why its all real, truly

Many people picture the Bible as a 2,000-year game of telephone: copied by hand for centuries until nobody could know what the authors really wrote. New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman points out that there are more differences between the manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament. So we take that seriously and ask two questions: do we have what the original authors wrote, and did those authors get the story right? We give the sceptics their best arguments, and we correct some claims Christians make that go further than the evidence. CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold open: the telephone game 1:20 How ancient texts survive at all 3:26 The manuscript evidence 7:14 Variants: what changed and what didn't 12:10 When were the Gospels written, and by whom? 15:43 Oral tradition and memory 18:55 Details nobody could fake 23:10 Why don't the Gospels agree? 26:30 Where the doubt still stands 27:36 So, is it a game of telephone? SOURCES AND FURTHER READING Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus (2005; paperback edition with interview, 2007) Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament, 4th ed. (2005) Daniel B. Wallace, ed., Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament (2011) Brent Nongbri, "The Use and Abuse of P52", Harvard Theological Review 98 (2005) Pasquale Orsini and Willy Clarysse, "Early New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates", Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 88 (2012) INTF, Kurzgefasste Liste (Münster register of Greek New Testament manuscripts) Tal Ilan, Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, Part I (2002) Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2006; 2nd ed. 2017) Kenneth E. Bailey, "Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels" (1991) Richard A. Burridge, What Are the Gospels? (1992) J. J. Blunt, Undesigned Coincidences in the Writings Both of the Old and New Testament (1847) Bible quotations on screen: King James Version (public domain). IMAGE CREDITS Simon of Cyrene helps carry the cross (Giandomenico Tiepolo), photo: Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Steps of the Pool of Siloam, photo: Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... The Pilate Stone, Israel Museum, photo: Carole Raddato, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... All other manuscript, artwork and archaeology images: public domain or CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Stock footage: Pexels (pexels.com). Map data: Natural Earth (public domain). MUSIC (YouTube Audio Library) "Tiptoe" by Nat Keefe "Exploring The Crystal Caves" by Asher Fulero "Scale The Mountain" by Density & Time "Final Soliloquy" by Asher Fulero