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alright hey everyone it's good to see an opportunity we have again to touch on the topic of the scripture it's one of the most popular topics that we deal with here at city lights Seattle because most of the questions that we have come in are dealing in that realm today I have a guest with me Timothy Mitchell who specialized in a section of a book called miss mistakes of New Testament textual criticism which you have probably heard me reference numerous times in some of the articles I've written on as well as referencing one of its editors Elijah Hickson who's become a good friend also you've heard me use names like Peter Guri who's the other editor of this as well and well who we have with us today is my guest Timothy Mitchell who wrote chapter 2 in the book myths and mistakes and we're going to talk today about the original autographs a very important discussion I think we all need to have because we need to go back to the origins we need to go back to the roots and we need a as I've said numerous times you've heard me say on our different podcasts as well as in our videos that we need a look at the Bible not from necessarily the last 400 years but the first 400 years and then move towards our English translation and so Timothy is going to help me do that Timothy tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and then we'll jump into some questions all right good morning uh thanks Steven so my background I'm actually in the technical field I'm a helicopter mechanic and I got into textual criticism and the history of the early history of the scriptures really through reading Bart Ehrman's misquoting Jesus as a young adult I read it and I was really challenged in my faith and I had already had some biblical training but not too much academic side of it it was more just studying the Scriptures which is great and it really challenged my faith and it caused me to start searching sources my dad was a big part of this he's a pastor and I ended up going back to school because I was spending a lot of time researching and end up getting a bachelor's degree a master's and now I'm working on a PhD in textual critisism at the University of Birmingham in England and I'm working on a particular group of medieval Greek manuscripts called family pie and I'm about halfway through my studies there right now alright well that's interesting that Herman turned you on to this interest usually he turns them on to the other side it's it's amazing that you ended up on this side of it it didn't shake your faith to the point where you ended up falling into some of the thinking on that on that wave can you fill us in a little bit on that what we're the biggest turn was for you not to follow her men's trail well honestly I had a few dark days there where I really was questioning my faith I think James chapter one where it says that we are to ask when we're going through trials and God will gave us knowledge without doubting and I really clung to that and I think honestly a big turning point was when I read Harry gambles books and readers in the early Christian church or something along those lines I can remember the title exactly a highly informative and it really talked about publication how in the greco-roman time in the first century second century and so how things how books were published how they were composed a little bit talked about libraries a fantastic book highly recommended and really opened my eyes to that there was more to it than what airman was talking about not that he was being deliberately deceptive or anything but a lot of times textual criticism focuses on the text itself and not necessarily the wider book culture us it's just a lot to cover so a lot of times it's it's not talked about a lot so that really piqued my interest and it was through that I kind of came up with an answer to my own question as and that question is from the time of the earliest manuscripts that we have you know p66 p75 to the time that the New Testament books were written the Gospels in this case that time may be a hundred hundred fifty years or so what what governed the text why was it how can we be sure that it was a stable stabilized text so the Avenue that I kind of came up with an answer for that was in the realm of how books were circulated um you could call it publication but you have to be careful about using that word because that's kind of using a modern term to describe something in the past that was a lot different it looked a lot different so so that can't that's where I found my answer and I actually have an article coming out and the journal for the study of the New Testament that kind of articulates this argument and that's basically my answer to my own question to my own doubt so that's where I'm at now that's great and when you get that article out please send it to me and I'll make sure to post it as well in and kind of keeping with what you just said Erman has cause number a number of people that we know to be shaken and we know some who have actually felt fallen off into that wave of thinking all together I I've met with numerous people who are now professing atheists or at least agnostic because of his work I mean guys that are nineteen years old twenty years old grew up in a pastor's home similar to how you did but there are still some people there that we are discussing this with who are still struggling that will watch this video give me about a 30-second answer about what you would give what kind of advice would you give that person that's gonna watch this who's where you were at that time they're still struggling well I would say continue to read widely textual criticism is a huge field and I would definitely focus on the early period of copying and circulation and I would say that in the end the answer is that books were circulated mainly through community a community of readers and it would let's say if you had a book and I wanted a copy of it I would simply borrow it and then make a copy of it so in that kind of environment it would be very difficult for me to make any kind of major textual change and and not have that come to light in that same community that's circulating these documents so that's good and we're gonna get into some of that too because you've written on that extensively and it was very helpful for me as I was reading through chapter two in fact you should know out of all the chapters so far I've written the most words off of chapter two I think I had 1500 words off of chapter two by itself so I'm definitely gonna exceed my requirement of ten thousand words I think I'm already pretty close to that and I'm only in chapter six seven getting close to eight so yours had the biggest amount of words so I obviously learned a lot from that section but in keeping with ermine he talks about the originals quite a bit and he had no problem talking about him in in his book misquoting Jesus in fact I believe you referenced him in the very first paragraph of yours yes in fact I heard him just recently he debated Dan Wallace a while back but they just released it on on YouTube and dr. Dan Wallace and him got into this discussion about should we even use terminology like original autographs so what do you think about that in light of Airman's claim of well we have copies of copies of copies of copies that's his famous line copies