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Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to my channel Vice Rhino. Here today,
Speaker 2: I'm looking at a video from the Pursue God channel,
Speaker 2: which is the channel that brought us the guy who
Speaker 2: looked like he was being held at gunpoint while defending slavery.
Speaker 2: This time they are giving us three reasons to trust
Speaker 2: the reliability of the Bible. I imagine that this is
Speaker 2: going to be another case of them just showing one
Speaker 2: tiny aspect of the Bible to be reliable and then
Speaker 2: extrapolating from there to the idea that the entire thing
Speaker 2: is reliable because that one tiny aspect is. Of course,
Speaker 2: that's not actually how reliability works, but that's usually how
Speaker 2: apologists present it. So let's see if I'm right.
Speaker 3: And the first reason, we are calling historical evidence ancient
Speaker 3: manuscripts and archaeological digs have stacked up in favor of
Speaker 3: biblical reliability.
Speaker 2: And this is where I will ask, what exactly do
Speaker 2: you mean by reliability. Now, if by that you mean
Speaker 2: that our modern reconstruction of the books of the Bible
Speaker 2: transmit the words of the original documents relatively faithfully, then
Speaker 2: I would be willing to grant that, though I would
Speaker 2: also argue that there is enough doubt in that area
Speaker 2: to say rather definitively that there was no supernatural help
Speaker 2: with the transmission of the documents. If, however, you mean
Speaker 2: that the stories in the Bible are reliable accounts of
Speaker 2: actual events, then that is largely not true. There are
Speaker 2: some correct details, like the names and places of people,
Speaker 2: but there's also a lot that we know it got wrong.
Speaker 2: And with these things that we know it got wrong,
Speaker 2: there are different reasons for the different stories. So, for instance,
Speaker 2: we know that the Exodus didn't happen as described by
Speaker 2: the Bible because there has been zero evidence of such
Speaker 2: a large population of Hebrew slaves existing in Egypt at
Speaker 2: any time that would match up with the story, and
Speaker 2: there is zero evidence of a mass migration on the
Speaker 2: scale required for that story to be true. That large
Speaker 2: a group of people can't wander around a known location
Speaker 2: for decades while leaving zero evidence behind. But for the
Speaker 2: Book of Samuel, we know that a lot of that
Speaker 2: book is wrong because of all of its anachronisms. It
Speaker 2: has them fighting against an army that had soldiers manted
Speaker 2: on camels. It talks about the use of iron tools
Speaker 2: as though they were comeplace at the time, It references
Speaker 2: the Kushites, a group of people who wouldn't have been
Speaker 2: prominent in the area until after the twenty sixth dynasty
Speaker 2: of Egypt. And more, in the case of the birth
Speaker 2: narratives for Jesus, we actually know that they cannot be
Speaker 2: simultaneously true because each of them has historically accurate information
Speaker 2: within their account. So in Matthew, Jesus was born while
Speaker 2: Herod the Great was king. In Luke, it says that
Speaker 2: he was born while Kyrineus was governor of Syria. The
Speaker 2: problem here being that Herod the Great died in either
Speaker 2: four or one BCE, and Chyrineus did not become governor
Speaker 2: of Syria until six CE, either six or nine years
Speaker 2: after Herod's death. But hey Bonus points for menustioning real
Speaker 2: people like Here the Great and Chirnius, right, That must
Speaker 2: mean the whole thing is true.
Speaker 3: Anytime you and I are trying to assess the accuracy
Speaker 3: or the validity of any ancient piece of literature, we
Speaker 3: want to look at two things. How many manuscripts do
Speaker 3: we have access to and how reliable are those manuscripts.
Speaker 2: Sure, those are important metrics, but notably they are important
Speaker 2: for the question of how much of the ancient text
Speaker 2: and question can be reconstructed. It says nothing as to
Speaker 2: whether or not the events recorded and said text are
Speaker 2: true events. For comparison, it is estimated that the various
Speaker 2: books in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series have sold over one
Speaker 2: hundred million copies. Does this mean that historians of the
Speaker 2: future should conclude that the world is being carried on
Speaker 2: the backs of four elephants that are themselves on the
Speaker 2: back of a great turtle. Of course not, because more
Speaker 2: copies does not equal more true.
Speaker 3: So let's tackle that first question, how many, and let's
Speaker 3: see how the Bible stacks up with some other famous
Speaker 3: ancient works of literature. We'll start with Aristotle. We have
Speaker 3: access to forty nine copies of the earliest manuscripts for Aristotle.
