Brevard County's 211 Hotline promotes abortion

Here's a radio show program about this important issue. Lawrence Salberg is at about the first five minutes talking about Brevard County's 211 hotline promoting baby killing with taxpayer money.

So download it, listen to it, stream it from your site if you can.

Below is Lawrence Salberg's email communication (in reverse thread order) with Brevard County trying to get them to remove the abortion referral from their 211 line.

See also Lawrence Salberg's Blog and hear an edited version of the interview. You will need to scoll to the bottom of the post.

If this upsets you, as well it should, and you want to take action, you can contact Ms. "Libby" at the following address, phone and email.

***********************
Libby Donoghue
Executive Director 2-1-1 Brevard Inc.
321.631.9290 ext. 202 tel
321.631.9291 fax
ldonoghue@211brevard.org
http://www.211brevard.org/

**********************

Hi All,

Ms. Donoghue of 211 Brevard apparently thinks she is funny. She removed WomanCare and added ... Planned Parenthood! Using my logic, she apparently thought that as long as she used a "non-profit" to help her little agenda, she'd be okay? ...

Full thread below for some who may not yet know about it.

- Lawrence Salberg


-------- Original Message --------

Mr. Salberg:

Our policy permits the inclusion of for-profit entities that provide “unique or specifically targeted services, or services that are otherwise scarce or difficult to access.” That said, we have learned that Planned Parenthood offers services in counties contiguous to Brevard. We have added their services to the database in lieu of WomanCare since it is also our policy to refer to not-for-profit services when available. Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention.

Libby Donoghue
Executive Director
2-1-1 Brevard Inc.
321.631.9290 ext. 202 tel
321.631.9291 fax
ldonoghue@211brevard.org
http://www.211brevard.org/

*************

From: Lawrence Salberg
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 5:09 PM
To: Elizabeth B Donoghue
Cc: Lawrence Salberg
Subject: Re: Abortion Referral on 211 Brevard

Ms. Donoghue:

In speaking to numerous individuals this past week, there has been some concern over your statement here about the "agency's policy" as to what constitutes an appropriate organization to be included on 2-1-1 Brevard's referral list.

I've referred them to the policy that was very recently posted to the 211 Brevard website (previously and seemingly unavailable on the website).

Personally, I have no interest in playing games in determining whether or not a for-profit abortion clinic meets your and your board's self-created guidelines. Quite obviously, would there to be certain individuals in your organization (up to and including yourself perhaps) that simply had a political determination to allow abortion clinics as a valid referral source, a simple modification of your own internal guidelines, which can be amended without any outside approval, would be sufficient to warrant a previously "gray" area.

I fully intend to notify 211 Brevard's sources of funding, with the help of a few folks. You can expect some calls and letters asking for an explanation from your own funding sources. You can also expect other abortion clinics to inquire why this one particular clinic gets special treatment, merely for the maintainence of a Brevard area-code phone number.

However, prior to engaging others to pursue your organization's questionable use of federal and state monies to help refer abortions (and all without proper counseling or training in dealing with crisis pregnancies), I feel it is appropriate to open as many doors to communication as I can. Whether or not you and your board reciprocate is certainly your decision.

In that regard, and not meaning to be a "pest", I'm trying to determine under what part of your own policy permits the use of for-profit abortion facilities. Everyone who has read it seems to feel that it is specifically disallowed by your own policy. Indeed, it does seem confusing that your sole criterion for inclusion (your agency policy) seems to specifically EXCLUDE an abortion clinic's inclusion.

Under Section M of Exclusions, it outlines pretty much what I relayed to you in my first letter, specifically that if you include one, you'll have to include them all. If you include this abortion clinic (nothing more than a private medical practice (as defined by Florida state law), then you'll not only have to include all of them that "service Brevard County". There are about a dozen that would meet that standard. And of course, about 1,000 other private medical services that qualify equally under the law.

As a separate matter, there is a long and protracted history of abortion clincs (and in particular, this one) with skirting and abusing state and federal laws. Unlike a more reputable medical practice, abortion clinics routinely disregard federal and state reporting laws. Thus, under section A and F, such a 'business' would be excluded. I don't expect that you would know that, but it is a significant angle that others will be bringing forth.

There's quite a few other sections (G and E) that step in the gray area.

I would implore you to carefully consider how you'll be able to justify publicly your inclusion of WomanCare.

I don't know your background, nor do I want to sound insulting here, but I've had some experience in dealing with third parties who kind of "step into the poop" of getting too cozy with abortion clinics. Often, it stems from an innocent mistake or a bit of "politics over pragmatism". Very understandable - we all have our political positions and I can respect that.

But what these organizations fail to realize is how messy things get once the public gets involved. Over the many years that I've been involved with pro-life organizations and activities, I've come to the conclusion that it is so often better to spend time to try and reason upfront - not forever or without limit, but too often pro-life groups go into a full-scale assault before cooler heads can sit down and help others to see the danger (or error) of their ways. Although I think I've been more than clear, I'm not under the impression that you fully understand the ramifications of standing strong on this (not that you are doing that).

I want to be clear: There will indeed be a concerted effort to get 211 Brevard to drop WomanCare from its referral sources. I'm certainly no leader of it, but I do intend to facilitate information to others as much as possible. The stuff I've mentioned here is just the tip of the iceberg. We all have our lives and families to attend to and would much rather do that then spend time focusing on the otherwise good efforts of 211 Brevard.

If you would be so kind as to review your policy, I'd much rather have you the opportunity to retract privately than publicly. I think you understand that there is no way this is going to stand up to intense public scrutiny. Do the right thing now and use your own policy to exclude them. Everyone goes away happy. WomanCare knows full well they've been on thin ice and a prayer for a few years. They might balk, but keep in mind that they have absolutely no interest in seeing 211 Brevard staying in business. They are just using you as free advertising and extra business. If they lose that avenue, they might cry a bit, but, quite frankly, too bad, so sad. Tell them to pay for advertising like all other private for-profit businesses. It would be much better to lose an out-of-town business than lose something far greater.

Please consider your policy more deeply as well as all the possible ramifications of staying your present course. The only reason I'm writing this is at the counsel of others who feel that you and your board may not realize that you have an "easy out" of this with your own policy. Such an "easy out" becomes much more difficult when your backs are against the wall of public scrutiny and audits. From that regard, I guess it may be worth one final email to point out the above to you. At this point, only you, the board, and about a half-dozen others know. Perhaps it can stay that way, but I suppose that is up to you.

Sincerely,

Lawrence Salberg
Melbourne, FL

***************

Elizabeth B Donoghue wrote:
Mr. Salberg :

The 2-1-1 Board has considered your concerns. It is satisfied with the agency’s policy for determining what programs will be included in the database & will not be making any changes.


Libby Donoghue
Executive Director
2-1-1 Brevard Inc.
321.631.9290 ext. 202 tel
321.631.9291 fax
ldonoghue@211brevard.org
http://www.211brevard.org/

***********

From: Lawrence Salberg
Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2007 12:53 PM
To: Elizabeth B Donoghue
Subject: Re: Abortion Referral on 211 Brevard

Ms. Donoghue :

Thank you for your reply.

Can you give me an estimate on the turnaround time that I should reasonable expect?

I'm not yet familiar with how often your board meets. I'm assuming you have (or will) be emailing them this information prior to the next meeting, so maybe it can be sufficiently handled without a formal meeting.

Anyway, as a matter of some urgency (as I see it anyway), I'm hoping this can be taken care of in the next few days.

Sincerely,

Lawrence Salberg
Melbourne , FL

*****************

Elizabeth B Donoghue wrote:
Dear Mr. Salberg :

Thank you for sharing your concerns. I will review them with our board of directors.

