DEBATE: The LSB is superior to the KJV; James White vs. Thomas Ross

Foreign music plays.

So as I typically would as I enter any pulpit, I would like to start us off with a quick prayer before I introduce what's going on today. So let's pray. Lord God, I do thank you for the privilege it is to come together with fellow believers to sit down and to discuss, to disagree, to banter and have fellowship in all these things that we've done today in these last few days. Lord, it's a privilege to talk about you crucified. And Lord, I pray that today through the earnest thought and debate from these two gentlemen, Lord, that you would bless the time, that you would bless the hearers' ears to learn new information and to be able to consider these things with a biblical mind. And Lord, it is upon the name of Jesus Christ, the substance upon which we've been preaching throughout these days, we say these things. And I say that the holiest name, Jesus Christ, amen. So again, I just want to thank Jeff Rice and Covenant Reform Baptist Church for opening up their doors to this debate. The debate topic, if you don't already know it, is: the Legacy Standard Bible as a representative of modern English translations based upon the UBS/NA text is superior to the King James Version as a representative of the TR-based Bible translation. I dare you to try to say that ten times fast. Taking the affirmative on that is Dr. James White, as he will be representing the Legacy Standard Bible. The denial of the debate topic is going to be represented by Thomas Ross, representing the King James Version of the Bible. I'm going to go ahead and introduce both of our speakers today with a little bit of information about who they are. Dr. James White is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries. He is a professor of church history and apologetics at Grace Bible Theological Seminary and has taught Greek, Hebrew, systematic theology, textual criticism, church history, and various topics in the field of apologetics for numerous other schools of which I participate in. He has authored or contributed to more than 24 books, including 'The King James Version Controversy', 'The Forgotten Trinity', 'The Potter's Freedom', 'The God Who Justifies', and 'What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Quran'. He is an accomplished debater, having engaged in more than 175 moderated public debates with leading proponents of the Roman Catholic Church, Islam, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Mormonism. He is a pastor elder of Apologia Church in Arizona. He has been married to his wife Kelly for more than 40 years and has two children and five living grandchildren. Please give a round of applause for Dr. James White.

Then here on my left, I would love to introduce the one that is taking the denial position of the King James Version, Thomas Ross. Thomas Ross here grew up doubting the existence of God, but through God's grace turned to the Lord Jesus Christ in repentant faith shortly after entering college at the age of 15 and was born again. He earned a BA from the University of California at Berkeley, an MA from Fairhaven Baptist College, an MDiv from the Great Plains Baptist Divinity School, a theological master of theological studies from Anchor Baptist Theological Seminary, and should complete and submit his PhD dissertation this year at Great Plains Baptist Divinity School. He has taught systematic theology, Greek, Hebrew, apologetics, textual criticism, and other courses with a variety of church-authorized Bible institutes, colleges, and theological seminaries in the United States and in foreign countries. Thomas Ross serves the Lord at Bethel Baptist Church in El Sereno, California. Thomas Ross has engaged in public moderated debates both in the United States and internationally with leading representatives of non-Christian worldviews and with representatives of pseudo-Christian cults and religious organizations. He loves to read and study his Greek, Hebrew, and English Bible with the intention of obeying them. He has also translated the Aramaic portions of Scripture and he has written several books. So I would love for you to please give a round of applause for Thomas Ross.

So I will go ahead and just cover what this debate format is going to consist of, the times and the order of events right now. For the debate format itself, we're going to have opening presentations for both gentlemen. These are going to consist of two 25-minute opening arguments or presentations. It's going to start off with James White followed by Thomas Ross, and that format has been agreed upon by both men as the consistent way that these things are going to flow. So James White will start, Thomas Ross will go second following him. After the opening presentations, which are 25 minutes each, there will be a second presentation consisting of a rebuttal for 12 minutes each for both opponents. Following this, we'll have cross-examinations, 10 minutes to 10 minutes on both sides, followed by another cross-examination of 10 minutes to 10 minutes on both sides. Then we're going to have a third presentation, a rebuttal, for eight minutes for both opponents again, following that same format, Dr. James White going first followed by Dr. Thomas Ross. After this, we will have concluding statements, five minutes given both. And then after this, we will then have a short break. I will just announce this now: if you look at the end of your pews, you should see some of these note cards that are around. We would ask that this is how you're going to be turning in questions for the Q&A moment. You will write down your question on it, rip it out, and then you will give it to Pastor Jeff Rice. Please raise your hand, brother Jeff, please get them to him, and we will start immediately sorting those questions as fast as we can so that we can get right into the very short break going into the questions and answers. Just to give you some miscellaneous details, some rules of order of how this is going to be taking place: questions from the audience should be submitted during that short break that was just mentioned. Those questions, please again give it to Jeff Rice. One thing I would ask that you would abstain from is expressions of approval or disapproval during this debate. This would include clapping, facial looks, anything that would insinuate that approval or disapproval, and you should stay quiet until the break, please. When these questions get asked, each person here is going to have one minute to respond to these questions that are directly asked to them. The opponent will have 30 seconds to respond to these questions if he would like to do so; he has the option of refusing this. During the cross-examination, the person answering questions will take no more than 30 seconds again to answer a question. The moderator is going to... so I would ask you guys today to please show me a little bit of grace. I am the moderator for this. The moderator's job is to passively make sure people stay on time, but is not the active rule of determining the validity of arguments made or even if presenters are staying on topic. The speakers can do this for themselves and point out if the other party is failing to do what he needs to do, with the audience as the judge of these matters. Presenters are allowed to use visual aids, as you can see on the TVs on both sides of this room. A speaker's time clock begins immediately when the speaker begins to talk. This will again be done with as much grace as possible, as I will be the timekeeper. And on that note, we will go ahead and turn the time over to Dr. James White, and I will get down from up here.

Wonderful. Thank you, thank you, James White. We will now have Thomas Ross giving his opening presentation. I would like to remind everybody, as I did not open in this introduction, please abstain from any recording equipment. Pictures are fine, but please abstain from recording.

