May 31, 2026

The Dead Sea Scrolls, Why Pastors Talk about Controversial Bible Issues, Textual Criticism, and Guarana Antarctica Soda Review with Textual Criticism Expert Dr. Anthony Ferguson

Show Notes
Transcript

Why should pastors talk about controversial Bible passages and difficult Bible origin questions with church members? Old Testament Scholar Dr. Anthony Ferguson answers...

Today, we talk to Dr. Anthony Ferguson, an Old Testament Textual Criticism expert and pastor, about some pretty deep Bible nerd stuff, including how pastors can talk about the background of the Bible without turning the church into a seminary. Some of this short interview is pretty deep, but if you feel lost, never fear, we will process through a little bit of what we discussed at the end of the episode today, right after Cal Baptist Ministry student J.C. and I review Brazil’s #1 Coke competitor, Guarana Antarctica.

Like me, Dr. Ferguson was taught in seminary to not use Greek or Hebrew in sermons, and also like me, he pretty routinely ignores this advice, which raises a question that the third part of our interview with Dr. Ferguson brings up: why would we focus a whole episode on some of the more academic points of the Bible, including textual variants, biblical origins, and the Dead Sea Scrolls? At least one of the answers to that question, Dr. Ferguson addressed in our opener - if you don’t, somebody else well, and shouldn’t a pastor be the one to shepherd the people through those issues, rather than somebody else?

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So why should pastors talk about controversial Bible passages and difficult

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Bible origin questions with church members?

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Old Testament scholar, Dr. Anthony Ferguson answers.

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You know, in the book of Proverbs, Solomon takes his son up on the roof and

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he points out the prostitute.

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And he says to the person who's pursuing her, that is the pathway to hell.

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And so what I mean by that is that there is an appropriate form of exposure

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that we can give to our church members.

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And I think we should do that. I think we should be the ones who introduce our

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members to the most difficult topics.

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The north central coast of California and the beautiful Redwoods.

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The Every Church Flourishing podcast is all about helping churches,

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leaders, and pastors find health, encouragement,

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Join hosts, Pastor Chris Cole

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Hello, everybody, and welcome into episode number 20 of the Every Church Flourishing podcast.

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We are a ministry of the Great Commission Association of California,

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and we are always looking for pastors, churches, people, and groups to partner

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If you are interested in partnering with us, reach out through our website, G-C-A-S-B-C dot org.

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That is G-C-A-S-B-C dot org. Today on the podcast, we talked to Dr.

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Anthony Ferguson, an Old Testament textual criticism expert and pastor about

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some pretty deep Bible nerd stuff, including how can pastors talk about the

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background of the Bible without turning the church into a seminary?

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Now, some of this short interview is pretty deep, but if you feel lost, never fear.

00:02:08.210 --> 00:02:12.150
We're going to process through a little bit of what we discussed at the end

00:02:12.150 --> 00:02:18.250
of the episode today, right after Cal Baptist ministry student JC and I review

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Brazil's number one Coke competitor.

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So like me, Dr. Ferguson was taught in seminary not to use Greek or Hebrew in sermons.

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And also like me, he pretty routinely ignores this advice, which raises a question

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that the third part of our interview today with Dr.

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Ferguson brings up, why would we focus a whole episode on some of the more academic

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points of the Bible, including textual variants, the Dead Sea Scrolls,

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biblical origins, and that sort of thing?

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Well, at least one of the answers to that question Dr.

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Ferguson addressed in our open, and that is, if you don't, somebody else will.

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And shouldn't a pastor be the one to shepherd the people through those issues

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rather than somebody else?

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Well, let's nerd out for a second. I know that you are much more than a hobbyist

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in the field of textual criticism and

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I think it's pretty fair to say that nearly all church members.

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Most pastors and leaders are quite ignorant of textual criticism.

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I guess my question is, should they be? I went to a Christian college in the

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South in the 90s, and I was exposed to a special kind of attack on the Bible,

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kind of spearheaded by Spong and John Dominic Cross and the Jesus seminar later

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on by Bart Ehrman and people like that, that really used sort of academic means

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to undermine the reliability of the Bible.

