Archive for category: Textual Issues

Dr. Benjamin Shaw is professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. He answers the question “Why a conference on scripture in the 21st Century” and also gives a brief word on his particular session “Englishing the Bible” For further information and to register for the conference, go to the conference Website. Back on December 30, 2009

Starting with a flawed foundation dooms a building, and starting with improper instruction in the Christian faith can often have disastrous consequences. Thankfully, the Spirit overcomes our ignorance and our traditions, all to His glory, but we should surely be very concerned that we give new believers a solid foundation upon which to develop a heart of wisdom to God’s

Everyday we are introduced to new applications of technology in many scholarly fields. But I cannot become blasé about the recent technological innovations in text critical studies. The most well-known innovation is the Codex Sinaiticus project. Just last year one had to travel to four different libraries around the world just to view different parts of the manuscript. Now you

Dan Wallace has provided a useful service in commenting on a number of the odd, off-the-wall statements that have appeared in the press recently, particularly in reference to Codex Sinaiticus. You can read his comments here. All Christians should be reminded that they need to “hear” the media’s comments on anything relating to the faith, and in particular on the

   It was Saturday evening–I think. I was running on reserve batteries, having done the Shamsi Ali debate, spoken earlier that day across Long Island, and was now way out on the Eastern part of the island. A small group gathered at the church to hear my presentation on the reliability of the New Testament. I will admit, I was a

Introduction The issue of the tenacity of the text is one of the important points that was raised by Dr. White in his debate with Dr. Ehrman recently (the debate can be obtained here). One of the illustrations of the tenacity of the text is the illustration of a jigsaw puzzle set that includes 1,010 pieces although only 1,000 are

Those who have followed this blog for a while know that I have often repeated the same things in reference to Bart Ehrman’s last two books. Imbalance, deep prejudice, utter ignoring of all relevant believing responses to the issues he raises (which he himself admits are nothing new to begin with). But I’m just a blogger from Phoenix, right? Well,

   The FedEx man just delivered our first order of the debate DVDs. I am very thankful for the hard work put into making this available. My opening presentation has been very well incorporated into the video of my speech. Very easily readable. I think you all will enjoy it! Get copies for any student heading off to school! Give one

   There was a fascinating, albeit brief, exchange on the Textual Criticism Yahoogroup this week between Bart Ehrman and Dan Wallace. Those who have listened to the debate with Dr. Ehrman in Florida will remember this portion: I understand the arguments of people like James and Dan Wallace, but sometimes, you know, they don’t make sense to me, even though I

   Some kind fellow believers provided a transcript of the Ehrman debate, which we are making available here. We hope this is of assistance to folks. Keep in mind that we hope to begin shipping DVDs of the Ehrman debate on 4/3! You can pre-order your DVD here! And, just a note: I have not been able to get any information

   I got this idea, oh…a few minutes after the Ehrman debate was over? Thanks to Carla and Micah for their help. Get yours here! Be the first geek to have pictures of all the second century NT manuscripts on your shirt! Talk about dominating at Bible Trivia next time! And what pastor wouldn’t want to see one of the members

   I would like to briefly reflect, hopefully for the last time on this particular topic, on Dr. Tommy Wasserman’s most recent comments on the ETC blog in reference to his original entry regarding the “busiest 15 years in the history of textual criticism” claim by Bart Ehrman. Sadly, instead of the topic being focused upon the real issue I was

1) Do not attempt to offer a possible reason for why someone would completely misread your purpose and statement. You will be accused of “mocking” people if you do. Of course, if you do not do that, you will be accused of being mean anyway. So, lesson learned: you can’t win. Specifically, I am sitting here in shock this morning

   Last week when a caller to The Dividing Line asked about resources on textual critical studies, I noted the plethora of information to be found at the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog. One of the contributors to this blog is Dr. Tommy Wasserman from Lunds Universitet in Sweden. I was surprised, and very disappointed, to read Dr. Wasserman’s comments today on

Bart Ehrman has announced that a new edition of Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research is being put together. I found the reason he noted to be telling. He wrote, What was then the state of the question has now become a bit dated. A lot has happened in fifteen years! Arguably more than in any comparable fifteen

