0:03 with all the work that you've done in
0:05 seminary with your doctoral work in the
0:08 area of Theology and manuscripts what
0:10 got you interested in the Bible I
0:12 realized that I was engaging with a lot
0:14 of people with Muslims with Mormons with
0:17 Jehovah's Witnesses Skeptics of all
0:19 different Stripes all of them would
0:21 resort to some sort of well that sounds
0:24 great Wes but all you're relying on is
0:26 the Bible that's your foundation and you
0:28 can't trust that all you have are
0:30 translations of translations of
0:32 translations all you have are error
0:33 written copies you don't even know if
0:36 you have the right books you're reading
0:38 Matthew Mark Luke and John but have you
0:40 ever heard of the Gospel of Thomas and
0:43 so I realized that that was a genuine
0:46 critique if it was true if that was true
0:48 I'm staking my entire life on the person
0:50 of Jesus and where do I find the
0:52 information about Jesus I find that in
0:54 the Bible and if I can't trust the Bible
0:55 I really have no reason to put my hope
0:58 and trust in
1:00 Jesus hey Andy ster here here we are in
1:03 Egypt working on a new project called
1:04 can I trust the
1:07 Bible so part of the trickiness with the
1:08 Bible is that we think of the Bible as
1:10 one book because we have it in a nice
1:13 single bound volume but the Bible is not
1:16 one book as much as it's 66 books 66
1:18 books written over a period of 1600
1:20 years on three different continents by
1:22 close to 40 different authors in three
1:24 different languages two major languages
1:27 Greek and Hebrew and one minor language
1:29 Aramaic but you might be asking the
1:31 question well why are Andy and I here in
1:34 Egypt to talk about the complexities and
1:36 issues regarding the Bible when we're
1:38 talking about the history of the Bible
1:40 the vast majority of those handwritten
1:42 copies what we call the manuscripts of
1:44 the Bible and particularly the earliest
1:47 ones come from
1:49 Egypt almost immediately after its
1:51 production the books of the Bible were
1:53 being copied and translated into
1:55 numerous languages and spread across the
1:58 ancient world this means that the Modern
2:01 English Bible we have today is some
2:03 2,000 years removed from even the last
2:06 book written in it how can we know that
2:09 what we have was accurately copied and
2:12 translated over that time it was
2:15 discoveries of ancient papi in places
2:18 like the city of oxus that allow us to
2:20 answer this
2:23 question this city on the banks of the
2:25 River Nile was where Papyrus was being
2:29 grown and made into writing material it
2:31 was in the Gard garbage dumps of oxar
2:33 rinkus where a treasure of ancient
2:41 discovered in 1895 fresh graduate from
2:44 Queens College England in Oxford Bernard
2:47 Granville and his friend Arthur hunt
2:50 left England on a trip to come to Egypt
2:52 sponsored by the Egyptian exploration
2:56 Society their purpose was not to find
2:59 Monumental architecture or statuary
3:00 which was the purp purpose of
3:04 archaeology at the time but to find papy
3:07 after Excavating a number of graveyards
3:11 and cities to no avail they eventually
3:14 discovered here in and around the area
3:19 of Alban NASA known then as oxar rinkus
3:22 papy in fact between
3:25 1895 and
3:29 1897 over half a million papii were
3:31 discovered including every book of the
3:34 Bible and a number of influential
3:43 texts I'm here at the University of
3:45 Pennsylvania Museum and I'm looking at
3:49 P1 P1 is the second manuscript
3:52 discovered the story goes that Grenville
3:54 was walking through the desert and
3:57 looking down saw a corner of what is now
4:01 P1 sticking out of the C
4:03 what was discovered by Grenville and
4:08 hunt in that winter season was this
4:10 fragment of the Gospel of Matthew
4:13 written on both sides that contained the
4:16 genealogy of Jesus from the beginning of
4:19 that gospel Wes I think a question that
4:23 a lot of people ask is if if these
4:25 discoveries in places like o Ox rinkus
4:28 are fairly recent discoveries of these
4:31 ancient manuscripts well what were we
4:33 relying on before then and could we
4:35 trust our Bible I mean when we're
4:37 comparing the Bible that we've had to
4:38 these ancient manuscripts like how does
4:41 it line up when they discovered the
4:43 earliest copies of the papay really
4:46 within the last 200 years what it didn't
4:48 do was alter the way that we understood
4:50 the text of the Bible before that even
4:53 though we had these large spans of time
4:56 in between when the earliest copies or
4:58 the originals are being written and when
5:00 we start to you know think of the King
5:03 James Bible in the early 17th century
5:04 when we discovered the Papi what they
5:07 didn't do was completely blow up how we
5:09 understood the text of the Bible in fact
5:12 what they did is simply confirm that
