YouTube Transcript:
Can I Trust the Bible - Episode 2: The Right Text | @WesHuff
Skip watching entire videos - get the full transcript, search for keywords, and copy with one click.
Share:
Video Transcript
Available languages:
View:
with all the work that you've done in
seminary with your doctoral work in the
area of Theology and manuscripts what
got you interested in the Bible I
realized that I was engaging with a lot
of people with Muslims with Mormons with
Jehovah's Witnesses Skeptics of all
different Stripes all of them would
resort to some sort of well that sounds
great Wes but all you're relying on is
the Bible that's your foundation and you
can't trust that all you have are
translations of translations of
translations all you have are error
written copies you don't even know if
you have the right books you're reading
Matthew Mark Luke and John but have you
ever heard of the Gospel of Thomas and
so I realized that that was a genuine
critique if it was true if that was true
I'm staking my entire life on the person
of Jesus and where do I find the
information about Jesus I find that in
the Bible and if I can't trust the Bible
I really have no reason to put my hope
and trust in
Jesus hey Andy ster here here we are in
Egypt working on a new project called
can I trust the
Bible so part of the trickiness with the
Bible is that we think of the Bible as
one book because we have it in a nice
single bound volume but the Bible is not
one book as much as it's 66 books 66
books written over a period of 1600
years on three different continents by
close to 40 different authors in three
different languages two major languages
Greek and Hebrew and one minor language
Aramaic but you might be asking the
question well why are Andy and I here in
Egypt to talk about the complexities and
issues regarding the Bible when we're
talking about the history of the Bible
the vast majority of those handwritten
copies what we call the manuscripts of
the Bible and particularly the earliest
ones come from
Egypt almost immediately after its
production the books of the Bible were
being copied and translated into
numerous languages and spread across the
ancient world this means that the Modern
English Bible we have today is some
2,000 years removed from even the last
book written in it how can we know that
what we have was accurately copied and
translated over that time it was
discoveries of ancient papi in places
like the city of oxus that allow us to
answer this
question this city on the banks of the
River Nile was where Papyrus was being
grown and made into writing material it
was in the Gard garbage dumps of oxar
rinkus where a treasure of ancient
discovered in 1895 fresh graduate from
Queens College England in Oxford Bernard
Granville and his friend Arthur hunt
left England on a trip to come to Egypt
sponsored by the Egyptian exploration
Society their purpose was not to find
Monumental architecture or statuary
which was the purp purpose of
archaeology at the time but to find papy
after Excavating a number of graveyards
and cities to no avail they eventually
discovered here in and around the area
of Alban NASA known then as oxar rinkus
papy in fact between
1895 and
1897 over half a million papii were
discovered including every book of the
Bible and a number of influential
texts I'm here at the University of
Pennsylvania Museum and I'm looking at
P1 P1 is the second manuscript
discovered the story goes that Grenville
was walking through the desert and
looking down saw a corner of what is now
P1 sticking out of the C
what was discovered by Grenville and
hunt in that winter season was this
fragment of the Gospel of Matthew
written on both sides that contained the
genealogy of Jesus from the beginning of
that gospel Wes I think a question that
a lot of people ask is if if these
discoveries in places like o Ox rinkus
are fairly recent discoveries of these
ancient manuscripts well what were we
relying on before then and could we
trust our Bible I mean when we're
comparing the Bible that we've had to
these ancient manuscripts like how does
it line up when they discovered the
earliest copies of the papay really
within the last 200 years what it didn't
do was alter the way that we understood
the text of the Bible before that even
though we had these large spans of time
in between when the earliest copies or
the originals are being written and when
we start to you know think of the King
James Bible in the early 17th century
when we discovered the Papi what they
didn't do was completely blow up how we
understood the text of the Bible in fact
what they did is simply confirm that
what we had was surprisingly shockingly
close to the text that we had even
centuries and Millennia later from the
time of the first copies down through
the centuries the Bible hasn't stopped
being copied and translated in fact the
New Testament writers themselves were
using a translation a copy of the Hebrew
Old Testament books translated into
Septuagint we're here in Alexandria
Egypt at the Library of Alexandria Not
the ancient Library of Alexandria that
hasn't been around for a long time but
Alexandria was a key and special place
within both Jewish and Christian history
about 200 years before Jesus the Old
Testament and particularly the first
five books of the Bible the Torah were
commissioned most likely in Alexandria
to be transitioned out of the Hebrew and
into the Greek the Library of Alexandria
the ancient Library of Alexandria and
the city of Alexandria stood as a focus
and a important key Point geographically
for both Jewish and Christian history
although translated into many languages
the Bible is not itself a translation of a
a
translation like we see in the example
of the Septuagint judeo-christianity has
always been a literary tradition that
has never stopped copying and
translating its books in order to be
read almost immediately after its
production the books of the Bible were
being copied and translated into
numerous languages across the ancient
world when we look back at how we
actually go from ancient papyrus to
modern-day print the history of the
Bible is not some sort of layered web of