I'd like to begin this debate by thanking the one God, the Eternal Father, who has adopted me in His everlasting love, His eternally begotten Son who loved me and gave Himself for me, and the Holy Spirit who eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son and who inspired, preserved, and led me to receive His self-attesting Word in His free and glorious grace. To Him alone be the glory. I would also like to thank this Baptist church and its pastor for sponsoring this discussion with James. And I'd like to thank James here for taking the time to debate this important topic. He's a great debater, and I'm confident that he will do a great job presenting as strong a case as can be made for his position, as he's already started to do. I appreciate a great deal many of James's books and debates, and they've been helpful to me in my gospel preaching, in my personal apologetics, and in several of the other public debates I've been privileged to do. So to the glory of the Triune God, thank you church, thank you pastor, thank you James, thank you audience for coming here to consider this topic at hand with, I trust, open Bibles, open minds, and open hearts. Our topic today is whether the Legacy Standard Bible as a representative of modern English translations based upon the UBS/NA text is superior to the KJV as representative of TR-based translations. James and the affirmative must prove the LSB and other modern English UBS-based Bibles are superior to the King James as representative of other TR-based Bibles, so he has the burden of proof. So if you were to sum that up, it would mean that this is a King James Only debate. I'm King James Only. What does that mean? Well, James in his book 'The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust Modern Translations?' creates a KJVO spectrum encompassing those who believe the King James Version is the best single English translation available today; those who believe that the underlying Hebrew and Greek texts used by the King James translators are superior to those used by modern translators, encompassing both majority text advocates and those who believe the printed editions of the TR should be preferred in some or all of the approximately one percent of instances where printed TR editions differ from what we believe is the currently excellent majority of Greek manuscripts; and those who believe that the Textus Receptus or Received Text has been supernaturally preserved and is inerrant. Demonstrating the validity of any of the positions on that spectrum would validate my position in the negative of the debate topic tonight. Unfortunately, James's book goes on to claim that most King James Only believers fall into the 'inspired KJV group,' who James alleges in all bold letters make the association 'King James Bible alone equals the Word of God alone.' This alleged largest group of KJVO believers bleeds into his next category: those who he says believe God re-inspired the Bible in 1611, rendering it in the English language, a position he says predominates in many areas. James says that one might well say such people worship the King James Version. He then proceeds to claim that there are groups who claim that the KJV was written in eternity and Abraham, Moses, and the prophets all read the 1611 KJV, including the New Testament. These individuals believe that Hebrew is actually English. James provides no sources or any evidence or sources whatsoever on the alleged size of his KJVO extremist categories. No sources are provided to prove that people who think the Holy Spirit re-inspired the Bible in 1611 'predominate' in 'many areas' of the movement, or that 'most KJVO people' think that the King James is the Word of God alone in the sense that you would need to translate the Bible from English into other languages. And I didn't see any source for people who believe that Abraham and Moses spoke 1611 King James English that even existing. I didn't see any evidence there. Unfortunately, that under-bash of the King James Only Bible colleges, seminaries, and institutes that reject these positions vastly outnumber those that even arguably take them, such as those on my slide there. Those are some good ones that I think are worth checking out. So in any case, neither I nor any other King James Only Baptist with whom my church is in fellowship believes that God re-inspired the Bible in 1611, or that original languages should be rejected, or that you should translate Bibles into other languages from English, or such foolishnesses that Abraham spoke King James English. I hope that when James's book rightly points out that some outlandish claims are made by people like Peter Ruckman or Gail Riplinger, that he also considers whether some of these are maybe unintentionally outlandish claims. So setting aside the small extremist minority in the King James Only movement who James claims think the Bible was re-inspired in 1611, any position along the spectrum that he sets forth in his book would be sufficient to establish the negative that I'm defending in our debate today. Anywhere within that spectrum will prove the superiority of the King James to what James calls 'such fine translations' as the English Standard Version and New International Version. Now what does Scripture teach about its own preservation? This is absolutely crucial to this debate, absolutely crucial. By far the most important source of information on what has happened to the text of Scripture is what God Himself promises that He would do in preserving and protecting the canonical words and books that the Father gave His people through the Son by the Holy Spirit. I'm going to spend some time on this because it is absolutely crucial for our debate topic tonight. Once we believe what Scripture teaches on its own preservation, the application of Scripture's teaching to the issue of Bible texts and versions is clear. James's position is wrong because it violates what Scripture teaches on its own preservation. We're going to discover that the Nestle-Aland/UBS type Greek text from which the LSB and practically all other modern English versions are translated is wrong most fundamentally because it does not fit what Scripture teaches about its own preservation. Note that unfortunately, nowhere in White's 'King James Only Controversy' in his books or in any of his King James Only debates, at least as far as I've been able to locate, does James carefully expose and draw out the good and necessary consequences of Scripture's teaching on its own preservation. Even in our opening statement tonight, James did mention certain passages, but he didn't expose what Scripture taught in its own preservation. Now what does Scripture teach about its own preservation? Well, Scripture infallibly teaches that, in the words of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, 'The Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek, being immediately inspired by God, and by His singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical.' That is a great accurate representation of the teaching of Scripture on its own preservation. The Bible affirms the verbal plenary preservation of the inspired words originally dictated by the Holy Spirit through the agency of holy men. So the Bible teaches that God's inspired and preserved words would be available to the people of God in all ages, and the church is the institution appointed by God to receive, guard, and propagate those inspired and preserved words until the return of Christ. That is, Scripture teaches the following: One, it teaches that God revealed the Scriptures so that men could know His will, both in the Old and New Testaments, and in the future, as all those verses indicate. The Bible is clear that no Scripture was intended for only the original recipient. A bunch of verses: God intended for His word to be recognized and received by the churches as a whole, references the inspired text of Scripture to be guarded as a former pattern of sound words for the church and used to instruct all future churches. That's number one. Number two, the Bible promises that God will preserve every one of His words forever, down to the very jot and tittle, the smallest letter. Many, many verses of the Bible teach that. Three, the Bible assures us that God's words are perfect and pure. Four, the Bible promises that God would make His words generally available to every generation of believers. Five, the Bible promises that there will be certainty as to the words of God. Many, very many verses of the Bible promise this. Number six, the Bible promises that God would lead His saints into all truth, and that the word, all of His words, are truth. Believers are not to set themselves above the word but to receive it with the faith of a little child, rejecting secular and worldly wisdom. Seven, God states that the Bible will be settled to the extent that someone could not add to or effectually take away from His words and effectually corrupt them. Eight, the Bible shows that the true churches of Christ would receive and guard those words. Number nine, the Bible presents a pattern that believers would receive these words from other believers. Many references. Number ten, the Bible shows that God's promises may appear to contradict science and reason. In Genesis 2, we see a newly created world that may look ancient, but the Scriptures remind us that it is better to put our trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. Psalm 118: 'I believe so that I may understand' is a great dictum of how we come to the truth on this topic. Summarizing this well, a little not quite the summary: Christ taught the preservation of His very words, since they will be the standard in the day of future judgment, John 12:48, and men will be accountable to obey all of them. He also warned of the vanity of ignoring His actual words, Matthew 7:26. Christ emphatically declared, 'The Scripture cannot be broken,' John 10:35. In Matthew 22:29, Jesus rebuked men for saying, 'You do err, not knowing the Scriptures.' If Scriptures were only accessible in long-lost autographs, why would the Lord chide people for being ignorant of words that are not available? Believers are commanded to contend for the faith, Jude 3, and this faith is based upon the words of God, Romans 10:17, and even in the book of Jude, verse 17. So, summing that up, what does the Bible teach in summary? 'The just shall live by faith,' Romans 1:17, Habakkuk 2:4, and 'We walk by faith and not by sight,' 2 Corinthians 5:7. So Scripture and faith in the promises of Scripture must be the glasses through which we evaluate historical data about the preservation of the Bible. Scripture teaches the verbal plenary preservation of the verbally plenarily inspired autographs, the original manuscripts, that the preserved words would be perpetually available to God's people, Isaiah 59:21, and that the church would be—Israel was the guardian of Scripture in the Mosaic dispensation, and the church the guardian in the New Testament period. The Holy Spirit would lead the saints to accept the words the Father gave to the Son to give to His people. Believers can know with certainty where the canonical words of God are because they're to live by every one of them and are going to be judged by them in the last day. For more on the biblical doctrine of preservation, a good book is 'Thou Shalt Keep Them,' edited by Kent Brandenburg. Others either the list of presuppositions is in a great article by a King James Only Presbyterian Seminary actually in Asia. So the Textus Receptus fits what Scripture teaches about its own preservation. So I'm in the negative, not in the positive in this debate. My main point will be to show the text underneath modern Bible versions does not fit what Scripture says. But by way of contrast, does the TR fit these presuppositions? Well, historians recognize that the Received Text was identified with the autographs by both Baptists and even the general body of Protestantism. So for example, Kurt Aland, editor of the critical Greek New Testament that James is defending, says, 'It is undisputed that Luther used the Greek Textus Receptus for his translation of the German New Testament in 1522 in all its later editions. So did all the translators of the New Testament in the 16th century. All the translations of the 17th century, including the King James Version, were based on this text. Thus the New Testament of the church in the period of the Reformation was based on the Textus Receptus. It is equally undisputed that in the 16th or 17th century, and for that matter well into the 18th century, anyone with a Greek New Testament would have had a copy of the Textus Receptus. Finally, it is undisputed that from the 16th to the 18th century, orthodox doctrine of the orthodoxy's doctrine of verbal inspiration assumed this Textus Receptus, which was regarded as the text of the church from the 4th century.' It is therefore not surprising that throughout Baptist and Protestant Christendom in the Reformation and post-Reformation era, the Textus Receptus was regarded as preserving even to the last detail the inspired and infallible word of God Himself. That's according to one of the editors of the text James is defending. Bruce Metzger and Bart Ehrman write, 'Having secured preeminence, what came to be called the Textus Receptus resisted for 400 years all scholarly effort to displace it. The Textus Receptus, the commonly received standard text, makes the boast that the reader now has the text received by all, in which we give nothing changed or corrupted. This form of Greek text succeeded in establishing itself as the only true text of the New Testament and was slavishly reprinted in hundreds of subsequent editions. It lies at the basis of the King James and all of the principal Protestant translations in languages of Europe prior to 1881. So allegedly superstitious has been the reverence accorded the Textus Receptus that in some cases attempts to criticize or amend it have been regarded as sacrilege. For centuries, the editors of the New Testament kept reprinting it. Textual groupings are made against the TR, and variations from it were considered to be agreements in error. So to cite one of many examples of how this works, the Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689, which has been said that no confession of faith has had so formative an influence in Baptist life, as we already mentioned, says that the Bible has by God's singular care in providence been kept pure in all ages and is therefore authentical. What text did this Baptist confession refer to? This confession of faith is full of uniquely TR readings. It references the long ending of Mark three times. It supports the TR reading 'only begotten Son' in John 1:18, not the Arian corruption 'only begotten God.' It supports the glorious doctrine of Christ's two natures in one person using only the TR readings: 'Church of God, which He has purchased with His own blood' and 'Son of Man which is in heaven,' Acts 20:28, John 3:13. It supports the necessity of a profession of conversion before baptism using only the TR verses Mark 16:16 and Acts 3:7. It employs the language of and references 1 John 5:7 to prove Trinitarianism. Since this confession states that care has been taken 'to affix texts of Scripture in the margin for the confirmation of each article in our confession, which are the most clear and pertinent for the proof of what is asserted by us,' we can see that they had no doubt whatsoever about peculiarly TR readings. They could be the most clear and pertinent verses for a doctrine, and they are a part of that 'Holy Scripture to which nothing is at any time to be added or taken away.' The distinctive Received Text is quoted not only in the 1689 Baptist Confession but also in the New Hampshire Baptist Confession of Faith of 1833. It was accepted by groups such as the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, the Landmark Baptist movement, the American Baptist Association, and others. So Scripture promises the verbal plenary preservation of the autographic words, that those words would be in the mouths of God's people from generation to generation, and that those words would be received by true churches so that saints could have certainty about the word of God. The TR claims and does meet those criteria. In contrast, the UBS/Nestle-Aland text does not fit what Scripture teaches about its own preservation. It was not in use for over a thousand years. It doesn't even claim to give people certainty so that they can live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God and avoid the curse on those who add or take away from even one word of Scripture. So likewise, Westcott and Hort, for example, whose Greek New Testament is very similar to the modern Nestle-Aland text, were very clear that on their principles, certainty about the words of Scripture is impossible. So they said that there are places where they are constrained to recognize the existence of textual error in all excellent documents, and they say there are other places where we can't even tell. There may be lots of places where the Bible is corrupt; we can't tell where they are, but there's somewhere, and you don't have all the words of God. Okay, that was Westcott and Hort's view. Likewise, modern textual critics, defenders and authors of the Nestle-Aland critical texts, are clear that certainty about the New Testament text is impossible on their presuppositions. So the text suggests many emendations. Supposedly every single Greek manuscript is corrupt. So the Nestle-Aland 26th edition contains about 130 conjectures in its apparatus. The Nestle-Aland 27th edition, the base text for the LSB, lists over a hundred explicit conjectural emendations. The text contains conjectural emendations in Acts 16:12. The Nestle-Aland 28th edition has a conjectural emendation in 2 Peter 3:10. So their text suggests many emendations, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. This is difficult to ascertain from the UBS apparatus, but the UBS/Nestle-Aland text is full of readings with no manuscript evidence at all, readings in which readings have been selected and substituted based upon an inadequate representation of the evidence, and the readings in their support are often misleading or in error. So it's been stated by textual scholars. So there are lines of text in the UBS and in Westcott and Hort that have no manuscript support. Just in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, there are lots of these. They're well into the triple digits. There are way over a hundred instances where no manuscript on Earth has simple small phrases of words that are in the printed UBS/Nestle text. And the vast majority of these, there's no footnote in the LSB warning the readers about this, that these readings have no manuscript evidence on Earth, and it's difficult or impossible to discern this from the UBS apparatus. Now here we're talking about simply individual lines of text, parts of verses, not whole verses, even parts of verses consisting of handfuls of words. As for whole verses, groups of verses, or larger sections of text, the portion of the UBS/Nestle-Aland text that looks like exactly zero manuscripts on Earth grows exponentially. And the TR has manuscript support, by the way, in 100 of these passages where the UBS/Nestle text has zero manuscripts supporting its reading. So for example, here are several texts: Matthew 17:4, Matthew 17:24, Matthew 17:27, Matthew 20:30, Matthew 27:46—the cry of Christ on the cross in the UBS—Mark 1:27, Mark 2:12, Mark 3:35, Mark 4:8, Mark 6:23, Mark 9:12. Many more examples. There are certainly more significant variants than some of these. I'm not saying that these are the most earth-shattering variant in every instance, but right here and there, there are 40 or 31 examples right there just from Matthew and Mark where simple lines of the UBS text have no support from any known manuscript in the world. So that's not a certain text. Now what did the Nestle-Aland editor Kurt Aland say? Well, he said that well into the second century, Christians still regarded themselves as possessing inspiration equal to that of the New Testament writings which they read in their worship services. Until the 4th century, there are many different forms of New Testament text. There are many places where there's an insoluble tie between two or more alternative readings, so you just—this is the right reading, that's the right reading, we just get to pick it, no problem. No certainty. That isn't what the Bible teaches about its own preservation. Similarly, Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament editor Bruce Metzger was clear that on his presuppositions, certainty about the text of the New Testament is impossible. So we already recognized he said that the TR was regarded as the autographs for a very long time. Modern textual criticism proceeds upon a rejection of the TR and the presupposition that the Bible was corrupted for a long time and then partially restored by modern critics, but certainty is impossible and will never again be restored. Now this quote here is from Karl Lachmann. This is supporting Metzger on these people. So Metzger said that Karl Lachmann was the first one to break with the TR, and his aim was even to attempt to reproduce the original text, which he thought was an impossible task. So he thought this is impossible. Westcott and Hort we already mentioned; they had about 60 passages that they said were involved primitive error where you just have to guess, make a conjectural emendation. In descent from this, Dean Burgon said that he defended the traditional text of Scripture because he said that he couldn't imagine that if the words of Scripture have been dictated by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, God would not have providentially preserved them, and therefore the text that was in use by the church for centuries could not be in need of the drastic revision that Westcott and Hort had administered to it. Metzger goes on to say that textual criticism is not an exact science at all. He says it's possible that after the original is placed in circulation, it became lost or destroyed. All excellent copies may have derived from some single error-prone copy. How did Mark's Gospel end with verses 9 through 20? We don't know. We don't know how Mark's Gospel ended. Among the endings that are current in the manuscripts, probably none of them represent what Mark intended. It's possible that there are non-Pauline interpolations that occurred before any surviving manuscripts. Well, that could have happened too. So it's impossible or difficult or maybe even impossible to even talk about an original text to Paul's letters. There are one or more passages that were interpolated as letters. And so he says it's an impossible task to restore the allegedly lost text of Scripture. And this is not what the Bible teaches about its own preservation. He says that it is not the sovereignty of God but chance that entered into the survival of lots of manuscript evidence from previous centuries. There are many places where textual critics just say, 'We don't know what happened,' and occasionally none of the variant readings will commend itself as original. 'We simply do not know what the original author wrote.' That's what Metzger said. That's what Ehrman said. That's what the editors of the Nestle-Aland/UBS texts think. And that's not what Scripture teaches about its own preservation. When James himself debated Douglas Wilson on the text of Scripture, Wilson asked James, 'If you agree that we are capable of finally settling on the text of all books, would you agree that this final ecclesiastical text would have to be generated in some kind of artificial way, kind of like the 1881 revision was formed, or as a correlation from the original languages?' James replied, 'I would assume that over time the further discovery of older texts will help us get further along here, but even then, I cannot see unanimity being achieved.' So James himself has said we're not going to get unanimity on what the text of Scripture says. We don't have it now, and we're never going to get it for sure. Three minutes. Well, that's not what the Bible teaches about its own preservation. So Scripture teaches that believers in every age can be certain about what the pure words of God are, so they can, in the words of Matthew 4:4, love and live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God and avoid those curses on those that add or take away from any of His words. But James says we never have and never will get certainty about what every one of those words is. James's position and the NA/UBS text he's defending violates Scripture's promises. They are wrong. What about the Old Testament? Text-critical views of the Old Testament likewise utterly reject certainty and providential preservation. So Emmanuel Tov, standard introduction to the Old Testament, he says, 'A critically reconstructed original text does not exist for the complete Hebrew Bible. For most of human history, they just thought the Masoretic text was the same thing as the original text, but now we know that it's not. Most of the biblical books were even written by one person; they're compositional layers. For many centuries, there never was a single original text. Reconstruction of the original text is almost impossible. A textual theory which can explain the development of the biblical text in its entirety doesn't exist.' He says, 'We've got the random preservation of evidence for all these different books. Textual criticism in the Hebrew Bible does not even aim at the compositions written by the biblical authors.'

