heresies). The only way that their books would be read is if it was under a popular name. Because of all of this ghost writing we aren't certain which ones are pseudepigraphas and which ones aren't. Why should we believe your version of Christianity? Have you ever read the other books? Whose to say that those don't have truth to them? I'll come back to this at the end.

The New Perspectivism

But anyways, to move on, since we can't be sure who wrote each book we must read the books as individual books in order to truly grasp the author's intent. The Bible was written in a specific culture, at a specific time, for a specific people. The whole problem with our understanding of Scripture comes from our innate individualism. The culture of the Bible is communalistic. Also, we were raised in the west, we're this side of the Reformation and the Holocaust. So when we read the Scriptures we read them out of an individualistic guilt complex mixed in with some Semitic self-conscientiousness. But if we realize that this is utterly foreign to the text, and that it's just because of our fundamentalistic pastors imposing it upon the text, we'll grasp a slightly different picture. The Jews for centuries taught that the messiah was an individual who would come to set Israel free from tyranny and establish His kingdom on earth. A Jesus who didn't come to atone for our sins “as individuals”. But he died as Matthew says, for the sins of His people, a community, a specific nation. Jesus said that He was sent not to the dogs but to the house of Israel, Jesus came for the nation of Israel, he came to show that he was there to bring the Jews out of their exile. He said that his coming would unite the gentiles to the Jews. There is a specific word picture given by Jesus, a grafting in of the gentiles to Israel. This has nothing to do with individualistic guilt, it has everything to do with Covenant Community.

When we read the parable of the Prodigal Son, we as westerners, we think the sin was that he wasted his money, since that's the most important thing right? This is not the what the Jews had in view as the principal sin. For them the primary sin was that he left the community. An individualistic inheritance was a slap in his father's face. So, to jump to the conclusion, what Jesus was trying to do was unite the Jews and gentiles. That's why Paul was so concerned with the Jews' enforcement of the ceremonial laws. Because the Jews were promoting Nationalism. Jesus' death was the ultimate demonstration of true power and love. As Jesus said, he did not come to condemn, and when Peter drew his sword and cut off the guard's ear Jesus healed the man's ear. Jesus' purpose was to unite not divide. Jesus also taught that the truest demonstration of love was to lay one's life down for another. True unity includes diverse interpretive communities. Once we realize this, we can see that there is no transcendent imposition here to become cookie cutter Christians. We can be free to enjoy people for who they are and not for what they believe, and we can even benefit from their beliefs.

The Talpiot Tomb of Jesus of Nazareth

What can we learn from some of those other Gospels? Specifically that Jesus and Mary Magdalene got married and had children. This also is evidence of two mistakes in our understanding of Christianity today. First, that we can learn some truth that isn't in what we know as the Bible today. Two, that fundamentalistic pastors have been teaching a wrong understanding of the resurrection of Jesus. In 2007 Jesus' family tomb was found. Jesus' bones were found in a limestone ossuary (bone box) in Talpiot, a suburb of Jerusalem. The bones are presently being held at I.A.A. (Israeli Archeological Authority) In Beth Shemesh. On Jesus'. This is a common practice, in those times, a certain time after the body has been dead it is moved into a bone box and stored in a large cave. This is why there was no body in the tomb. But if Christianity still helps you that's fine, just don't impose your fundamentalism on others. You have the right to believe whatever you want to believe, and so do we.

For the main body of this work, I am indebted to:

D.A. Carson's works: Sacred and Sure-four part series, The New Perspective on Paul (RTS)

Dr. James R. White: The Reliability of the New Testament, Debate with Dr. Bart Ehrman, How We Got the Bible, and The KJV Only Controversy

Daniel Wallace: Is What We Have Now What They Had Then?

Dr. Bart Ehrman: Misquoting Jesus, TTC Lectures, and Debate with Dr. James R. White