The Sean McDowell Show - 8 Reasons the New Testament is Reliable (w/ Dr. Ben Shaw)

Episode Date: August 9, 2024

Can we trust that the New Testament is reliable? As a Christian, Dr. Ben Shaw had no good reason to explain why he believed the NT was trustworthy. So, he dove in to study the textual, archaeological, extra-biblical, and internal testimony for himself. He recently published an EXCELLENT book laying out 13 reasons to trust the NT. We briefly discuss his story and then unpack 8 of his arguments. This is one you will enjoy and want to share with other Christians and skeptics. READ: Trustworthy: Thirteen Arguments for the Reliability of the New Testament (https://amzn.to/4cZhuFS) CHECK OUT: https://www.coreapologetics.com/ for more resources. *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

From careful copying to archaeology to non-Christian sources, we have good reasons to believe the New Testament is reliable. Our guest today, Dr. Ben Shaw, has written an outstanding, excellent new book called Trustworthy, 13 Arguments for the Reliability of the New Testament. We're going to discuss eight of them today. Ben, I've been hearing about your work for a long time. Thanks for coming on and talking about your book. Yeah, thanks for having me. I've heard your work for a long time. Thanks for coming on and talking about your book. Yeah, thanks for having me. I've heard about you for a long time, and I'm just glad to get on here and share about these different arguments about the reliability of the New Testament.

Let's jump right in there. Before we get to our eight arguments, maybe tell us why you wrote this book and what you think makes this book different or unique. Okay, yeah. So part of it has to do with my backstory. I got saved at a young age when my babysitter took me to church, and I heard the Sermon on the Mount, recognized Jesus as Lord. Just hearing his commands on love were incredibly powerful. Had some oasises along the way, but really wasn't discipled for a long time. And so I had a bunch of questions about Christianity. I'm from South Florida, Fort Lauderdale. We had 4 million people in our

county, so that's 4 million different worldviews, all sorts of different, you know, theories on what life is, how we should live and all that kind of stuff. And so not being discipled, I kind of got tossed and turned by every wind of doctrine a little bit and still have my questions. And a long, weird story is eventually hockey took me to Liberty. So I was ice hockey player. Liberty had an ice rink on campus. It's amazing, by the way. Even better now, they got a jumbotron. Ridiculous.

But when I went there, it was my fifth college, I found out you could ask questions about God, and they took them very seriously. And so I started asking a bunch of questions. And in the process of that, by the way, for example, when I said I wasn't discipled, when I came to Liberty, I learned Paul wrote half the New Testament. That was kind of a big deal. I was like, oh, my goodness.

Romans, I'm looking at totally different now. So it was very important and impactful for me. And then I met the former hockey coach, who was Gary Habermas. And long story short, I became his research assistant and started studying with him and we got asked one day to go speak somewhere and I'm like well everything I know is what he's taught me you want to hear me talk about the resurrection you want to hear him he's the he's a Michael Jordan of resurrection you don't want to hear me and I was like what's something that was really fruitful and helpful for me?

And then I was, these 12 different arguments were something that I was very, I wish I would have known without having to come to Liberty or without having to go get a graduate degree. So these were the good fundamental starting points for understanding the New Testament as a believer and as someone who had questions. that's kind of how it came about that makes sense now each of these books could be an entire I'm sorry each of these arguments you make could be entire book or series of books within itself but this I would say this this might be the best book I've seen that says here's the breadth of scholarship from canonicity to authorship to textual criticism in one book brought together that is helpful to somebody who's new. But every chapter, there's like one or two things I'm like, oh, that's a fresh way of looking at this, even though I've studied this, was helpful to me. So

I recommend it as highly as I can, a book on the reliability of the New Testament. It's really, really well done. Let's jump into each one of these and start giving folks what you consider the case for the reliability. And the first chapter is on New Testament textual evidence. So maybe explain what you mean, how this advances the argument and some of the evidence itself. Right. And yes, the first chapter on the textual criticism, it's probably the most difficult chapter. And so for those, if you start reading it, you're like, oh, this is tough. After that, it's even, it's very easy to understand the following chapters. And the reason I say that is

because I was talking, my wife's reading the book. And so as academics, you know, we don't always get our wives to read our work. So we were talking through that. And so as academics, you know, we don't always get our wives to read our work. So we were talking through that. And so getting to understand some of the textual arguments sometimes can be tricky just because of the nature of what it is. And what we're really arguing is, are the words in the New Testament, the actual words that were written down originally? And so there's a whole field called textual criticism about that. And so we just unpack some of the real basic fundamental issues regarding the New Testament evidence we have. And so the two that I looked at were how many copies do we have, the amount of copies, and then the age of those copies, because we want to see how they how they stand up to critical scrutiny.