Speaker 3: Not bad right for a guy who wrote the original
Speaker 3: almost twenty five hundred years ago. If we were to
Speaker 3: compare that to the works of Homer, maybe you had
Speaker 3: to read the Iliad or the Odyssey as you were
Speaker 3: going through school. And we have six hundred and forty
Speaker 3: three copies of Homer's works, and you'll see that when
Speaker 3: we look at the New Testament, it isn't even close.
Speaker 2: And would you like to know why it isn't even close?
Speaker 2: Because unlike Homer and Aristotle, the New Testament had over
Speaker 2: a thousand years of one of the most powerful organizations
Speaker 2: in the world dedicating a massive amount of resources to
Speaker 2: making sure it got copied out. The same organization also
Speaker 2: made sure to destroy a bunch of works that it
Speaker 2: saw as heretical and well, the works of Aristotle and
Speaker 2: Homer did largely escape that effort. Other ancient authors, like Celsus,
Speaker 2: weren't as lucky. The only reason we even know that
Speaker 2: Celsa's existed is because Origin of Alexandria wrote an eight
Speaker 2: volume work titled Contracelsum, which was a response to celsus
Speaker 2: work The True Word, which only survives in the form
Speaker 2: of quotations by Origin. My point is it's not impressive
Speaker 2: that there are a lot of copies that survived when
Speaker 2: an organization existed dedicated to making a lot of copies
Speaker 2: and ensuring their survival while purging what they saw as
Speaker 2: heretical works. Also, keep in mind that the vast majority
Speaker 2: of these manuscripts are from the ninth century onward, with
Speaker 2: many of them being copies of other manuscripts that we
Speaker 2: already have. Essentially, it'd be like photocopying a page twice
Speaker 2: and then saying that we have three separate copies. I mean, sure,
Speaker 2: technically that is true, we do have three copies, but
Speaker 2: that says nothing about the contents of that page other
Speaker 2: than that it was copied twice. But if we discard
Speaker 2: the later works commissioned by a powerful church and focused
Speaker 2: instead on the first three centuries, the number of manuscripts
Speaker 2: dwindles down to a mere one hundred and twenty four,
Speaker 2: most of which are tiny scraps, not the entire New
Speaker 2: Testament or even entire books of the New Testament. Now,
Speaker 2: to be fair, this is still impressive when compared to
Speaker 2: other ancient texts, but it doesn't strike me as being
Speaker 2: supernaturally impressive.
Speaker 3: So clearly, when it comes to how many manuscripts we
Speaker 3: have access to. There is more manuscript evidence for the
Speaker 3: Bible than any other ancient work of literature.
Speaker 2: Again, though this is not evidence that the Bible is true,
Speaker 2: it is evidence that the Bible was copied a lot. Now,
Speaker 2: let's look at that manuscript graph showing when all the
Speaker 2: manuscripts were produced.
Speaker 1: Again.
Speaker 2: Do you see how there's a very sharp decline after
Speaker 2: the fourteenth century. Do you know why that is, Well,
Speaker 2: it's because the word manuscript is definitionally a work that
Speaker 2: is written out or copied by hand. You know, manually,
Speaker 2: manuscript manually same same. So there was this thing that
Speaker 2: was invented in the fourteen hundreds that you may have
Speaker 2: heard of. It's called the printing press. Well, that's when
Speaker 2: the Europeans got around to inventing it. Movable type printing
Speaker 2: presses had already been in use in China for four
Speaker 2: hundred years by that time. Anyway, my point is the
Speaker 2: Bible will still be being copied extensively. But after the
Speaker 2: printing press showed up that copying was no longer being
Speaker 2: done exclusively by hand, and so handwritten copies began to decline.
Speaker 2: But what is the functional difference here? Why is a
Speaker 2: hand copied book of the Bible counted as evidence for
Speaker 2: the accuracy of the Bible, but a printing press copied
Speaker 2: one is not. It seems rather arbitrary if you ask me,
Speaker 2: and now allow me to pose a hypothetical here, imagine
Speaker 2: for a moment that we found a treasure trove containing
Speaker 2: thirty thousand individual manuscripts of Homer's Odyssey. At that point,
Speaker 2: it would have far surpassed the number of manuscripts of
Speaker 2: the Bible, even if we include the non Greek ones.
Speaker 2: Would that mean that we should all believe in ciren
Speaker 2: Cyclopsis and the Greek gods? If not, then why do
Speaker 2: you think that a large number of manuscripts means that
Speaker 2: I should believe in the Bible?