Libby Donoghue
Executive Director
2-1-1 Brevard Inc.
321.631.9290 ext. 202 tel
321.631.9291 fax
ldonoghue@211brevard.org
http://www.211brevard.org/


**************

From: Lawrence Salberg
Sent: Monday, November 05, 2007 12:19 PM
To: Elizabeth B Donoghue
Subject: Re: Abortion Referral on 211 Brevard

Ms. Donoghue :

Thank you for your timely response. However, I have several problems with this and your initial response here. I apologize for the length, but I feel it important to be very clear. I realize you are also accountable to others and I want you to be able to share my comments freely without burdening you with the need for further explanation to those persons. I hope I can accomplish that by explaining thoroughly my concerns here.

1) You indicate here that 211 Brevard is really nothing more than a yellow pages book. Of course, the county, state, and federal money spent on the 211 program is clearly not intended to replicate the functionality of the more than abundent sources of information already available such as phone books or Google.

If that were so, I'd surely like my business to be listed in 211 Brevard - at taxpayer expense - and listed on the internet website. I'm sure most business owners would like the same.

But the intent of the program is to act as a sort of crisis help line for those who are in need: families without food or a place to stay, those feeling suicidal, abused women, etc.

Having referals that go to a full-fledged for-profit abortion clinic is nothing more than a straightforward business referral.

In fact, considering that there are no open abortion clinics in Brevard, it is a bit suspect why 211 Brevard would just have "one" listed. I'm curious what the reaction of the other nearby clinics in Fort Pierce and Daytona Beach would think, not to mention the many other abortion clinics in Orlando, if they knew that government money in Brevard was being used to funnel business to one isolated clinic. I'm certainly not suggesting that (being pro-life), but having some first-hand experience in dealing with these abortion clinics, I can assure you that there is no more competitive industry in America . Once they learn of this, you'll be inundated and my "pro-life" concern will seem like a mere ripple in the raging storm.

I trust you see my point here: Once the government begans referring business to "for profit" entities, a huge whole is ripped into the fabric of the fine line between "government services" and outright competition.

2) Abortion, while "legal", is an elective surgery. When you take away the rhetoric from both sides about the "killing of a human life" or a "woman's choice", it is not too different from plastic surgery.

Again, we have an example of government money being used to funnel business to one particular business.

Surely, we can agree that the 211 Brevard operators are not licensed counselors and should show no partiality to a person's situation. Thus, I find it highly questionable that they would take on the liability of referring a woman to a for-profit business whose only function is to administer abortion procedures. These women, who are in a "crisis pregnancy" should be instead referred to a licensed counseling center or a center which focuses, without regard to profit, on women in such situations. They should not be given the name of an abortion clinic and told that they have been "helped" by the government.

3) You mention the referrals to "abortion alternatives". I don't know your street level knowledge of the situation, so excuse me if this is old hat to you. The sad reality is that "crisis pregnancy centers" are often forced to sometimes market themselves as "abortion alternatives" by either fiat from those that run these types of directories, or by the simple lack of knowledge in the public sphere. In other words, some directories (such as certain tele phone books) require it, refusing to place them more appropriately under "Crisis Pregnancy Counseling Centers". More often, market conditions force crisis pregnancy centers to do it because some people wouldn't know to look under the words "crisis" or "pregnancy" in a phone book or directory.

You might imagine a concerned parent trying to get quality information for their pregnant teenage daughter. Knowing that an abortion clinic is, by its very nature, going to be biased toward true alternatives (not to mention complicit in turning a blind-eye when it comes to required reporting of certain laws (such as statutory rape), the parent opens a phone book to look for help. Naturally, they check the "abortion" section first in their stress, so many CPC's are, by way of trying to help, forced to advertise in the field of "abortion alternatives".

Thus, while you seem to applaud 211 Brevard's 4:1 ratio of referrals to "abortion alternatives" over and above "abortion clinics", I don't find that amusing. As I previously stated, the situation is rather dire when you have 211 Brevard employees, using taxpayer funding, to directly refer patients, without proper understanding (and/or concern) for that person's overall well-being, to a full-fledged abortion clinic for the termination of their pregnancy.

The point I'm trying to make is that no one should be referring women in crisis pregnancies to abortion clinics without them having heard of ALL the options and without their personal situation being discussed with trained counselors. It isn't a matter of whether they should get the "abortion alternative" or the "abortion". It's a matter that they should be referred to a caring non-profit center where they can receive truthful and complete information BEFORE they make a decision to have an abortion. Should they then seek to still do so, there are plenty of ways for them to find the information necessary to do so - they surely should not be assisted by government-funded programs that were setup as a "lifeline" for those in dire need without resources.

4) Your numbers are a bit off.

First, I'm not sure if you are trying to persuade me that the impact of such referrals is "minimal" by referring to the 45 tele phone referrals to WomanCare last year, but if you ask me, that is 45 too many. That is 45 absolutely free, government-supported (and thus, taxpayer funded) referrals that a "for-profit" business was able to get out of 211 Brevard last year.

Aside from the obvious moral dillemmas placed on any pro-life staff (i.e. that they could be guilty of helping 45 babies to die), there is also the more obvious contrast of, again, a business that made approximately $500 per referral (a total of $22,000+) in one year - paid for by the money of Brevard taxpayers.

I shouldn't have to point out the long and extremely controversial history of government money being used to fund or refer patients for abortions. Federal money, in particular, has, for many years, oscillated back and forth whenever it was shown that taxpayer money was used for this purpose. Even when money has been sent to supposedly "multi-service family planning clincs" (such as the kind run by Planned Parenthood), it has caused great stirs and controversy. Simply put, no matter your personal beliefs, the simple fact is that over one-half of the population is "pro-life" (or "anti-abortion") and does not want their personal money going to fund such things.

Second, I too have your report. What you failed to mention here was that out of 1,584 "programs" in the 211 Brevard database, that WomanCare was viewed online at the website 133 times, making it the 15th most popular online visit on your website. In other words, it was in the top ONE percentile of all programs viewed online. While I don't believe all that web traffic resulted in direct referrals (as did the tele phone calls), there's no doubt that it is a popular destination for visitors to your website. 1,568 other programs were viewed LESS than WomanCare. That is stunning.

Additionally, going back to your tele phone referrals which you seem to minimize, the reality is that even with "only" 45 referrals to WomanCare, they were STILL the 169th most popular referral out of that same 1,584 "programs". placing it in the 11th percentile of tele phone referrals - right next to the Melbourne Public Library and the above the Better Business Bureau of Central Florida. In other words, WomanCare's referral rate by 211 Brevard is clearly significant when compared to the other organizations, most of whom are legitimate not-for-profit entities and government services.

Looked at another way, out of the 45,500 logged tele phone referrals to 211 Brevard last year, one out of every 100 tele phone referrals was sent to WomanCare.

In summary, considering the funding of 211 Brevard, I would like to politely remind you that even though your personal preference may be to continue referrals to WomanCare (and I'm not suggesting that it is to do so), I think as Executive Director, it is incumbent that you bring this matter to the attention of the board of 211 Brevard.

As you know, many different funding sources, including the cities of Melbourne , Satellite Beach , Cocoa , and so forth, all assist to help fund 211 Brevard. State and federal money is also used greatly and I think it is imperative that you consider the representative nature of all that money.

By this I mean that the money represents the "will of the people" insofar as we understand the program to be purposed. We all support 211 Brevard and are happy to pay for its existence so that we can feel good that we are able to get the right people to the right services, particularly in a time of personal crisis, or after a disaster like a hurricane.