of copies cops cops cops codes and so we can't possibly get back to the originals there's no point talking about the original what is your thoughts based on using him as a springboard in your first paragraph and his view of the original how should we have you the original autographs well there's some terminology confusion in that you know autograph is a multivalent term this is something that Peter Williams from Tyndale House has talked about a lot and he's written in some other of his books and that is you know an autograph can mean something physical it could mean something just talking about its tech stick and in modern terminology it can mean just your signature so we have to be careful in how we defined what autograph or original means and when you get to the point of composition at that point of a document or a book or a writing the text can be very fluid so you're composing something you're drawing in sources and you're writing making changes and editing so that's all autograph but it's very fluid once you hit Send on your email and it goes out that kind of fixes it and it that's a very modern way to look at it but it's kind of the similar way in antiquity once you fit you write something any it gets sent out whether accidentally somebody steals it and starts circulating it or whether you intentionally send it out for people to copy and circulate it kind of gives a fixity to the text because you're a powerless really to make any kind of significant changes so I think when we're talking about autograph or original we need to make sure that we're talking about that point at which a text is released and it begins to circulate so that's how I mention that in the book about once it leaves the control kind of the idea that control of the original writer to the public that's when it's now official and that terminology is that correct yes and I mean those are simplistic terms that we have to use that I've used because there can be some post release changes but especially with a work that circulates widely and rapidly which I think there's good evidence that the scriptures especially the Gospels had a wide circulation early on that it becomes extremely difficult to make any kind of major changes and that would cause a type of stability in some sense but that we have to be careful about as we're describing what original or autograph means that we need to be sure that we're talking about that moment when the writing is first released do you think that happened in the New Testament at all where maybe I know there's stipulations about even the early portions of the Gospel John where perhaps John went back and added the prologue there in the epilogue as well I know Erman I think I've even heard dr. Dan Wallace don't quote me on this even agree that that's possible that that happened do you think that's that happened often or just maybe periodically at times for the New Testament um it's certainly possible and I wouldn't necessarily be against that at all and I just to be clear so as far as definitions go when I say textual changes I'm definitely focusing on macro level changes and that would be to use Michael Holmes's terminology in a couple of his writings he came up with a nice statement that said that something along the lines of that the New Testament text shows evidence of macro level stability and micro level fluidity so at the the word and maybe a sentence level you do have an incredible amount of movement and in our manuscripts but on the macro level so paragraph structure where parables are in the in the Gospels for example and the basic letter structure of the palling letters they still a macro level stability so I'm talking about macro level changes now it's certainly possible that you could have some big additions on say the end of John the or something like that or for example the the doxology of Romans could be at this point - may be something added later the problem is when when you start talking about big changes like that it I would think that that would be more difficult once a writing has been released and you'd almost have to re-release a writing and we do see evidence of that for example Tertullian a Christian writer in the second century I believe it says work against Marcion in his prologue he talks about how this is actually the the third version of his writing but the other versions were parts of it were stolen and some of it were released before he was really ready to write about it and so he basically ends up making a whole new edition and he tells everybody in his beginning of his writing that hey there's other versions of this going around this is the one that I approve basically Wow and then quintillion from the first century in his Institutes of oratory he says something similar that there's versions of this that you'll might come across that were released prematurely this is the one that that I'm talking about so it you don't really have those kinds of statements in the gospels or the writings and so I don't know I I would be kind of that's where I would be hesitant okay sure yeah and that makes it I just you hear these rumors of possibilities and they make you at least stop and think for a minute like okay am i okay with it even if there were small sections like the prologue and epilogue or at the end of Romans or something like that like am i okay if they went back and did that because we have to remember and I have to remind myself of this - I think we can overemphasize that it's the Bible is a divine and a human book and it's easy to major on one and forget the other and so there are elements where humans did write it who we're still human though under inspiration under these original autographs they were still led by their humanities - and and had human tendencies and so you see that even in the scriptures I mean man if you work through the Gospel of Luke versus the Gospel of John the syntax is completely different you can see their own unique style and almost their background Paul versus a letter like first Peter I mean the Pauline epistles very different so they are humans and we see those features as well but in keeping with that you know we talked about this circulation of these originals you made a statement on page 27 you quoted Gilbert blond bird from Denver seminary and then Craig Evans about how they made statements and claims I've got one of them here from blomberg 2nd and 3rd century New Testament manuscripts may well be copies of the very autographs or at least copies of this copies so they kind of made this argument that the original circulated for possibly up to a century kind of build off of what they're saying how much you agree with that and what does that mean for us like if that's a reality well um obviously I push back against that a little bit in the book I just want to say that I'm not necessarily against the idea that you know is it possible that the original autographs could have lasted that long well it's certainly possible I mean we have I mean I was just talking about p66 at p75 I mean have their hundreds and hundreds of years old so it's certainly possible but there's a there's a few things that I am hesitant on one is that those kinds of long lasting manuscripts I think are the exception they're exceptional they just happen - it's a lot of it's by chance or you know definitely I'm not going to say God's hand wasn't in there his