Speaker 3: Now, the second question that we ask ourselves is how
Speaker 3: reliable is it? Well, for the longest time, the oldest
Speaker 3: manuscripts we had access to for the Old Testament was
Speaker 3: the Massoretic Text, which was written around eight hundred AD.
Speaker 3: Think something really cool happened in the years between nineteen
Speaker 3: forty seven and nineteen fifty six. The Dead Sea Scrolls
Speaker 3: were discovered.
Speaker 2: Ah, Yes, the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is a collection
Speaker 2: of documents which demonstrates that the idea of a Jesus
Speaker 2: like Messiah was alive and well in the first century
Speaker 2: BCE in Judea, which then throws a bit of a
Speaker 2: wrench into the common apologetic argument that no first century
Speaker 2: jo would have thought of the Messiahs that kind of figure.
Speaker 3: Now, the Dead Sea Scrolls date back all the way
Speaker 3: to one hundred and fifty BC.
Speaker 2: Your dating's a little off here. The Dead Sea Scrolls
Speaker 2: are a collection of nearly a thousand manuscripts found in
Speaker 2: the Kumrong Caves, dating from three hundred BCE to one
Speaker 2: hundred CE. Now, I'm sure he's just about to bring
Speaker 2: up the Isaiah Scroll, because that is what apologies often
Speaker 2: do when arguing for the accuracy of manuscript transmission. And
Speaker 2: the Isaiah Scroll was dated to around one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty to one hundred and twenty five BCE, so that's
Speaker 2: probably why he's giving that date.
Speaker 3: Now, one of the amazing things about the Dead Sea
Speaker 3: Scrolls is in the Dead Sea Scrolls we have a
Speaker 3: copy of the entire Book of Isaiah.
Speaker 2: A Boom called it. I'm going to skip this because
Speaker 2: he takes a while and is very boring about it,
Speaker 2: but he goes on to explain that it's ninety five
Speaker 2: percent identical to the copy we have from the Masoretic Text,
Speaker 2: indicating that it was reliably transmitted over those nine hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty or so years, which is largely true. While
Speaker 2: there are a few thousand differences, they do mostly amount
Speaker 2: to simple spelling differences in scribal errors. But now we
Speaker 2: also have to keep in mind that for important texts,
Speaker 2: any changes are most likely to be made within the
Speaker 2: first decades of that text's existence. While and still new,
Speaker 2: there will be fewer copies around for other scribes to check,
Speaker 2: so whatever changes are made have a much higher chance
Speaker 2: of being accepted as accurate. Isaiah was written between the
Speaker 2: eighth and fourth centuries BCE. The Isaiah scroll from the
Speaker 2: Dead Sea Scrolls was from the second century BCE, so
Speaker 2: we would expect that if Isaiah had been changed during
Speaker 2: its copying process, those changes would have long since been completed.
Speaker 2: There's also the fact that Isaiah was by that point
Speaker 2: being copied by highly educated Jewish scribes.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: The books of the New Testament spent the first centuries
Speaker 2: being copied mostly by amateurs who were prone to making
Speaker 2: mistakes as well as making theologically motivated changes, and in
Speaker 2: the manuscripts there is a definite trend of less reliability
Speaker 2: in the transmission as we get older copies, which means
Speaker 2: that for the first few centuries, where we have barely
Speaker 2: any copies of anything, it is entirely possible that many
Speaker 2: changes were made that we have no way of detecting.
Speaker 2: The way we find out about them in more recent
Speaker 2: manuscripts is by comparing them to other contemporary copies as
Speaker 2: well as to the older manuscripts they were copied from.
Speaker 2: We can't do that with the older manuscripts, but even
Speaker 2: when the copying was being done largely by professional scribes,
Speaker 2: we know of many such changes. It is entirely within
Speaker 2: the realm of plausibility that theologically significant changes were made
Speaker 2: early on and those changes became the accepted version of
Speaker 2: the story.
Speaker 3: So when it comes to manuscript evidence, we can see
Speaker 3: that the Bible stands far above any other ancient work
Speaker 3: of literature. And if we were to include archaeological evidence,
Speaker 3: you would see the countless archaeological digs affirm the accuracy
Speaker 3: of the historical places and events that are listed in
Speaker 3: the Bible.