Because if we don't know what the original words were, how can we even know they were reliable? So we have to know what they said in order to test to see whether those claims are reliable or not. And so New Testament critics, textual critics that is, they will use the same tests that we use for other ancient writings like Plato or Homer. And so we actually compare Plato and Homer

with those of the New Testament. N.T. Wright has that great saying where Homer is the Old Testament for the pagan world, and Plato is the New Testament. So what a good comparison we could use to compare with the New Testament evidence. And so when we look at the evidence for Homer and Plato, we see there's about the recent counts, I believe, are up to about 2,000 copies for Homer's writings, and I'll say about 225, 250 for Plato. And when it comes to the New Testament, there's at least 5,000 copies. And this isn't some conservative count. This is widely recognized by scholars of all stripes, including Bart Ehrman. We have some good quotes from him in the book that highlights

the amount of textual evidence we have is far more than any other ancient writing. Full stop. That's it right there. And so that's just in the Greek. That doesn't even count the other languages. So you put right here on page 13, I thought this is really helpful. It says, Homer or the homeric tradition dates around the 8th century bc and like you said roughly 2 000 copies the date of one of the earliest papyrus fragments of the iliad is as early as the 4th century so about 2 000 copies 400 years later you look at plato this you know, somewhere between 210 and maybe 275 manuscripts based on how you count it. And then you have a quote in here that says,

the oldest sources for the text of Plato are written in the second or third centuries A.D. So we're talking 500 years roughly past the time. And this says, as one classist put it, these copies are closer to us than to him. Now right what I appreciate is you're not saying this means Homer and Plato are not reliable in fact you think we can largely trust them as historically copied documents but if we just compare the New Testament to the number and dating of these other sources, the New Testament kind of stands in a category of its own. That's the root of your argument, as I understand. Is that fair? Absolutely. And we're just comparing it to how we look at other ancient, other historical works.

Plato and Homer, everyone is familiar with them. And so if we don't have any questions with them, we definitely shouldn't have any questions about the New Testament textual evidence and even Ehrman himself who he's the leading textual critic between him and Dan Wallace they're the top two leading scholars on the text New Testament textual criticism and and they even they're on different sides of the coin one's a skeptic and the other is a believer and even Ehrman uh it's no question that there's more textual evidence for the new testament than there is for these other writings so uh we're just but if you don't know that then you don't know that and so we just we're trying to identify these fundamental starting points for understanding

oh yeah we can trust what we have and i heard herman one time in on a podcast uh years ago is such a funny line and i kind of borrow from it a little bit but um he's asked by an atheist he's like if we're looking for you know all these textual changes in the new testament where's a good place we can look and herman goes the bible if you just look in your footnotes they usually identify somewhere hey this is or is not in one of the earlier manuscripts so sometimes you'll see it bracketed in the footnotes. So it's a pretty interesting distinction there. So if there are questions, just go to the Bible.

So it's nothing new in that regard. We've known about the textual evidence and how well attested the New Testament is for a while. It is interesting. You probably quote Ehrman more than anybody else in this book. And as far as I can tell, reliably and carefully and accurately, not out of context to just say even Ehrman agrees with me on this general point I'm trying to advance about, you know, fill in the blank with these different evidences. Now, really quickly before

move to the next one, what do you do with variants? Because people are going to say, all right, you know, across the different manuscripts, there's hundreds of thousands. In fact, Peter Gurri has said just in Greek manuscripts, non-spelling differences, he estimates about 500,000 differences. So how would you approach these kind of variants? Yep. It's widely agreed that the overwhelming majority of the differences are just spelling issues. So, and that makes sense. Like if you think about are just spelling issues. And that makes sense. If you think about how many spelling issues we make when we're typing up something using a typewriter with spellcheck, no typewriters, no spellcheck back then. You're just doing everything by hand.