in his sovereignty but you know those are changes of environment and location that we happen to have these and so to kind of take something that's highly exceptional and make it general is where I have the problem especially when you have something like that we have with the New Testament where these are with the Gospels especially you have a writing that circulates quickly and widely in a community it would be difficult to see something like that lasting very long and the other thing to think of is simply because we have a copy of and rid let's say we have a copy that came from the hand of John and we copy from that we make another transcription of it that doesn't guarantee that the text that's transcribed is accurate so there's a that's a whole other question of accurate accurate cocking so you can have an autograph right in front of you straight from the author and yet you make a whole bunch of blunders and you could actually introduce a whole bunch of mistakes and there's some examples of that in the just in the primary sources like Cicero talks a little bit about where some of his books are being copied horribly and he has no no way to control that um for example I know that's touched on numerous times throughout the book by almost all of you have made that statement because you kind of hear that myth from people like well older is always better well not nothing not really it doesn't always guarantee quality but what do you think about you know I've even heard Armand speak highly of p75 and that it's probably one of the best manuscripts that the New Testament has of itself and then he even links it slightly over to Vaticanus in the fourth century and says it's probably one the purest manuscripts that we have for Bart Ehrman to say that and I think he actually put that it's funny he didn't put that in the book of misquoting Jesus it was in one of the citations in the book but he did allude to p75 and Vaticanus because though they're separated by about a hundred and fifty years or a hundred twenty-five hundred years from each other and they're directly related they're very close so that was obviously a very clean stream wherever it branched where do we as Christians we look back at the evidence can we sit there and say well we don't have any first century manuscripts so we don't have the originals it's potential that a first century manuscript could come out of the blue in fact there was a false alarm on that that you guys mentioned in the book in a debate with Bart Ehrman daughter damn Wallace his sources mislead him on that and he kind of prematurely put it out there that we had a century of Mark and even got her ermine said that he would reconsider a lot of his views if a first century manuscript showed up so but we don't have that realistically what we have is fragmented second century fragmented third century and the fullest completions didn't come till the fourth century where do we sohow with with all of the distribution can we say we have a New Testament that we can rely on when there's so many missing gaps with those fragments well I'd say that for a couple things that you can talk about one is that you could take the approach of Michael Holmes he takes this approach in a couple of his writings and if you look at the time period of our earliest manuscripts and how they were copied the difference for example you mentioned p75 and Vaticanus we don't see we see a nice stream of copying there and if if it's good there we can kind of say that okay let's rewind it another hundred or two hundred years or so and we can say that not not a lot of things have changed you know that could be what you would say and so because it was good there it's probably good earlier the other Avenue would be what I mentioned earlier with how things were circulated and copied so there are a few of examples where the texts where we have that trickled down from our witnesses that the text of the New Testament was altered in some way and those things have become infamous in the history of our text of Marciano's one know granted that's hotly debated about whether he actually alter the text of Luke or received in altered text but that the fact is that any kind of tampering with the text would received a big notice in the Christian community and there's another one with the Theodosius that's talked about by Eusebius where they somebody kind of tampers with the text and that becomes known and so i think that if you have major changes to a manuscript tradition early on you're gonna see multiple streams with really big changes and that's something that Michael Holmes points out and one of his writings is that we don't the the Gospels and acts acts would be the only one that I would have a little bit of that evidence is that you don't really see that kind of textual evidence where you have huge parables you know being switched around where they look completely different there's some similarities but we can't even tell if it's really Matthew what's interesting to me is that we can pick up a fragment of the Gospel of John or Matthew out of the desert with just a verse or a fragment of a verse and we know exactly well we assume well exactly what book it came to but it comes from because the text is so close so that's how I would answer it yeah even like p-52 which is the early it's one of the earliest witnesses it's just a small section but we know which part of John and yeah I mean you could make the argument that that's from some earlier writing that looks like John but that would be an argument from Silence but I think that's a testament to how close that there's really not a lot of big huge textual changes that have happened and I think that's important what you mentioned Timothy is that there was high alert to that like when there were major changes you mentioned Martian like people were low hey hey this is corrupted people started talking about Church Fathers patristic writers to writing there's a stream over here that's corrupting the text Luke those things were it's like the churches were so familiar with the genuine one if anything that was altered came in they instantly had something to say about it and I think that's important because that means the churches were well aware of what was being circulated and we I don't think we give enough credit to the early church because they didn't have technology and stuff but how in tune they were with what the messages of Paul looked like what the messages of Luke look like in John and so forth let's do some defining of subjects on page 28 you talk about the term book it's sad we have to define these things because we kind of use them loosely today in our modern world you use the word book and codex go ahead and define those for us in relation to a roll or scroll and things like that why is that significant why do we need to know that when we're talking about original autographs and it's materials yeah that's a great question so when we talk about books there's there was two big ways that literature was circulated and the first century and and beyond and that was what is popularly called the scroll so that's where writing was on one side and then the book was rolled up with the writing on the inside and then the other way was where you would take a roll a blank roll and cut sheets off of it and you'd stack them up and then you'd fold them and you'd stitch him along