However, no one notified us that for-profit abortion clinics would be one of the many services listed and referred to with our tax dollars. I personally don't think it needs to become a "showdown" or anything crazy like that. I just think that, with a bit of a review by those with some experience and wisdom, good people will come to the simple conclusion that abortion clinic referrals are not inline with the program's goals, that it would be a slap-in-the-face to the many prolife people in Brevard who don't want their money to be mingled with the death of a baby (as they see it), and that the information is freely and easily available elsewhere to those who elect such a procedure.

I trust you will take this matter seriously and get back to me at your earliest convenience on the steps that are being taken to examine this matter. I appreciate your time and if there is anything I can do to expedite this issue, please let me know.

Sincerely,

Lawrence Salberg
Melbourne , FL

***************

Elizabeth B Donoghue wrote:

Dear Mr. Salberg,

Like the local tele phone book, internet, 4-1-1 or a community library, 2-1-1 is a non-partisan, non-idealistic and non-judgmental information source for many governmental, faith-based and community based health and human services. Our mission is to connect people to governmental, health or human services that are available to people in Brevard County . For the most part, these are services located in the county. In some instances, services are not located here but are available and of interest to local residents – these may be located in adjacent counties or may be internet-based services (e.g., online support groups).

Our 2-1-1 specialists generally provide abortion referrals as the result of a direct request (e.g., ‘may I have the number to…”), never as a recommendation. You may also have noted that our database contains information on abortion alternatives. Of more than 45,000 referrals made to nearly 1,200 programs last year, 45 were made to WomanCare and over 200 to programs listed as abortion alternatives.

Sincerely,

Libby Donoghue
Executive Director
2-1-1 Brevard Inc.
321.631.9290 ext. 202 tel
321.631.9291 fax
ldonoghue@211brevard.org
http://www.211brevard.org/

***************

From: Lawrence Salberg
Sent: Saturday, November 03, 2007 4:40 PM
To: Elizabeth B Donoghue
Subject: Abortion Referral on 211 Brevard

Ms. Donoghue :

I'm writing to inquire regarding the use of the 211 service to refer people to abortion clincs. Currently, the service lists an abortion clinic on their list of services that they refer to.

Can you please help me understand how this is possible? I don't understand how the county could be funding referrals to abortion clinics in the Orlando area.

Thank you.

Lawrence Salberg
Melbourne , FL

Bible Babylon (part 5)

Manuscript Evidence for the Reliability of the New Testament

Left: a leaf from Codex Vaticanus. Click on the image to see a larger view.

When we say that the Bible has over 25,000 early manuscripts that prove its reliability, we are talking about mainly documents from the fifth century onward. These are "early" compared to the documents supporting most other ancient works. Yet there are about one hundred early manuscripts from the second to the fourth century that were not known to us until the late 1800s and the most significant of these have been rediscovered in the last 60 years.

To understand why so many of the early manuscript copies have been lost, we need to first look at two mediums for writing that were used in ancient times, papyrus and vellum.

Papyrus is similar to modern day paper – it was durable and inexpensive – yet most papyrus could not last more than a few hundred years without crumbling into dust. Therefore, most of the papyrus manuscripts from more than 1500 years ago are fragments, decaying pages or at best books with significant parts missing.

Vellum is made from animal skins processed into parchments used for writing. The oldest scrolls and books from ancient times are parchments of the highest quality. The problem with vellum is that even though it was available during the time of the first writing of the New Testament, it was expensive and only became a common medium for the New Testament when the church became state-sponsored at the time of the Emperor Constantine in 325 A.D.

In fact, Constantine commissioned Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea to produce 50 copies of the complete Bible on vellum in 332 A.D. The two oldest nearly complete biblical manuscripts we have from ancient times, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus were probably copied sometime between 325 to 350 A.D. Many think that these are copies from one of Eusebius’ manuscripts and perhaps two of the original 50 manuscripts, although some think Vaticanus may be a few years older than Eusebius’ copies.

Codex Vaticanus contains nearly the entire Bible except for Genesis 1:1–46:2 and ends abruptly at Hebrews 9:14 lacking also 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon and Revelation. Thus the beginning and end of the manuscript were lost. Yet despite its great importance, Vaticanus was almost unknown prior to the 1800s. It had been in the possession of the Vatican library since at least the 1300s, hence the name, but no one knew exactly how old it actually was and was inaccessible to scholars until the end of the 1800s.

Likewise, Codex Sinaiticus was discovered in 1859 by Constantin Tischendorf in a convent at the foot of Mount Sinai. Tischendorf wrote that the codex was actually in a pile of parchments waiting to be burned as trash when he rescued it! Sinaiticus contains the entire Greek Bible, plus the Epistle of Barnabas and most of the Shepherd of Hermas (early Christian writings which were widely used in teaching). It is believed to be from the fourth century, but later than Vaticanus. The two great codices are in general agreement and both attest to the general reliability of the received text. In fact, Codex Vaticanus was later used by Hort and Westcott in their edition, The New Testament in the Original Greek (1881).

For those wanting to research for themselves the textual reliability of the New Testament over two millennia, I suggest purchasing an interlinear Greek New Testament that has a literal word for word rendering in English above each Greek word in the text and usually a modern English translation of the scriptures in the side column. The simple conclusion any honest inquirer will draw is that the New Testament scriptures have come down to us in virtually unaltered form.

Bible Babylon (part 4)

What about variant texts in biblical manuscripts?

I was first introduced to the concept of biblical textual criticism in a biblical interpretation class sponsored by Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary at the Center for Urban Ministries in Boston. The professor teaching the course was a conservative who nevertheless upset many of the evangelical pastors in attendance by leading a discussion on how variants in newly discovered New Testament manuscripts have altered newer translations of the Bible such as the New American Standard Bible and the New International Version.

The thought that even small portions of the Bible are in dispute rankles evangelicals because it is thought that the original autographs of the Bible were inspired of God and therefore inerrant and infallible. There is no quick and easy answer to this question, but any editor can tell you that the text of a manuscript is often adjusted as it is prepared for publication in different editions. This occurs for many reasons.

These reasons may include:

1. Corrections and mistakes that have crept into the text due to careless copying;
2. Adjusting spelling and grammar to reflect modern changes to the language;
3. Smoothing of the text for style and consistency;
4. Edits for emphasis or to make the meaning of certain words and phrases more clear.

The long and short end of the discussion was that none of these minor variants affect the meaning of any text in the New Testament.

Skeptics and atheists who criticize the Bible’s integrity like to point out that among the 25,000 manuscripts and portions of the Bible there are supposedly hundreds of thousands of variants.

My answer to this is that the number of “variants” depends on what you use as your denominator.

If variant means simply the total number of places where the text varies in each manuscript, then the number is high simply because each variant text is counted each time it occurs in any text. For instance, let’s say that an original manuscript had the Greek word for “him” in the text, but a scribe decided that the word is better understood in the reflexive tense as “himself.”

The new manuscript is then copied 2027 times. This would equal 2028 in this way of numbering “variants.” The numerator here is each instance of a variant in all manuscripts over a denominator of 1.

2028/1 then equals 2028 variants.

But if we count each example of the variant only once, whether the same variant occurs once or over 2000 times in different manuscripts, the number shrinks dramatically because the same variant copied over and again are counted only as one variant.

2027/2027 + 1 equals one variant and the original. So there are only two variants.

We also need to distinguish between “significant” and “insignificant.”

If a word is spelled differently or contains a different case or tense, but means the same thing, then it is thought to be an insignificant variant. For instance, if meaning of the original “him” was reflexive and a scribe simply wished to emphasize this, then practically speaking these 2027 instances of the “himself” variant are insignificant because it doesn't change the meaning of the text at all.

It is only when the actual meaning of a sentence changes even slightly that the variant is termed “significant.”