Authors and most scholars affirm that the books of the Hebrew Bible never existed in one original written form. He says there's no unanimous view on any reading, that at certain times scholars are often reluctant to admit the subjective nature of textual variation. Scholars realize that sometimes even conjectural emendation is not acceptable, and then you just say the text is corrupt. He says many readings have been lost. He says this is a fun one: a critical edition is the most inappropriate of all names for the thing to which custom applies it, an edition in which the editor is allowed to fling his opinions in the reader's face without being called to account and asked for his reasons. Well, is that what the Bible teaches about its own preservation? No, it's not. Now note that Tov, after all this talk about critical editions, also says it's not easy to provide convincing evidence of proof of errors in the Masoretic text. So he says all this. Why does he say all that? Stuffing his presuppositions that are not what the Scripture teaches. So the teaching of Scripture on its own perfect inspiration, preservation, and availability is utterly inconsistent with the ungodly presuppositions and product of the biblical texts underlying the LSB and modern versions. Scripture models the receipt of the text from other true believers. Scripture indicates God's sheep hear His voice. Not one of the editors of the critical Greek New Testament believed in the infallible inspiration of Scripture. Neither Westcott nor Hort believed in infallible inspiration of Scripture. Do we get our Bible from the sheep or do we get them from the goats? Is that who we want editing our New Testament text? So the most important thing in this debate is what does Scripture teach about its own preservation. The TR fits that. The UBS text does not fit what Scripture teaches on its own preservation. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Thomas Ross. So we will now be rolling into the second presentation slash rebuttals. I'll turn the time over to James White for 12 minutes.