The Ehrman debate will be a gold mine of quotes and topics for some time to come. Sadly, the really important portions of the debate have not been the focus of the initial flurry of commentary in the blogosphere, but that is to be expected. Instead, in this video I not only provide the first glimpse of the actual debate

Introduction: In listening to the debate, I think Ehrman provided a very good summary of his position in what he called (in his opening statement), a “very quick conclusion.” Ehrman stated: Do we have a reliable text of the New Testament? Are there places where the Bible misquotes Jesus? The short answer is, there is no way to tell. We

Alan Kurschner reviewed a KJV Only article yesterday, and the author (who wrote his first post without having listened to the entire debate, completed his review. The level of bias flies past the level of sheer bigotry, as seen in this amazing paragraph: In fairness to Ehrman, even though I hate the work that he does, he has a higher

Kent Brandenburg has written some presumptuous comments on the White-Ehrman debate. He has made unsubstantiated claims about Dr. White’s apologetics and the debate specifically. (Brandenburg is a King James Only advocate to give you some background of his presuppositions.) Brandenburg writes, “James White hasn’t done much to defend the Bible against the skeptic . He’s mainly attempted to give more

   On January 30th, Joel McDurmon posted an article on the American Vision website regarding his attendance at my debate with Bart Ehrman on the 21st. I appreciate the opportunity to respond to specific statements that appeared in that article.    I would like to begin with Joel’s concluding comments: In the end, despite all of the helpful information and engaging points,

I wrote the following article for the American Vision website. It is the first of two replies to Joel McDurmon’s comments on the debate, likewise posted on AV. Mr. McDurmon will be joining me on the DL tomorrow.

No doubt most of you are already aware that the MP3s and Audio CD of the debate are available. But since no one has mentioned it on the blog yet, I figured I would. Go here to listen or here to view.

I wanted to drop a line before we head out to sea. I’ve been thinking about last night, and a number of things have come to mind. First, I’m really glad Dr. Ehrman said many of the things he did. Most of us have known he was heading this direction, but the frankness of the debate, and his obvious displeasure

Turn on your television around the two major Christian holidays and a perennial stream of really smart people who don’t believe in the historic Christian faith will wax eloquent on the real meaning of the Bible. The latest weapon in their arsenal is the work of renown scholar of textual criticism and best selling author of Misquoting Jesus, Dr. Bart

   As most of you know, I am working now on the presentations I will be making next week in Florida, and, of course, primarily my opening presentation in the debate with Bart Ehrman. I have always wanted to do something more with Rylands 457 (P52) than just show it on the screen. So a few weeks ago I got an

   I have begun creating my KeyNote presentations for the conference, debate, and cruise, and in the process came across a resource that would surely expand my citations on one of the key texts that will be discussed, Mark 1:41. I have added it, with the highest priority, to the ministry resource list. It is the work on Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis

Monday morning I posted two items on my ministry resources list at Amazon, both commentaries on John by Origen. By Tuesday evening the books were sitting on my desk, being put to use (thank you CR!). They led me to the needed location in a resource I’ve had for many years so as to have the exact citations, in Greek,

   I can’t help it. I really like Dan Wallace. One of my favorite memories of ETS in Orlando in 1998 was standing at the NET Bible booth for a long period of time debating the interpretation of the Carmen Christi with Dan. Neither of us had a text with us, but we both knew it well enough to do without.

The SillyBrit pointed me to another wonderful example of the “yeah, we are biased, we don’t care, its the new journalism” mentality of the modern Left. Here is a BBC article making the rounds, written by Roger Bolton. I would like to think Mr. Bolton was not purposefully trying to be a complete snob toward believing Christians, but his writing

A common myth that we hear from time to time from a number of different directions, is that Bibles were in essence Gutenberg’s invention: a testimony to Northern European printing ingenuity, but not an ancient practice. Of course it is true that printed Bibles necessarily followed the development of printing, but Bibles were being made long before then. Likewise, others

   Today I will be joined by Alan Kurschner to discuss the textual variant at Luke 23:34. I have placed the variant in brackets in the following citation to give you an idea of what we are talking about: And they cast lots, dividing up