How to number the total amount of variants that would significant change the meaning of a text is highly subjective. Just to give an idea of how insignificant even the most “significant” of these variations can be, the following example is often used. In some early manuscripts, the word “yet” does not appear in John 7:8. Some manuscripts read, “I am not going up to this feast,” while others read, “I am not yet going up to the feast.” Then John 7:10 says, “However, after his brothers had left for the feast, he went also, not publicly, but in secret.” Some critics say that a copyist probably added the word “yet” to verse 8 to bring it in harmony with verse 10 and prevent the appearance that Jesus lied even though the original text would not have included “yet.”

However, editors of the most recent modern translations of the Bible agree that the total number of significant variants in the New Testament is somewhere between 300 to 1500. The modern translations mentioned above include these variants in the form of footnotes. Usually these are small words or different spellings of place names and people’s names.

If you are like me, such differences seem trite. In fact, the professor of the biblical interpretation class I was attending challenged us that if one’s faith was shaken by such variants, then it was not really a true “faith” in God. In fact, no text – even including modern printed texts that also contain errors – could withstand such a scrutiny of details if this would be our definition of “inerrancy.”

This does not affect the concept of inerrancy because the general meaning is not changed at all. Inerrancy does not mean that there is no variation is the 25,000 manuscripts of the Bible available to us. It simply means that none of the variations in the most reliable texts are so significant that the meaning of the text varies from copy to copy. The transmission of divine inspiration isn’t dependant of an exact wording nor on how the meaning of the text is rendered; but solely on a facet of divine intent that is communicated by the text. If this were not true then books could not be translated into various languages without losing the sense or meaning of the texts.

The loudest detractors to the Bible's accuracy and reliability are the atheists and skeptics who use the “hundreds of thousands of errors” argument as a weak propaganda ploy. However, the objection that supposedly “the Bible is full of errors” is based on such variants as those found in John 7:8. The vast majority of variants are not “significant” and even those variants that are significant do not change the meaning of the text so greatly that the original intent of the larger passage is lost. Christians who have examined the evidence first hand are often surprised at how trivial these differences really are.

Although some of the earliest New Testament manuscripts are corrupted and contain many copyist errors, these manuscripts are easy to discern as bad manuscripts. There are a number of early manuscripts that match the received text almost exactly, while worst of the New Testament manuscripts are still over 90 percent similar to the received text.

Many ancient works of literature have only one existing manuscript written hundreds of years after the originals. The Bible has literally thousands of manuscripts – and over a hundred of these still existing manuscripts were copied very early – from about 120 A.D. to 400 A.D. – more manuscript evidence than any other ancient writing.

Bible Babylon (part 3)

Lower criticism vs. Higher criticism

To fully understand German Higher Criticism, one must first examine the social and political situation in Germany and Europe in the mid to late-1800s. To understand the background of these men sheds incredible light on their motivations and lends nothing but discredit to their conclusions.

The German “Higher Criticism” gets is name as a distinguishing mark from the so-called lower criticism. Lower criticism is named because it is the first method of criticism and the foundation for all other criticism. Lower criticism is simply textual criticism of the various early manuscripts of the Bible. Christians should be involved in the study of lower criticism because it attempts to determine the original wording of the original text of the scriptures. Higher criticism then analyzes the text to determine its authorship, date of composition, literary structure, and meaning.

Higher criticism in its basic meaning is just interpreting the text. Anyone who has an opinion on what the Bible means is a higher critic. However, “Higher Criticism” (especially when capitalized) has come to have the connotation of the liberal criticism that began in Germany in the 1800s. The Higher Critics purported to study the Bible as they would any other literary document, but in reality they approached it with a high degree of skepticism attempting to discredit the historicity and reliability of the received texts. Not only are the received texts doubted, but the early dates of composition are interpreted as spurious and the authors as pseudonymous. In other words, the books of the Bible were written at a much later date than claimed in the text by unknown authors using the names of apostles and prophets.

Much of the discussion among today's liberal critics revolves around methods of interpretation that make the people, places and events of scripture allegorical not intended to be read as history. The fact is that these works were received by ancient Jews and Christians as historically accurate documents by authentic authors. To impute a figurative or allegorical intention on the part of the authors is essentially accusing these men as being false prophets who intentionally and fraudulently forged the names of historical persons on their works in some sort of perverse religious power play.

Up until the 1800s, the view was that the books of the Bible were written by the named authors approximately at the time the events occurred. This wasn’t questioned simply because there was no hard evidence to the contrary. Then came the Enlightenment. Rationalists began to apply the skepticism of modern science to literary criticism. The burden of proof shifted from the skeptic having to prove the Bible was false, to believers having to prove it was true. The persons, places and events of scripture were deemed “guilty until proven innocent.” Therefore, much of the work of the higher critics has been pure speculation. For example, they might try to guess the motivation of the person who wrote the Gospel of Matthew based on conjectural imputations to the author’s character and motivations.

The problem with much of the speculation of liberal higher criticism is that it is based on the idea that the received texts are not authentic and reliable documents. This ignores the fact that “lower” textual criticism began very early. We actually have canonical lists, extensive commentaries and criticisms of the variant texts as early as the second century. The Higher Critics treated these sources skeptically as a basis for biblical interpretation while ignoring the huge amount of data and documents for use in textual analysis.

Prior to the 20th century, the received text from which all English translations were compiled relied heavily on the Latin Vulgate, the Bible translated by Jerome in early fifth century Rome from the Hebrew Masoretic text, the Septuagint and the Greek codices of the New Testament. Codices (singular: “codex”) is simply a name for the earliest books. Up until about the first or second centuries ancient writers wrote on scrolls or tablets. In fact, books in their modern form were probably invented by Christians as a method of collating the various books of the New Testament and other Christian writings.

Jerome relied on the version of the Greek New Testament known as the Western Text. There are several surviving manuscript “families” from the early church era. These codices are derived from the three great centers of Christianity in the early centuries, Byzantium, Alexandria and Rome.

No one today knows exactly what the original autographs of the New Testament looked like, but textual criticism had proven that the text has altered so little over thousands of years, that we can be certain that few changes have entered into the picture. Even if small portions of the text have been altered, none of these changes would be considered significant in changing the overall meaning of a passage. Evangelicals and conservatives accept the authenticity and reliability of the received text which has come to us through the Latin Vulgate with some modern translations making some minor redaction due to a comparison of recent discoveries of early copies of Greek versions of the Western, Eastern (Byzantine) and Alexandrian texts. If we were to compile a list of these variants, we could fit them all on one page.

The reason for these variants is that no ancient or medieval manuscript -- even up until the time of William Shakespeare -- is without variations. No ancient work comes down to us from an original copy – or “autograph” – and most are derived from copies of copies that are hundreds and even thousands of years older than the originals. Since all books were copied by hand, mistakes in copying entered into the equation. It is also certain that scribes edited or added materials in order to make the text more understandable to the reader, to modernize spellings or numbering systems, to add their own contribution or put a “spin” on the work of literature.

The Hebrew Bible and the Christian scriptures we treated differently. Since the scriptures were considered to be inspired oracles of God, there are warnings in the text prohibiting changes by scribes. Holy Scripture was obviously treated differently than stories and poems told for entertainment purposes and even histories. However, small mistakes and changes for various reasons entered in. For instance, out of the thousands of manuscripts and fragments of the New Testament available for study, there are some manuscripts that are highly corrupted and may be easily separated from what is called the “majority text” which is derived from a comparison between the oldest manuscripts that have the highest degree of agreement.

The most common type of textual corruption in the most reliable manuscripts of the Bible consists of small words, spellings of names, prepositions and numbers. Lower criticism is the process of arriving at a text that is closest to what the original autographs looked like. Since there are thousands more extant manuscripts of Bible than of other ancient manuscripts, we can be more certain about the text of scripture than about any other ancient or medieval work of literature.

