Peter J Williams & Bart Ehrman • The story of Jesus: Are the Gospels his...

This is a good debate. They discuss many great things regarding the reliability of the Bible text. Bart Ehrman has risen to be someone who people listen to but he is wrong. The Bible can be trusted. Unfortunately, Dr Williams does not have the killer attitude to really take it to Dr Ehrman, but he by no means lost this. Dr Ehrman does not argue that Bible unreliability lead to his apostasy but argues that the Bible is not historically reliable or inerrant. Of course he is wrong, but instead says he left Christianity because of the Problem of Evil and unable to reconcile the fact that there is evil and suffering with what he understood about God.

Over the years, Dr Ehrman has debated many famous and capable Christians over the years. I highly recommend them.

Vs James White


vs. Michael Brown

vs. Dan Wallace

vs. William Lane Craig

Interviews From San Francisco

Recently Dr Michael Licona interviewed a few scholars on camera in San Francisco. The videos are now on YouTube.


A talk with Dr William Lane Craig.




Dr Dan Wallace and Dr Paul Copan on the controversy regarding Dr Norman Giesler, Licona, and Matthew 27.








Dr Dan Wallace talked about his recent debate against Dr Bart Ehrman.

Beggars All: Reformation And Apologetics: Good Evidence for Historical Reliability for 2 Peter as written by Peter Himself

Over at Beggars All blog, Ken has posted a very interesting article that will be very helpful to me and a lot of people. You may know that I've had sharp disagreement with Ryan Anderson regarding whether or not 2 Peter was really written by the Apostle Peter. Anderson uses the idea that because a consensus of scholars don't believe that Peter wrote 2 Peter, Peter did not write it. He accepts their arguments and therefore it's proof to him that the Bible is not inspired and not true. He went as far as calling 1st and 2nd Peter lies because the letters say they were written by Peter but he didn't write them. Of course I disagree. Ken has summarized a lot of good evidence and comments from scholars, like Dan Wallace and James White, who disagree with the "consensus" and affirm that these letter were written by the Apostle himself.

Dr. James White has a little article with an excellent graphic of an ancient manuscript of P-72
which has both I and 2 Peter (and Jude) in it. One of the pages of this manuscript shows the end of 1 Peter and the beginning of 2nd Peter and this manuscript called P-72 is dated at around 200 AD. That is very good early dating for a copy of one of the most attacked books of the NT by skeptics, atheists, and Muslims and others, sometimes by good scholars. (the Muslims like to use Bruce Metzger as authoritative evidence that 2 Peter was not written by the apostle Peter. But many other conservative scholars and all Christians who believe in inerrancy believe that 2 Peter is "God-breathed" and was written by Peter. ( 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:20-21)

So what about scholars like Bruce Metzger and Ben Witherington III? Are they wrong to conclude that Peter did not write 2 Peter? I'm not sure. Does that mean that they are going to hell ("went" in Metzger's case given that he died) because they did not think that Peter wrote all of  2 Peter? Nope. What one believes about authorship is not a litmus test for orthodoxy. What is important is what you believe about Jesus - is He Lord of your life or not? Do you accepts his propitiatory sacrifice on your behalf and live submitted to Him? That is how you know you are born-again.

I highly recommend this article and hope that anyone who has doubts that Peter wrote 2 Peter or that the Bible is in anyway reliable will read this article along with their own research for the truth.

Beggars All: Reformation And Apologetics: Good Evidence for Historical Reliability for 2 Peter as written by Peter Himself

When Your Professor Attacks the New Testament

Jamin Hubner has posted a list of resources to counter the poison from scholars who are teaching that we can't trust the New Testament.. Here is what he wrote:

Great question, and tough situation - but a good opportunity for growth! Here was my brief response to the email (note: all of these can be found on the RealApologetics.org Recommended Reading):

Bruce's The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?

Carson and Moo's Introduction to the New Testament
J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer,

and Daniel Wallace's Reinventing Jesus

Blomberg's The Historical Reliability of the Gospels

When Your Professor Attacks the New Testament

Parchment and Pen » What Bible Should I Own (Dan Wallace)

Dan Wallace is one of the Textual Critics and scholars working in Biblical studies today. Brian Auten tweeted an awesome post Dr. Wallace wrote about which English translation is the best one to use.

Parchment and Pen » What Bible Should I Own (Dan Wallace)

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• New Living Translation SE Study Bible. (daveenjoys.com)

Atheism is Dead: Bart Ehrman’s Problem, part 1

Image via Wikipedia

Mariano has launched a new series of articles again considering the work of  Bart Ehrman but this time juxtaposed with other scholars

Hereinafter, we will consider occurrences at the Greer-Heard Forum of 2008 AD.
The forum’s topic was the reliability of New Testament manuscripts as pointers to the original text.

The lectures and discussions primarily featured Dan Wallace (Dallas Theological Seminary) and Bart Ehrman (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) with contributions by Michael Holmes (Bethel University), Dale Martin (Yale University), David Parker (Birmingham University) and William Warren (New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary).

I will be gleaning from the reports of the forum written by Ed Komoszewski from the theology blog Parchment and Pen; part 1 and part 2.

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• 2 reviews of Bart Ehrman (Christian fundamentalist to liberal Christian) (rateitall.com)

This is good!