Speaker 2: Places often yes, events not really know. It really is
Speaker 2: fascinating to me how many apologists are capable of looking
Speaker 2: at the Bible, seeing that a place was somewhat accurately
Speaker 2: described by an author who'd likely lived there, and then
Speaker 2: extrapolating from that the idea that the Bible accurately described
Speaker 2: events that it said took place there. Like take the
Speaker 2: pool at Bethesda, for instance, a pool was described and
Speaker 2: Jesus healed a paralyzed guy there. In Jerusalem, the ruins
Speaker 2: of a pool that matched the biblical description were found.
Speaker 2: Therefore Jesus must have healed a paralyzed guy there. It
Speaker 2: can't just be that the author of the Book of
Speaker 2: John was familiar with a public location in a big
Speaker 2: city and so use that as a setting for his story.
Speaker 2: It has to be that the story itself is true.
Speaker 2: This is the New York City exists, so spider Man
Speaker 2: must be real. Line of argument. It is possible to
Speaker 2: write fiction and have it set in a real location,
Speaker 2: and it is even possible to accurately describe that location
Speaker 2: while doing so. And yet we are supposed to take
Speaker 2: the existence of some places that the Bible describes as
Speaker 2: evidence that the Bible is not fiction. Also, there are
Speaker 2: geographical errors in the Gospels that make it clear that
Speaker 2: the authors were not in fact as familiar with the
Speaker 2: region as we would expect if they were actually traveling
Speaker 2: around it with Jesus. Ironically, the one that shows the
Speaker 2: best geographical knowledge is Luke, the one gospel that explicitly
Speaker 2: states in its opening that is not an eyewitness account,
Speaker 2: but is compiling accounts based on other accounts.
Speaker 3: Now, let's talk about textual evidence. The Bible contained sixty
Speaker 3: six books written by forty authors over the course of
Speaker 3: fifteen hundred years, and yet it tells one unified story.
Speaker 2: Only if you squint really hard and ignore a bunch
Speaker 2: of stuff, including most of the scholarship surrounding the authorship
Speaker 2: of the various books of the Bible. Hell, according to
Speaker 2: the Bible, even Jesus himself came out and directly contradicted
Speaker 2: a bunch of from the Old Testament. You have heard
Speaker 2: that it was said an eye for an eye, and
Speaker 2: a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you,
Speaker 2: do not resist the one who is evil. But if
Speaker 2: anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him
Speaker 2: the other. Also, that is a direct refutation of the
Speaker 2: Jewish law Leviticus twenty four nineteen through twenty says, if
Speaker 2: anyone injures his neighbor as he has done, it shall
Speaker 2: be done to him fracture for fracture, I for eye,
Speaker 2: tooth for tooth. Whatever injury he has given a person
Speaker 2: shall be given to him. Tell me, how is it
Speaker 2: the same message to say at one point, if you
Speaker 2: are injured by your neighbor, then your neighbor shall be
Speaker 2: injured in the same way, and then later to say,
Speaker 2: if you are injured by your neighbor, then don't do
Speaker 2: anything to defend yourself for secrettribution. Instead, present yourself in
Speaker 2: a way that will allow him to continue injuring you,
Speaker 2: especially when the statement about allowing yourself to be continually
Speaker 2: injured begins by saying, you have heard the first thing said,
Speaker 2: but I'm saying do this instead.
Speaker 3: Let me just give you a quick sampling of how
Speaker 3: diverse the biblical authors are. We're gonna start with Moses.
Speaker 3: If you know anything about Moses's story, he was born
Speaker 3: and israelied. He was born during a time when Israel
Speaker 3: was slaves under the Egyptians. He ended up becoming the
Speaker 3: adopted son of Pharaoh's household.
Speaker 2: Whatever may be said of the historicity of the figure
Speaker 2: of Moses. One thing is certain, he did not write
Speaker 2: the Pentituke. For starters, Deuteronomy thirty four tells us how
Speaker 2: Moses died and how the people of Israel responded to
Speaker 2: his death. Bit tricky for Moses to be the author
Speaker 2: of that one. Also, all that stuff I said a
Speaker 2: couple weeks ago regarding the documentary hypothesis for the authorship
Speaker 2: of the Pentuke, and how the fact that the story
Speaker 2: isn't even unified within the individual books is part of
Speaker 2: how we know that different sections were written by different
Speaker 2: authors with different cultures and times, with different opinions on
Speaker 2: the same issues. Yeah, all that.
Speaker 3: Then we have David, a famous warrior the Shepherd who
Speaker 3: had become king. David wrote about seventy five of the Psalms.