the spine and you could even have multiple choirs of this and the writing would be on both sides now there is some indication that high literature was written only on rolls and more workaday texts scientific things Galen kind of talks about this a little bit in one of his writings where he has like a book of recipes and he refers uses terminology that describes it as a codex so something that you would in essence reference a lot so there's these two major book forms and we have hints at the differences as early as the first century is it very likely that the original autographs would have been on the scroll more so than the codex I know there's indicators and revelation you know right on the scroll type or deal to John and so forth well that's a difficult one because all of our earliest Christian the copies that we have of our Christian writings are on codex format granted those are a number of years removed from the time of writing I would say it also depends on what we're talking about I think it's more likely that for example one of Paul's letters was written on just on a sheet or two if it can be fit like for example Philemon is it's just gonna be like a small sheet and then just fold it up and and then maybe even sealed I don't know how they would have he would particularly seal that and that's probably the what the the form that was circulated now when you're talking about something like one of the Gospels it's definitely possible that was in a roll but it's equally possible that it could have been into a codex from the beginning there's some an author a scholar named Loveday Alexander talks about how the preface to Luke most closely matches scientific writings things like what Galen would write for example a medical treatise and so rather than necessarily history or high literature so from the beginning if these writings weren't necessarily meant to be high literature but were working text like reference texts then I don't know if culturally they would necessarily it's necessitate that they be on a roll but honestly we really don't know well it's interesting how they would have used that and and I think dr. Wallace mentions the fact that Christians almost popularized the Codex in the fact that they because it was easier to carry collections and Kodak's obviously if you have a scroll it's gonna be individualized you can put a codex together and most of the main scripture that way like when you look at the epistles a lot of the Pauline epistles are together or like I was mentioning Peter 1st 2nd Peter and Jude are typically found in a similar codex they kind of stack them together when you have a scroll you can't really do that as much because you're carrying individual one so would you say that was pretty popular in the Christian culture and they possibly even popularized it more so than the leather because you study outside of Christian culture writings too so how quickly did they use it there - well there is there is right some of the classical authors and stuff to secular classical authors that can be found in codices so now we have to be careful about saying that the Codex was used simply to contain texts because a lot of our earliest copies of the New Testament writings the Gospels for example only contain one writing so I'm not I'm not completely convinced that the Codex came about simply to contain more writings I think there's probably more to be said with the type of text codex would contain you know a like a working workaday text the reference text or something like that and not high literature I know that - because there's there's there's so much being said there - it's like well how do we view this in light of work that doesn't matter to us in our century yeah you just type it on a computer and hit Send and put it in the cloud you know it was a much more detailed process and and and sometimes I mean some of these things like you didn't have access to the materials some of these materials are very expensive I mean you'd have to go kill you know Betsy in the backyard to get some of the parchment you know back then parchment I mean you it wasn't just free except and that's why we see these palimpsests so much you know where they were scraping for the original wording and writing on top I mean that happened throughout the centuries too because the access the amount of access they had to these materials was very limited at times and I and I'm pretty sure papyri was not like cheap and it wasn't like it just you know anybody had it just sitting around on their shelves at home and big stacks ready to use whatever so I understand that it's important to consider the materials they had and what they used and I seriously doubt that from Matthew to Revelation they all use the same kind of format sure they change it up because some of them are different parts of the world Paul was yelling in one way others were in Jerusalem and I mean it's possible that they could have written stuff on a wax tablet on a wooden tablet in fact a tablet is mentioned in Luke when the priest writes the name of John he grabs a tablet I can't speak so I think that's interesting the other thing to remember just as far as how books were linked so writings can be conceptually linked without being physically linked and that's one of the things that's interesting about the gospel titles or the titles to the Pauline epistles - to the Thessalonians to the Romans gross throw man - whichever particular community is that those in essence or the Gospel according to John or according to Matthew those are linking these writings together conceptually without having to physically link them in a binding if that makes sense okay yeah yeah it does it does and so let's move into a new section that's more on page 31 you talked about the commercial use of private use of these documents that there were different reasons for it and you use plenty of the younger who is alive from 61 to 115 ad you mentioned that he talks about these private circulation private and commercial circulating in that first century greca in Roman era kind of tell us a little bit what we can learn from plenty on this well he tucks in one of his letters I think it's the one you're referencing where he writes to one of his friends who is an awesome author and he's like I want I would love to see your writing I'm being copied read read and sold so he describes the big avenues of how writing was circulated I would recommend one work by Brian J Wright called communal reading in the time of Jesus fantastic book and he focuses mainly on the public reading side but there's a very the the public reading or communal reading would be a better way to describe it is a way that a writing could be published in the sense of being disseminated as far as commercial we don't have a lot of knowledge of how books were produced in the sense commercially there's a few references to book shops too we have some booksellers that are named by name and the writings of for example Marshall and quintillion they might have both they're contemporaneous authors might have used the same bookseller in Rome Galen talks about an area in Rome where there's booksellers so in fact in one letter Pliny talks is writing to somebody that's in Gaul I believe modern-day France and he talks about how this friend of him sent word that some of his works were being sold in a bookshop out there so that's