5:15 what we had was surprisingly shockingly
5:19 close to the text that we had even
5:22 centuries and Millennia later from the
5:24 time of the first copies down through
5:26 the centuries the Bible hasn't stopped
5:30 being copied and translated in fact the
5:32 New Testament writers themselves were
5:35 using a translation a copy of the Hebrew
5:38 Old Testament books translated into
5:48 Septuagint we're here in Alexandria
5:50 Egypt at the Library of Alexandria Not
5:52 the ancient Library of Alexandria that
5:54 hasn't been around for a long time but
5:56 Alexandria was a key and special place
5:59 within both Jewish and Christian history
6:02 about 200 years before Jesus the Old
6:05 Testament and particularly the first
6:08 five books of the Bible the Torah were
6:10 commissioned most likely in Alexandria
6:13 to be transitioned out of the Hebrew and
6:15 into the Greek the Library of Alexandria
6:17 the ancient Library of Alexandria and
6:19 the city of Alexandria stood as a focus
6:21 and a important key Point geographically
6:24 for both Jewish and Christian history
6:27 although translated into many languages
6:30 the Bible is not itself a translation of a
6:31 a
6:33 translation like we see in the example
6:36 of the Septuagint judeo-christianity has
6:39 always been a literary tradition that
6:41 has never stopped copying and
6:43 translating its books in order to be
6:46 read almost immediately after its
6:48 production the books of the Bible were
6:50 being copied and translated into
6:54 numerous languages across the ancient
6:57 world when we look back at how we
6:59 actually go from ancient papyrus to
7:02 modern-day print the history of the
7:04 Bible is not some sort of layered web of
7:07 translations in reality what we find
7:10 ourselves with is a single step going
7:11 from the original Hebrew and Greek
7:14 directly into our Bibles today the
7:16 translation of the Bible takes into
7:17 consideration an amazing collection of
7:20 archaeological evidence from discoveries
7:22 in Israel like the Dead Sea Scrolls to
7:25 papy dug up in places like oxar rinkus
7:27 over time as we've uncovered more of
7:29 these fragments and manuscripts they
7:31 they haven't complicated our
7:33 understanding of the Bible but clarified
7:35 it the documents that sit behind the
7:37 history of the Bible and the way that we
7:41 translate them today gives us confidence
7:42 in their reliability to go from the
7:46 original languages into our own even
7:48 though we're almost 2,000 years removed
7:50 from the last book of the Bible that was
7:53 written as discoveries are made we are
7:56 not getting farther away from the text
7:57 but getting
8:00 closer this evidence confirms and gives
8:04 us good reason to trust that our Bibles
8:06 have been faithfully and accurately
8:09 copied and that what we have now is what
8:15 wrote hey Andy here on the streets of
8:17 Egypt first thing you need to know it's
8:19 it's been about 40°
8:22 today uh I hid from the Sun I've now
8:25 ventured back out and we're on the hunt
8:27 for some food looking for some street
8:30 food I'm personally uh a big fan of
8:32 Egyptian food but interestingly enough
8:33 they don't call it Egyptian food they
8:35 call it oriental food at the restaurant
8:38 here we got a couple different dishes
8:40 got a soup going on got some peer bread
8:41 with some different sauces dipping
8:44 sauces got a very interesting uh I think
8:46 it's a dipping sauce here it's like a
8:48 it's like a
8:58 some I don't know kka kka kofka Ka I
9:05 it's one thing I've always appreciated
9:07 about the Bible is it's not trying to uh
9:09 hide anything from you it in fact will
9:11 note when there is a difference if it's
9:13 a word or if something was missing in a
9:15 different manuscript it'll tell you yeah
9:17 a lot of people I think when they see
9:19 that there are differences within the
9:21 manuscripts they Panic they think that's
9:23 a problem and they they see our Bible
9:26 has been changed and I would say yes
9:29 that is true to a certain degree but our
9:31 our Bible has been changed and that
9:34 doesn't give us a picture of confusion
9:35 within the history of the Bible it
9:37 actually gives us Clarity within
9:38 understanding the text of the Bible when
9:41 we have these differences the fact is we
9:44 know that there are the differences so
9:46 when you read your modern translation of
9:48 the Bible and you see a citation note at
9:50 the bottom of the page that shouldn't
9:52 make you panic what that should do is
9:55 give you confidence that we have such an
9:57 glut of information that we're able to
9:59 pinpoint those things to a
10:03 very credible and exact level one of the
10:05 things that catches a lot of people off
10:07 guard when they're reading the Bible is
10:09 they'll come across a verse that's
10:10 missing and that might surprise some of
10:12 you something like John
10:16 5:4 there isn't a John 5 ver4 so how do