It is generally agreed that the majority text derived from the most reliable manuscripts is at least 99.5 percent accurate to what the original autographs had. Such a high degree of reliability is so unlikely, that many Christians see a divine Providence in the preservation of scripture.

The Reliability of the Hebrew Bible

The earliest surviving copies of the Hebrew Bible were originally copied from the so-called “Masoretic text.” Up until 1947, the earliest Hebrew manuscript of the Hebrew text was from about 900 A.D. Since the text was 1copied 200 to 2000 years after than the original autographs, modern critics had legitimate questions as to how many mistakes had entered into the received text. Much of this concern over textual reliability was laid to rest after the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls, which were at least 1000 years older than the oldest surviving copies of the Masoretic text. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, not only do we have portions of all the books of the Old Testament (except Esther) from deep antiquity, but we can compare long portions of these biblical manuscripts to the Masoretic text. To put it simply, the Dead Sea Scrolls confirmed the reliability of the received text of the Hebrew scriptures to a surprising degree.

Unfortunately, even the most durable scrolls and parchments don’t last thousands of year. So if we want to see what the Bible looked like at the time of King David for instance, we have to rely on artifacts other than paper, which are few and far between.

The oldest biblical scroll yet discovered are the two silver scrolls uncovered at Ketef Hinnom near Jerusalem in 1979. This artifact is 400 years older than the Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts, and perhaps older. One is inscribed with portions of the Priestly Blessing from the Book of Numbers.

Numbers 6:25--Yahweh bless you and keep you;
Numbers 6:25--Yahweh make his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
Numbers 6:26--Yahweh lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.

Left: One of the silver scrolls of Ketef Hinnom

The bold words are missing from the inscription (probably to save space on a small amulet) but this is undoubtedly a quotation from the Pentateuch. The amulet is thought to be from about 725 to 650 B.C. Another silver scroll from the same time period contains allusions to the book of Deuteronomy. At this early date, the combination of two different passages from the Pentateuch proves that a larger document containing these texts was composed prior Josiah’s reform and not after the return from Babylon under Ezra as the Higher Critics maintained.

The existence of this text lays waste to the Higher Critical “Documentary Hypothesis,” the theory that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, but that large segments of the first five books of the Bible were written in the period of Ezra, 400 to 500 B.C. The documentary hypothesis arguments revolve around the use of YHWH, the divine name of God, which the Higher Critics claimed was a later innovation after the more primitive names of ELOHIM and ADONAI.

The fact that the silver scrolls contain the name YHWH refutes the entire basis for the theory. Since the skeptical speculations of the Higher Critics have so often been wrong, the burden of proof ought to shift toward the liberal theologians. The hard evidence is in favor of the Bible’s authenticity. Notions of a “Documentary Hypothesis” have been weighed in the balance and found bankrupt. This hasn't stopped the liberal critics of course. The documentary hypothesis has been simply adjusted to fit the new evidence and is still accepted in many academic circles.

What does the evidence really tell us? When we compare the textual integrity of the Old Testament against comparisons of the manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a few tablets describing the kings of Israel and the two silver scrolls, we can be confident that the text of the Old Testament has remained consistent and reliable for thousands of years.

How old is the oldest Latin manuscript of the Bible?

I was talking to internet radio show host, Joe Dunn, who is a pastor from Chicago about the integrity and reliability of the New Testament. We were talking about the three most famous disputed passages in the New Testament: 1 John 5:7-8 (the so-called Johannine Comma, which I've written on) ; John 7:53-8:11; and Mark 16:9-20.

Basically, the argument comes down to whether or not one thinks the earliest extant Greek manuscripts of the Bible are more reliable than the church fathers and the later Latin manuscripts of the Bible. Up until the 1800s, biblical scholarship relied mainly on the Textus Receptus, a manuscript of textual consensus that was compiled from the Latin Vulgate, the Hebrew Masoretic text and the Greek Septuagint. But then dozens of older Greek manuscripts were discovered in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Because there are textual variations in these manuscripts, a debate over the correct text of the New Testament ensued with many textual critics arriving at the conclusion that many of these passages ought to be changed in modern translations.

I am not claiming to know conclusively the answer to this question, but I have some objections to the modern liberal approach of redacting the received text.

1. Some of the church fathers quoted these passages as though they were scripture. So if they were added, they were added in the early century. And since we have no manuscript evidence from the first century, there is no way to prove that these passages were added.

2. The church fathers who translated the New Testament from Greek to Old Latin and Vulgar Latin were living a lot closer to the source and certainly had more early manuscript copies than we do today. Therefore, I don't see any reason why modern critics would know better than early textual critics.

3. We assume that just because a manuscript is older it is better. Yet the Dead Sea Scroll proved to us that the surviving copies of the Masoretic text, which were copied hundreds of years after than the oldest surviving Greek Septuagint manuscripts, were generally more reliable than their Greek translation counterparts. There is no reason why copies in Latin -- which is more closely related to Greek than Greek is to Hebrew -- would be so much less reliable than Greek copies of the New Testament especially in identifying interpolated and deleted passages.

I explained to my pastor friend that the passages in question are found in the oldest surviving Latin manuscripts and in quotations in the Church Fathers. Then I was then asked something I did not know the answer to.

How old is the oldest Latin manuscript of the Bible?

The answer depends on whether we mean the whole Bible or significant fragments. Are we talking about both the Old Testament or the New Testament? It also depends on whether we mean the Latin Vulgate or the "Old Latin" manuscripts.

This following is compiled from various Internet sources.

What are the oldest extant Latin manuscripts of the Bible?

The official Latin version of the Roman Catholic Church was prepared between A.D. 383–405 by St. Jerome (c.342–420). This is the Latin Vulgate. Prior to that there were some Old Latin texts of the Bible. The term "Old Latin" or "Vetus Latina" refers to classical Latin as opposed to the Latin of common vernacular or "Vulgar Latin" from which the Vulgate gets its name. There is no single version of the Old Latin Bible, and many have significant corruptions and variants. Jerome was commissioned by the Bishop of Rome to produce a reliable text based on a good translation of the Greek.

Old Latin Texts

The language of the Old Latin translations is uneven in quality, as Augustine of Hippo lamented in De Doctrina Christiana (2,16). Grammatical mistakes abound; some reproduce literally Greek or Hebrew idioms as they appear in the Septuagint. Likewise, the various Old Latin translations reflect the various versions of the Septuagint circulating, with the African manuscripts (such as the Codex Bobiensis) preserving readings of the Western text-type, while readings in the European manuscripts are closer to the Byzantine text-type. Many grammatical idiosyncrasies come from the use of Vulgar Latin grammatical forms in the text.

The Latin Vulgate

With the publication of Jerome's Vulgate, which offered a single, stylistically consistent Latin text translated from the original tongues, the Vetus Latina gradually fell out of use. Jerome, in a letter, complains that his new version was initially disliked by Christians who were familiar with the phrasing of the old translations. However, as copies of the complete Bible were infrequently found, Old Latin translations of various books of the Bible were copied into manuscripts along side Vulgate translations, inevitably exchanging readings; Old Latin translations of single books can be found in manuscripts as late as the 13th century.

Jerome was originally commissioned to produce a Latin text of the four Gospels based on the most reliable Greek manuscripts. But he was soon able to complete the entire Bible from the Greek including a translation of the Greek Old Testament including the apocrypha which he considered non-canonical. For this he used the Hexapla, a polyglot version of the Old Testament in six columns that contained the Hebrew Masoretic text, a Greek transliteration, the Septuagint, and Greek translations by Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion,

From 390 to 405 A.D., Jerome eventually began translating the Old Testament from the Hebrew. By this time he believed that the Masoretic text was the superior version. But the received text of the Vulgate comes from the Hexapla. Most modern English translations until the 1900s relied on the received text.