pretty interesting so even through a public four through commercial means a book can be disseminated but it seems that from our sources that the more private through social networks is how writings tended to be circulated and I would say in the especially with the way that the Christian communities were with a mainly professional middle-class with occasional upper-class and a lot of lower-class people that that's probably more like how the writings of the New Testament were circulated as through the social context people requesting copies in fact in Colossians 4:16 we have a reference that Paul actually is telling the the Colossians a after you read this I want you to make sure these other churches late Asiya reads a copy too so he's already talking about how his writings are gonna be circulated there yeah I met and I always found that passage interesting I can't remember if you brought that up in the book it might have been you in the book or somebody else brought up that passage of scripture it might have been in your chapter and I was like you know that's a great point he told him when they were finished to go to relay to see you read it it's like that just shows how how quick they were to get these copies out so so when we talk about the original autograph that would have been written let's talk about the editing and releasing stage because you also use plenty in some of this as well on page 5 what would the when we say autograph you even suggested the possibility of autographs plural in the process of the editing you talked about secretaries you talked about edits in that small community before the release tell us what it would have looked like in a first century context based on some of these other guys like plenty and others who talk about their excruciating process of getting a finalized work into the assembly people oh that's a great question so especially with the writings of Paul there's really great indications I recommend ear and off Richards Paul and first century letter-writing he talks about this a lot excellent source there's a really good indication to say that when Paul references Timothy or Sylvanus I think is one of them that um in the beginning the opening section of his letter he's signaling a co-author or a co contributor in some way so there's a really good possibility at the some of these writings were a product of discussion or co-authoring in some sense there in a sense there they are Pauline but some of the material comes from these other contributors the other thing to think about is scribes who contributed you mention that in Romans 16:20 - I think it is it says I tertius who wrote this epistle griot so there is definitely we should consider that the scribe had some contributing some contributing part we see that with Cicero in his slave Tarot was a big contributor to the language of Cicero's writings yet we still consider it Cicero's writings even though he had some contributing fact and you know these I can imagine that some of these writings especially for example Paul's writings maybe came out of some intense discussion with his his cohorts that were with him you know maybe they talked about him and agonized over how are we gonna deal with this problem at this church okay we need to write this stuff down you know something along that line that's how I imagine it and he might have used them for a point of reference because he would say the household is so-and-so told me and I hear these reports of you and even in colossi he even admitted he'd never seen them in the face like faced a few of them maybe Philemon he mentions in that personal log because those two would have probably been sent at the same time one was for the church one was for the individual so would you even say that it's a possibility that the reason he mentions those names he was using their oral report for his written answer oh yeah intentions that churches wrote to him too like he mentions the Corinthians were asking questions about things he mentioned the Thessalonians we're asking about the those that died before them and so this this is kind of an interesting discussion I think it needs to be had yeah definitely and that you know there's rolls of letter carriers peterhead from he's at Wickliffe hall and oxford he's written a lot about this he has a great work in the journal for the study of the New Testament I think it's called named letter carriers and Oxyrhynchus papyri but where he talks about that you know there was a big interchange between the churches and you see hints at it for example tikka kiss is a letter carrier that's brought up in a couple of Paul's writings for example in Colossians you see tikka kiss and an SMS are specifically called out I believe it's in chapter 4 at the beginning of the chapter as he's giving as bringing a message and oral message of help hulls doing in prison along with the actual physical letter and he wants to hear from them about what's going on at the church there too so there's this interchange and you see it also in Philippians with some of his people that he brings up there where he's having this interchange and he's writing him and he's hearing about stuff that's going on there so exactly what you were saying yeah and that and I think that's it again that brings back the humanity behind these books it's it's not just like some guy sitting in a room by himself under a trance of the Holy Spirit and he's just like mystically writing this stuff down like there's real human interaction that created these words that were real issues happening in the church the Corinthian church was out of control the thessalonians was in a persecution and and struggling what to do and how to think about resurrection how to think about those a day so these are real questions and he was answering real concerns that we share those same concerns today and and they were miles and miles apart from each other and we're talking on the telephone it wasn't after a text message he read that came on his phone or an email he checked it was mostly word of mouth and then people handing letters over back and forth and exchanging and that person must have been trustworthy and I think people even suggest Romans that perhaps Phoebe was yes one who delivered and who's a woman yes you know which is amazing and that's great that means she must have been a trustworthy individual for Paul D and Trust a letter with her yeah exactly and now if we want to tie that back to the textual transmission now when you have a community like that of a lot of hands in the pot it would be very difficult for somebody like tikka cos to take the letter of Colossians and change it because onesimus is right there beside them those who read the lip and heard the letter in Colossae you know if he's if they're in contact with Paul and they could easily tell Paul and his cohort they're like hey is this what you wrote and in fact there's a reference in Thessalonians where Paul says do not be easily a you know duped by a letter as if from us as if you have a letter from us so even Paul could um seems to be alluding to that some people for example the Thessalonians is a could be getting false information as if it's from him and he's able to call that out correct and we have a couple other indications of that and I think it's second Peter where three where the Peter mentions that some twists the words of Paul