Speaker 2: When describing David, you seem to have left out rapist
Speaker 2: who murdered his victim's husband to cover up his crime,
Speaker 2: which then resulted in God punishing David by torturing a
Speaker 2: baby to death. It's not really relevant to the topic here,
Speaker 2: but it is all always worth keeping in mind what
Speaker 2: kind of God the Christian God is, and it's the
Speaker 2: kind that would torture a baby to death in order
Speaker 2: to punish the parent for doing something bad.
Speaker 3: Luke was a first century doctor. He wrote the Gospel
Speaker 3: of Luke and also the Book of Acts.
Speaker 2: The idea that the author of Luke and Ax was
Speaker 2: a physician originated largely with William Kirk Hobart's eighteen eighty
Speaker 2: two book The Medical Language of Saint Luke. Okay, I
Speaker 2: confess that's a bit of a lie. Church tradition has
Speaker 2: him as Luke the physician, going back to the second century,
Speaker 2: at least with the Miretonian fragment from about one hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy CE. Identifying the author of Luke as the
Speaker 2: well known physician Hobart was just the first attempt at
Speaker 2: modern scholarly justification for connecting the traditional author with the
Speaker 2: physician Luke mentioned in Colossians four fourteen. The idea was
Speaker 2: that the author of Luke Ax was using a vocabulary
Speaker 2: that could best be explained by him being a medical
Speaker 2: professional of some kind. But it appears that Hobart put
Speaker 2: the cart before the horse here. He went looking for
Speaker 2: reasons why the Church tradition was accurate, and then he
Speaker 2: found them. Subsequent examinations into the matter, though, found that
Speaker 2: the vocabulary that was deemed to be evidence that Luke
Speaker 2: was a medical professional, was actually pretty common among authors
Speaker 2: who are known to not be medical professionals. Ninety percent
Speaker 2: of the words could also be found in the works
Speaker 2: of Josephus, who was most definitely not a physician. Among
Speaker 2: the writings of Lucian, the satirist and playwright, similar medical
Speaker 2: language appeared at a similar frequency to that which is
Speaker 2: found in Luke Acts. There is also medical terminology found
Speaker 2: in Matthew and Mark that not only does not appear
Speaker 2: in Luke, but seems to be more interested in the
Speaker 2: professional details than anything from Luke. So while this does
Speaker 2: not definitively prove that the author of Luke Acts was
Speaker 2: not a physician, it does serve to show that the
Speaker 2: language that the author used was no more medicalized than
Speaker 2: would be expected from any educated Greek author of the time.
Speaker 3: John he was a Jewish fisherman until Jesus called him
Speaker 3: to be a fisher of men.
Speaker 2: Funnily enough, one of the reasons that we know the
Speaker 2: Book of John was not authored by the disciple John
Speaker 2: is because of the Jewish fisherman thing. He was uneducated.
Speaker 2: Ibill agrees on that point. Acts four thirteen says that
Speaker 2: he and Peter were common uneducated men, but the Book
Speaker 2: of John was written by someone who is very highly
Speaker 2: educated in literary techniques. So not only does John have
Speaker 2: to get an education sometime in between the Resurrection and
Speaker 2: his supposed authorship of the Gospel, but he also had
Speaker 2: to learn an entirely new language, as a common uneducated
Speaker 2: fisherman from Galilee would at the time have spoken Aramaic,
Speaker 2: not Greek. Notably, the historian and highly educated member of
Speaker 2: the Aristocracy, Josephus, struggled with Greek himself, admitting that when
Speaker 2: it came to Greek, he relied on his assistance because
Speaker 2: it's all Greek to him, you see.
Speaker 3: And then lastly, we have Paul, the former Pharisee, who
Speaker 3: at one time was actually rounding up and persecuting Christians
Speaker 3: and having them put in prison and even killed, and
Speaker 3: God ended up using him to write a huge portion
Speaker 3: of the New Testament.
Speaker 2: Fun fact, one of the ways that we can confirm
Speaker 2: that Paul likely was actually a Pharisee and not a
Speaker 2: member of a different Jewish sect is that this is
Speaker 2: one of the small number of things that the Book
Speaker 2: of Acts and Paul's epistles actually agree on. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's no real reason to question it aside from just
Speaker 2: being a disturber at this point. But given that we're
Speaker 2: in the middle of claiming that the Bible has one
Speaker 2: unified message, it is worth bringing up the fact that
Speaker 2: disagreements between acts and the epistles is a pretty active
Speaker 2: area of scholarly research.