In my own study of translated Dead Sea Scolls along side the Received Text, the differences are minuscule.

The Oldest Latin manuscripts

The oldest known Latin manuscript of the Bible is a lengthy fragment of the New Testament known as Codex Vercellensis (the "Codex of Vercelli"). It part of a collection of biblical manuscript codices preserved in the cathedral library of Vercelli, in the Province of Vercelli, Italy.

Codex Vercellensis is from the 4th century. It is a purple-stained vellum codex, the earliest manuscript of the "Old Latin" Gospels (called simply "Codex a"). The Gospels are in the usual order of the Western Church — Matthew, John, Luke and Mark. It does not now contain the last twelve verses of the Gospel of Mark. It is generally believed to have been written under the direction of bishop Eusebius of Vercelli.

It's interesting that some Greek and Latin codices had Mark as the last Gospel. Could this be the sole reason why the last 16 verses are missing from the oldest extant Greek and Latin manuscripts?

Greek/Latin Diglots

There is a diglot manuscript, with Greek on one page and Latin on the other facing side, called Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis. It contains most of the four Gospels and Acts and a small part of III John. This codex is from the 5th century.

Another diglot manuscript, Codex Claromontanus is a 6th century manuscript containing only the Epistles of Paul and the Epistle to the Hebrews in Greek and Latin on facing pages.

The Oldest Latin Vulgate manuscripts

The Codex Fuldensis dates from around 545 A.D. It contains most of the New Testament in the Vulgate version, but the four Vulgate Gospels are harmonized into a continuous narrative derived from the Diatessaron.

The Codex Amiatinus is the earliest surviving manuscript of the complete Bible in the Latin Vulgate version. Originally three copies of the Bible were commissioned by Ceolfrid, an Anglo Saxon monk, in 692 A.D. The only surviving copy is dated to 716 A.D.

The Codex Amiatinus is considered to be the most accurate copy of St. Jerome's text. Although very aged, Ceolfrid undertook to carry one copy to the Pope in Rome personally. After a long sea voyage, he landed in Germany, but war detained him in the monastery of Langres in Burgundy, where he died. This is thought to be the manuscript that survived.

What do the Latin manuscripts tell us about disputed passages in the New Testament?

Note on the Johannine Comma (1 John 5:7-8): Neither of the two oldest Latin Vulgate manuscripts contain the Johannine Comma. This clause is found mainly in the Old Latin texts from the fourth century onward and in later versions of the Vulgate. It is mentioned by many of the Latin church fathers, however, and my article on the Johannine Comma goes more into detail. I wrote a longer article on this earlier this year that I won't reproduce again here.

Note on the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8:11): This is otherwise known as Pericope Adulterae because it does not appear in Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus or in other Greek manuscripts fragment from the third century known as P66 and P75.

It is mentioned by Jerome as being found in many copies. It is also mentioned by Ambrose, Augustine, and other writers from the fourth century onward.

St. Augustine of Hippo was aware that the passage as missing from some of the copies then extant. He wrote the following explanation of why he thought it was omitted in some manuscripts:

Certain persons of little faith, or rather enemies of the true faith, fearing, I suppose, lest their wives should be given impunity in sinning, removed from their manuscripts the Lord's act of forgiveness toward the adulteress, as if he who had said, Sin no more, had granted permission to sin (De Adult. Conj., ii. 6).

The passage was not controversial until the time of the Reformation. During the 16th Century, Western European scholars sought to recover the original Greek text of the New Testament, rather than relying on the Vulgate Latin translation. At this time, it was noticed that a number of early manuscripts containing John's Gospel lacked John 7:53-8:11.

Until recently, it was not thought that any Greek Church Father had taken note of the passage before the 12th Century; but in 1941 a large collection of the writings of Didymus the Blind (c. 313- 398) was discovered in Egypt, including a reference to the Pericope Adulterae; and it is now considered established that this passage was present in its canonical place in a minority of Greek manuscripts known in Alexandria from the 4th Century onwards. In support of this it is noted that the 4th century Codex Vaticanus, which was written in Egypt, marks the end of John chapter 7 with an "umlaut" (two dots) indicating that an alternative reading was known at this point.

See a defense of this passage here: http://www.bible-researcher.com/adult-hills.html

Note on the end of Mark 16:9-20: The earliest existing copies of Mark end abruptly after 16:8. Scholars are almost united on the idea that the final leaf of an early manuscript was lost causing numerous manuscripts to be copied without the ending. Then one of several things happened:

1. There were two or more manuscript traditions, one with and one without the ending, but the only early copies that have survived are those without the ending;
2. Earlier copies with the correct ending were recovered and the ending was re-inserted;
3. The ending was interpolated from some other source.

Given these three possibilities, the Christian who believes in scriptural inerrancy (at least in the original autographs) has a choice to make. Either we have the correct ending or we don't. Those who think the passage is an outright interpolation must admit that the ending was not written by Mark. They have the option of saying that the passage is a "Gospel tradition" known to the church fathers and therefore inerrant scripture.

Furthermore, there are two versions of the ending that deserve consideration as the correct ending. The so-called "shorter ending" reads:

And they reported all the things that had been commanded them briefly (or immediately) to the companions of Peter. And after this Jesus himself also sent forth by them from the East even unto the West the holy and incorruptible preaching of eternal salvation.

The "longer ending" is the one that appears in today's English versions (v. 9-20).

The longer ending is absent from the oldest Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, and Armenian manuscripts. The main reason it is included in modern translations (usually with qualifying brackets and footnotes) is that it was known to Justin Martyr, Irenaeus (both in Greek and Latin), Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Tatian, who incorporated it into his Diatesseron.

Justin alludes to Mark 16:20 -- "And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following" -- in the following passage from his First Apology chapter 45, "His apostles, going forth from Jerusalem, preached everywhere."

This is thought to be only a slight allusion by some except for the fact that Irenaeus uses the Greek word pantachou -- a word for "everywhere" that appears only seven times in the New Testament.

Irenaeus wrote in Against Heresies (c. 185 A.D. ), Book III, 10:5-6: "Also, towards the conclusion of his Gospel, Mark says: 'So then, after the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God." This is an outright quotation of Mark 16:19.

At the seventh Council of Carthage in 256, a bishop named Vincentius of Thibaris said, "We have assuredly the rule of truth which the Lord by His divine precept commanded to His apostles, saying, 'Go ye, lay on hands in My name, expel demons.' And in another place: "Go ye and teach the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.'"

There seems to be good reason, therefore, to conclude that the passage was known as part of the canonical text of Mark in the second century even though we have no extant manuscripts from this early period to confirm this. The earliest known copy of Mark -- Papyrus 45, from about A.D. 225 -- is damaged and for this reason is missing all of Mark 16.

My view is that given the textual consistency of the rest of the New Testament scriptures in the early manuscripts, and since the none of the earliest manuscript fragments contain any of Mark 16, to say that the passage is an outright interpolation is at best a reasoned guess. The passage ought to stand as it is recorded in modern translations, with brackets stating to the interested reader that the "earliest manuscripts do not have Mark 16:9-20."

However, it also should be known that none of these manuscripts are earlier than the writings of Irenaeus and Cyprian. The number of the manuscripts that have the deletion are simply too small to confirm the tradition that would suggest that the original autograph did not have these verses. That the passage was known to Justin, Irenaeus and Cyprian infers that the text was contained in manuscripts that existed in the second century.

Left is part of the Codex Vercellensis, scribed by Eusebius, the Bishop of Vercelli in northern Italy, in the year 370 A.D.

This section contains the Gospel of John, 16:23-30.