translations in reality what we find
ourselves with is a single step going
from the original Hebrew and Greek
directly into our Bibles today the
translation of the Bible takes into
consideration an amazing collection of
archaeological evidence from discoveries
in Israel like the Dead Sea Scrolls to
papy dug up in places like oxar rinkus
over time as we've uncovered more of
these fragments and manuscripts they
they haven't complicated our
understanding of the Bible but clarified
it the documents that sit behind the
history of the Bible and the way that we
translate them today gives us confidence
in their reliability to go from the
original languages into our own even
though we're almost 2,000 years removed
from the last book of the Bible that was
written as discoveries are made we are
not getting farther away from the text
but getting
closer this evidence confirms and gives
us good reason to trust that our Bibles
have been faithfully and accurately
copied and that what we have now is what
wrote hey Andy here on the streets of
Egypt first thing you need to know it's
it's been about 40°
today uh I hid from the Sun I've now
ventured back out and we're on the hunt
for some food looking for some street
food I'm personally uh a big fan of
Egyptian food but interestingly enough
they don't call it Egyptian food they
call it oriental food at the restaurant
here we got a couple different dishes
got a soup going on got some peer bread
with some different sauces dipping
sauces got a very interesting uh I think
it's a dipping sauce here it's like a
it's like a
some I don't know kka kka kofka Ka I
it's one thing I've always appreciated
about the Bible is it's not trying to uh
hide anything from you it in fact will
note when there is a difference if it's
a word or if something was missing in a
different manuscript it'll tell you yeah
a lot of people I think when they see
that there are differences within the
manuscripts they Panic they think that's
a problem and they they see our Bible
has been changed and I would say yes
that is true to a certain degree but our
our Bible has been changed and that
doesn't give us a picture of confusion
within the history of the Bible it
actually gives us Clarity within
understanding the text of the Bible when
we have these differences the fact is we
know that there are the differences so
when you read your modern translation of
the Bible and you see a citation note at
the bottom of the page that shouldn't
make you panic what that should do is
give you confidence that we have such an
glut of information that we're able to
pinpoint those things to a
very credible and exact level one of the
things that catches a lot of people off
guard when they're reading the Bible is
they'll come across a verse that's
missing and that might surprise some of
you something like John
5:4 there isn't a John 5 ver4 so how do
we understand that why are there verses
in our Bible missing yeah I think people
when they come on these quote unquote
missing verses it kind of surprises them
they'll look at their Modern English
translation and they'll see there's no
John 5:4 and they go back and it's in
there King James so who took that verse
out and when well realistically it's not
about who took that verse out and when
it's about who put that verse in and
when and because we have such a glut of
information in regards to the manuscript
tradition and the text of the Bible
we're able to pinpoint when those things
happened because of this we're able to
figure out okay a scribe at some point
in history say wrote what we now have
cuz remember the verses were added much
later they're not original to the text
the chapter and verse divisions were
added in later centuries and so when we
find out John didn't write what we have
in John 5:4 but a later scribe wrote
that well we don't reverse the entire
Bible that that's going to mess up all
of our Bible memorization it's going to
mess up all of the commentaries that
have been written throughout history
that do include the verses and so what
we do is we simply put John 5:4 and we
add a citation note at the end of the
page okay okay the earlier we go and the
more we look at the different
manuscripts we can see that this was
added at this point and again we're
going to footnote that and say that
shouldn't be there and the ancient
scribes did their own version of
footnoting when we discovered the story
of the woman caught in adultery in the
Gospel of John is missing from our earli
papy it didn't blow up the way we
understood that story scribes all along
have been noting some copies that we
have have it some copies that we have
don't have it and so they're adding
little scribal notations to say we're
not sure about this textt we're not sure
about that text but they would include
things even if they weren't sure whether
it was part of the original or not know
we have not 100% of the text we have
110% of the text because what that means
is that even though things were added
the scribes were so tenacious to include
everything that the original text is in
there and it's kind of like a puzzle if
you had a puzzle with a 100,000 pieces
and you opened it up and you found that
you actually had not a 100,000 pieces but
but
100,001 100 pieces once you start to put
the puzzle together you can see where
the image is you can see where pieces
were added from another puzzle by
accident or maybe that someone came
along and they added extra pieces once
the picture starts to come together it's
really clear to figure out well what
does and doesn't belong and that's kind
of like the text of the Bible once we
put together the pieces of the text of
the Bible we can see this piece doesn't
belong this piece does belong that be
the case Wes why do the scribes make
some of these changes in the text well a
lot of them are just mistakes and
mistakes you and I would make if we were
handwriting documents you know I do this
all the time I do this a lot in my
emails all my froms are forms that kind
of thing it doesn't have to be
handwriting but when you're dealing with
handwriting we do make mistakes the vast
majority of these textual variants of