Thank you, James White. We will now have Thomas Ross respond with another rebuttal of 12 minutes. You will be hearing my voice above on just different minute markers just to help remind the men of their time restraints.

Thank you, James, for that presentation. I appreciate that. I'm going to quickly hit some of the things that he said in order of the time you try to hit them so I try not to forget them. So he said that the King James, leaving out the preface of the King James or leaving out the marginal notes, the King James published by the TR Trinitarian Bible Society has the notes, has the preface. So we're not, preface is great, love the preface, wonderful. So they would be ashamed that I'm going to be using, I'll deal with that one later, I'll skip to that one. He said that the UBS uses more, has manuscripts that are 1800 years older than any manuscript that the King James had. Some of the mainstream Stephanus used, he used at least one 8th century minuscule, he used some 10th century minuscule. So that would make some of the manuscripts underneath the modern version state to about 200 BC. I don't think there are any New Testament Greek manuscripts in 200 BC. So that's unfortunately not quite accurate on James's part, but we can all make mistakes sometimes. I'm sure that I do many times. So Ephesians 3:9, fellowship versus administration. That reading, so there actually is some manuscript support for it. In my thing over there, the Pickering family 35, I want to know what Paul wrote. Of course we want to know what Paul wrote. The question is how do we know? And the way we know is by believing what God says about His own words' preservation. We know that God promised to preserve every word that He inspired. He promised those words would be available to every generation of believers. He promised that the church would be the institution through which that preservation would take place. So we believe what God says, and those are the glasses which we use to evaluate textual data. And he didn't give any citations from someone who says, 'Oh, we don't care what papyri say, we're against papyri because...' Well, I mean, it's a debate. Maybe he has quotes for people who say that. I've never seen them, but maybe he has some. Revelation 16:5, Holy One versus shall be. The Stephanus 1550 had Holy One, the Elzevir 1624 had Holy One. There's that. It's basically James is trying to argue about certain positions on a spectrum, but I don't need to prove anything specific in my spectrum. Anything from the majority text to TR preferred to TR perfect all proves my position. So if he wants that, once he comes over to my side and becomes at least majority text, we can have another debate about different editions of the TR and things like that. That'll be great. But until that time, I just need to prove anything on my spectrum here. Okay. Different things with jewels. He said that's lexically superior. I just looked in my Hebrew concordance, the modern Hebrew lexicon, and they still have question marks by some of the terms for jewels. So they're not that easy to figure out. I'm certainly glad more evidence we have. Fantastic. Granville Sharp rule. I love the Granville Sharp rule. It's fantastic. Jude 4 has a Granville Sharp rule in the TR that's not in the critical text. There's actually at least one more text with a Granville Sharp rule in the TR than there are in the UBS text. So the TR actually has more Granville Sharp constructions proving the deity of Christ than the critical text does. Granville Sharp is wonderful. Romans 9:5 is not a translation. It teaches that Jesus is God in the King James version. So he said that I gave a blast of quotes who are not connected to reality. Now I agree with him that what the Nestle-Aland editors said about their own text is not connected to reality. I agree. But he's defending the text by the people who said these things. He's, I'm not talking about the individuals who translated the LSB into English. They are probably much more similar to our beliefs and we're very thankful for that. But the people who made the Greek New Testament that he's defending said those things. So do I agree that what the people who made the Greek New Testament he's defending said, and the Old Testament he's defending, that those principles are not connected to reality? I do, because what God says is reality, not what they said. But he has to defend those. Those are not just random liberals out there. Those are the editors of his text. So he says that the TR was all that they had in 1689. Well, that means that it has to be right because then if that's all they had, then his text was not preserved pure in all ages. So if it's all they had for several centuries, it must be the right text because God promises that every single one of the words that He inspired is preserved and those words would be received by the churches. So whether or not they had access to some specific reading out there or not, if it was all they had, that means that was the text of the church, and God promised to preserve the text of the church. He says that if you're going to be this, you have to go with the Latin Vulgate because that was used for a long time. No, because Matthew 5:18 and 19 says that God would preserve. Jesus said not one jot or tittle. He's talking about original language words. Original language words would be perfectly preserved. That's what God said. He didn't promise that words in a translation would be perfectly preserved. So that's why his position is wrong. So that's why it's not the Latin Vulgate, because of what the Bible says. Did you notice that James still didn't exegete any passage about what Scripture taught about preservation? We didn't do that either about preservation of Scripture. Okay. And if you watch his debate with Ehrman, he doesn't exegete what Scripture says about preservation. I'm glad you debated Bart Ehrman. It's great. When Ehrman asked him why he believed that there were no readings lost, he didn't say because God said He'd preserve His words. He said because Kurt Aland said something about tenacity. Well, I'm glad Kurt Aland said something about tenacity. Kurt Aland also edited the text that he's using that then that text has conjectural emendations. So does Kurt Aland actually mean what James says? Do we believe that God preserved His words because of Kurt Aland, or do we believe it because God said that He would do it? Okay. So those are some objections. I'm glad that James rejects conjectural emendation, contrary to the editors of the text he's defending. That's fantastic. Maybe he's part of the way to my position already. Okay. He said that these are irrelevant quotes. Is it irrelevant what the people who edited his own text thought? Is that irrelevant? I don't think that's irrelevant. Okay. It's not irrelevant. So since the Textus Receptus was received by God's people, oh, he said there's no, he wants, give me some examples of, or there's no text so even you can even see from this the UBS text he's defending, he isn't even aware of this. You get this is a very critical text person. This the preface written by Bruce Metzger. You can get Reuben Swanson, New Testament Greek Manuscripts, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. He gives the lines of the manuscripts. Whether you know Greek or not, look at the lines. There's lots of lines where there's a U with nothing next to it. That means there's no manuscript that reads just like that line. There's line to the W with nothing next to it. Lines to the U, nothing next to it. This isn't some King James Only fanatic. This is actually a critical text person book endorsed by Bruce Metzger. But notice James wasn't aware of that because it's not easy to find out in the UBS text. Okay. That may not be his fault. He didn't realize that it's okay. Okay. But there are hundreds of places where the UBS text and just groups of words has no manuscript evidence at all behind it. And so let's concede for the sake of argument that there's a few places like that in the TR and he's got hundreds of texts in his text with no manuscript support. I win the debate. My text is better than his. Maybe you don't become TR perfect, you become TR preferred. Well, that's fine. I still win the topic of this debate. So since the people of God rejected the Nestle-Aland texts for centuries, one might highlight its antithesis with the old received Bible. You might call it the Textus Receptus, or if you're going to speak in a modern way, you could call it the Textus Rejectus. So this is a Textus Receptus versus a Textus Rejectus debate. Okay. Now it's not just that we have readings with no manuscript evidence at all. There's also many, many readings in the Nestle-Aland texts that have a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny one manuscript out of with nothing else. So Matthew 4:23, John 4:27, John 9:22, John 14:7, 1 Peter 2:25. There's readings where they follow only one manuscript against all others. There are many readings where the Nestle-Aland text rejects around 99.9% of the manuscript evidence. So for example, Luke 2:52, it's not the most significant reading in the world, but just give one example. It follows 0.1% of the manuscript evidence. You can go to Wilbur Pickering's site. He gives, unlike the UBS, his apparatus gives you the percentages of Greek manuscripts that support different readings. Search for point one, search for point two, search for point three. You'll find tons of places where way over 99% of the manuscript evidence is rejected. Now that's according to the presuppositions of the UBS editors. That makes sense because God didn't preserve His word according to the text that he's defending, the people that made it. So we can see that James is indeed defending a Textus Rejectus instead of a Textus Receptus. The Nestle-Aland text also fails to meet the model of Scripture because it's a patchwork. It doesn't resemble any actual manuscript that exists on the face of the Earth in significant portions of it, in larger sections of its text. So modern eclectic practice, you just individual readings to try to find support for this one and for that one, but there's no proven existence in transmissional history of this type of text. The idea is you just pick a text here and pick a text there, but in terms of an actual manuscript that looks like this text over a longer passage, there aren't any passages like that. So this is an impossible burden upon textual restoration since not only is the original text no longer extant in any known manuscript or text type, but no manuscript in its or group of manuscripts reflects this view, this text in its overall pattern of readings. And there's very little attempt to defend the resultant sequential text as a transmissional entity. In other words, not just that this reading and that reading, but the actual passages as a whole, it doesn't look like anything that we actually have that exists. So modern eclectic theory underneath this text fails a probability test. It doesn't exist as a connected sequence of texts. It's transmissional unlikely that a short sequence of variants would leave no supporting witness within the manuscript tradition. The probability that such would occur over and over and over again in the large majority of the text we're going to choose is essentially zero. So for example, in Matthew 20:23, you've got seven variant units, and the actual text of Matthew 20:23 as you have it in the Nestle-Aland has no support at all. The actual verse itself. Luke 6:26, five variants together as a whole, just that one verse, no support. Mark 11:3, only two variant units, and the witnesses to each one that the Nestle chooses are mutually exclusive, so the text as a whole, just that one verse, no support. Mark 4:27, same thing. Acts 17:26, Mark 7:24, Mark 14:72. Lots of texts in the Nestle that have no support as a whole. When you get more than one verse, it's even worse. You quickly get to a place where there's no support for it at all. One minute. In contrast to that, the text that underlies the Textus Receptus type of text actually is in actual consecutive passages in manuscripts. You have a lot of things like that. If you were to open the opening pages of Mark in the NA27, pages 106 to 110, there are no Greek manuscripts that look like those pages. No actually extant manuscript that we have that looks like those consecutive pages. The text that he thinks are the best are full of errors. Now you can contrast that with TR manuscripts. So for example, I have some pictures if you can get to them, pictures of manuscripts from different centuries that are copied in different locations that the whole book, this is the whole book of Titus, the whole book of Titus is exactly identical in these copies. And this is because the TR is copied in such a way that it looks like an actual text that's preserved. So manuscript 2028 from St. John in the Isle of Patmos, manuscript 2723 from Greece. We've got a bunch of manuscripts that are exactly the same for whole books in the TR in contrast to the critical text. Thank you.