Speaker 3: So just in our list of five authors, we see
Speaker 3: the amazing amount of diversity and the men that God
Speaker 3: used to write the Bible. Imagine if we expanded that
Speaker 3: to all forty authors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, imagine with just the differences that I've highlighted here,
Speaker 2: if we were to expand that to the definitely more
Speaker 2: than forty authors.
Speaker 3: Now we're gonna look at textual evidence as it relates
Speaker 3: to fulfilled prophecy in the Bible, and I want to
Speaker 3: start with the lineage of Jesus. We're gonna look at Genesis,
Speaker 3: chapter forty nine, verse ten. It says the scepter will
Speaker 3: not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from his
Speaker 3: descendants until the coming of the one to who belongs,
Speaker 3: the one whom all nations will honor.
Speaker 2: Before getting into it, I would like to point out
Speaker 2: that this verse has one of the most hotly contested
Speaker 2: translations in the whole of the Bible. Depending on which
Speaker 2: version you're using, it can say completely different things. Ea Spicer,
Speaker 2: in his commentary on Genesis, spent more time discussing this
Speaker 2: verse than any other verse in the chapter, and concluded
Speaker 2: by pointing out that just a summary of the views
Speaker 2: about these four words in the Shiloh passage this passage
Speaker 2: would fill a good sized monograph ordinarily with biblical prophecies.
Speaker 2: Reading the surrounding context makes it clear that either it's
Speaker 2: not even a prophecy in the first place, or else
Speaker 2: it isn't specific enough to get us to the conclusion
Speaker 2: that the apologists want to arrive at. But in this case,
Speaker 2: the actual scholars tasked with translating the Bible, most of
Speaker 2: them Christians themselves, will agree that we don't have enough
Speaker 2: information to know for sure what the proper translation of
Speaker 2: this verse should even be, So keep that in mind
Speaker 2: when he inevitably says that this is very clearly a
Speaker 2: prophecy of King David, or of Jesus or something.
Speaker 3: Now here's what's really cool. We see this prophecy about
Speaker 3: Jesus all the way back in the very first book
Speaker 3: of the Bible.
Speaker 2: There you go. It is very clearly a prophecy about
Speaker 2: Jesus as long as we go with the specific translation
Speaker 2: that he has chosen and ignore all of the scholarships
Speaker 2: surrounding the verse, even the translation he's using, which appears
Speaker 2: to be the new Living translation. In context, this is
Speaker 2: Jacob saying what's going to happen to his kids and
Speaker 2: the tribes that they found it. So unless you believe
Speaker 2: that Jesus only came to rule over specifically the Israelite
Speaker 2: clan of Judah, it doesn't really fit anyway. I'm skipping
Speaker 2: the rest of this part. He takes a long time
Speaker 2: to say that, in Matthew, the genealogy of Jesus has
Speaker 2: recorded such that it traces back to the clan of Judah.
Speaker 2: Even if this were a prophecy about that and there
Speaker 2: were no scholarly debate about the translation of this verse,
Speaker 2: all this says is that a later author, who shows
Speaker 2: every indication of being aware of and actively massaging his
Speaker 2: story to fit older prophecies, wrote down a list that
Speaker 2: started with Judah in order to make it fit with
Speaker 2: a prophecy. Are unimpressed.
Speaker 3: Now Matthew is writing to primarily a Jewish audience, and
Speaker 3: he knows the importance of establishing the fact that the
Speaker 3: Messiah comes from the line of Judah, just as it
Speaker 3: was prophesied all the way back in Genesis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that's what I said. I could write down
Speaker 2: a bunch of names that would establish that I came
Speaker 2: from the line of Judah if I really wanted to,
Speaker 2: would that make that true? So, given your admission here
Speaker 2: that Matthew knew of this prophecy and was actively writing
Speaker 2: to make it clear that Jesus was fulfilling it, where
Speaker 2: is your evidence that the things that Matthew wrote are
Speaker 2: actually true. This is supposed to be a why the
Speaker 2: Bible is reliable video, and where it stands now, you've
Speaker 2: given excellent evidence to suggest that it is not. I'm
Speaker 2: skipping the rest of the prophecies that he brings up,
Speaker 2: but if you want to see more on that, I'll
Speaker 2: leave a link to an older video of mine where
Speaker 2: I began my tradition of looking up one of the
Speaker 2: three hundred prophecies and seeing how prophetic it was. Anytime
Speaker 2: an apologist mentions that there are over three hundred prophecies
Speaker 2: of Jesus, this guy didn't actually mention the list, so
Speaker 2: I didn't do it here, go watch that video to
Speaker 2: scratch that itch.