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And one of which was just the fact that there were so many.

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Textual variations out there. Now, I grew up in the church. I grew up in solid churches.

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Frank Barker, Briarwood Christian, and one of the flagship PCA churches and

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some really good large Baptist churches in the South.

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But when I got to college, I was very ignorant of these textual variants and

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paleography and textual criticism and all of that.

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And so when I first started hearing German higher criticism, it shook me.

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I went through quite a bit of doubt to hear these very smart people making fairly

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sophisticated, and I would say sophisticated for this guy, not genuinely sophisticated,

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arguments against the reliability of the Bible.

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And to this day, I would say pastors and church members are largely ignorant

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about textual criticism and the origins of the Bible.

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And I think scholars like Wesley Huff, who's very popular, are doing things

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to ameliorate and help that situation.

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So what do you think, Dr. Ferguson? Is this something that pastors should talk

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about more from the pulpit?

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And if so, how do we do that without kind of turning the church into a seminary?

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That's a really good question. Okay, first question, should they be ignorant?

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No, I don't think they're able to be ignorant because of the issue that you brought up.

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Now, can they be an expert? Absolutely not.

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I mean, the amount of time it's taken me like reading manuscript, I'm a bit obsessive.

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And so doing manuscripts really aligns with my personality because I want to

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get to the bottom of things. I don't even want to read. Here's my Vulgate.

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I don't have, whereas my tuogen is somewhere. I think it's down here somewhere,

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but I don't even want to read a printed edition. Like I want to read a manuscript. So I'm

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I'm obsessive. I want to get to the bottom of things. So like,

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yeah, they shouldn't be ignorant, but we can't expect pastors and ministry leaders

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to be experts in all things. That is really, really difficult.

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I think the problem with, in particular, the Dead Sea Scrolls is there's many,

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if any, experts who are evangelicals.

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I don't know, would you call me an expert? I have a contract to publish my dissertation with TNT Clark.

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Maybe once I publish that, then you can call me an expert. I mean,

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I do have a PhD in the field.

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I have academically published things in JBL and other journals.

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There's another expert, Drew Longacre, who is a good friend,

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but there's just not many.

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So what you have in the field of Dead Sea Scrolls is you have a lot of non-Christian

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who interpret the data from a non-Christian perspective, and they come up with

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maybe coherent arguments.

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And I would say, Chase, they might be very sophisticated arguments.

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They don't believe the Bible. They might even have an ax to grind against the Bible.

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So they're reading everything in terms of that worldview.

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So who would a pastor turn to, right? I would recommend any listeners to look

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at Texting Canon Institute.

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Texting Canon Institute is a very helpful resource.

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The Evangelical Textual Criticism

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blog spot, where I blog with several others, is very, very helpful.

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The issue with both of those is that most of the scholars there are New Testament textual critics.

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There are very, very few Evangelical Old Testament textual critics.

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Now, Peter Gentry is an amazing evangelical, but he was a Septuagint scholar.

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So he produced people like John Mead, who is another great scholar,

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but he again is Septuagint.

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He's getting more and more involved in the Dead Sea Scrolls because of the influence

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of Wes Huff. And he's very, very competent.

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He does a great, great job. But there's just not a lot of experts who can synthesize

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the data and then articulate the data in a way that's both trustworthy, like they're actually

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Interpreting the data properly, but then also faithful.

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And that's what I've tried to do is that, so just for example,

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if you look at a lot of apologetic sources, they'll say things like,

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the great Isaiah scroll proves that the book of Isaiah has been preserved letter by letter.

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I mean, even Wes Huff mistakenly said that on the Joe Rogan show.

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And I know Wes Huff, We've talked multiple times, and Wes Huff is great.

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Wes Huff is doing a great, great job. Wes Huff has already admitted that was

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a mistake. He didn't mean to say that. He was thinking of 1Q, Isaiah, B.

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But that just illustrates the fact that it's so easy to misrepresent the Dead Sea Scrolls.

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And if you pull up any apologetic book off your shelf from an apologist who

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isn't an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, they're going to tell you the Dead

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Sea Scrolls prove their liability of the Bible.

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Well, the real thing about the Dead Sea Scrolls is, yes—

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They do prove the reliability of the Bible, but it's much more complicated than that.

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And so one of the problems that we have is we tell our students,

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oh, the Bible has been preserved with accuracy.

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Or we say they counted letter by letter to make sure no letters were missing.

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They make these arguments, and then somebody like yourself then goes to a state

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university, and Abart Ehrman, or Eugene Ulrich, or an Emmanuel Tov,

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rightly says, look at all the variants.

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What do they do? So this makes me think about the book of Proverbs.

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You know, in the book of Proverbs, Solomon takes his son up on the roof and

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he points out the prostitute.

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And he says to the person who's pursuing her, that is the pathway to hell.

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And so what I mean by that is that there is an appropriate form of exposure

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that we can give to our church members.

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And I think we should do that. I think we should be the ones who introduce our

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members to the most difficult topics, issues of justice and injustice,

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textual variety, textual plurality, fluidity, all of the difficult things in

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this world, the problem of evil.

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I don't want the people on 11th Street to be learning the problem of evil from a non-Christian.

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I don't want them to be learning epistemology from David Hume,

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right? I don't want that.

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I want them to be learning it from a biblical perspective.

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So, yes, pastors should not be ignorant to textual criticism.

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Yet, textual criticism is very complex, And the Dead Sea Scrolls in particular

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has a dearth of experts who are both evangelical and experts,

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right? So there's not a lot of information.

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So although ignorance is no excuse, I'm very sympathetic.

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Now, what do I do? I don't, I was told in seminary, you should never talk about

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Greek and Hebrew from the pulpit. I do it often.

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And I don't do it in a way that's condescending and I don't do it in a way that's prideful.

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I try not to. So, for example, onomatopoeia, the word in English is the same word in Hebrew, sh.

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So that would be an example where I might say, like, the Hebrew here is onomatopoeia,

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where the word is the same as it sounds.

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And, well, I do that often. Or if there's a textual variant and I think it's

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significant, I'll tell the church, listen, the ESV says this,

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but I think the ESV is wrong, and here are the reasons why.

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And I have no—I'm exposing the people at 11th Street often to these types of topics.

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And I try to do it in a way that's not arrogant, but also exposes them.

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Sometimes if the issue is minor, I won't mention it. There are some times I

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think the ESV is wrong, but I don't know exactly how the way to communicate

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it, so I'll still preach the ESV.

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And that, my friend, is a very interesting question that we can save for another

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time or an academic publication in the future.

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So, I mean, so in all of these ways, I'm exposing the church in either very

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explicit or implicit ways to textual criticism. And I'm not afraid.

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The people at Texting Canon Institute, John Mead, Peter Gurrie,

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say we shouldn't be afraid of truth.

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And I think that's exactly right. Let's give God's people the truth about the

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Bible manuscripts, and let's also give them a faithful way to interpret the

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data. That's what I want to do.

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And you're not very familiar with the world of textual criticism.

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Dr. Ferguson is not saying the Bible is wrong. He is saying the translators

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of the ESV are not infallible in some of the translation calls they make.

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And you know, a really good book, and Pastor Christopher is about to close us

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out with the last question, but a really good book that I think is good for pastors.

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Might be a little high level for some, not all church members,

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but you've mentioned Peter Gurry a couple of times.

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Elijah Hickson and Peter Gurry came out with a very short and helpful book,

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Myths in New Testament Textual Criticism, that I think helps inoculate pastors

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from sharing, I don't know, apologetics myths, like you were mentioning earlier.

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Some of the things that people smooth over a little bit that Emmanuel Tove,

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Herb Bart Ehrman, would not smooth over so much. And I think it's very helpful, as you say, for

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church members, pastors, leaders to know truth and to promote truth.

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Okay, over to you, Pastor Christopher.

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Anthony, we're so glad that you've been on the show with us.

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You've got such a broad range of expertise, and we can't wait to have you back.

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I want to have you back just for an episode to talk about how pastors can apply

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the Old Testament when they're preaching it to people in current contexts,

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and love to hear you unpack that.

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So hopefully we get you to come back on our show and do that with us.

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Just, you've got your average church members listening to this podcast,

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sort of people who say, I'm not an expert.

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Other people who say, yeah, I'm a church leader or I'm a biblical scholar.

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Other people, pastors, maybe others that are listening.

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So real quick, maybe you could do it this way.

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Top three or four recent takeaways that the average church member would just

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be so blessed or encouraged by from recent Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship that

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you would just say, hey, here's some really cool things.

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They're just fun to know, or they might be life transformative.

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So Wes Huff said 1QISA is word for word identical to the Masoretic text.

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So that was a mistake. But I would say there are some Dead Sea Scrolls that

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are letter by letter identical to the empty text. So I think that can be an encouragement.

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The second thing I would say is the best way to interpret the data is to see

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that some scribes approached copying with a more dynamic approach and the ability

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to make adjustments to the text.

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But alongside that approach, there is a very conservative approach to copying.

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So really the goal, my goal in textual criticism is to identify the conservative approach to copying.

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And often what happens is the evangelicals only think about the conservative approach.

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And then the mainline news articles only focus on the dynamic approach.

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Nobody, some people, but the goal is to bring those things together, right?

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So I would say amid the diversity of readings in the Old Testament,

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there is a unity that is very, very close to the Masoretic text.

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And that's what my book is attempting to show and what my dissertation showed as well.

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So there are letter for letter. When you put it all together,

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there is, we see God's sovereignty in it all.

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I would say also to the average person who's watching this, maybe who's somebody

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who's like in Chase's situation, what if God in his sovereignty and providence

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only preserved the diversity?

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Ask the question, what if in God's sovereignty, he only preserved manuscripts

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in the Dead Seas that are wild and non-aligned?

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And there was no evidence of a conservative approach to copy.

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He could have done that, but he didn't.

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So in my mind, I am very grateful to God and I rejoice in God that he allowed

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us to see a conservative approach all the way back.

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I would finally say that Dead Sea Scroll scholarship, I think one of the problems

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is there's an absence of practitioners who are also Dead Sea Scroll experts,

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and that's kind of hard, right?

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Drew Longacre, he's a pastor as well, and I would highly recommend him.

00:15:16.333 --> 00:15:20.693
The people at Qumran loved the Bible. They believed that if you disobeyed the

00:15:20.693 --> 00:15:23.873
Bible, you would be kicked out of their community. They even thought if you

00:15:23.873 --> 00:15:26.473
disobeyed it in the smallest of details, you'd get kicked out.

00:15:26.653 --> 00:15:28.473
So they thought they could obey the Bible.

00:15:28.833 --> 00:15:32.473
And yet, when you look at their copies of the Bible, they had different versions of Isaiah.

00:15:32.673 --> 00:15:35.893
And what I mean is that there's differences in their Isaiahs.

00:15:35.993 --> 00:15:39.573
And yet, they believed they could obey Isaiah completely.

00:15:39.853 --> 00:15:43.953
So what I would say to the listener is that I think the people in Qumran are

00:15:43.953 --> 00:15:46.053
doing to the Bible the same thing we're doing.

00:15:46.233 --> 00:15:50.913
Use my Bible. I sing my Bible. I adapt my Bible to be a Jesus storybook Bible

00:15:50.913 --> 00:15:54.593
Bible. I adapt my Bible to be a new mother's Bible Bible, right?

00:15:54.653 --> 00:15:59.413
I take verses about greed and I put it into a different form of the Bible,

00:15:59.573 --> 00:16:02.153
excerpted Bible, so I don't have all the passages about greed together,

00:16:02.213 --> 00:16:03.853
right? Why am I doing this?

00:16:04.153 --> 00:16:07.253
Why do we like Chosen? For those of you who like Chosen, I know that's a bit,

00:16:07.533 --> 00:16:08.833
you know, everybody likes that.

00:16:09.053 --> 00:16:13.093
But what are they doing? They're reworking the Bible. Why? Because they love

00:16:13.093 --> 00:16:14.833
the Bible. Here's my final example.

00:16:15.153 --> 00:16:18.753
Shane and Shane, if you don't know who Shane and Shane is, they have a song

00:16:18.753 --> 00:16:22.733
called Psalm 23. But when you listen to Psalm 23, it's not Psalm 23.

00:16:23.133 --> 00:16:27.733
Redone Psalm 23. They've added words and reworked words and done all these things.

00:16:27.753 --> 00:16:31.053
But why have they done that? Is it because they don't believe in the authority of the Bible?

00:16:31.313 --> 00:16:34.753
Is it because there's not an authoritative, canonical Psalm 23?

00:16:34.873 --> 00:16:36.513
No, it's because they love the Bible.

00:16:36.773 --> 00:16:40.373
And I would say, I think what's the best way to interpret the evidence from

00:16:40.373 --> 00:16:42.373
the Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran is just that.

00:16:42.573 --> 00:16:46.513
You have people who love the Bible and are using the Bible and believe you can

00:16:46.513 --> 00:16:49.633
obey the Bible. and that they're doing the same thing that we're doing today.

00:16:49.813 --> 00:16:55.053
So I think amid a diversity, the best argument is that when we talk to the people

00:16:55.701 --> 00:17:01.381
Who made the changes in the second, first century BC, they were people who believed

00:17:01.381 --> 00:17:05.321
that the Bible was stable, steadfast, and that you could obey it.

00:17:05.401 --> 00:17:08.241
They knew what it was. So I think that's an encouragement.

00:17:08.501 --> 00:17:14.401
Well, that is a great ending point. Dr. Ferguson, we have soaked up almost 90

00:17:14.401 --> 00:17:19.221
minutes of your time and I have enjoyed every second of it. Thank you for your

00:17:19.221 --> 00:17:20.641
time. Thank you for your insights.

00:17:21.041 --> 00:17:24.941
Thank you for pastoring and being a scholar. We don't have enough of those.

00:17:24.941 --> 00:17:27.021
And God bless you and your family.

00:17:27.281 --> 00:17:30.501
You guys have been great to us on the podcast and we really appreciate you.

00:17:30.721 --> 00:17:31.581
Absolutely. See you guys.

00:17:32.178 --> 00:17:37.238
Okay, that was short, but pretty deep. Some of you might have some fried brains right now,

00:17:37.258 --> 00:17:42.418
so let's hit a refreshing South American beverage really quick to perk us up,

00:17:42.438 --> 00:17:46.278
and then we're going to talk about the deep academic world of the Bible and

00:17:46.278 --> 00:17:51.558
why it's important for regular church members to know these sorts of things.

00:17:51.878 --> 00:18:01.518
So today, we are reviewing an interesting soda from Brazil, Guarana, Antarctica Zero.

00:18:02.178 --> 00:18:08.378
The diet version of Brazil's national soft drink. Have you ever tried this before, JC?

00:18:08.698 --> 00:18:12.718
I have not. It looks good. I like the colors. Solid green right there.

00:18:12.918 --> 00:18:17.098
Yeah, it's really pretty. That's a Guadagnac fruit on the front of it,

00:18:17.198 --> 00:18:19.798
which reminds me of some Guadagnac trivia.

00:18:20.158 --> 00:18:24.918
Number one, it is made from the Amazonian Guadagnac plant,

00:18:25.158 --> 00:18:30.058
which is called the eyeball fruit, because the cherries-looking things,

00:18:30.058 --> 00:18:37.118
The fruits of the Guadagnac plant look exactly like creepy bloodshot eyeballs when you cut them open.

00:18:37.358 --> 00:18:42.198
Number two, the Guadagnac berry has twice the jolt of caffeine,

00:18:42.198 --> 00:18:49.118
maybe as much as four times because Guadagnac berries and coffee berries both have caffeine,

00:18:49.318 --> 00:18:54.958
but Guadagnac has two to four times more caffeine than coffee berries.

00:18:55.658 --> 00:19:00.058
And finally, as I mentioned earlier, this is Brazil's Coca-Cola killer.

00:19:00.378 --> 00:19:06.078
In fact, it was so popular in Brazil that Coca-Cola had to make a competitor

00:19:06.078 --> 00:19:10.558
called Kuat just to try to get into the Guadagnar market.

00:19:10.978 --> 00:19:14.038
So what do you think this is going to taste like, JC? Honestly,

00:19:14.278 --> 00:19:17.998
this is the first time I've ever heard about this drink, but it has been a long

00:19:17.998 --> 00:19:21.438
day at work and hearing about caffeine, that's exciting.

00:19:21.658 --> 00:19:25.278
I'm looking forward to this. I have no idea what that fruit tastes like,

00:19:25.318 --> 00:19:26.698
but that's, that's going to be cool.

00:19:26.938 --> 00:19:30.478
Okay. Let's open her up and give it a shot. Let's do it.

00:19:31.900 --> 00:19:34.660
It's a nice, crisp open. I like that.

00:19:35.220 --> 00:19:39.400
It's definitely got more of a smell than our soda from last week,

00:19:39.580 --> 00:19:42.000
the liquid death billionaire drink.

00:19:42.320 --> 00:19:45.120
Yeah, I like that smell. That's appealing.

00:19:46.860 --> 00:19:48.260
Okay, let's give her a drink.

00:19:48.977 --> 00:19:55.837
Wow. Wow. That is a really interesting, different flavor.

00:19:56.117 --> 00:19:57.457
What is that?

00:19:58.017 --> 00:20:01.977
That's insane. That's good. That is really good.

00:20:02.157 --> 00:20:06.957
It is good, but I don't even know what to compare it to.

00:20:07.397 --> 00:20:11.917
Yeah, I don't even know how to describe that. I don't either.

00:20:11.917 --> 00:20:19.457
It's a really interesting taste that's very uncommon for an American.

00:20:19.737 --> 00:20:22.717
It's almost like a citrus grape.

00:20:23.197 --> 00:20:29.477
If a grape had a little bit of that lemon taste, almost, something close to that.

00:20:30.077 --> 00:20:34.157
Yeah. I'm getting a little bit of maybe cherry.

00:20:35.097 --> 00:20:38.497
I don't know. It's sort of like a cherry ginger

00:20:38.497 --> 00:20:41.957
ale but even there it's not it's

00:20:41.957 --> 00:20:45.457
just different there there's nothing in america that

00:20:45.457 --> 00:20:48.657
i'm aware of and i've drank a lot of soft drinks

00:20:48.657 --> 00:20:51.457
that's like this one this is good it's

00:20:51.457 --> 00:20:54.457
a good it's a zero it's a guadalas zero

00:20:54.457 --> 00:20:57.557
which means no calories which does mean artificial

00:20:57.557 --> 00:21:00.797
sweeteners but it doesn't have any aftertaste it's really good

00:21:00.797 --> 00:21:04.597
hmm what do you think what are you going to give it jc honestly

00:21:04.597 --> 00:21:07.477
this one's going to be really high i i drink a coke

00:21:07.477 --> 00:21:10.777
zero probably almost every single day thanks to

00:21:10.777 --> 00:21:13.657
your wonderful supply of them and this might

00:21:13.657 --> 00:21:16.817
be a competitor with my beloved coke

00:21:16.817 --> 00:21:20.697
zero i'm gonna have to give that a four point

00:21:20.697 --> 00:21:23.557
i i like that that's good

00:21:23.557 --> 00:21:29.717
i'm going to dial it back just a bit but still very high for me as well 4.5

00:21:29.717 --> 00:21:39.617
so bravo brazil for your wonderful job good job guadalanta antarctica zero yeah

00:21:39.617 --> 00:21:42.457
i think i'm gonna finish this whole thing this is this is good,

00:21:42.937 --> 00:21:46.537
Okay, well, we'll see you next week for more Soda Reviews.

00:21:46.757 --> 00:21:49.897
Thanks for your time, JC. Hope you can sleep tonight.

00:21:50.057 --> 00:21:55.257
And we've already discussed one reason why we had a discussion with Dr.

00:21:55.357 --> 00:21:57.677
Ferguson today on textual criticism.

00:21:58.197 --> 00:22:01.897
Bible variants, all the Bible nerd stuff, the origin of the Bible.

00:22:02.177 --> 00:22:06.097
Let me give you one more reason that I alluded to earlier. This is very personal.

00:22:06.317 --> 00:22:11.437
I grew up going to two great churches in my youth, Hilldale Baptist Church in

00:22:11.437 --> 00:22:17.617
Centerpoint, Alabama, and Briarwood Presbyterian in the Altadena-Cahaba Heights area of Birmingham.

00:22:17.677 --> 00:22:22.957
Both those churches had pastors who taught me in no uncertain terms to value

00:22:22.957 --> 00:22:28.137
the Word of God, obey it, and live by it. They honored the Word with their teaching

00:22:28.137 --> 00:22:32.297
and they taught it well, and I am so grateful for that.

00:22:32.457 --> 00:22:36.437
However, and this is not a complaint at all about either of those two churches,

00:22:36.537 --> 00:22:40.757
I may have simply missed what I'm about to talk about because young Chase was

00:22:40.757 --> 00:22:45.777
an ADHD rascal that would rather read a book in church than listen to the pastor.

00:22:45.937 --> 00:22:51.537
So it is that I might have just flat missed any discussions on the origins of

00:22:51.537 --> 00:22:57.537
the Bible, on manuscript transmission, on paleography, textual criticism.

00:22:57.937 --> 00:23:00.397
Textual variance, all that sort of thing.

00:23:00.477 --> 00:23:04.517
And when I finally began to learn about those things in college and grad school,

00:23:04.517 --> 00:23:06.377
they kind of blew me away.

00:23:06.577 --> 00:23:10.097
I was initially overwhelmed by the origins of the Bible.

00:23:10.297 --> 00:23:14.357
We don't have Paul's original letters or the original gospels.

00:23:14.517 --> 00:23:18.317
Some of the handwritten Bible manuscripts have variants.

00:23:18.677 --> 00:23:22.637
The story of the woman caught in adultery and the longer ending of Mark isn't

00:23:22.637 --> 00:23:25.717
in the earliest and most reliable Bible manuscripts.

00:23:26.097 --> 00:23:31.097
What about for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

00:23:31.557 --> 00:23:35.997
That also isn't in the earliest and most reliable Bible manuscripts,

00:23:35.997 --> 00:23:40.257
but I grew up saying that every week in church.

00:23:40.884 --> 00:23:46.104
So finding these things out in rapid succession shook my faith,

00:23:46.104 --> 00:23:50.564
and it led me to a time of deep, dark doubt that I shared with no pastor or

00:23:50.564 --> 00:23:54.944
friend, because I reasoned if my pastors growing up never mentioned this stuff.

00:23:55.164 --> 00:23:57.304
Maybe they didn't know about it.

00:23:57.424 --> 00:24:03.624
So I was alone and eaten up with doubt, and it was really a deep dive academic study,

00:24:03.744 --> 00:24:08.264
actually, of the resurrection of Jesus and all of the many evidences that point

00:24:08.264 --> 00:24:13.784
towards that event happening in historical reality that God used to bring me

00:24:13.784 --> 00:24:17.764
out of that doubting period and largely made me who I am today,

00:24:17.764 --> 00:24:22.404
a pastor who cares deeply about the Word of God and the origins of the Word

00:24:22.404 --> 00:24:29.584
of God too, and a guy who wants to equip church members to not go through the same experience I had.

00:24:29.684 --> 00:24:34.544
So let's talk briefly about the science and academics of biblical study,

00:24:34.544 --> 00:24:40.424
Starting with a basic question, what is textual criticism and why does it not

00:24:40.424 --> 00:24:42.264
mean criticizing the Bible?

00:24:42.464 --> 00:24:46.404
Well, Dr. Michael Kruger is a New Testament textual criticism expert.

00:24:46.424 --> 00:24:52.644
He's written a great beginner's article on the topic, which is on the gospelcoalition.org

00:24:52.644 --> 00:24:58.404
website, but I also have it linked on our website, everychurchflourishing.com,

00:24:58.624 --> 00:25:02.464
under the episode notes for this episode, episode 20.

00:25:02.464 --> 00:25:08.864
And I want to use his definition of textual criticism here and his explanation of it.

00:25:09.044 --> 00:25:13.704
Dr. Kruger writes, Outside of archaeology, the only way we can know what might

00:25:13.704 --> 00:25:18.804
have happened during a period of human history is because someone somewhere wrote about it.

00:25:19.024 --> 00:25:23.964
While people wrote on a wide range of materials from stone to pottery to wood,

00:25:24.104 --> 00:25:30.724
the most common were papyrus or parchment, which are essentially ancient versions of paper.

00:25:30.724 --> 00:25:35.664
If a person wrote a historical or literary document and wanted to see that document

00:25:35.664 --> 00:25:38.204
distributed, then copies would have to be made.

00:25:38.364 --> 00:25:45.384
Copies were done by hand, usually by trained scribes, although sometimes by amateurs.

00:25:45.791 --> 00:25:50.911
As documents wore out over time, and they do wear out because they're made of

00:25:50.911 --> 00:25:54.971
paper and animal skin and papyrus,

00:25:55.271 --> 00:26:01.151
more copies would have to be made so that the text could be preserved for future generations.

00:26:01.611 --> 00:26:08.511
During the copying process of any ancient document, scribes occasionally made mistakes.

00:26:08.511 --> 00:26:15.271
Most were just ordinary slips of the pen or spelling differences or word order changes,

00:26:15.651 --> 00:26:21.411
accidental omissions or doubling of letters or whatever, but now and then scribal

00:26:21.411 --> 00:26:23.671
changes would be more significant.

00:26:23.671 --> 00:26:27.631
This means that when we compare copies of any historical document,

00:26:27.811 --> 00:26:30.471
there are likely to be points where the text is different.

00:26:30.671 --> 00:26:36.651
Unlike books published by a printing press where all copies are usually exactly

00:26:36.651 --> 00:26:42.331
the same, hand-copied manuscripts have inevitable textual variations and

00:26:42.523 --> 00:26:47.283
Pretty much every copy of the Bible, every copy of every book of the Bible was

00:26:47.283 --> 00:26:51.243
hand-copied up until almost 1500.

00:26:51.923 --> 00:27:00.543
So essentially nearly 1500 years of church history, our scriptures were copied by hand.

00:27:00.743 --> 00:27:04.383
Here we come to the core purpose of the discipline of textual criticism,

00:27:04.643 --> 00:27:10.783
which is to restore as much as possible the original wording of any historical

00:27:10.783 --> 00:27:12.983
document in this case. the Bible.

00:27:13.303 --> 00:27:18.003
Other aspects of the discipline are important, but there are debates about how

00:27:18.003 --> 00:27:25.963
accessible the original text is and whether we can ever really reach it after hundreds,

00:27:26.483 --> 00:27:29.583
over a thousand years of manual copying.

00:27:29.803 --> 00:27:34.683
Regardless, neither of these things changes the main goal of the discipline

00:27:34.683 --> 00:27:38.983