Source: Plate XXXII. The S.S. Teacher's Edition: The Holy Bible. New York: Henry Frowde, Publisher to the University of Oxford, 1896.

Bible Babylon (part 2)

The Contribution of Dr. John Henry Ludlum, Jr.
Refuting the Marcan Priority Hypothesis and the Fabled "Q" Gospel

One of the theologians mentioned in The Real Jesus (DVD) is a little known linguistics prodigy named John Henry Ludlum, Jr.

Ludlum is known today for a groundbreaking article that was published in four parts in Christianity Today.

"New Light On The Synoptic Problem," Vol. III, Nos. 3 and 4, 1958

"Are We Sure of Mark's Priority?" Vol. III, Nos. 24 and 25, 1959

The article is cited in lots of places, but isn't on the WWW at this point. I am currently trying to locate copies of the article and if you know quick and easy way I can get them, let me know.

One book that cites the articles is The Jesus Crisis: The Inroads of Historical Criticism into Evangelical Scholarship by Robert L.Thomas and F. David Farnell, which is on my reading list. You can read a limited version here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=QtE1orv4Xg0C&dq

If you are like me, you can't get your hands on nearly enough articles and books on textual criticism for your reading pleasure, so I've pointed you to this paper by John Henry Ludlum. Sorry that it's 260 pages of tiff files and hence the size.

You can download the PDF file from the following link:

http://messiahskingdom.com/jhludjr/anewcomprehensiveapproachtothegospels.pdf

John Henry Ludlum, Jr. was the only doctoral candidate at Yale University to receive honors in all seven of his oral examinations. He was a linguistics expert and textual criticism prodigy. His first assignment after graduating gave him enough free time to read many of the German Higher Critics including Bruno Bauer, who has only one theological work translated into English.

He was shocked as a liberal to find out how flimsy the arguments of the historical criticism -- so widely accepted as iron-clad among liberals -- really were. They were so bad in fact, that Ludlum did his own Synoptic harmony of the Gospels and found many errors on the part of the liberal critics. He spent the rest of his career lambasting the liberals and he was blacklisted in his own denomination -- eventually founding a Bible College in Maine.

Today, there is very little published by Ludlum. His most notable work is the series of articles published in Christianity Today in the 1950s debunking the Marcan Priority Hypothesis. Many at the time thought his argument -- in embryonic form in the attached paper -- was irrefutable. I am not committed to any Synoptic hypothesis -- Matthean, Marcan or Independence -- at this point, but I am concerned that so many evangelicals accept the Marcan Hypothesis without understanding the liberal presuppositions that gave rise to its popularity.

Anyway, if you skim through the paper, I am sure you'll find a few fascinating insights even if you don't have time to read all of it carefully.

A Short Bio

Dr. John H. Ludlum, Jr. is one of those Bible scholars whose experience was the mirror image of other liberal theologians. Too often conservatives are corrupted by seminary education. Ludlum was one who began as a liberal, but as his education was steeped in skepticism, it made him question the foundation of such skepticism.

David Lutzweiler has written the following biography of Ludlum:

Back in 1951, Dr. Ludlum received his Ph.D. from Yale University and received on his orals in seven fields at the Department. of Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Literature the highest scores that anyone ever had received as far as they had records going back for the department at the time. (I have a copy of the department's report on his rating). At that time, of course, he was a liberal. He studied under Marvin Pope and that crowd.

Then he got a job that was more or less a sinecure, an office which requires or involves little or no responsibility, in NYC at a Reformed Church, and had a lot of time to pursue his own studies independently. He read the whole German higher criticism in the original language, and a lot of other stuff; and the more he read, the more he saw that the whole liberal position was just plain silly, not to mention dishonest. In a few years, he moved out of liberalism (or "Up From Liberalism," as William F. Buckley put it) and into evangelicalism.

This created problems. The RCA liberals could not stand up to him, because he was too good. He knew the scholarship inside out and backwards. Thus, the word went around that under no circumstances was Ludlum going to be permitted ever to teach at New Brunswick, etc.

They shunted him off to pastor a small church in Englewood, NJ.It was a bad decision on their part. That only gave him more time to study, write, and fight, which he did. I came to know him when he was in Englewood, in the middle of his prime, and that was one of the most enriching contacts in my life.

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The Real Jesus (DVD)

The Real Jesus:
A Defense of the Historicity and Divinity of Christ

Who is the Real Jesus?

Ever since the dawn of modern rationalism, skeptics have sought to use textual criticism, archaeology and historical reconstructions to uncover the "historical Jesus" -- a wise teacher who said many wonderful things, but fulfilled no prophecies, performed no miracles and certainly did not rise from the dead in triumph over sin.

Over the past 100 years, however, startling discoveries in biblical archaeology and scholarship have all but vanquished the faulty assumptions of these doubting modernists. Regretably, these discoveries have often been ignored by the skeptics as well as by the popular media. As a result, the liberal view still holds sway in universities and impacts the culture and even much of the church.

This presentation explodes the myths of these critics and the movies books and television programs that have popularized their views.

Presented in ten parts -- perfect for individual, family and classroom study -- viewers will be challenged to go deeper in their knowledge of Christ in order to be able to defend their faith and present the truth to a skeptical modern world – that the Jesus of the Gospels is the Jesus of history -- "the same yesterday, today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). He is the real Jesus.

Speakers include: George Grant, Ted Baehr, Stephen Mansfield, Raymond Ortlund, Phil Kayser, David Lutzweiler, Jay Grimstead, J.P. Holding, and Eric Holmberg.

Ten parts, over two hours of instruction!

Running Time: 130 minutes

$19.95

ORDER NOW!

For more information

The Real Jesus (DVD) now available!

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!

The Real Jesus (DVD) is available beginning today. You can now order the expanded two hour, ten minute presentation at the following link.

Order The Real Jesus

Although the DVD is completely finished, we have the DVD inserts on order. This is the insert here. However, it will take a week or two to get them in. You can pre-order the video or if you want the DVD right away without an insert, I can send it right away and will send the Amaray case later.

I am also looking for people to write reviews of The Real Jesus. If you order the DVD and write a review of it on Amazon.com, we'll be giving a free copy of Amazing Grace: The History and Theology of Calvinism or God's Law and Society absolutely free. Send me an email if you are interested in this "two-for-one" offer. Then look for the product on Amazon in a week or two.

This offer is good through January 30th, so do it now. Over 100,000 people have viewed the 10 parts of The Real Jesus on YouTube. You can watch the V-log "podcast" version here:

http://therealjesus.com/

The DVD version has more than an hour of additional materials than the "podcast version" and is hosted by Eric Holmberg of the Apologetics Group. We've had literally hundreds of comments from atheists and skeptics on YouTube. So if you order this product, you'll also be helping to make other videos like this available to believers, seekers and skeptics alike. The scripts for The Real Jesus parts two and three are already written and production has already begun!

Bible Babylon (part 1)

How liberal academic criticism of the New Testament was co-opted by the anti-semitic 19th century German Higher Critics

This series outlines the history of liberal criticism in the church, it fallacious premises and anti-Semitic motivating forces, and then proposes some solutions as to how it can be refuted soundly and systematically rooted out of the popular culture.

All but vanquished in the early 20th century, liberal criticism has experienced a revival in the last 50 years on three fronts – among the intellectual academicians, among liberal “mainline” Protestant churches and in the popular media. The main tenets of liberalism – that Jesus was merely a man and not the Son of God risen from the dead in conquest over sin and death; that the received text of the Bible is unreliable and historically inaccurate; that the miraculous events of scripture did not really occur, but were merely stories told to embellish legendary events – are popular in small pockets of the church especially among British and European denominations and among the faculty of large secular universities with Divinity Schools.