Atheism is Dead: Bart Ehrman’s Problem, part 1

FacePalm of the Day #43: Islam and Christianity A Common Word: Coptic Christians: Concealing Testimony of John 1:1

Image via WikipediaThegrandverbalizer is at it again. He tries to make the point that Coptic translations of the John 1:1 says the "Word was a god" not the "Word was God". He wants to make it seem like our modern translations are wrong because he says the Coptic translations are based on older Greek manuscripts that we no longer have access to. Of course he has to describe it that way because we have no Greek manuscripts that experts agree should be translated that way. The things that amazes me is that he tries to disprove the Trinity by attacking the deity of Jesus Christ using John 1:1 directly but quotes a Dan Wallace, an acknowledged expert, who says that John 1:1 does tells us that Jesus is God.

"Few today would take issue with Rudolf Bultmann’s oft-quoted line that “In describing Christ as ‘God’ the New Testament still exercises great restraint.” The list of passages which seem explicitly to identify Christ with God varies from scholar to scholar, but the number is almost never more than a half dozen or so. As is well known, almost all of the texts are disputed as to their affirmation—due to textual or grammatical glitches—John 1:1 and 20:28 being the only two which are usually conceded without discussion." - Dan Wallace

The emphasis is given by Thegrandverbalizer. I'm amazed. Dr Wallace is saying that John 1:1 is conceded as calling Jesus God even by scholars who deny that Jesus is God. However, thegrandverbalizer spends his post attacking John 1:1 due to "textual and grammatical glitches" that the majority of scholars agree is not there in John 1:1.

"Interestingly, he basically says that scholars can't agree on which verses say Jesus is God. This is because of "textual or grammatical glitches" - verses that have different readings in ancient manuscripts (Such as Acts 20:28) or verses which can be validly translated in a non-Trinitarian manner (Such as Hebrews 1:8). Except, he says, John 1:1."

If  John 1:1 has no such glitches and many scholars would disagree that  Acts 20:28 and Hebrews 1:8 has such glitches. To go to a translation to get around something that a text plainly says is really a sign of desperation. Serious FacePalm.

Islam and Christianity A Common Word: Coptic Christians: Concealing Testimony of John 1:1

On Remaining Sound in Islamic Apologetics

On his blog today,  Dr. James White joined Dr. Dan Wallace on calling attention to an argument made by "Walid Shoebat [who] alleges that Codex Vaticanus (B) identifies the mark of the beast not as "666" (or 616 as some earlier manuscripts have) but instead an Arabic insertion "in the name of Allah" along with a symbol of crossed swords." Dr. White does not repeat Wallace's arguments but linked to them but I like the two addtitional comments that Dr. White offered. 

1. The rendering of Revelation 13:18 is not from much later than most of of the codex.
2. There is no way you can get the number of the mark of the Beast 666 (or 616) to be "in the Name of Allah" in Arabic! White even posted pictures of the Greek texts verses what Arabic "Allah" looks like. No way do they match!

This is important because in our zeal to show Islam is wrong about key issues concerning Jesus and the Bible, we can't just lie on Islam. We must accurately represent it at all times. Trying to equate Islam with the Anti-Christ is unfair and lying on God!


Revelations 13:18  says:

This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666.

666 from Revelations 13:18 

Allah in Arabic

On Remaining Sound in Islamic Apologetics

Apologetics 315: Dan Wallace on Text of Scripture: Interview MP3 Audio

Here is a great resource! This is an interview with Dan Wallace on textual criticism of the New Testament. If you want to hear counter arguments by a renowned scholar who is just as credentialed as Bart Ehrman, this is the interview you need to hear. Dr. Wallace defines what "Textual Criticism" is and how to interpret the data and facts. Wallace and Ehrman actually agree on the facts. There are variants.  More  variants than the words of the New Testament. Only Wallace tells you things that Ehrman won't say publicly - only in his scholarly books. This is a great interview. Thanks, Brian.


Apologetics 315: Dan Wallace on Text of Scripture: Interview MP3 Audio

Scholar Dan Wallace on Podcast

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday, Dan Wallace was a guest on James White's Podcast The Dividing Line. Wallace is a scholar and author who studies and teaches about the New Testament. I enjoyed the program and their interaction. Wallace wrote one of the best textbooks for learning Kione Greek, the languages of the New Testament. He is considered an expert in textual criticism and the history behind the New Testament. The most interesting thing about the program I found was watching Dr. James White interacting with a peer. It was fun to hear them actually respond to the ideas and challenges raised by experts who disagree with them like Bart Ehrman. People are mistaken if they think that neither side is aware of the other and don't have good reasons why they hold the views they hold. You can read the blog post where the program is posted here.

Truthbomb Apologetics: Featured Audio: Interview with Daniel Wallace on the Reliability of the New Testament Text

This is a great interview. I enjoyed it greatly. Wallace can summarize and explain textual variants in the Bible very cleanly. Everything he says confirms my own research and what I have heard other scholars who are not Bart Ehrman say. I think that if you have questions as to where or not the Bible you have in your hands contain the same information as the original manuscripts the following interview will be a great place to begin your research.

Truthbomb Apologetics: Featured Audio: Interview with Daniel Wallace on the Reliability of the New Testament Text