10:18 we understand that why are there verses
10:20 in our Bible missing yeah I think people
10:21 when they come on these quote unquote
10:24 missing verses it kind of surprises them
10:26 they'll look at their Modern English
10:28 translation and they'll see there's no
10:30 John 5:4 and they go back and it's in
10:32 there King James so who took that verse
10:34 out and when well realistically it's not
10:36 about who took that verse out and when
10:38 it's about who put that verse in and
10:42 when and because we have such a glut of
10:44 information in regards to the manuscript
10:46 tradition and the text of the Bible
10:49 we're able to pinpoint when those things
10:51 happened because of this we're able to
10:54 figure out okay a scribe at some point
10:57 in history say wrote what we now have
10:59 cuz remember the verses were added much
11:02 later they're not original to the text
11:03 the chapter and verse divisions were
11:07 added in later centuries and so when we
11:09 find out John didn't write what we have
11:12 in John 5:4 but a later scribe wrote
11:15 that well we don't reverse the entire
11:16 Bible that that's going to mess up all
11:18 of our Bible memorization it's going to
11:20 mess up all of the commentaries that
11:21 have been written throughout history
11:23 that do include the verses and so what
11:26 we do is we simply put John 5:4 and we
11:28 add a citation note at the end of the
11:30 page okay okay the earlier we go and the
11:31 more we look at the different
11:33 manuscripts we can see that this was
11:35 added at this point and again we're
11:36 going to footnote that and say that
11:38 shouldn't be there and the ancient
11:39 scribes did their own version of
11:42 footnoting when we discovered the story
11:43 of the woman caught in adultery in the
11:46 Gospel of John is missing from our earli
11:48 papy it didn't blow up the way we
11:51 understood that story scribes all along
11:53 have been noting some copies that we
11:55 have have it some copies that we have
11:57 don't have it and so they're adding
12:00 little scribal notations to say we're
12:01 not sure about this textt we're not sure
12:04 about that text but they would include
12:06 things even if they weren't sure whether
12:07 it was part of the original or not know
12:10 we have not 100% of the text we have
12:13 110% of the text because what that means
12:16 is that even though things were added
12:19 the scribes were so tenacious to include
12:22 everything that the original text is in
12:24 there and it's kind of like a puzzle if
12:27 you had a puzzle with a 100,000 pieces
12:29 and you opened it up and you found that
12:32 you actually had not a 100,000 pieces but
12:33 but
12:37 100,001 100 pieces once you start to put
12:39 the puzzle together you can see where
12:41 the image is you can see where pieces
12:43 were added from another puzzle by
12:46 accident or maybe that someone came
12:48 along and they added extra pieces once
12:51 the picture starts to come together it's
12:54 really clear to figure out well what
12:56 does and doesn't belong and that's kind
12:57 of like the text of the Bible once we
13:00 put together the pieces of the text of
13:02 the Bible we can see this piece doesn't
13:04 belong this piece does belong that be
13:06 the case Wes why do the scribes make
13:08 some of these changes in the text well a
13:09 lot of them are just mistakes and
13:11 mistakes you and I would make if we were
13:13 handwriting documents you know I do this
13:15 all the time I do this a lot in my
13:19 emails all my froms are forms that kind
13:20 of thing it doesn't have to be
13:22 handwriting but when you're dealing with
13:25 handwriting we do make mistakes the vast
13:27 majority of these textual variants of
13:30 these scribal changes are spelling
13:33 differences cuz remember spelling was
13:36 not organized or standardized till much
13:39 later but if I spell Andy with two D's
13:41 or One D you can still figure out that
13:43 I'm trying to write Andy and a lot of
13:44 them they they didn't even necessarily
13:47 catch these changes so the vast majority
13:49 are things like spelling are word order
13:52 you know as long as there are particular
13:54 grammatical and syntactical linguistic
13:57 Clues we can figure out what the
13:59 sentence says so the vast majority of
14:01 these differences within the Bible are
14:04 inconsequential and make no difference
14:06 in the translation out of the original
14:07 language I think a question that a lot
14:09 of people might be asking is well how
14:11 big are these variances are these are
14:13 these pretty are these significant are
14:15 they doctrinal in nature even though we
14:17 have these differences no textual
14:20 variance affect any essential Christian
14:23 doctrine there's nothing that relies on
14:26 one verse that has a question about it
14:29 in the history of the textual traditions
14:31 of the [Music]
14:35 [Music]
14:38 Bible hey we're here in the white desert