And so you can see how easy it would be to make those sorts of mistakes. And that's the overwhelming majority of mistakes. I highlight four different variants or different differences, types of differences. And the one that most people are probably interested in are the ones that are meaningful and significant. And so those are the ones that are going to say something different and then that there's a reasonable question about it. An example of one that is meaningful but not viable is there's a text question about it. An example of one that is meaningful but not viable is there's a text in Luke that says, if you suffer and are persecuted, you are blessed.

And it leaves out the phrase, for Jesus's sake. So, you know, the meaning has changed. Anytime you suffer or you're persecuted, hey, you're blessed. But it leaves off that key part there with for Jesus's sake but that that text comes from the 10th or the 11th century so it's considerably later compared to the other manuscripts we have which all well attest so the person just the copy is probably just assumed it or wrote over it thinking they wrote it or some other mistake like that I doubt they were actually trying to say you know anytime you anytime you suffer, you're blessed. So that would be a meaningful but non-viable difference. A meaningful but significant or meaningful but viable difference

would be one like in Mark 16, 9 through 15. That's widely considered. That's one of the bigger sections. Most differences are only about two verses or less long, if that. But that section, that's a section that creates some questions for the New Testament critics. But as we talk about in the book, not only can we find those verses elsewhere in Scripture that are well attested, there's no, to quote both, I believe, Ehrman and Wallace, it makes no change to any traditional or orthodox Christian doctrines.

So even the biggest changes does not affect Christian doctrine or practice in that regard. So that's one of the important findings, I think. So we just want to be careful that when we say biggest, it sounds like, oh no, oh no. But no, it's not really as significant as when we look at it and see what the difference is. That's an interesting quote by Ehrman, because essentially it points out what you said in your last response, that there's no conspiracy here. Nobody's hiding anything about variants. People who think the Bible just floated down in the King James Version and was handed to us might be shocked about this.

But this is what textual critics do, is they examine different manuscripts and they try to assess either theologically sometimes, like your point was, or just how early the manuscript is or different criteria, what's the most likely viable original writing? This is what textual critics do. In the vast majority of cases, we have incredible confidence that we have what was originally written down.

There are some cases we're not sure about, and the debate is there. But I've also heard it said that the original wording is in a manuscript somewhere we've just got to find it and narrow it down so okay fair enough now i do appreciate you're not arguing for biblical authority here you're not arguing for inerrancy you're just basically saying as a whole is this ancient book reliable and basically if we think there's any ancient books that are reliable at all, we should think more so, that much more so, when it comes to the New Testament. Let's move to the second one. You call it New Testament genre and audience expectations.

Yeah, genre is an interesting one that we often overlook. And so when we're looking at the writings, we don't want to understand what is it that the authors were trying to communicate? What were their audiences expecting them to write? And so I use a lot of Richard Burge's What Are the Gospels? And he's famous for that book because it's considered to be the definitive work that demonstrates the gospels are ancient biographies. And so we're understanding the Gospels now. They're not a work of fiction. They're not a work of romance or novels. They're not falling into those sort of ancient categories,

but categories of biography, which would be a subset of history. So they're there to give us some historically reliable information. Now, obviously, the way they did biographies back then versus today, there's differences and nuances. We might expect different things in a biography today that they wouldn't expect back then and vice versa. So, for example, like there's a moral teaching. Moral components are important to biographies back then, where today we're a little more descriptive, where we want to talk about the who, what, when, where, why, not the ought, what we ought to do. So that would be one important distinction as well, just to keep in mind, because we want to read them in

the same context that the original authors wrote them. So having that understanding, I think, is profoundly important, especially because Burrage was writing to argue that the Gospels weren't biographies. So he did his dissertation arguing against the theory, looked at the evidence, got convinced that they were biographies, and you're like, oh my goodness, that's powerful, because now we're looking at a very specific genre. And what's important is these are biographies

that were written within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses. They weren't written down centuries after the fact. So they were written within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses. They weren't written down centuries after the fact. So they were written within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses. They were expected to convey historical information. They weren't expected to just create situations entirely or anything like that. We understand they didn't have tape recorders back then. And that goes back into comments by Thucydides,