Absolutely brilliant. So we are going to now go ahead and take a 10 minute break. Again, write your questions on the Dead Man's Walking podcast notebooks that are on the ends of the pews. Get those questions into Pastor Jeff Rice and we'll start sorting through those questions. 10 minutes. See you back here in 10 minutes.

It's a blessing to have everyone here. I just want to again thank both James and Thomas for participating in this debate. We're going to begin on our cross-examination portion of today's debate. We will start with brother James asking Thomas, cross-examining him, asking him questions and whatnot. And so I would ask that the questions be stuck on points and that God would be glorified through the pursuing of truth.

There's no verse in Scripture that promises that God would perfectly translate the Bible into English. I personally, as more as a matter of pastoral concern, prefer to say if I think there's a translation you question or translated more than one way, I personally say this could also be rendered as versus this would be better rendered as. But that's, I don't have a verse that says that. And if you want to say that, whatever you think about that, it doesn't deal with the fundamental question of this debate, which is any part of that King James Only spectrum in his book, I still win the debate.

Let me go to before you start my answer time. I'd like to look at Acts 5:30. Where's Acts 5:30? Okay, now I'm going to answer. So it is true that they both that they raised up Jesus by hanging Him on a tree, and it's also true that they slew Jesus and hanged Him on a tree. I would actually say that if that's your key debate example of a mistranslation, I think that King James is going to do really, really well because they did slay Him and they did hang Him on a tree. And true though, again, if you prefer 'they slew Him by hanging on a tree,' it doesn't fundamentally change the question, which is how does God's preservation work? So the part is simple there.

I think that anyone who studied Greek grammar says, you've read Wallace's Greek Grammar on the basics, there's lots of categories of participle. I am not saying this participle isn't a participle of means. It could be a participle of means. But you've got temporal, manner, means, cause, condition, concession, purpose, result. You've got a lot of different categories of participle. They did slay Him and they also hanged Him on a tree, and they also slew Him by hanging Him on a tree. That's fine. But go ahead. If that's the best you've got, I think we're going to be doing okay.

So that question would be answered several. So my, anyone on the majority text, the TR preferred, TR perfect position, which still I would still win this debate. If somebody is saying this reading is wrong because it's not in the vast majority of manuscripts, it's a minority reading, that I win the debate because there's so many more of those in James's text. Then you become TR preferred, you become majority text, but then I still have a better translation than James does. So that's how a TR preferred person, TR preferred person or majority text person would say it's administration. A TR perfect person might point out that in Pickering's Greek New Testament, coordinate family 35, he says in his footnote there's 10 support for the TR reading. Maybe it's lower than that, maybe, but we haven't classified all the minuscules yet. So no one's actually collated them all. But let's say it's lower than that. Well, okay, then you don't become TR perfect, you come TR preferred. But TR perfect people, their answer would say we should in this case accept a minority reading. It is very different to accept a minority reading one percent of the time and accept a minority reading 99% of the time like James's text.

Well, look, I can't see what every single person in the 4th century had there. I can't interview them. I can't go back and talk to them and take a video and see, 'Hey, what New Testament did you have?' But since God promises in His word that we would have a perfect, that the words of God, not manuscripts, that the words that God inspired to be available to every generation, since that's what He promised, we have an infallible reason to conclude that He did that. So we know that He did it just the same way we know that Abraham existed even if we don't have contemporary archaeological evidence for Abraham. So whatever is in the King James version, because of the promise of God, even if there is no evidence in history whatsoever.

Whether somebody's majority text or TR preferred or TR perfect, anywhere on that spectrum, it still is a better position for me. So if you decide, you know what, based on, if someone says based on the Bible's promises of preservation, Ephesians 3:9 should have the reading administration, I could see somebody arguing for that. I could see why someone would say that. Okay, then you're TR preferred instead of TR perfect. But James's text has hundreds of texts that have no support in just short phrases. So the argument he's making, he can't consistently make his argument against Ephesians 3:9 and support his text. Now if he becomes Byzantine priority, he can't. Okay.

In all of Titus, we don't have that many manuscripts from the 5th century. My point isn't that there's tons and tons and tons of manuscripts where the scribe never got sleepy. But the TR type text is a continual text. There are manuscripts that look very much like it. Manuscript, it's a text you can see that exists through history. The Nestle-Aland text is chopped up into little bits and there's no manuscript that has anything close to the book of Titus for any long portion of it. Now, I was, there's no way for me to know. You asked me about a manuscript from the 5th century for that Titus. So no, of course I can't. I don't have them with me.

My position is that God promised that He'd preserve all the words that He inspired and those words would be available to the churches. It's not my responsibility to show how every single Christian throughout history was able to do that. I know that it was possible because God said it. I know that we have an actual literal descent from Adam because the Bible says so, but I can't prove that I'm descended from Adam. So I don't have the text of every single person who lived and can prove it all the way through. But since God said it, therefore those words were available.