these scribal changes are spelling
differences cuz remember spelling was
not organized or standardized till much
later but if I spell Andy with two D's
or One D you can still figure out that
I'm trying to write Andy and a lot of
them they they didn't even necessarily
catch these changes so the vast majority
are things like spelling are word order
you know as long as there are particular
grammatical and syntactical linguistic
Clues we can figure out what the
sentence says so the vast majority of
these differences within the Bible are
inconsequential and make no difference
in the translation out of the original
language I think a question that a lot
of people might be asking is well how
big are these variances are these are
these pretty are these significant are
they doctrinal in nature even though we
have these differences no textual
variance affect any essential Christian
doctrine there's nothing that relies on
one verse that has a question about it
in the history of the textual traditions
of the [Music]
[Music]
Bible hey we're here in the white desert
we've been going in a Land Cruiser for a
couple hours now out in the desert just
absolutely stunning beautiful we've
pulled over and we're doing like an Egyptian
Egyptian
picnic our driver here is making us some
delicious food really looking forward to
it now here in Egypt uh travel takes a
long time and one of the the reasons is
because we are stopped once again at a
security checkpoint uh the whole way
along we've had to have police escorts
as we've been going from different
cities and this one is a particularly
long one as we're waiting for the police
to decide uh if we can go through and if
we do we're probably going to need
another police escort so we this is
going to be an interesting day this is
our first police escort of the day uh
but we've uh we have had many here in
Egypt so Wes we have confidence that
what we have in our New Testament is
what the original authors wrote and the
books that we have are the documents
that get us closest to the time frame of
Jesus but it could very well be the case
that we just have the most historically
tested lies we could have what the
original authors wrote like you said but
they just could have made it up or they
could have been diluted so how do we
know that it's not only the right words
that were written on those ancient
documents but that it's true Luke goes
to length to demonstrate that his
narrative is placed within an actual
time and location in the first three
verses of Luke 3 we are not only given
seven historical characters that Mark
out the beginning of the ministry of
John the Baptist but within these three
verses alone are 22 historical
references to locations and people that
have been verified by archaeology and
ancient literary sources outside of the
Bible this places Luke's account within
a historical framework making sure his
readers know he's not merely making up a
story but pinpointing when and where
these events actually took place in
history and the gospel authors do this
in multiple different ways with names
locations as well as with accurate plant
and animal life related to the areas
within the narratives they are
describing the gospel authors get these
types of facts right even when other
ancient writers of the time
don't it's the details that make the
difference the gospel authors are going
to lengths to try to communicate that
what they are saying is history right at
the beginning of the Gospel of Luke in
his preface he says that he's writing up
an orderly account that term account
that he uses in the original language in
Greek is the same word that other
ancient writers like Josephus and Lucian
use when they talk simply about how to
write good history The Gospel authors
they want to make sure you know that
what they're writing is not just
important but that it's actually true
one of the most important ancient
writers within this time period is a guy
named tacitus in tacitus is annals book
1544 he describes what the Christians
are doing and believing in that time and
he says that Jesus Christ was crucified
under Pontius Pilate but he describes
ponus pilot as being the procurator now
that is actually not the right
description of what Pontius pilot was
you know in 1961 in cesaria Maritime
there was a stone that was found found
which is known as the pontious pilot
Stone which has the title of pontious
pilot governor of this area but you know
who gets the right title for Pontius
pilot Luke Luke in his gospel accurately
describes and uses the correct Greek
term for Pontius Pilate being the
governor of Judea this is something that
one of the most prominent ancient
writers during that time of which we
know most of our information or a good
portion at least of our information
about who the ancient Emperors were he
gets this title wrong whereas the gospel
authors get it right our journey through
the Sands of Egypt has shown that we
have the right books that make up the
Bible the gospel biographies of Jesus
included within it get us in closest
proximity to his life and
teaching its books have been Faithfully
preserved and seek to give us an
accurate history of the event that
actually took place although we sit
thousands of years Downstream from the
events recorded in these ancient
documents there are good reasons to
Click on any text or timestamp to jump to that moment in the video
Share:
Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds
One-Click Copy125+ LanguagesSearch ContentJump to Timestamps
Paste YouTube URL
Enter any YouTube video link to get the full transcript
Transcript Extraction Form
Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds
Get Our Chrome Extension
Get transcripts instantly without leaving YouTube. Install our Chrome extension for one-click access to any video's transcript directly on the watch page.
Works with YouTube, Coursera, Udemy and more educational platforms
Get Instant Transcripts: Just Edit the Domain in Your Address Bar!
YouTube
←
→
↻
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc
YoutubeToText
←
→
↻
https://youtubetotext.net/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc