Perfect timing on this. Our small group is working on teaching on how to teach kids apologetics, and this was a long discussion a few weeks ago. We watched a video from a former Christian turned atheist lecturing on the discrepancies in the Bible (of course it was easy to pick apart his arguments because he never gave specifics of what the discrepancies were and he was obviously speaking out of anger). In your 10 minute video you have demolished an argument he took an hour to build (with a lot of repetitions).
Hi Ticia. Great idea of exposing kids to this. I have a hard time bringing up this topic in our adult Bible study -- the folks just aren't that interested. Be aware that there are opponents (like the atheist you mention) whose academic credentials, quality of arguments, and mode of arguing, are much more respectable than that guy. I'm thinking people like Bart Ehrman here. He teaches at Duke, and has written popular-level books on the topic. But his erudition doesn't make him right.
Bart Ehrman is actually the person I was referring to, I just didn't remember his name when I commented. I watched an hour-long talk he did, and in his talk, he repeated himself several times, he never gave concrete examples, and when he says thousands of errors, he's talking spelling or word order errors. I know academically he's very respected, but the couple of videos I saw I could pick apart his arguments easily.
@@TiciaM Seriously?! You're picking apart an hour long lecture(s) and considering that good enough?! How about you actually read his books, which are far more in depth, and then try to refute his arguments? He's very well respected because he's earned that respect. Typically, they don't let uninformed/uneducated scholars write new testament textbooks for ivy league schools.
@@dabeamer42 Bart Ehrman doesn't teach at Duke; he teaches at UNC Chapel Hill. Mark Goodacre is the new testament professor at Duke. Bart Ehrman has never taught there, only at Rutgers and UNC Chapel Hill. If you're going to try to smear the guy, you might want to at least get his credentials correct. You do realize that you could have googled that information, right? And no, his erudition doesn't necessarily make him right; the validity of his arguments are what matter most. Until you've addressed those, you have no reason to dismiss him. As I stated in my previous comment on this thread, it says quite alot to his knowledge/perspective that he is enlisted to write new testament textbooks for ivy league schools. And as for your "great idea exposing kids to this" comment, I think indoctrination of children is disgusting. If they want to believe when they are psychologically matured and understand logic and critical thinking, then that should be their choice to make. Ingraining them with a belief at an early age, especially a religious faith based belief, is irresponsible to say the least.
Love this series so far. It's what 2 years in Bible college taught me in 10 minute series. Totally sharing this on Facebook if that's OK. I also like the fact you left the end open as to not prevoke an argument about whether God is real. It keeps it in the middle and allows people sharing it to open more to the gospel. Stay awesome
Destin Sandlin Hi Destin, just wanted to say thank you so much for your great work on UA-cam. SED is one of my go-to places as a Physics teacher and NDQs has firmly established itself as my podcast of choice to listen to while doing house chores! (They are often so good that I look for extra jobs to do so that I can keep on listening!!)
Monkey Monkey I respect your beliefs, but I'm curious. Why is everything one man (Muhammad) says credible, but many people reading thousands of texts and agreeing on exactly what was written isn't credible? I'm trying to understand why one man's writing must be from God, but many men agreeing on a common writing isn't. It just seems disingenuous, but maybe I misunderstood you.
Dude I can't tell you how much I love your channel. Thank you for existing, pls keep content coming. Also, the way you always make it an open ended, conversation starter, that's just who you are, you don't have a hidden agenda with it and I love that, it's rarer than you know
But the copy we have now is in English. - Who translated them - how was it copied - how do you make sure it’s authentic - the translators are honest in translating?
Great video! I love your enthusiastic tone. I love your tangible explanations and teaching methodology. Very easy to listen to. I don't know if previous comments have asked this.... The comparison with the kids copying of the poem is great, but simplistic in that it doesn't consider the aspect of time and generations of copying. Since the majority of New Testament copies have come from one family of earlier texts, isn't it better to lean towards the earlier texts rather than a simply rule of "majority wins"?
Incredible video! Simple yet profound...you have a clear, concise manner of communicating your points and this is exactly what I was looking for to answer my questions. God bless you and your family.
One thing the bible isn't lacking is archeological evidence, that's actually one of its strengths. That's not to say everything in it is backed by archeology. Scientific impossibilities are a universe from nothing, we never observe things coming from nothing.
Thank you explaining this in such an objective, clear and unbias way! I am a Christian and I also love science. Thank you for bridging the two together!
This is a GREAT explanation of an important topic. Matt... you’re a blessed intellectual and relatable communicator. I encourage you to keep producing quality videos. And how cool is it that you know the ‘Smarter Every Day’ dude! 😜
Quality of video was really great! Nice explanation. Cool to have a little interview and interaction with others, fun music, and nice Mega Man reference!
For anyone that doubts it still,.. see Dr. Daniel Wallace and his research on this in depth. He is the founder of- the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts.He is actually the guy who is personally digitizing every NT greek manuscript in the entire world.
Good work, I like the experiment as well. Thank you for adding valuable content that helps people think intelligibly about the most significant issue of their lives. I really appreciate you and Destin and am thankful for having learned about your channel from getting to know you through the "No Dumb Questions" podcast. I think, of late, another blessing to me has been Tim Mackie (Main contributor to "The Bible Project") and if you've not been turned on to him, I urge you to consider looking into his exploration of biblical themes.
Hi Matt, just been catching up on all your NDQs over the past fortnight. They are fab, as is this video. You, sir, are an inspiration to me. Keep up the great work!!
Hey Matt, really awesome episode. I really liked how you got those kids to copy the poem as a practical experiment. I have gotten into many discussions about the validity of the early manuscripts and so on. It is really eye opening how much evidence points to at least a single working document. That said, why isn't this spoken about more? I feel this should be common knowledge about the considering the fact that scholars have been studying these texts for thousands of years and so many people's lives have been affected by said texts. Thanks for all your hard work. Also Han shot first. Please fix.
to answer your question about why isn't this spoken about more its rather simple, Most pastors and churches don't invest the time and energy required to really lay out why we believe what we believe. instead they give platitudes and bullet points.
Nicely done! I spent yesterday afternoon monkeying around on the roof putting up lights & listening to your sermon on the Protestant reformation. It was super informative & gave me a better understanding on what sacrifices were made for our benefit
Kyle Reitsma Sermons - Lander Evangelical Free Church Sunday sermons and other lessons from Sunday School classes Via my podcast app Subscribe: feed://lander-efree.squarespace.com/sermons?format=rss www.landerefree.org/sermons/
Search any podcast player for "Lander Evangelical Free Church". My personal recommendation would be to jump in on his Sermon on the Mount Series starting with the Beatitudes at the beginning of Matthew chapter 5. His deep dive into Ephesians is pretty great, too.
Jarrett Hall Thanks for the link! He never mentioned those. What other secrets is this mysterious man hiding? Just when I think I know some guy on the internet, I learn he's living a secret life, posting sermons and not even telling ME, his buddy? Doesn't subscribing to someone's UA-cam channel MEAN anything anymore? Who ARE you Matt? If that's your real name. Anyway, listened to the "sermon on the mount", then bookmarked for later. 45 minutes is long, but if it wasn't 12:30am, I'd listen to another one. I like the relatable analogies that actually make sense and add value to the subject matter. What happened to my life? I'm getting excited to listen to a bunch of sermons?! Don't tell Matt I liked it. He didn't tell me they even existed, so why should I tell him anything? That'll teach him to respect me. If he asks, I'll say I fell asleep after 5 minutes.
I’m a Catholic that always loves searching for good information to help me evangelize to other people and I always enjoy all your videos! You are very well spoken! God bless you my brother in Christ
Great video! Loved the experiment you did. It would have been a better analogy though if you had asked some of the kids to DELIBERATELY add to the poem, which we know scribes did to the gospels (e.g. the gospel of John's story of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery is not found in our oldest and best manuscripts. Same with the last twelve verses of Mark)
Very well done. Your rational and reasoned videos are the best on the web. I have been trying to explain this very thing to people for years. It simply does not compute with others...for some reason. (I, of course, have my suspicions as to why. 😉). Keep up the great work.
Thank you for also pointing out the difference in arguments about whether the Bible is a verifiable historical document and whether what it says actually happened. Plenty of Christians themselves would still argue that the Olympian gods in Homer's writings didn't actually exist either, so it isn't unreasonable for people to question/argue/discuss the supernatural stuff in the Bible either. Plenty of historians argue over how much of Julius Caesar's writings actually happened as well (#fakenews), but we are still talking about some of the most well documented ancient texts, so we know with a good degree of certainty that these are the same words that ancient people had in front of them to read also AND that quite a lot of these words were written down within the lifetimes of those people who were being written about...
Extract from Wikipedia on the "Rylands Library Papyrus P52: "The original editor proposed a date range of 100-150 CE;[5] while a recent exercise by Pasquale Orsini and Willy Clarysse, aiming to generate consistent revised date estimates for all New Testament papyri written before the mid-fourth century, has proposed a date for 52 of 125-175 CE.[1] But a few scholars say that considering the difficulty of fixing the date of a fragment based solely on paleographic evidence allows the possibility of dates outside these range estimates, such that "any serious consideration of the window of possible dates for P52 must include dates in the later second and early third centuries."
the telephone game is often used as evidence to show that the bible cant be accurate, after all a group of people couldn't even get one simple message right, right? I think the telephone game is a game designed to achieve a specific result.I would encourage you guys to try another experiment I think is rather enlightening. there is a flaw with the telephone game, each person can only (usually) say the phrase one time to the next person. There is usually no incentive to be accurate.So I say allow the participants to ask the person telling them the phrase to repeat as many time as they wish to talk and ask question as much as they like. Secondly incentivize the participants with prizes if the results are 100% correct at the end.In my experience the results have been perfect every time.
Interesting yea; the critical difference with the telephone game is that the message is only ever carried by a single source to a single destination at a time, even ignoring to favor towards mutation that's a perfect environment to destroy information. I bet if you started with a single message and a hundred lines of kids, you could do this same thing to bash the results together and get a reputable approximation of the starting conditions. With 25,000 lines of kids, I bet you'd be within a percentage point of correct. (internet could totally do this, that'd be fun)
exactly. when the participants have the opportunity to seek more information and verify that the information is correct they will do so as long as they are incentivized to do so. in fact I bet the group as a whole would become faster more accurate and more efficient the more times they participated.
Here's the biblical motto I use on copies "God allows the dust, but doesnt allow the rust". Unlike a copy machine, the biggest scriptural problem is not what's been taken away, but what is added. Nowhere on a copy machine does anything get added, only diminished. Textually, there's next to no evidence anything has been lost, only embellished.
Wait, somone got Smarter Everyday in my Ten Minute Bible Hour. :) I like the fact that you actually tested the hypothesis of statistical analysis on defragmenting documents. ;) With kids no less. :)
I would love to see you address this with Religion for Breakfast, as he's also great, though he studies religion from a non-devotional perspective. Plus, I would guess your audiences have similar interests but perhaps don't overlap much.
one quibble: what about potential early errors in a text that got widely copied? it seems semi-likely that quite a few 'chains of copies' could flow through the same text, so an error in that text could become fairly widespread. other than that, great video!
That's absolutely correct. That is why scholars don't just count the number of manuscripts that say one thing and then say the one with the most is the best. There are a number of techniques that help root out early errors. The easiest is that most errors don't make sense when you read it, so we know that those are an error. Another technique is that manuscripts are sorted into "textual families". These are usually text traditions that grew up in different areas. For much of the reception history of the NT, different areas were separated geographically, politically or even theologically and there was not as much "cross-pollination" of textual traditions. Some of these divisions happened very early and, once they did, even early errors made subsequently didn't cross over into the other tradition. An extension of this is translation. The NT letters and books were translated very early into other languages (like Coptic) and while we generally don't re-translate these back into Greek and use them for translation, they are helpful for settling textual disagreements of competing early text traditions. There are more techniques as well, but the final thing to consider is that most of these variants make no difference. About 1% of all variants are realistic (i.e. they could be the correct copy) AND significant (meaning that the difference would even show up in a translation to English).
I love your channel, Matt. In regards to your statement, "Interestingly, the fragment that dates so close was written by John." at 3:16 is not attested in any source I can find for the John Rhylands fragment. Where is there a fragment we can say is written by an apostle of Jesus?
Thanks for the question. I think you might have misunderstood my remark. The oldest fragment of the New Testament is a fragment from the Gospel of John, who was the last of the twelve to die, which puts the earliest copy we have within living memory of the lifetime of the apostles who wrote the original. I do not believe, nor does anyone I’ve heard of, that we are in possession of anything written by John himself with his own hand using his own ink.
@@MattWhitmanTMBH Hey! Thanks so much for your prompt reply! So happy to hear from you. I wanted to believe we had a first-hand copy of a gospel, but thank you for clarifying!
I've been loving the series. Just a quick question. There are verses or excerpts that are footnoted with *not in earlier manuscripts. How do those passages come about?
The 'Word' of course does not refer to the bible. If you refer to 'In the beginning was the Word...' then a knowledge of the 'Logos is necessary. There is no reference in scripture which confirms the bible is the word of God. That which does not pass away is the primordial Aum (Om) the creative sound vibration which creates the universe, the breath of God. "The wind blows where it wills, you know not from where it comes or where it goes, so are they born of the Spirit (literally wind)" "
What about intentional changes in the early copies? We have some if we compare it to Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanicus. Was this changes the reason why we don't have any originals? Not even fragments to compare with what we have today.
What hesays is true as far as what can be put in 9 minutes. There are early manuscripts and fragments in other languages, but the largest number are in Coy Greek. The Aramaic manuscripts have overlapping dating that are not as old as the average Greek manuscripts. The Coptic manuscripts and fragments have overlapping dating to the Greek with some being older. The Latin manuscripts seem to post date most Greek manuscripts and reflect the linguia franca change from Coy Greek to Latin. The oldest fragments are now placing the gospels in the First Century AD. What does this mean? It means the new testament manuscripts were available in both Coy Greek or Coptic in the 1st Century AD. When comparing Greek, Coptic, Aramaic, and Latin manuscripts, there is still consistentsy. Some linguistic scholars have suggested that some of the Greek text suggest the original author was a native Hebrew or Aramaic speaker.
P52 is earliest dated 125-175 AD, 30-80 years after John is thought to have been written. It is comprised of only four verses of John. P66 is dated around 200 AD and contains most of John. P75 is dated 175-225 and contains much of Luke and John. The earliest full version of the NT is Codex Sinaiticus, dated around 330-360 AD. Before that, there were only fragments. I don’t know how we can be confident that the Bible didn’t undergo significant revision and the development prior to extant fragments much less the significantly later completed NT manuscript. I’m not sure how the Robert Frost exercise addresses this.
Ah, Textual Crit. My favorite class in seminary. Really. I enjoy digging in to the apparatus (that's the term for the footnotes Matt pointed to, where the scholars give reasons for and against a given reading). I was a teeny bit disappointed that Matt made it all the way thru without mentioning the phrase "Textual Criticism". That would have made my day.
The problem is We don't know if someone added or taken away from the original from the beginning. Also these are 1000s of words where each word can have multiple meanings coming from a language that we can barely translate into English to get the true Translation. So in other words its copies of copies but also language to language and different interpretations
Because Robert Frost lived in modern society (died 1963), where his works were published in his lifetime, proofread by him, mass-printed on presses, and available in bookstores and libraries. But that's not what you were really asking, is it?
If the Good Lord is able to keep this entire universe afloat, He is certainly able to preserve and maintain His Word throughout the ages. Great video 👌
Solid video. If I remember correctly, scribes took so much care in copying scripture that the exact placement of characters is usually identical across biblical manuscripts. I believe even small shreds of the Dead Sea Scrolls (admittedly Hebrew scriptures not New Testament) can be identified almost like puzzle pieces because all the characters line up in the same locations on the page as other known manuscripts.
THANK YOU! I love this series and have recently made some family really mad because I worded something wrong. Ok so I said that saying the KJV was the only viable translation was ignorant. People don't like being called ignorant... And I was wrong to not clarify my point further. God bless and may the Peace of Christ be with you!
The oldest New Testament transcript is from the 4th Century (325AD - 380AD). So that makes the oldest transcript of the New Testament 1695 - 1640 years old. Now before anyone jumps up and down the oldest fragment of the New Testament or what is proclaimed to be was written in the 3rd Century 250AD. but that's not a transcript that's just a fragment that has just 2 single letters on it. Then we have the oldest known Greek New Testament. Papyrus 52 is the earliest extant Greek New Testament fragment. (2nd or 3rd Century) Papyrus 52 has never been radiocarbon dated. There are some major issues with P52. First, the papyrus has been dated based on the handwriting alone, without the support of dated textual references or associated archeology. Secondly, like all other surviving early Gospel manuscripts, this fragment is from a codex, not a scroll. If it dates from the first half of the second century, this fragment would be amongst the earlier surviving examples of a literary codex. Until they radiocarbon date P52 it will be disputed.
I'm pretty late to the party but I can't find anyone else mentioning this so I'll included it. Alexandria was the gateway to Africa at that time, especially if you are coming from the areas Christianity got its start. It was also one of the largest trading hubs of the Mediterranean world at the time so it would definitely make sense if that would have been one of the first places Christianity spread to. Anyone that stopped at Alexandria possessing any sort of written text had that text confiscated with a copy of it returned to them. The library of Alexandria kept the originals and the person that brought the text there got a fresh copy. The Library of Alexandria burned in 48AD. It is very possible that some of the original manuscripts written directly by the apostles were lost just 15 years after Christ's death.
I couldn't tell exactly which one Matt was using but I think it was a Nestle -Aland edition. It could the United Bible Societies edition but they do have the same text base. The Nestle-Aland text is the standard for academic work in New Testament studies and you can find them rather cheaply on eBay and Amazon. I found a Nestle-Aland 25th edition at a thrift store for $2.99.
Very nicely done. So what you are really saying is that Han Solo shot first, and that however much George Lucas tried to change it you can still reliably reconstruct the original Star Wars movie from the existing copies, even if Lucas burned the original negatives?
Resident Atheist Here: Could you post your sources for those studies which evaluated the copies vs each other. It is great to hear they match up, but it is better to see for one's self.
You could probably do that yourself with a quick Google search. No (respected) scholars disagree that the New Testament is a reliable historical document. As for the Old Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls pretty much cover that.
Great video, I went to a Christian college and this is teaching that took a whole semester to examine and you broke it down in a clear and understandable video🔥
-"As one who has not bought into the conventional wisdom concerning 'recovery of the lost text,' I find it refreshing that the Eastern Church has available a Greek text which, while probably not perfect, is as close as we may come to the original today. Instead of one determined by a vote of 5 or 6 scholars, this text is the one commonly received by the Greek and Russian churches from time immemorial. As a Protestant Christian I delight in honoring my Orthodox friends who have preserved this text when the entire western church had defaulted to a translation, Jerome's Latin Vulgate, and now has widely accepted theories which do not accord with the historical record we have. For instance, a recent Greek edition in the west is done with the overt assumption that changes in the ancient text were done by men of good will, when the fathers repeatedly have written that there were intentional corruptions which had crept in as early as the first few centuries. I trust Christians in the Nicene age to be better judges of the original than Americans in the twentieth century." Thomas E. Martin -"This Beautiful book presents the Eastern Orthodox Church's traditional or patriarchal Greek text of the New Testament. [...] To this extent, it is useful to have direct access to the traditional text of one significant section of Christianity; and for the preservation of the Greek New Testament text, this is the most important part - the Greek Orthodox Church. [...] This Patriarchal Text appears to be mid-way between the MT and Textus Receptus. The book is a delightful reference for what the late Byzantium church used for its liturgy." Peter McGowan
About 400 years passed between the writing of the first Christian manuscripts and their compilation into the New Testament. (That's the same amount of time between the arrival of the Pilgrims on the Mayflower and today.) The first books of the Old Testament were written 1,000 years before that. In other words, some 1,500 years passed between the day the first biblical author put stick to clay and when the books that would become the New Testament were chosen. There were no printing presses beforehand or until 1,000 years later. There were no vacuum-sealed technologies to preserve paper for centuries. Dried clay broke, papyrus and parchment crumbled away, primitive inks faded. Back then, writings from one era could be passed to the next only by copying them by hand. While there were professional scribes whose lives were dedicated to this grueling work, they did not start copying the letters and testaments about Jesus's time until centuries after they were written. Prior to that, amateurs handled the job. These manuscripts were originally written in Koiné, or "common" Greek, and not all of the amateur copyists spoke the language or were even fully literate. Some copied the script without understanding the words. And Koiné was written in what is known as scriptio continua-meaning no spaces between words and no punctuation. Sentences can have different meaning depending on where the spaces are placed. For example, godisnowhere could be "God is now here" or "God is nowhere." What biblical scholars now know is that later versions of the books differ significantly from earlier ones-in fact, even copies from the same time periods differ from each other. There are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.
Biblical Hebrew, sometimes called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language. The very first translation of the Hebrew Bible was into Greek. This is known as the Septuagint (LXX), which later became the received text of the Old Testament in the Catholic church and the basis of its canon.
Applying to the historical manuscripts as the authority for verifying the Bible, only because of their date, is a method used specifically by the secular scholars, or trusted by the protestants who lack a better alternative, and it's a basic error from the Orthodox perspective, because a late date of a document doesn't necessarily make it the original one, or more authentic than any of the newer documents, especially when the oldest manuscripts are missing most of what we are using in the current canon of the Bible, and thus suggests that we would have to reject all the current canons, only due to a lack of evidences, which is a ridiculous idea.
Perfect timing on this. Our small group is working on teaching on how to teach kids apologetics, and this was a long discussion a few weeks ago. We watched a video from a former Christian turned atheist lecturing on the discrepancies in the Bible (of course it was easy to pick apart his arguments because he never gave specifics of what the discrepancies were and he was obviously speaking out of anger). In your 10 minute video you have demolished an argument he took an hour to build (with a lot of repetitions).
Hi Ticia. Great idea of exposing kids to this. I have a hard time bringing up this topic in our adult Bible study -- the folks just aren't that interested.
Be aware that there are opponents (like the atheist you mention) whose academic credentials, quality of arguments, and mode of arguing, are much more respectable than that guy. I'm thinking people like Bart Ehrman here. He teaches at Duke, and has written popular-level books on the topic. But his erudition doesn't make him right.
Bart Ehrman is actually the person I was referring to, I just didn't remember his name when I commented. I watched an hour-long talk he did, and in his talk, he repeated himself several times, he never gave concrete examples, and when he says thousands of errors, he's talking spelling or word order errors. I know academically he's very respected, but the couple of videos I saw I could pick apart his arguments easily.
@@TiciaM lol, that was a great comeback. XD
@@TiciaM Seriously?! You're picking apart an hour long lecture(s) and considering that good enough?! How about you actually read his books, which are far more in depth, and then try to refute his arguments? He's very well respected because he's earned that respect. Typically, they don't let uninformed/uneducated scholars write new testament textbooks for ivy league schools.
@@dabeamer42 Bart Ehrman doesn't teach at Duke; he teaches at UNC Chapel Hill. Mark Goodacre is the new testament professor at Duke. Bart Ehrman has never taught there, only at Rutgers and UNC Chapel Hill. If you're going to try to smear the guy, you might want to at least get his credentials correct. You do realize that you could have googled that information, right? And no, his erudition doesn't necessarily make him right; the validity of his arguments are what matter most. Until you've addressed those, you have no reason to dismiss him. As I stated in my previous comment on this thread, it says quite alot to his knowledge/perspective that he is enlisted to write new testament textbooks for ivy league schools. And as for your "great idea exposing kids to this" comment, I think indoctrination of children is disgusting. If they want to believe when they are psychologically matured and understand logic and critical thinking, then that should be their choice to make. Ingraining them with a belief at an early age, especially a religious faith based belief, is irresponsible to say the least.
Love this series so far. It's what 2 years in Bible college taught me in 10 minute series. Totally sharing this on Facebook if that's OK. I also like the fact you left the end open as to not prevoke an argument about whether God is real. It keeps it in the middle and allows people sharing it to open more to the gospel. Stay awesome
Bible collage don't teach you the truth
🤙 Determinism is Freedom 🤙
Buddha's sutras were way older than the bible but they can still be found.
Great video man.
Destin Sandlin Hi Destin, just wanted to say thank you so much for your great work on UA-cam. SED is one of my go-to places as a Physics teacher and NDQs has firmly established itself as my podcast of choice to listen to while doing house chores! (They are often so good that I look for extra jobs to do so that I can keep on listening!!)
pretty sure that's not the real Destin, since he often comments with his Smarter Everyday account here
Monkey Monkey So you don't listen to men, just God? Clever. Just one question. Was Mohammed a man?
Monkey Monkey I respect your beliefs, but I'm curious. Why is everything one man (Muhammad) says credible, but many people reading thousands of texts and agreeing on exactly what was written isn't credible? I'm trying to understand why one man's writing must be from God, but many men agreeing on a common writing isn't. It just seems disingenuous, but maybe I misunderstood you.
Great study bro! Cross my minds your questions with no solutions
Man.. I just loved your presentation
Fascinating experiment where you recreate the poem from the kids' copies. Really good idea. And.....
Han Shot First!
🤙 Determinism is Freedom 🤙
It is a very interesting video!
*Han did in fact shoot first*
ONLY Hans shot.
@@georgechristiansen6785 Point taken! I agree 💯
Dude I can't tell you how much I love your channel. Thank you for existing, pls keep content coming.
Also, the way you always make it an open ended, conversation starter, that's just who you are, you don't have a hidden agenda with it and I love that, it's rarer than you know
Thanks for saying that Yanislava! I can’t tell you how much I appreciate hearing from people who are tracking with what I’m going for here. Thank you!
Buddha's sutras were way older than the bible but they can still be found.
But the copy we have now is in English.
- Who translated them
- how was it copied
- how do you make sure it’s authentic
- the translators are honest in translating?
Great video! I love your enthusiastic tone. I love your tangible explanations and teaching methodology. Very easy to listen to. I don't know if previous comments have asked this.... The comparison with the kids copying of the poem is great, but simplistic in that it doesn't consider the aspect of time and generations of copying. Since the majority of New Testament copies have come from one family of earlier texts, isn't it better to lean towards the earlier texts rather than a simply rule of "majority wins"?
Incredible video! Simple yet profound...you have a clear, concise manner of communicating your points and this is exactly what I was looking for to answer my questions. God bless you and your family.
Im ok with errors on copies. My issues are with the historical inaccuracies, scientific impossibilities and general lack of archeological evidence.
One thing the bible isn't lacking is archeological evidence, that's actually one of its strengths. That's not to say everything in it is backed by archeology. Scientific impossibilities are a universe from nothing, we never observe things coming from nothing.
So true. Having that many copies only means the inaccuracies, scientific impossibilities and general lack of evidence are spread across them all.
Love what you're doing with this series.
Seeing the comparison between New Testament manuscripts verses others were FASCINATING
You’re awesome brother.
Superb explanation. Well done
Is that papyrus font on a papyrus background?
#papyrusception
+RyoriNoTetsujinfan "I know what you did James Cameron!"
Yes, and was, I have zero doubt in my mind, selected for that exact reason!
hahahah
Thank you explaining this in such an objective, clear and unbias way! I am a Christian and I also love science. Thank you for bridging the two together!
This is a GREAT explanation of an important topic. Matt... you’re a blessed intellectual and relatable communicator. I encourage you to keep producing quality videos.
And how cool is it that you know the ‘Smarter Every Day’ dude! 😜
Quality of video was really great! Nice explanation. Cool to have a little interview and interaction with others, fun music, and nice Mega Man reference!
Well done Matt! This video is awesome. So are you.
All your videos are so good👏👏
These videos are excellent, thank you.
Phenomenal video! Loved it, thanks very much Matt!!
For anyone that doubts it still,.. see Dr. Daniel Wallace and his research on this in depth. He is the founder of- the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts.He is actually the guy who is personally digitizing every NT greek manuscript in the entire world.
Good work, I like the experiment as well. Thank you for adding valuable content that helps people think intelligibly about the most significant issue of their lives. I really appreciate you and Destin and am thankful for having learned about your channel from getting to know you through the "No Dumb Questions" podcast. I think, of late, another blessing to me has been Tim Mackie (Main contributor to "The Bible Project") and if you've not been turned on to him, I urge you to consider looking into his exploration of biblical themes.
Your examples are always phenomenal. Really great job in this one.
This is actually brilliant. Well done. Great video.
Hi Matt, just been catching up on all your NDQs over the past fortnight. They are fab, as is this video. You, sir, are an inspiration to me. Keep up the great work!!
I loved your poem exercise, and the poem itself!
Good work on basic apologetics with textual criticism.
You have earned a new subscriber 😊😊😊
Hey Matt, really awesome episode. I really liked how you got those kids to copy the poem as a practical experiment. I have gotten into many discussions about the validity of the early manuscripts and so on. It is really eye opening how much evidence points to at least a single working document.
That said, why isn't this spoken about more? I feel this should be common knowledge about the considering the fact that scholars have been studying these texts for thousands of years and so many people's lives have been affected by said texts.
Thanks for all your hard work. Also Han shot first. Please fix.
to answer your question about why isn't this spoken about more its rather simple, Most pastors and churches don't invest the time and energy required to really lay out why we believe what we believe. instead they give platitudes and bullet points.
Nicely done! I spent yesterday afternoon monkeying around on the roof putting up lights & listening to your sermon on the Protestant reformation. It was super informative & gave me a better understanding on what sacrifices were made for our benefit
Where do you listen to his sermons?
Kyle Reitsma Sermons - Lander Evangelical Free Church
Sunday sermons and other lessons from Sunday School classes
Via my podcast app
Subscribe: feed://lander-efree.squarespace.com/sermons?format=rss
www.landerefree.org/sermons/
Search any podcast player for "Lander Evangelical Free Church". My personal recommendation would be to jump in on his Sermon on the Mount Series starting with the Beatitudes at the beginning of Matthew chapter 5. His deep dive into Ephesians is pretty great, too.
Thank you DJ Martinez! I will look into that series!
Jarrett Hall Thanks for the link! He never mentioned those. What other secrets is this mysterious man hiding? Just when I think I know some guy on the internet, I learn he's living a secret life, posting sermons and not even telling ME, his buddy? Doesn't subscribing to someone's UA-cam channel MEAN anything anymore? Who ARE you Matt? If that's your real name.
Anyway, listened to the "sermon on the mount", then bookmarked for later. 45 minutes is long, but if it wasn't 12:30am, I'd listen to another one. I like the relatable analogies that actually make sense and add value to the subject matter.
What happened to my life? I'm getting excited to listen to a bunch of sermons?! Don't tell Matt I liked it. He didn't tell me they even existed, so why should I tell him anything? That'll teach him to respect me. If he asks, I'll say I fell asleep after 5 minutes.
I’m a Catholic that always loves searching for good information to help me evangelize to other people and I always enjoy all your videos! You are very well spoken! God bless you my brother in Christ
Hey there I too am a catholic 😝
Buddha's sutras were way older than the bible but they can still be found.
MegaMan sfx!? In a Bible video!?
This makes me happy.
Great video! Loved the experiment you did. It would have been a better analogy though if you had asked some of the kids to DELIBERATELY add to the poem, which we know scribes did to the gospels (e.g. the gospel of John's story of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery is not found in our oldest and best manuscripts. Same with the last twelve verses of Mark)
+theninjacowboy I did that. More in the next video.
I just wanna say this video is eye opening and reassuring and just makes me feel good thank you!
This is the best video I’ve seen on this ❤❤❤❤❤
Thank you, once again, Matt.
Very well done. Your rational and reasoned videos are the best on the web. I have been trying to explain this very thing to people for years. It simply does not compute with others...for some reason. (I, of course, have my suspicions as to why. 😉). Keep up the great work.
Destin's rubbing off on you. You did a science! Actually, you did a few different sciences! Nice job, sciencer!
🤙 Determinism is Freedom 🤙
Great job! Keep the good work.
Well done, as always! Keep up the good work!
Thank you for also pointing out the difference in arguments about whether the Bible is a verifiable historical document and whether what it says actually happened. Plenty of Christians themselves would still argue that the Olympian gods in Homer's writings didn't actually exist either, so it isn't unreasonable for people to question/argue/discuss the supernatural stuff in the Bible either.
Plenty of historians argue over how much of Julius Caesar's writings actually happened as well (#fakenews), but we are still talking about some of the most well documented ancient texts, so we know with a good degree of certainty that these are the same words that ancient people had in front of them to read also AND that quite a lot of these words were written down within the lifetimes of those people who were being written about...
Beautiful 🌻🌻🌻
Found your channel back when Destin mentioned. LOVE your videos and look forward to them each week!!
+Jessica Olson Thanks Jessica!
@@MattWhitmanTMBH John wasn’t written by john the author of john is unknown.
Good work 👏🏿
Really enjoying this series. Great info.
Extract from Wikipedia on the "Rylands Library Papyrus P52:
"The original editor proposed a date range of 100-150 CE;[5] while a recent exercise by Pasquale Orsini and Willy Clarysse, aiming to generate consistent revised date estimates for all New Testament papyri written before the mid-fourth century, has proposed a date for 52 of 125-175 CE.[1] But a few scholars say that considering the difficulty of fixing the date of a fragment based solely on paleographic evidence allows the possibility of dates outside these range estimates, such that "any serious consideration of the window of possible dates for P52 must include dates in the later second and early third centuries."
Thank you so much for this series! Its ao great knowing more about the bible beyond the stories!
this is one of the best breakdowns ive ever seen! amazing job
Thank you for your work for Christ. I wish I did more for him, I struggle with sin everyday.
LOVE this video. I would love for even more videos to tackle topics like this!
the telephone game is often used as evidence to show that the bible cant be accurate, after all a group of people couldn't even get one simple message right, right? I think the telephone game is a game designed to achieve a specific result.I would encourage you guys to try another experiment I think is rather enlightening. there is a flaw with the telephone game, each person can only (usually) say the phrase one time to the next person. There is usually no incentive to be accurate.So I say allow the participants to ask the person telling them the phrase to repeat as many time as they wish to talk and ask question as much as they like. Secondly incentivize the participants with prizes if the results are 100% correct at the end.In my experience the results have been perfect every time.
Interesting yea; the critical difference with the telephone game is that the message is only ever carried by a single source to a single destination at a time, even ignoring to favor towards mutation that's a perfect environment to destroy information. I bet if you started with a single message and a hundred lines of kids, you could do this same thing to bash the results together and get a reputable approximation of the starting conditions. With 25,000 lines of kids, I bet you'd be within a percentage point of correct. (internet could totally do this, that'd be fun)
Also I know from experience that sometimes kids purposefully change the message. First graders can be mean.
yea kids are jerks.
exactly. when the participants have the opportunity to seek more information and verify that the information is correct they will do so as long as they are incentivized to do so. in fact I bet the group as a whole would become faster more accurate and more efficient the more times they participated.
Here's the biblical motto I use on copies "God allows the dust, but doesnt allow the rust". Unlike a copy machine, the biggest scriptural problem is not what's been taken away, but what is added. Nowhere on a copy machine does anything get added, only diminished. Textually, there's next to no evidence anything has been lost, only embellished.
Ths is so important!! Good job.
Wait, somone got Smarter Everyday in my Ten Minute Bible Hour. :) I like the fact that you actually tested the hypothesis of statistical analysis on defragmenting documents. ;) With kids no less. :)
That is probably the coolest part of this
🤙 Determinism is Freedom 🤙
I would love to see you address this with Religion for Breakfast, as he's also great, though he studies religion from a non-devotional perspective. Plus, I would guess your audiences have similar interests but perhaps don't overlap much.
No there might be cross over
one quibble: what about potential early errors in a text that got widely copied? it seems semi-likely that quite a few 'chains of copies' could flow through the same text, so an error in that text could become fairly widespread.
other than that, great video!
That's absolutely correct. That is why scholars don't just count the number of manuscripts that say one thing and then say the one with the most is the best. There are a number of techniques that help root out early errors. The easiest is that most errors don't make sense when you read it, so we know that those are an error. Another technique is that manuscripts are sorted into "textual families". These are usually text traditions that grew up in different areas. For much of the reception history of the NT, different areas were separated geographically, politically or even theologically and there was not as much "cross-pollination" of textual traditions. Some of these divisions happened very early and, once they did, even early errors made subsequently didn't cross over into the other tradition. An extension of this is translation. The NT letters and books were translated very early into other languages (like Coptic) and while we generally don't re-translate these back into Greek and use them for translation, they are helpful for settling textual disagreements of competing early text traditions.
There are more techniques as well, but the final thing to consider is that most of these variants make no difference. About 1% of all variants are realistic (i.e. they could be the correct copy) AND significant (meaning that the difference would even show up in a translation to English).
I love your channel, Matt. In regards to your statement, "Interestingly, the fragment that dates so close was written by John." at 3:16 is not attested in any source I can find for the John Rhylands fragment. Where is there a fragment we can say is written by an apostle of Jesus?
Thanks for the question. I think you might have misunderstood my remark. The oldest fragment of the New Testament is a fragment from the Gospel of John, who was the last of the twelve to die, which puts the earliest copy we have within living memory of the lifetime of the apostles who wrote the original. I do not believe, nor does anyone I’ve heard of, that we are in possession of anything written by John himself with his own hand using his own ink.
@@MattWhitmanTMBH Hey! Thanks so much for your prompt reply! So happy to hear from you. I wanted to believe we had a first-hand copy of a gospel, but thank you for clarifying!
I've been loving the series. Just a quick question. There are verses or excerpts that are footnoted with *not in earlier manuscripts. How do those passages come about?
Awesome Matt. Really enjoyed this one.
Heaven and Earth shall pass away but my word shall remain
The 'Word' of course does not refer to the bible. If you refer to 'In the beginning was the Word...' then a knowledge of the 'Logos is necessary. There is no reference in scripture which confirms the bible is the word of God.
That which does not pass away is the primordial Aum (Om) the creative sound vibration which creates the universe, the breath of God.
"The wind blows where it wills, you know not from where it comes or where it goes, so are they born of the Spirit (literally wind)"
"
You have quite a gift explaining biblical material. Great job.
What about intentional changes in the early copies? We have some if we compare it to Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanicus. Was this changes the reason why we don't have any originals? Not even fragments to compare with what we have today.
This was fun to watch! 👍🏻
Great video Matt!
What hesays is true as far as what can be put in 9 minutes. There are early manuscripts and fragments in other languages, but the largest number are in Coy Greek. The Aramaic manuscripts have overlapping dating that are not as old as the average Greek manuscripts. The Coptic manuscripts and fragments have overlapping dating to the Greek with some being older. The Latin manuscripts seem to post date most Greek manuscripts and reflect the linguia franca change from Coy Greek to Latin. The oldest fragments are now placing the gospels in the First Century AD. What does this mean? It means the new testament manuscripts were available in both Coy Greek or Coptic in the 1st Century AD. When comparing Greek, Coptic, Aramaic, and Latin manuscripts, there is still consistentsy. Some linguistic scholars have suggested that some of the Greek text suggest the original author was a native Hebrew or Aramaic speaker.
P52 is earliest dated 125-175 AD, 30-80 years after John is thought to have been written. It is comprised of only four verses of John. P66 is dated around 200 AD and contains most of John. P75 is dated 175-225 and contains much of Luke and John. The earliest full version of the NT is Codex Sinaiticus, dated around 330-360 AD. Before that, there were only fragments. I don’t know how we can be confident that the Bible didn’t undergo significant revision and the development prior to extant fragments much less the significantly later completed NT manuscript. I’m not sure how the Robert Frost exercise addresses this.
Huge fan of your videos and your work on NDQ. I lost it on the Darryl name drop :)
Nicely done.
This is ingenious and beautiful! Awesome video man!
Ah, Textual Crit. My favorite class in seminary. Really. I enjoy digging in to the apparatus (that's the term for the footnotes Matt pointed to, where the scholars give reasons for and against a given reading).
I was a teeny bit disappointed that Matt made it all the way thru without mentioning the phrase "Textual Criticism". That would have made my day.
The problem is We don't know if someone added or taken away from the original from the beginning. Also these are 1000s of words where each word can have multiple meanings coming from a language that we can barely translate into English to get the true Translation. So in other words its copies of copies but also language to language and different interpretations
Very well done! Thanks for sharing this.
I love your commentary. I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day saints, and it was nice to hear reasonable comments about the Bible.
I hope Christ guides you to TRUTH.
It's great that Vikings got put with natural disasters. Great idea using the poem and younger students. This is a great series of videos. Thank you.
Great explaination. But how do we know for certain that the "original" poem, which you give for children to copy, original? 🤔
Because Robert Frost lived in modern society (died 1963), where his works were published in his lifetime, proofread by him, mass-printed on presses, and available in bookstores and libraries.
But that's not what you were really asking, is it?
If the Good Lord is able to keep this entire universe afloat, He is certainly able to preserve and maintain His Word throughout the ages. Great video 👌
Solid video. If I remember correctly, scribes took so much care in copying scripture that the exact placement of characters is usually identical across biblical manuscripts. I believe even small shreds of the Dead Sea Scrolls (admittedly Hebrew scriptures not New Testament) can be identified almost like puzzle pieces because all the characters line up in the same locations on the page as other known manuscripts.
THANK YOU! I love this series and have recently made some family really mad because I worded something wrong. Ok so I said that saying the KJV was the only viable translation was ignorant. People don't like being called ignorant... And I was wrong to not clarify my point further. God bless and may the Peace of Christ be with you!
Wow...marvelously done!
The oldest New Testament transcript is from the 4th Century (325AD - 380AD).
So that makes the oldest transcript of the New Testament 1695 - 1640 years old.
Now before anyone jumps up and down the oldest fragment of the New Testament or what is proclaimed to be was written in the 3rd Century 250AD. but that's not a transcript that's just a fragment that has just 2 single letters on it.
Then we have the oldest known Greek New Testament.
Papyrus 52 is the earliest extant Greek New Testament fragment. (2nd or 3rd Century)
Papyrus 52 has never been radiocarbon dated. There are some major issues with P52.
First, the papyrus has been dated based on the handwriting alone, without the support of dated textual references or associated archeology. Secondly, like all other surviving early Gospel manuscripts, this fragment is from a codex, not a scroll. If it dates from the first half of the second century, this fragment would be amongst the earlier surviving examples of a literary codex.
Until they radiocarbon date P52 it will be disputed.
Love the new look logo + text boxes
Ah! Thank you for this video.
Brilliant experiment with the poem!
We keep finding older and older copies.... they always are the same. GOD IS NOT A LIAR! AMEN!
I'm pretty late to the party but I can't find anyone else mentioning this so I'll included it.
Alexandria was the gateway to Africa at that time, especially if you are coming from the areas Christianity got its start. It was also one of the largest trading hubs of the Mediterranean world at the time so it would definitely make sense if that would have been one of the first places Christianity spread to. Anyone that stopped at Alexandria possessing any sort of written text had that text confiscated with a copy of it returned to them. The library of Alexandria kept the originals and the person that brought the text there got a fresh copy.
The Library of Alexandria burned in 48AD. It is very possible that some of the original manuscripts written directly by the apostles were lost just 15 years after Christ's death.
Well done! This information should be part of EVERY church's education program.
Congratulations on this video, this is a very insightfull experiment!
Your Videos are well done. Obviously you put a lot of work in them.
+Chris Bau thanks Chris, they are a ton of work, but I enjoy doing it.
Keep up the good work !
Hi Matt. Do you have a preferred edition/copy of the New Testament in Greek? It seems like a document I should have.
I couldn't tell exactly which one Matt was using but I think it was a Nestle -Aland edition. It could the United Bible Societies edition but they do have the same text base. The Nestle-Aland text is the standard for academic work in New Testament studies and you can find them rather cheaply on eBay and Amazon. I found a Nestle-Aland 25th edition at a thrift store for $2.99.
great video
Very nicely done. So what you are really saying is that Han Solo shot first, and that however much George Lucas tried to change it you can still reliably reconstruct the original Star Wars movie from the existing copies, even if Lucas burned the original negatives?
Resident Atheist Here: Could you post your sources for those studies which evaluated the copies vs each other. It is great to hear they match up, but it is better to see for one's self.
You could probably do that yourself with a quick Google search. No (respected) scholars disagree that the New Testament is a reliable historical document. As for the Old Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls pretty much cover that.
Matthew Robles, Thanks for your response. I'm actually quite well aware, but I wanted to hear Matt's sources and evaluate them myself.
Great video, I went to a Christian college and this is teaching that took a whole semester to examine and you broke it down in a clear and understandable video🔥
-"As one who has not bought into the conventional wisdom concerning 'recovery of the lost text,' I find it refreshing that the Eastern Church has available a Greek text which, while probably not perfect, is as close as we may come to the original today. Instead of one determined by a vote of 5 or 6 scholars, this text is the one commonly received by the Greek and Russian churches from time immemorial. As a Protestant Christian I delight in honoring my Orthodox friends who have preserved this text when the entire western church had defaulted to a translation, Jerome's Latin Vulgate, and now has widely accepted theories which do not accord with the historical record we have. For instance, a recent Greek edition in the west is done with the overt assumption that changes in the ancient text were done by men of good will, when the fathers repeatedly have written that there were intentional corruptions which had crept in as early as the first few centuries. I trust Christians in the Nicene age to be better judges of the original than Americans in the twentieth century." Thomas E. Martin
-"This Beautiful book presents the Eastern Orthodox Church's traditional or patriarchal Greek text of the New Testament. [...] To this extent, it is useful to have direct access to the traditional text of one significant section of Christianity; and for the preservation of the Greek New Testament text, this is the most important part - the Greek Orthodox Church. [...] This Patriarchal Text appears to be mid-way between the MT and Textus Receptus. The book is a delightful reference for what the late Byzantium church used for its liturgy." Peter McGowan
About 400 years passed between the writing of the first Christian manuscripts and their compilation into the New Testament. (That's the same amount of time between the arrival of the Pilgrims on the Mayflower and today.) The first books of the Old Testament were written 1,000 years before that. In other words, some 1,500 years passed between the day the first biblical author put stick to clay and when the books that would become the New Testament were chosen. There were no printing presses beforehand or until 1,000 years later. There were no vacuum-sealed technologies to preserve paper for centuries. Dried clay broke, papyrus and parchment crumbled away, primitive inks faded.
Back then, writings from one era could be passed to the next only by copying them by hand. While there were professional scribes whose lives were dedicated to this grueling work, they did not start copying the letters and testaments about Jesus's time until centuries after they were written. Prior to that, amateurs handled the job.
These manuscripts were originally written in Koiné, or "common" Greek, and not all of the amateur copyists spoke the language or were even fully literate. Some copied the script without understanding the words. And Koiné was written in what is known as scriptio continua-meaning no spaces between words and no punctuation. Sentences can have different meaning depending on where the spaces are placed. For example, godisnowhere could be "God is now here" or "God is nowhere."
What biblical scholars now know is that later versions of the books differ significantly from earlier ones-in fact, even copies from the same time periods differ from each other. There are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.
In short Bible constantly changed?
sources?
Biblical Hebrew, sometimes called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language. The very first translation of the Hebrew Bible was into Greek. This is known as the Septuagint (LXX), which later became the received text of the Old Testament in the Catholic church and the basis of its canon.
Well done
Applying to the historical manuscripts as the authority for verifying the Bible, only because of their date, is a method used specifically by the secular scholars, or trusted by the protestants who lack a better alternative, and it's a basic error from the Orthodox perspective, because a late date of a document doesn't necessarily make it the original one, or more authentic than any of the newer documents, especially when the oldest manuscripts are missing most of what we are using in the current canon of the Bible, and thus suggests that we would have to reject all the current canons, only due to a lack of evidences, which is a ridiculous idea.