so those are examples where doctrinal twisting and changes are called out I would say that that same model could be had with textual alterations too that's good that is so good and I think that's important for us to consider as well because we need to look at it from the reliability standpoint like there's accountability with these letters it just wasn't a flippant letter written on a whim the closest guy that was in the vicinity hey go ride on horseback take this I mean like there was intentionality behind this and so with that a author from what I understand what I gather from numerous section here there were there were what ways where it went wrong and it went bad and authors were insulted by something being misconstrued or anybody taking their work and corrupting it or selling it finding out hey somebody selling your stuff up here and you know we see examples where stuff was pre released I think you even give an example of a petition made to an Egyptian prefect or something like that in the book as well there's all kinds of scenarios in history where it's like hey for somebody to tamper with your original words that you had in there like that was an insult all most of the character of the writer yeah and those things were called I mean Galen is a perfect example where because he writes about it so much in his his his writing that he has on my own books and where he he gave a lot of speeches public speeches and demonstrations and his students wanted copies of these demonstrations for their own use and that's what he wanted he only wanted this particular student to have this copy well because it was such a great writing you know it was loaned out people copied it or he's giving a demonstration and somebody in the audience would would copy it down and these things circulated well um in his case a lot of the stuff because his name wasn't a fixed and it was circulated so haphazardly things were changed and altered stuff was plagiarized but this was noticed in his community of people who followed him whether it's as students or just followers and it was noticed and he was alerted to that and he had an opportunity to correct that and there's other examples in late much later than the time we're talking about work for example in Jerome and his epistle 106 I think it is he gets a letter from somebody all the way across the Mediterranean I think near the Black Sea if I'm remembering about Jerome's translation of the Psalms and they ask him all these textual very detailed textual questions and then his epistle is a response to that and this is at a time something like at least 10 years I think it might might have been 20 I can't remember that it's like 20 years after he does this and the B's people are able to contact Jerome and have detailed textual questions answered by him so I mean we have to be careful about you know reading that back in but um but if to go back to Paul if we have in his time people raising doctrinal questions about what he said or wrote I think in that same type of environment you could easily ask a textual question as well like oh that we have this copy here that where it says you said this you know we're on this Pauline community could be no that's not what our copy say another that's important because Herman emphasizes throughout his book and even in numerous discussions that wash a man like how careless you know the the Word of God was distributed to illiterate people farmers almost like as soon as I left Paul we don't know what could have happened to it it could have and and just from the view of the greco-roman world and knowing the Christian communities in the history that we've seen throughout the ages how they even called out errors like you're talking about or even the example Jerome it's not just one example there's so many examples Christian and non-christian communities who had not it's almost like I'm not saying Arman's ignorant he's most one of us intelligent beings in this field but it's like it's almost like he's neglecting to look at how it would have been done and I think that's why I appreciated your chapter the most you touched on something out of all the textual criticism that I've read and I'm not saying I've covered the whole realm but like nobody except for a couple names that you listed and I've gone back and look you talked about Holmes quite a bit like outside of them there's really not a lot of people actually starting there and that's why I wanted to do this video let's start with the original autographs what did it look we're always talking about this well which manuscripts are better which stream in Manchester let's talk about the origin how controlled was the original autograph there and how often was it distributed and then you again potentially mentioned the idea of autographs plural not one and you use the example on page 40 of a non canonical book called the Shepherd of hermas and I love that let me tell you why because most of my study though I'd do textual critisism in one aspect of my studies I'm also in canonicity so the Shepherd of hermas is a very closely near dear to my heart kind of book because it's it's one of those early writings that eventually showed back up I believe a Tischendorf found soon Atticus it was attached at the end of there so we're able to read it again it was kind of lost in history but there's people said why read books like that they're not Scripture well because they're history like even the heretical ones like the gospel it's like we can learn a lot about that time period oh yes theology being passed around the perversions like you're talking about I I did I wrote a twenty two thousand word research paper on the Gospel Thomas and covering some of the stories that he deals with like the the 99 sheep that were left for the one and how twisted it became by the time the Gospel Thomas was written which i think is early second century and then you have books like the Shepherd of hermas though over here who actually help us and I've said this to numerous people to say why read it because there's things in them that can help us understand a bigger picture of that time period cities names locations and also styles of writings and you mentioned the little book in the story you you're giving this little book and he tells them to do something with this little Brooke book and you're saying that this reference could actually give us a maybe a better understanding of how go to look to distribute all right so you got a small community that's kind of controlling the letters and maybe even discussing amongst themselves editing now it's time to give it out to the public does a writing like that give us an indicator of what it looked like in the late first early second century of how the distribution would have taken place yeah I definitely think it does you know we have to be careful because we just don't know Ryan but I think it's a good picture of how a book might have been distributed that gives us some more detail on because it talks about here I'll just read it it says therefore you will write two little books and you will send one to Clemente and one to graph T then Clemente will send it to the cities abroad because that is his job the graph t will instruct the widows and orphans but you yourself will read it to the city along with the elders who preside over the church so I think it's interesting that you have both