The Bible says in Isaiah 59:21, 'As for me, this is my covenant with him, saith the Lord: My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and forever.' So the Bible clearly says that all of God's words would be available to every generation of believers. Now we can talk about the specifics of how we apply that, and maybe James thinks that he'd apply it a little differently than me. Okay. But the Nestle-Aland text doesn't even try to obey what this verse says. But there's a lot within the spectrum that I'm defending. There's a lot of ways you can at least be honest with Isaiah 59:21.

Over and over again you kept saying there's no manuscript evidence, there's no manuscripts. Isn't it true that what you're saying is that when you talk about manuscripts, you're not saying that there are not manuscripts that contain all those words. What you're saying is that to make the textual decisions at various variant points, you're looking for a manuscript that somebody else made all those exact same decisions in antiquity. Isn't that what you're actually saying?

Seriously? 'N' is a preposition, not an article. But okay. But K is what I'm referring to. Notice here that that was one of many examples. But what we are saying is that even for small groups of words, something like Jesus's words on the cross, even those handful of words, there's no manuscript that has the Nestle-Aland reading in just those words. This is not a text that exists in any actual manuscript for large sections of text, while the TR type text does. There's whole books that are exactly identical and many other texts that are very, very similar because they were copying them like they're the word of God. Wonderful.

All right. So we will now switch these rules and we're going to have Thomas now ask James for 10 minutes doing a cross-examination. So I'll turn the time over to Thomas to do the exact same thing that we just saw.

Thank you for those questions. James, Matthew 4:4 says, 'But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.' Based on the presuppositions of the Nestle-Aland editors, how can a person live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God? How can they know those for sure?

So maybe I'll ask this one too. Maybe I'll help. So Matthew 5:18-19, Christ says, 'Till heaven and earth pass, not one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, essentially called great in the kingdom of heaven.' So there the Bible says we're able to be certain about even every single Hebrew letter of Scripture so that we can obey them all. How can you, from your presuppositions, be certain about every single letter of the Bible?

So in the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19 and 20, Christ told His church to be able that they would make disciples, baptize them, and teach them to observe all things whatsoever He commanded. How can the church observe all things whatsoever God commands, even jots and tittles of it? Was that something that was possible for churches through all ages, or are there significant numbers of words that were buried in the sands of Egypt and unavailable for century after century?

Is that text you say is a key deity of Christ text? Is it in the absolutely, absolutely awful New World Translation? And if it's so, how come the JWs, when they corrupt their Bible so many times, didn't realize that they were actually supporting the deity of Christ in John 1:18?

So speaking of John and Jesus's only begotten, doesn't the 1689 Baptist Confession and also actual, you know, plenty of good manuscript sources show that 'only begotten' is actually a better translation than 'unique'? Isn't that actually pretty well established?

All right. Proverbs 30:5 and 6 says, 'Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.' Is it a sin to preach and teach and love and receive even one word other than what God wrote in the original autographs?

That something that we see that all through the canon. Deuteronomy 12: 'Whatsoever things I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.' Proverbs 30, Revelation 22. So all those texts where it says not to add or take away from even one word of Scripture, that's only if it's intentional? You can't disobey those commands unintentionally?

Well, I think that the Bible teaches that there were no centuries when the words of God weren't available. So even like Revelation 22:18 and 19 where it says not to add or take away from the words of this book, that isn't actually talking about it being a terrible sin to add to or take away from the actual words, just talking about the teachings, which you can obey the teachings without having the words. It's talking about the Book of Revelation and it's talking about, it's not again, it's not, if you want to say, 'Well, they're warning people to not make specific changes to the text,' fine, that's not what we're talking about. None of these are specific changes to text where people were trying to hide something or change something, just like 1 John 3:1. My Legacy Standard Bible says 1 John 3:1 says 'we are the children of God.' Your King James does not say that. That was what was understood historically. I can take that all the way back, but there are people who had Byzantine manuscripts, they don't have that. So what does that mean? Were they missing part of the word of God? You say the promise of God was that would never be not there. I say the promise of God is that it is found in the entirety of the manuscript tradition, and there were times where people were in certain areas where they didn't have that affirmation, 1 John 3:1. That is historical reality.

I know we're out of time. That is time. But yeah, you guys, I think that's permissible right now. You really don't want to go to the Book of Revelation for that because it is the TR that is an absolute mess in the Book of Revelation and demonstrates that the text it presents was not known in the early church and was not available to every generation. You don't want to go there because that is your weakest area, is the actual text of the Book of Revelation.

Nope, that is the time right there. So we'll now turn the mic back over to James White to continue in this cross-examination. James, you have another 10 minutes. Go ahead whenever you are ready.

It is important to know what the correct words in that verse, Revelation and in every other verse of Revelation are. And the action on my position, I think we can know for sure where those words are. Now I personally would answer that question one way. Somebody who is slightly different on the TR perspective might answer in a slightly different way. Like, okay, so a Byzantine priority person would say, 'Yep, it's definitely Holy One.' A TR preferred person will probably say it's Holy One, and we can even see that in TRs that are before and after the King James. It's in the script, it's in the Stephanos TR has Holy One, the Elzevir 1624 has Holy One. A TR perfect person would say that Beza said he had a manuscript, and you can even see Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland in their text, New Testament, say that all the, that there's many manuscripts that have been lost, and so Beza did have a manuscript and there might have been numbers of manuscripts that were available to him that we don't have anymore. So but if you don't like that answer and you become a TR preferred person instead of being a Nestle-Aland person after this debate, I'll be very happy for you. Okay, because at least you're, but in regards more seriously, in regards to our debate, is the LSB reading of Revelation 16:5 more representative of the entire history of the Christian faith's understanding of Revelation 16:5 than the King James? Yes or no?

So in Revelation 16:5, let me finish what I was going to say if you don't mind. So there's multiple answers that people who take my position could give to that. And if you want to conclude that the Stephanus and the Elzevir reading is better in Revelation 16:5 for the words 'Holy One' because of what Scripture teaches about its own preservation, I totally can understand that. Revelation 16:5, 'Holy One' is not in, or 'ho esomenos' is not in any Baptist confession of faith, unlike many, many other TR readings. If we're going to say that because 'ho esomenos' is wrong, I can see a good case for why somebody would argue that, and many people on my side would agree, and some of them wouldn't. But whatever you conclude for that, James's argument undermines his own text a thousand times more as he's making it against 'ho esomenos' in Revelation 16:5.

Sure. So I think it's interesting that James doesn't want to hear about the King James Only perspectives in his own book that are on my position. What do I personally, and what I personally think about it is actually not crucial to what, you know, this debate topic. I am sympathetic personally to the view that 'ho esomenos' was in a text that Beza had. Beza referred to numbers of manuscripts that we may not have anymore. But if somebody says, if someone else is wrong and it's 'hagios,' we can see the 'hagios' in other TR editions, and somebody argues for 'hagios' saying that 'ho esomenos' doesn't fit what Scripture teaches, I can respect that. He's arguing scripturally. He's trying to say we believe what God promises about preserving His own word. That's great. I appreciate those presuppositions. Those presuppositions will not get you to James's text. It'll get you to somewhere on my spectrum. Okay. I tried.

Well, we have two papyri manuscripts from the third century. Whether they contain 16:5, I don't remember. I remember they contained 13.

And what I'm saying, James, is that I can concede everything that you just said and agree with you 100% and say that shows that the TR is a superior text because in so many other passages it's better than the Legacy Standard Bible. So it doesn't actually get you to a Nestle-Aland position. Whatever I say about it, I can make the most ridiculous answer, I can make the best answer. It's not going to get you to a Nestle-Aland text. So no, it doesn't. So it does not matter. I could grab Swanson, which of course I have in my library, I've had it for years, and by the way, it does not say what you said. What it does, it lists manuscripts, it gives the variants, and it lists the manuscripts that have the various readings to it. So I could take that and we could look at any text, any text whatsoever. It would not matter because all you have to do is say, 'Well, I believe God's promise is that every generation is going to have it, and even if I can't find any evidence, then it's still okay because that's my conclusion.' Is there any reason to even continue having the conversation right now?

Scripture says we look and see how God fulfilled that now in Revelation 16:5. There's so much... Pickering says we know for sure where God's words are. He would take a somewhat different position on where those words are than a TR preferred person or a TR perfect person, but at least he says we can know for sure. The Nestle-Aland position is all based upon rejecting what God says about its own preservation, which is why in James's book, 'King James Only Controversy,' in his debates, he never gives anywhere close to those verses that I probably spoke too fast about, but that I gave in the first part of my presentation.