14:40 we've been going in a Land Cruiser for a
14:41 couple hours now out in the desert just
14:44 absolutely stunning beautiful we've
14:46 pulled over and we're doing like an Egyptian
14:47 Egyptian
14:50 picnic our driver here is making us some
14:53 delicious food really looking forward to
14:57 it now here in Egypt uh travel takes a
14:59 long time and one of the the reasons is
15:01 because we are stopped once again at a
15:04 security checkpoint uh the whole way
15:07 along we've had to have police escorts
15:08 as we've been going from different
15:11 cities and this one is a particularly
15:13 long one as we're waiting for the police
15:15 to decide uh if we can go through and if
15:16 we do we're probably going to need
15:18 another police escort so we this is
15:20 going to be an interesting day this is
15:22 our first police escort of the day uh
15:25 but we've uh we have had many here in
15:28 Egypt so Wes we have confidence that
15:29 what we have in our New Testament is
15:31 what the original authors wrote and the
15:32 books that we have are the documents
15:34 that get us closest to the time frame of
15:36 Jesus but it could very well be the case
15:37 that we just have the most historically
15:40 tested lies we could have what the
15:42 original authors wrote like you said but
15:44 they just could have made it up or they
15:46 could have been diluted so how do we
15:49 know that it's not only the right words
15:51 that were written on those ancient
15:55 documents but that it's true Luke goes
15:56 to length to demonstrate that his
15:58 narrative is placed within an actual
16:01 time and location in the first three
16:03 verses of Luke 3 we are not only given
16:05 seven historical characters that Mark
16:07 out the beginning of the ministry of
16:09 John the Baptist but within these three
16:12 verses alone are 22 historical
16:15 references to locations and people that
16:16 have been verified by archaeology and
16:19 ancient literary sources outside of the
16:21 Bible this places Luke's account within
16:24 a historical framework making sure his
16:27 readers know he's not merely making up a
16:30 story but pinpointing when and where
16:32 these events actually took place in
16:34 history and the gospel authors do this
16:37 in multiple different ways with names
16:40 locations as well as with accurate plant
16:42 and animal life related to the areas
16:44 within the narratives they are
16:46 describing the gospel authors get these
16:49 types of facts right even when other
16:51 ancient writers of the time
16:54 don't it's the details that make the
16:56 difference the gospel authors are going
16:59 to lengths to try to communicate that
17:02 what they are saying is history right at
17:03 the beginning of the Gospel of Luke in
17:05 his preface he says that he's writing up
17:08 an orderly account that term account
17:09 that he uses in the original language in
17:11 Greek is the same word that other
17:13 ancient writers like Josephus and Lucian
17:15 use when they talk simply about how to
17:17 write good history The Gospel authors
17:19 they want to make sure you know that
17:21 what they're writing is not just
17:23 important but that it's actually true
17:25 one of the most important ancient
17:27 writers within this time period is a guy
17:32 named tacitus in tacitus is annals book
17:36 1544 he describes what the Christians
17:38 are doing and believing in that time and
17:42 he says that Jesus Christ was crucified
17:45 under Pontius Pilate but he describes
17:48 ponus pilot as being the procurator now
17:50 that is actually not the right
17:53 description of what Pontius pilot was
17:57 you know in 1961 in cesaria Maritime
17:59 there was a stone that was found found
18:01 which is known as the pontious pilot
18:04 Stone which has the title of pontious
18:08 pilot governor of this area but you know
18:11 who gets the right title for Pontius
18:15 pilot Luke Luke in his gospel accurately
18:17 describes and uses the correct Greek
18:20 term for Pontius Pilate being the
18:23 governor of Judea this is something that
18:24 one of the most prominent ancient
18:27 writers during that time of which we
18:30 know most of our information or a good
18:31 portion at least of our information
18:34 about who the ancient Emperors were he
18:36 gets this title wrong whereas the gospel
18:40 authors get it right our journey through
18:42 the Sands of Egypt has shown that we
18:44 have the right books that make up the
18:47 Bible the gospel biographies of Jesus
18:49 included within it get us in closest
18:52 proximity to his life and
18:55 teaching its books have been Faithfully
18:57 preserved and seek to give us an
18:59 accurate history of the event that
19:02 actually took place although we sit
19:04 thousands of years Downstream from the
19:05 events recorded in these ancient
19:08 documents there are good reasons to
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