the communal reading and actual copying and distributing both mentioned there which which I think coincides well with Colossians 4 because it implies both copying and reading in Colossians 4:16 with Colossians because he says read this out also well he's also implying copy this letter out and have it read so both physical copying and public reading so this would be a way where you know even Christians who couldn't read would have access to these texts and now this is where I think that I'm not sure how this would look as far as when it comes to inspiration or an errand see you know with the idea of multiple autographs you know at what point does God's superintending divine interaction with the writing when does that end you know I would say that when they get to the point of making these copies like that and disseminating them as is mentioned and the Shepherd from us that we're now in the realm of copying rather than in the realm of composition but that's my own that's just my own thoughts and honestly I really don't know could God have you know divinely controlled these initial stages I don't know that's that's a question that I'm not sure we can answer for sure well with that there's also you gave examples of I think Cicero I think perhaps writing Atticus if I remember correct on page 41 you mentioned even an example in a non difficult since there was correspondence going on personal correspondence with his longtime foreign atticus apparently said apparently these letters were collected from the family archives of Atticus and published around a hundred years after Cicero says to talk about why that significant and helps us maybe look at this in the New Testament differently - why does how does that help us looking at that because that's early that's you know what 2nd century why does that help us to know things like that - well I'll give an example one of them is it there seems to be a different textual history when it comes to the pastoral epistles and when it comes to the non you know like first second Timothy and the more what you'd call undisputed letters like Romans and first Corinthians for example P 46 an early collection of Paul's letter does not have first second Timothy and now one I think one way to have a that that this whole account with Cicero and Atticus can kind of illuminate this is that with Atticus these are very personal letters and for whatever reason the circumstance is Cicero didn't always make copies of them and so it's possible that we have something similar with Paul's letters where some of them because of a circumstances maybe because he was in prison or he's in the midst of traveling or some circumstance where he is unable to retain a copy of the letter and so I think that could be the possibility with for example for some psychic Timothy perhaps those the the way that those were disseminated looked a little different than for example something like Romans this big long epistle that obviously he took a great care in composing very likely kept retained a copy of that and the copies that circulated lay later in a collection may became from Paul's own personal collection that either he had or Luke had whereas something like first and second Timothy maybe it didn't because he didn't retain copies so that's why I think something like that with Cicerone Atticus we need to keep in mind yeah and that that helps us more so because that like you said those were personal letters to an individual rather than and and even in Colossians like I said it's very likely Philemon and Colossians were sent together and Philemon probably wasn't read out loud the same way Colossians was over and laid Asiya exactly because it was written personal which thankfully were able to now partake of and read but that kind of helps us with an idea I got two more questions and then we'll let you go appreciate your time you were talking about the author's copy or his own copy and you kind of alluded to that in statement and I am messaged you I think one of the first times ever messaged you I talked to you about something I had written on in it was actually more for canonicity than it was social criticism on second Timothy chapter four when Paul's at the end of his life finishing his last letter he asks to be brought to him his books and parchments and that parchments is really not a Greek word as a transliteration from a Latin word and what we know of it from outside of biblical sources historical sources that it was a little small book that traveling speakers would carry with whether it's government announcements or a guys just speaking notes that he would go around from town to town and he would go out and Paul wanted that is it possible on numerous levels but with that is it possible that those that parchment that he really really wanted was his collection of his own writings and perhaps letters had received from the churches remember I mean at that point he's kind of feeling abandoned he mentioned all the people that left him and the closest thing to him was his heart connected to the ministries that he had been around he said he carried the weight of all the churches yeah and is it possible well that Paul whether it's that parchment or not just in general is it possible that he carried with him his own personal letters and that perhaps he had the original autograph and what was sent was what his secretaries had copied and edited and he controlled over and he kept his own or at least a copy of his own well yeah it's certainly possible that he's referencing his letter collection I mean that's the view of a few scholars uh particularly Harry gamble proposes and is in that book that I mentioned earlier books and readers that that even could be the reason that the codex was popularized because it was in a collection of of Paul's letters I'm honestly just to come back to it we really don't know what it is um there's a few things that can be pointed out and you already mentioned that is he he does designate between books and then men braun us and then you mentioned the membranous is what we would call Delon word from latin and it's mentioned by both Marshall and quintillion especially with quintillion it's definitely a reference to a parchment codex and the fact that he different differentiates the two so I mean the books Biblos is most likely referring to the roles and is probably books proper you know maybe it's some Old Testament writings we don't know but yes this membranous I would definitely say would probably be either letter collection yeah his correspondence maybe it's even some of his own I mean we see things like tax receipts maybe he has his own personal property maybe he has it's stuff that shows that he is a Roman citizen I mean it could be just about anything it could be you know Galen when he's mentioning his book that's a codex that it's a list of recipes it could be something like that just a list of items so um it could be really anything well that's I find that extremely interesting in fact I got stuck on that sex in the book there were you were talking about how that would have looked distribution wise and then also the author's copy I was like man that because I made me think about manuscripts very differently and I mean we do it now I mean we had we do on computers like if when I write a research paper and I send it to a professor or Dean at the seminary I'm at I keep a copy