What's the name of the person you're talking about?

You've exposited scripture in context, yes, in that debate, yes. And in fact, well, I'm not... I can't ask questions, but let me just put it this way. If you actually just said to our audience that I have never presented a doctrine of preservation or exposited these texts, upon what basis would you dare to say so, given I've spent hours going through Psalm 12 and all of these texts on the Dividing Line and in other contexts demonstrating my position?

Then what did I say about preservation in the book?

Okay, all right. We've gotten to a point. I'll just stop there. Copy that. It's fine. Thank you, James. We will now do the same for Thomas Ross. Thomas Ross, whenever you are ready, I have my timer ready for you to start your 10-minute cross-examination.

Okay, thank you for that, James. So in Reuben Swanson, on page 12 of the introduction of his edition on Matthew, he says there are, quote, 'lines of text in the UBS4 and the Westcott-Hort that have no manuscript support,' unquote. And you go through that book and you find over 40 just in Matthew and Mark, and you keep going with Luke and John. Does he... what does he mean when he says that there are lines of text in the UBS4 and Westcott-Hort that have no manuscript support when he says on page 12 of his introduction?

We'll go ahead and start with the next question.

So the words 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani' — those four words, according to Swanson, there's no manuscript that has those four words like there are in the UBS. Is that the case, that even those four words...?

Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. In 1 Samuel... if you want to give me the reference... what's that? That's okay. Reference, please.

Yeah, okay. All right. 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani.' And so you are saying... oh, okay. And here's why I love it. Here's what the difference is. The Nestle-Aland 28th edition spells 'Eli' as 'Eli' (E-I, L-I), 'lama sabachthani.' So this is how you transliterate Aramaic into Greek, okay? Which scribes would have no clue about. The variant is instead of using an 'E' it uses an 'E' and an 'O', so 'Eloi, Eloi.' So it's all of this: how you transliterate an Aramaic phrase 'Eli, Eli' into Greek. That's all it is. It has nothing to do with meaning, nothing to do with anything whatsoever. And I can give you all the manuscripts that have the different readings right here: Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, 33, the Vulgate, the Coptic, etc. It's simply wrong to say there are no manuscripts that have these things. These are understandable variants that are dealt with all the time.

Yeah, I appreciate your pointing out that that variant isn't the most significant one and that those four words aren't in any specific text as they are. But in 1 Samuel 13:1 and Judges 16:13, the LSB rejects the Hebrew text as corrupt and follows the LXX against all excellent Hebrew manuscripts. How do you reconcile this with Christ's promise that 'till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled'?

Okay, and it's... I've said nothing about readings that have no Hebrew manuscript support. I specifically said that in the example that I gave, that there was a variant in the Hebrew between 'ba'al' and 'ga'al'. Okay. And if they believe that the Hebrew text... and I'm assuming that is... is that 1 Samuel 13:1? The LSB says the Hebrew basically says the Hebrew text is errant because it claims erroneously that the Hebrew should be translated that Saul was one year old when he became king, and so therefore they reject all known Hebrew manuscripts to follow the LXX.

Okay, thank you, James. In John 17:8, the Bible, Christ is speaking about the words. 'For I have given unto them the words that thou gavest me, and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.' This passage is never cited in your book on the King James Only Controversy. Now the Father gave the specific words of Scripture to the Son, that He might give them to His elect people by His Spirit, and this people would receive them. We can see in Acts, this receipt: they would consistently receive the word. Would that passage indicate that Christ's high priestly intercession guarantees that His people would have a 'receive text' mindset, where instead of a 'restoring a lost text' mindset? And do we know that in this... let me just finish, sorry. Would that also show that we have the right books of the canon, because Christ prayed that His people would have the right words? Do we know that we have the right books because we know we have the right words based on John 17?

Okay. Thank you for that. In your debate with D.A. Waite, an hour and 21 minutes in, you said, 'I believe that God preserved the text of Scripture in the same way that...' I'm sorry, wait a minute. Do you mean the radio program?

Thank you, guys, for the cross-examination portion. We are now going to proceed into the third presentation for today's evening. Thank you, appreciate it. These are going to consist of eight-minute presentations from each one of the speakers here today. Again, we will continue on with that format that we've had. James White will go first, followed by Thomas Ross. So James, you are up.

James, we will now have the third argument done by Thomas again. This is going to be eight minutes. Following this, we will have our concluding statements. Following that, a short break followed by questions and answers. So Thomas, it is your turn for this eight-minute presentation.

Thank you for that, James. Just quickly: God promised to preserve words, not individual manuscripts. The folks at Münster never said the church is involved in Scripture's preservation at all. I wanted to hit this earlier, ran out of time for it. But the reading 'Yahweh,' which is all over the Hebrew Old Testament of the LSB — there's no Hebrew manuscript in existence that has the vowel pointing for 'Yahweh.' So if you read the text as it actually stands, and all the names that are 'Jehovah' names in the Bible, it's always 'Yahuwah,' 'Jehovah.' Let's talk about how this affects apologetics. The Nestle-Aland text, the text and errancy in Matthew 1:7 and 10: it puts 'Asaph' the scribe into the genealogy of the Messiah instead of King Asa. It puts 'Amos' into it instead of 'Amminadab' in Matthew 1:10. In Mark 6:22, it has a clear error where it says that Herodias is actually descended from Herod. It's a clear error. And if you read Metzger's Textual Commentary, the UBS editors are perfectly willing to deny inerrancy in these passages. Luke 3:33: the Nestle-Aland text invents two fictional people that it puts into Scripture. Luke 23:45: it puts in a text and errancy by saying the sun was eclipsed, and that word for 'eclipse' with the word for sun or moon is always used for an eclipse, even if the word 'eclipse' on its own can be used in different ways. In 1 Corinthians 5:1, the critical text, the Nestle-Aland text, says that there's a type of sin that doesn't even exist among the Gentiles. So there's another attack on inerrancy in 1 Corinthians 5:1. So I don't actually think that we'd have a better apologetics going on here when we take a text where the editor is denying inerrancy and where there are clear examples of readings that are errant in the text. Let's talk about the Textus Receptus text type in Revelation. Hoskier, who actually collated all the manuscripts of Revelation — and if I'm supposedly against textual criticism, somebody would take my position — actually is the only one who collated all the manuscripts of Revelation. He said, 'If Erasmus had striven to found a text on the largest number of existing manuscripts in the world of one type, he could not have succeeded better, and that his family of manuscripts occupied the first rank in the point of actual numbers.' That's what he said about the TR text type of Revelation. The Textus Receptus text type of Revelation is old. It's a cursive stream that originates far back in the 4th century. The most respected manuscripts available to him would have been used. It could go back into the 2nd century easily, according to the preface to 'The New Testament According to the Majority Text' by Hodges and Farstad. They actually take a slightly different text of Revelation, but they admit that the TR type of text is very old in the Book of Revelation. So in the Book of Revelation, the TR type text follows a very large family that is associated with a commentary that was a very widely used commentary, indicating that the TR type of text in Revelation is in use. Now the Nestle-Aland text, the one that he's defending, is full of... there are categories of grammar that are invented in Daniel Wallace's 'Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics' to explain the grammatical absurdities in the Nestle-Aland text. Like in Revelation 1:4, it has an object of a preposition in the nominative, which is impossible in the Greek language. That text is full of it. It's full of grammatical absurdities. The TR text of Revelation actually is superior because it isn't full of grammatical absurdities like in Revelation 1:4 and in many other passages. The Greek grammar in the Nestle-Aland text is called 'bizarre' by Wallace, who's hardly somebody on my side. James said that his position is validated in my view of Matthew 5:18-19, which is the plain meaning of the passage that God would preserve all the Hebrew words, is wrong because the New Testament quotes the LXX as authoritative or differs from the perceived Hebrew text. First, that's not what Matthew 5:18-19 says. Second, that false idea proves too much. The book of Jeremiah differs from the Hebrew text by approximately 2,700 words shorter; it moves whole chapters around. If he's going to go with that argument, he proves too much. That would get you to a text where you can move whole chapters around back and forth here and there. It undermines the inerrancy of Scripture. A much better explanation for why the readings he's talking about in the book of Hebrews is the one that John Owen gave in his commentary and the one that's actually in the standard introduction to the Septuagint by Jobes and Silva, which is that scribes of the LXX often conformed their quotations to the New Testament. He didn't give us any examples where we have extant New Testament manuscripts of the LXX that predate those quotations. Most manuscripts of the LXX are with New Testaments. So actually, those quotations that he says prove that Matthew 5:18-19 don't mean what they obviously mean in their context — those are actually situations where the LXX was conformed to the New Testament, not the other way around. And you can see that this is something that is recognized as happening in the standard introduction to the Septuagint. This happens. John Owen's commentary on Hebrews. So instead of us saying that all the Hebrew texts are wrong and we need to reject what Matthew 5:18-19 says — he wouldn't put a quote like that, but that's what we're doing — it'd be much better to adopt the explanation of John Owen and recognize that this actually takes place. The New Testament papyri proved the sole existence and the superiority of the Alexandrian text type in his book 'The King James Only Controversy.' He made the astonishing statement that every papyrus manuscript we've discovered has been a representative of the Alexandrian text type. But if you look at Aland and Aland's book, there's actually most papyri aren't in Category 1, which would be where he would put the Alexandrian text. There are some that are classified as Byzantine: P63, P73, P84, even according to Aland and Aland. So his statement is simply not accurate. There are hundreds of readings in the papyri that are Byzantine. Hundreds of readings. To say that all papyri are Alexandrian is not accurate. Furthermore, there's a bias in these classifications. We have to recognize that according to standard liberal textual criticism, there are no text types before the 4th century. So actually, they would say we have nothing but readings. And so he would say... they would say you can find quotes that say there's no Byzantine papyri, but those people would also say there's no Alexandrian text that exists before the 4th century either. All we have is a motley group of stuff that's together. We should also recognize that the papyri — we're very thankful for the papyri — but we need to recognize that they come from small portions of Upper Egypt where it happens to be very dry. Can we prove that the text that's in a small number of places in Upper Egypt, which is very, very dry, are representative of the text everywhere from Asia Minor, where the autographs actually came from, to Britain, to Africa? Can we prove that? We can't prove that. So we're very thankful that papyri have been discovered. Another illustration of the bias here in the papyrus: if you look at the oldest papyrus that we have, P52. P52, if you look at it, it's not a very big papyrus. But if you look at it, the P52 text that we can see on that papyrus is exactly identical to what you would have in a printed TR text. It's exactly identical text, including a variant where the Nestle-Aland varies from the text of the TR. So the very oldest manuscript that we have of the Gospel of John is identical to the TR and differs from the Nestle-Aland text. It's not a very big papyrus, but Aland and Aland have said we can judge the categorization of a whole document from even the parts of it. So why don't we say that this is a TR type papyrus? Why would we say it's Alexandrian simply because of presuppositions? We say there is no Alexandrian text — excuse me — there's no Byzantine text back then, therefore this, in the parts we don't have, it must have read something else. Well, so we're very thankful for the papyri. The papyri do not establish James's position. The most important thing in this debate is: what does Scripture teach about its own preservation? Scripture teaches that God would preserve every one of His words. Scripture teaches those words to be available to every generation of believers. And Scripture teaches that it would be the church that was the institution for the receipt of those words. If you believe those presuppositions, we can talk about where on the spectrum of King James Only positions in James's book that gets you. But it doesn't get you to the Nestle-Aland text. Thank you.