In America, the conservative evangelical churches are far outpacing the growth of liberal denominations to the point where the mainline is no longer the “mainstream.” However, the viewpoints expressed in the books and articles of a liberal elite are given credence by the popular media over their conservative evangelical counterparts, even though the actual numbers of the liberal professors of religion are far fewer than the faculty at more numerous conservative Bible Colleges and Seminaries.

Most conservative Christians in America don’t understand exactly how liberalism within the church began and why its influence is still being felt. We tend to simply dismiss the liberals as skeptics and atheists, as wolves in sheep’s clothing, without giving them a hearing. However, when a group like the Jesus Seminar gets its press releases published far and wide, when books like The Da Vinci Code become runaway bestsellers with movie blockbusters and a myriad of television documentaries in tow, evangelicals chafe at the very suggestion that the biblical doctrine of the divinity of Jesus is not a settled issue among lettered churchmen. Even among those who claim to be conservatives, a “neo-orthodox” influence is felt in the form of a low view of the inerrancy of scripture.

The three greatest controversies in the church began early in its history. The Gnostic threat actually preceded Christianity. Gnosticism was actually a broad tendency in several eastern religions that had infected the Hellenistic Jews in the few centuries prior to Christ. Gnosticism in the church later gave way to Arianism and Pelagianism.

In his History of Redemption, Jonathan Edwards notes the irony that the Arian and Pelagian threats came only after several centuries of Jewish and Roman persecution had failed to quench the revival fire of the early church.

After the destruction of the heathen Roman Empire, Satan infested the church with heresies. Though there had been so glorious a work of God in delivering the church from her heathen persecutors, and overthrowing the heathen empire…. But the church soon began to be greatly infested with heresies; the two principal, and those which did most infest the church, were the Arian and Pelagian.

Indeed, the second century Church Father, Tertullian of Carthage, noted that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” It turned out that heresy within the church was its gravest threat. Gnosticism in its various forms -- Mithraism, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, etc. --was a threat to the church from the beginning because these mystery religions influenced nearly every world religion at the time including Judaism. However, the later “Christian” Gnostics did not deny the deity of Christ, but instead perverted the nature of the Godhead and the Incarnation by deemphasizing either the material or spiritual aspect of Jesus.

Likewise, Arianism was a heresy that denied a proper understanding of the Trinity, while Pelagianism compromised the Gospel by denying salvation by free grace. None of these heresies denied that Jesus was divine. Although there have been numerous atheist, pagan, Jewish and Muslim skeptics throughout history, the idea that Jesus was fully God and fully man was a settled issue among Christians long before the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D.

Even if we consider the Enlightenment thinkers, rationalists, Deists and free-thinkers of the 1600s and 1700s, who denied the deity of Christ, the attacks were from those rightly called “infidels” -- those against the faith -- rather than from churchmen who had become liberalized in their interpretation of scripture.

Then beginning in the early 1800s, a group of German theologians began to reexamine and deconstruct the history of the Old and New Covenant Church and along with it question the reliability, integrity and historicity of most of the Bible. Here was the first time in history that skeptics and doubters arose within the church. As Jonathan Edwards noted, it is as though the devil decided that attacks from without could not fail, so therefore he once again fought a battle from within.

Jesus, Mohammed, Shakespeare: Did they really exist? (part 3)

What about Hillel, Gamaliel, Confucius, Buddha and Mohammed?

If we applied the same level of scrutiny that the Jesus-mythists apply to the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth, many religious figures from antiquity would vanish from history. The Jewish rabbis Hillel and Gamaliel who lived at the time of Jesus then have no “contemporary eyewitness accounts” according to the skeptics’ accepted criteria. The eastern religious figures of Confucius and Siddhartha (Buddha) don’t have any surviving accounts written until hundreds of years after they lived.

In fact, only few ancient figures had biographies of their lives written while they still lived and any surviving record written in their own hand comes down to us from copies hundreds and even over a thousand years after the original autographs were written.

The Sira and the al-Maghazi were accounts about the life of Mohammed written after his death. Like the New Testament we do not the original autographs of the Koran, so using this level of scrutiny we have to discount Mohammed as a real figure too.

Was William Shakespeare a real person?

Just for fun, I searched for “Was Shakespeare a real person?” I wasn’t too surprised to find out that numerous Shakespeare doubters are out there on the blogosphere too. As a high school English teacher who has taught units on Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest, I am familiar with the popular yet spurious idea that Shakespeare did not write his own plays.

The evidence that Shakespeare was an actor and a playwright who lived in the late 16th and early 17th centuries is overwhelming. Since Shakespeare has become renowned as the world’s greatest writer in any language, there is understandably a thirst for more information about his personal life than we have available. However, there was no E! television in the 1600s to chronicle the personal foibles of famous actors and play writers. Shakespeare was one of hundreds of other actors and playwrights in London.

Therefore, little is known about his personal life. He left no Memoirs but we know quite a bit of biographical information including his date of birth and death, his family background, and the names of his wife and children. He was not a self-promoter like his contemporary, Ben Johnson, who although stingy in his description of other playwrights, predicted that Shakespeare would become known as the greatest writer calling his plays “not of an age, but for all time.” A more reliable witness than Johnson cannot be hoped for since he knew Shakespeare closely and the Bard even acted in Johnson’s plays.

Shakespeare still has enough contemporary corroboration to prove that he wrote about 37 plays. Some are doubted as “apocryphal” and it is thought that playwrights often culled lines and refined their stories from works of other writers, but it is certain that the work entitled the plays of William Shakespeare were both penned and at times performed by a man by that name who was born at Stratford on Avon, married Anne Hathaway at age 18, had three children, and so on.

As Mark Twain supposedly quipped, “William Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him; they were written by someone else with the same name.”

The same could be said of the Apostles, "If Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, James, Peter, Paul and Jude did not write the books and letters that bear their name, then the New Testament was written by eight other men by the same name who were contemporary witnesses to the events they described."

So … Did Jesus Exist?

Not surprisingly, when we compare the vacuous arguments of the Shakespeare doubters with those of the Jesus mythists, they are similar. The intellectual quality of this theory is aptly described here:

A woman from New England named Delia Bacon who taught Shakespeare in school went to England in 1853 to try to dig him up to prove that there was no body in his grave, just a bag of rocks. She went to his grave at night with shovel in hand, but the British authorities, in furtherance of the scheme or conspiracy to hide the fact that there was no Shakespeare, stopped her from digging him up…. An additional factor was that the tombstone of Shakespeare specifically states that under no circumstances should this grave be dug up. His tombstone reads: "Good frend for Jesus sake forebeare, To digg the dust enclosed heare. Blese be ye man that spares the stones, And curst be he that moves my bones." Why would a gravestone possibly contain such an injunction? The answer must be that, in reality, there are no bones in that grave.

Follow here the faulty logic. Since no one has ever dug up Shakespeare’s bones, the bones must not exist, therefore Shakespeare did not exist. This argument too, is similar to the level of logic used by the Jesus Mythists.

Gary Lenaire writes in An Infidel Manifesto: Why Sincere Believers Lose Faith:

Roman records give us no verified indication of an arrest or crucifixion of Jesus.

Again, here is a doubter using the argument from silence fallacy. There are no “Roman records” of Jesus arrest and execution, therefore Jesus did not exist. The claim is that there is a glaring hole in the “Roman records of crucifixions” where Jesus ought to be. To make such a claim then there should be some records of other crucifixions from the time when Jesus would have been crucified. The problem with this is that we have no Roman records of any first century Jew’s crucifixion during this time. Josephus and Philo record that there were many crucifixions under Pilate and later rulers, but there are no Roman records that exist today.

Likewise, the claim that “none of the contemporary historians of Jesus mentioned Him,” necessitates at least one extant