on my computer he's not getting the whole thing like there's I not know that we're doing on a computer but of course you want your own work because especially Paul who wrote often you could easily forget like did I say that to the Philippians or I said that the Colossians you need a point of reference and yeah I'm sure he's a great mind at all and you know and you can see some shared material too so especially look like Colossians and Philippians yeah so yeah there's definitely some share material so yeah I mean it could be as notes I mean it could be you know Christ illogical a list of Christ a lot Christological passages from Old Testament I mean we really don't know yeah yeah and that's and to me I find that extremely intriguing and here's the last question and we'll let you get going here this kind of goes back to the first question of Eman so can we retain the original wording without having the original autographs this is the big question this is where the two people go because a lot of times even textual critics on the other and will agree with text critics on this and you listen to Dan Wallace and ermine they agree about 90% of the time and then you get to this question and they go like this can we retain with what we just talked about the year they're gone they're the original autographs are gone but we see that they were controlled well that people picked up on major differences in church history we see how the distribution took place haven't given all the materials went over can we retain the original wording without the original autographs today so that when somebody looks at a Greek text today or they're reading their Bible or just a common person insurance reading their scripture that the pastor is preaching out of that they're following along that they can hold in their hands and say this is the Word of God and this is what Paul would have written yeah I would definitely say in the sense of text I would say we have the autographs so if we're talking about autographs as a physical entity alone then obviously we don't have the physical autographs but I think that I think with a pretty high degree of confidence that we have the text of the autograph and I think just what I've we've been talking about that you can look at the way that items were published in an antiquity or circulated how there's indications of how doctrinal or you know textual as far as doctrinal teaching differences and problems are called out in the New Testament writings themselves and then how we have a pretty early copies of the New Testament writings even if there's fragmentary how they still look very much the same as later texts and broadly speaking later copies of the same text I think all these point to that it's very reasonable to to assume because it is an assumption that the text that we have today is the text of the autographs at least at the macro level so you'd say definitely the macro level yeah and that within the textual variances none of them affect cardinal doctrine on the sense where we're losing a doctrine or something like that obviously some of such doctrine and you know and it's amazing if you ever pick up you know a New Testament and look at those passages that have very little or almost no textual variations listed that doesn't mean there isn't any because you know that's that's very selective apparatus but there's large portions of text where there is no uncertainty at all right and so you have to remember that - that there's a lot of large sections of the text that we know that there's just no changes yeah and I've always found it interesting that Romans is one of the least amount of problematic passages in the textual data that we have and it's like of all the books that are doctrinal and its essence that one ended up with like the least amount of major variances as compared to like you know some of the stuff in mark or and and John not that they're not important books to but it's like man that's that's like a major doctrinal book on our understanding of man sin salvation and it's probably one of the most reliable books when it comes to a manuscript tradition I don't think that's an accident either gods truly preserved his word and I know that that term is abused no but we do believe God has preserved his word in the body of manuscripts and we believe that a copy of it that's accurate is a representation of the Word of God itself and that that these were people's Bibles at one time as well so Timothy I thank you for coming on and and if you're in seminary or you're a Bible College student or you went to seminary or you even have any interest it's guys like Timothy that give us this kind of information so that we don't have to do the extensive amount of research now I say we somehow I find myself doing this kind of research myself but everybody has a job everybody has something they're doing and sometimes they don't have the time to go into this kind of depth like Timothy did to do the research or study Cicero I don't know how many people watching this have studied plenty of the younger Cicero and guys like that but it's important to know these things and if you don't have the time to do the study all the citations they did a great job Elisha Hicks and Peter Guri and a whole group of guys wrote chapters in this book mists and mistakes of New Testament textual criticism if you don't trust their words because you're skeptical all their citations are at the very bottom you can look at all the references Timothy mentioned numerous names here those names are also listed at the bottom you can go back and research those quotes yourself you don't have to take Kenneth these word for it you don't take Elijah's word for it go back to the sources study them yourself see for yourself how it looked what it was like don't just read Bart Ehrman and assume he's right but don't just read elijah Hickson and Timothy Mitchell and Peter Guri and Dan Wallace and assume they're right assume that you're going to pursue truth and and whatever the truth lands at believe it and we happen to believe and I know Timothy would agree with me that if you pursue the truth you're not only going to find the New Testament Scriptures to be reliable but you're gonna be pointed to the Lord Jesus Christ himself and he is the full embodiment of truth he is the truth and we believe that you're going to find joy at the end of that journey don't be afraid to search the truth it may be unpopular you may have to change your view a little bit you might have to reword some of your statements or what you've always stated but at the end of the day you're gonna have a defendable position against the skeptic and critics of the world that are trying to get you to doubt your Bible and trying to get you to say it's not reliable we don't even know if it's from God or from the Apostles we can combat these things by doing our due diligence to study Timothy thank you so much I'll give you a closing statement and then we'll we'll end on that well thanks Steven for the opportunity and yes I highly recommend the book despite my chapter it's got a lot of great stuff in it honestly if I had had a book like that in my early stages I'm not I told this to Peter Guri that I'm not sure I would necessarily have gone down the path of the PhD it answered a lot of my questions so that's well thank you for coming on Timothy we really appreciate it you