Thank you, Thomas. We will now be rolling right into our final concluding statements. These are going to consist of five minutes each, and again we're going to start with James and finish with Thomas. After this, we will do our break and then following that, our Q&A. So please go ahead, Dr. James White.

Thank you, James. We will now do our five-minute concluding statement from Thomas Ross. Just to note, I will be throwing a finger up — not the middle one, of course, the first one — when there's one minute left, just to not interrupt you in your concluding statement. So whenever you start.

I don't want to introduce too much new material in the last because it's just a concluding statement. Thank you very much, James, for the debate. I appreciate it. But since he brought those things up right at the end: underneath the word 'Jehovah,' the vowel pointing is actually not identical to the word 'Adonai.' Underneath the first consonant, it's got a 'pathach' instead of a 'hateph pathach.' You also have all the 'Jehovah' names: 'Jehoash,' every name where has 'Jehovah' in it has the vowels of 'Jehovah.' And if you look at the standard Hebrew syntax by Waltke and O'Connor, it talks about people who say we should just disregard the vowel points, and it says in there, 'Well, if we're going to do that, maybe we should all... maybe the Masoretes must have read Carl Brockelmann's Comparative Semitic Grammar because they have all these forms that are so accurate, that are so ancient.' So we can't just disregard the vowel points. And he admitted that 'Yahweh' is not in any Hebrew manuscript that we have. So we have to conclude that the pronunciation of God's name was lost, which I don't think is a good thing to conclude. So I also never said that the LXX didn't exist before the New Testament. I said that in those passages, scribes of the LXX conformed their copies to the New Testament, which is what a standard introduction to the Septuagint says happens at different times. So that would be better to recognize. This topic — what Scripture teaches about its own preservation — is absolutely crucial for this topic. It is crucial for this issue. If James were able to demonstrate that the Bible did not teach that God preserves every one of His words, that those words would be available to every generation of believers, and that those words would be received by the churches, my position would really be demolished. If Scripture doesn't teach those things, that is a crucial thing. If Scripture does teach those things, it's not the Nestle-Aland. It can't be the Nestle-Aland. The people who made the Nestle-Aland didn't believe what Scripture teaches about its own preservation. You read their introductions: they say absolutely nothing about the text that the churches receive. They say nothing about recognizing what the canonical words of God are, received by the churches. They say nothing about God's words being in the mouths of His people from generation to generation. They say nothing about God's word being preserved pure in all ages. So if we recognize what Scripture teaches about its own preservation, it can't be the Nestle-Aland text. There are words in there. That type of text was not in use for well over a thousand years. James himself admitted that type of text was not available when the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 was made. All they knew, the only text that was available as far as we can see clearly what was available, is the Received Text. The further back you go in history, the harder it is to figure out what was going on. For example, in the area where the autographs came from, Asia Minor, as soon as we have evidence, it looks like they're Byzantine people in the area where the autographs came from. But the environment there is not such that papyri are going to survive. So we have to recognize that when we can see, we need to believe what Scripture says as far back as we can go. And then when we can't see any further evidence, we still need to believe what God says. We have to approach this issue with scriptural presuppositions. The Bible teaches that God would preserve every one of His words. Those words would be available to every generation of believers. Those preserved words would be received by the churches. Jesus prayed this. Jesus's high priestly intercession guarantees that true churches would receive His words. That means that the words are not going to be lost. Jesus said that every jot and tittle would be preserved. That means that 1 Samuel 13:1 cannot have had the true words disappear and we have to restore them from the LXX. It means that in the book of Judges, where the LSB note says that the true readings are gone in the Hebrew text and we have to restore it from the LXX, that's not possible when we recognize that God promised to infallibly inspire His word. We need to recognize that that's something that none of the editors of the Nestle-Aland text believed, and that's why they are willing to introduce errors into their text, like in Luke 23:45, the sun being eclipsed, things like that. We need to recognize that they didn't think that it was inerrant, and they introduced errors of errancy into their text. They did not approach it with biblical presuppositions. And I'm thankful that James says certain things that he believes in certain things about tenacity. That's just wonderful. But we don't see a careful exegesis of Scripture in his book showing how the principles that the editors of the Nestle-Aland text use are developed based on what Scripture teaches. You can see that in the textual criticism of scholars like Edward F. Hills, who has a PhD in textual criticism from Harvard. We can see in writings like his or other TR scholars that they first looked at what Scripture taught about its own preservation, and from that basis they evaluated the data in light of Scripture's teaching. That is what we must do. And if we evaluate textual data in the light of what Scripture teaches about its own preservation, we will not believe in the NA text. We will believe in the TR as God's preserved word. Thank you very much.

Pause for the law that they had to say. So everybody, we will now take a five-minute short break. Please be back here to then open up for questions and answers. Again, our Q&A moment. Again, it's such a blessing to have two studious men that are presenting their different positions here today, and I again thank everybody for being here. How this is going to happen — and I'll be just honest with you, so I'm a bi-vocational pastor, so you think I would be well read, but I work as a firefighter as my main job, and I have a hard time reading. So I'm just going to as it is for all firemen. That's why we're firemen: we like to break down doors rather than read books.

And you have a stogie in your pocket.