Speaker 3: This is what I love about textual evidence. See the
Speaker 3: historical evidence that we looked at earlier really proves that
Speaker 3: the Bible is accurate. It proves that the Bible is reliable.
Speaker 3: But it could still just be a book.
Speaker 2: Well nothing he brought up actually accomplished that, But do
Speaker 2: go on.
Speaker 3: It could still just be like any other book written
Speaker 3: by human hands. But the textual evidence shows that God
Speaker 3: is behind the writing of the Bible. That it's supernatural.
Speaker 3: There's no way in the world that any human being
Speaker 3: could have predicted and then carried out the fulfillment of
Speaker 3: all those prophecies.
Speaker 2: Apparently, the idea that an author writing at a later
Speaker 2: date could have been aware of what an earlier author
Speaker 2: wrote is so astounding as to require supernatural intervention. So
Speaker 2: all those times I've referenced the anchor Bible in this
Speaker 2: video are miraculous. Because Ea Spizer died before I was
Speaker 2: even born. How could I possibly have known that he
Speaker 2: wrote all that about Genesis forty nine ten way back
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty four. Being aware of previous works is
Speaker 2: just impossible without a God.
Speaker 3: And in fact, Jesus said as much to the religious
Speaker 3: leaders of his time. He said in John five thirty nine,
Speaker 3: you search the scriptures because you think they give you
Speaker 3: eternal life. But the scripture's point to me, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Man. That just seems like evidence that John was aware
Speaker 2: of the scriptures and was therefore able to make his
Speaker 2: story fit with them, rather than evidence that John was
Speaker 2: unaware of the scriptures and was just telling the story
Speaker 2: as it happened, and just so happened to fulfill a
Speaker 2: bunch of these prophecies from scripture. I swear to you
Speaker 2: that I have not been picking videos where the apologist
Speaker 2: accidentally makes my case for me. But this is now
Speaker 2: three weeks in a row. It's almost like there's some
Speaker 2: divine intervention happening to make sure apologists look as bad
Speaker 2: as possible, and.
Speaker 3: That's going to lead us into our last source of evidence,
Speaker 3: and that's what we're gonna call personal evidence. So the
Speaker 3: Bible is ultimately about Jesus, and the change lives of
Speaker 3: his followers is the most compelling proof of its message.
Speaker 2: Okay, but from an historical perspective, it is difficult, bordering
Speaker 2: on him possible to prove that most of his named
Speaker 2: followers from the stories even existed in the first place.
Speaker 2: If we want to talk about what they got up
Speaker 2: to after Jesus died, it's even more difficult. So to
Speaker 2: say that Jesus changed their lives is to just credulously
Speaker 2: accept stories in a book that so far you have
Speaker 2: failed to demonstrate is even the least bit reliable.
Speaker 3: Let's take a look at three individuals who had encounters
Speaker 3: with the risen Jesus and see how it changed their lives.
Speaker 3: We're going to start with Peter.
Speaker 2: I am once again going to skip his bit here.
Speaker 2: I've been doing a lot of skipping, so as always,
Speaker 2: the link to the original video is in the description
Speaker 2: if you want to watch it for yourself to make
Speaker 2: sure that I'm not straw manning him. But he just
Speaker 2: takes a long ass time to say that Peter went
Speaker 2: from denying Jesus to a mere serving girl on the
Speaker 2: night of jesus trial to boldly proclaiming the gospel in
Speaker 2: front of thousands of people on the day of Pentecost
Speaker 2: according to the Book of Acts, which aside from the
Speaker 2: fact that one event took place on a day where
Speaker 2: being close to the guy could potentially have gotten you executed,
Speaker 2: and the other happening after the heat had died down.
Speaker 2: We also have to start with the assumption that both
Speaker 2: events took place as described in order for that to
Speaker 2: be even slightly impressive, And that's just not an assumption
Speaker 2: that I'm willing to grant, especially when one of my
Speaker 2: go to examples of an irreconcilable biblical contradiction is the
Speaker 2: question of who Peter made his denials to All four
Speaker 2: of the Gospels disagree, and they do so in a
Speaker 2: way that is impossible to harmonize without adding a bunch
Speaker 2: of details into the story that are not indicated by
Speaker 2: the text, like assuming that when Jesus said that Peter
Speaker 2: would deny him three times before the cock crowed twice,
Speaker 2: what that really meant was that he would deny him
Speaker 2: six times, three times before the cock crowed the first time,
Speaker 2: and three more before the second crow.
Speaker 3: The same Thomas who said I won't believe unless I
Speaker 3: put my finger in the wound would go on to
Speaker 3: be martyred for his faith.
Speaker 2: And in that case, Thomas had an experience where Jesus
Speaker 2: actually showed up in front of him and let him
Speaker 2: finger his holes. If Jesus lets me finger his holes,
Speaker 2: then I will come back to the church. But also,
Speaker 2: the primary source for the martyrdom of Thomas comes from
Speaker 2: the apocryphal Acts of Thomas. If we are believing that
Speaker 2: book for the account of his death, then I wonder
Speaker 2: if we should also believe it when it says that
Speaker 2: the way Thomas got to India was by Jesus selling
Speaker 2: him as a slave to an Indian merchant. And I
Speaker 2: would be curious to know why you would accept one
Speaker 2: claim but not the other, assuming that you wouldn't actually
Speaker 2: accept the idea of slave trader Jesus. But who knows.
Speaker 2: Maybe you're okay with that given that the rest of
Speaker 2: the Bible doesn't have a problem with slavery.
Speaker 3: And then the last example I want to share with
Speaker 3: you is Paul. So here we have Philippians three five.
Speaker 3: Paul talks about what it was like before he encountered
Speaker 3: the risen Jesus. He says, I was circumcised when I
Speaker 3: was eight days old. I'm a pure blooded citizen of
Speaker 3: Israel and a member of the tribe of Benjamin, a
Speaker 3: real Hebrew if there ever was one. I was a
Speaker 3: member of the Pharisees, who demand the strictest obedience to
Speaker 3: the Jewish law.
Speaker 2: That was Paul pre Jesus, and then he had his
Speaker 2: Damascus Road experience and became the most powerful and influential
Speaker 2: member of the new and growing religion. And of course
Speaker 2: he couldn't have done it for the power and influence.
Speaker 2: It could only be because Jesus really did show up
Speaker 2: and have a chat with him.
Speaker 3: But the reality is, if you've made up your mind
Speaker 3: ahead of time that the Bible's not true, a mountain
Speaker 3: of evidence wouldn't change your mind.
Speaker 2: Ah, Yes, the good old fashioned. If you're not convinced
Speaker 2: by this, then it couldn't possibly be because I didn't
Speaker 2: make a good case for it. It could only be
Speaker 2: because you decided not to be convinced by it in advance.
Speaker 2: Excellent way to end your video. Today's comment of the
Speaker 2: day comes to us from Jimmy Jimson. Those are probably
Speaker 2: uppercase eyes. Jimmy the Third says, real mature, Rhino, real mature.
Speaker 2: Along with the timestamp to the moment in the last
Speaker 2: week's video where I said you could store binary data
Speaker 2: in a series of rocks laid on the ground, and
Speaker 2: to demonstrate that, I showed a lineup of rock storing
Speaker 2: binary data, and well, as of this recording, I haven't
Speaker 2: seen anyone else successfully decode the rocks. Jimmy here seems
Speaker 2: to be the only person who have realized that I
Speaker 2: use them to spell the word boob, and thus we
Speaker 2: have conclusively demonstrated that not only can Rock store binary data,
Speaker 2: but that data can be success fully transmitted over the Internet.
Speaker 2: Thanks for watching. I'll be back next Friday with more,
Speaker 2: but if you need to get your rhino fixed before then,
Speaker 2: I lie stream with service every Wednesday eight thirty Eastern
Speaker 2: on my other channel, The Watering Hole. Thanks to Piper
Speaker 2: for being my editor, and special thanks as always to
Speaker 2: my patrons, who are the boobs spelled out by the
Speaker 2: Rocks that are my channel. If you'd like to be
Speaker 2: evidence that I am truly a thirteen year old boy
Speaker 2: at heart, you can join us on Patreon for as
Speaker 2: little as a dollar per week, over at patroon dot com,
Speaker 2: slash vice Rhano, or by supporting the channel and one
Speaker 2: of the other methods that can be found at link
Speaker 2: staf viceround dot com, which is also where you'll find
Speaker 2: links to my other projects. If for whatever reason you
Speaker 2: want to send me stuff, my pabox adresses in the description,
Speaker 2: See you next time,