who says, you know what, he tries to present the speeches he heard as accurately as he could. So we've got to understand there's some flexibility in how they can present them, but that's to be expected when there's no, you know, video cameras, internet, anything like that. So I thought that was very helpful for me. That's just related to the gospels. And Birch makes one last point. I just want to put it out there because it it's it's been thought-provoking to me for for a while now but why is it that we have the gospel why why is there a gospel of Jesus why is there a biography of Jesus when there's no biographies of rabbis

and so his argument and he unpacks it in his book as well, but I just hint at it in mine, they're doing it because Jesus, he is the manifestation of the law. He is the one to whom we are to follow now. None of the rabbis were like that. So even in their selection of the gospels as a biography, they're making theological statements about Jesus. So I thought that too was another profound element about gospel genre. That's a real interesting point. When I studied martyrdom, for example, like the Maccabean martyrs, they were willing to suffer and die for their commitment to the law. Don't compromise the law. So they're

clear martyrs, but they're not eyewitnesses to any events behind the law. It's the value of the law itself. Christians come along and inherit the idea of suffering and dying for the faith, broadly speaking, but rather than the law, they're dying for the person of Jesus whom they are witnesses to. So that distinction was fresh when he said there's not biographies of the rabbis because they would say it's not about me.

I'm just teaching and pointing towards the law. And yet the apostles see Jesus and say, we're writing these four gospels because it is about the person of Jesus who fulfills and manifests the law. In fact, all the law was pointing towards him as an individual. So we wouldn't expect the same kinds of biographies, at least within Jewish circles, so to speak. Now, if you're right about the genre, and as I understand it, we're talking from skeptics to believers, left to the right, there's a sense, minimally, that the Gospels share the same kind of qualities as ancient biographies. They're not trying to write fiction. If that's true, how should that shape the way somebody reads the Gospels specifically?

Well, we're not reading them the same way we would read an ancient epic or novel or romance work. We're reading them as though they're conveying some sort of information. And as we're getting at here, this information is trustworthy. It's reliable. It's reliable because one, it's in that category, that genre, which expects, where the readers would expect that things are not just invented whole cloth, but rather they're giving reliable information. We see in Luke 1 where Luke even says, you know, I talked to those who are eyewitnesses. I went and investigated these things.

So we see here that there's some historical core that's going on, but if God's acting in history, that's kind of the takeaway, I guess, of those two points. If God's acting in history and he is the law in flesh so to speak then when they're saying two things at once so I think those are those are helpful elements for us both and this is why it's called trustworthy on a broad level because I didn't want to make the distinctions is this just strictly historically trustworthy like you were

saying or is it just strictly the trustworthy like you were saying or is it just strictly theologically trustworthy or you know however you want to nuance it there's a couple different threads in there and they all belong together so i like taking those uh connections and always trying to make sure they're they're connected a little bit or together even if uh we're focusing on one i don't want to neglect the other one there might be some folks going wait a minute the biography if the genre implies that stuff can't be invented whole cloth what about the case that lacona has made that certain things can be rearranged and told to advance a theological narrative we're not going to go there i just had a 90-minute conversation with mike and we unpacked those things link below that's for another time you can check that out all right let's move to your third one which

you call New Testament dating tell us about that yep so this is just you know it's helpful to know I was in a discussion this past week where some people were saying the the New Testament was written about 350 AD and I was just this cannot be right uh like am i miss my misunderstanding something here and so uh it's helpful to know when these uh sources were written and obviously you know there's thousands of scholars and thousands of different opinions but we have some we have some good general dates that are widely agreed upon uh by a number of scholars and they can vary and we could talk about those fluctuations.

I actually try to identify them. Again, I use Ehrman's dates in the book. His dates are considered the late dates, but they're all within the lifetime of eyewitnesses. And so, for example, we'll just stick with the Gospels. He puts Mark around 65 AD, and then he puts Matthew and Luke around 80-85 AD, and John at 95 AD so

those were those would all be well within a lifetime of the eyewitnesses conservatives like I use Craig Blomberg as well he may date things a little bit earlier and and that's fine and there could be good arguments there's skeptics as you know like Maurice Casey and James Crosley, they date Mark to the 40s AD. So it's not just a strictly evangelical, non-evangelical divide or anything like that. But if we just take those general dates, I think we're good. I note that a recent book that just came out by Jonathan Bernier, I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce his last name, but he argues that the entire New Testament was written perhaps before 70 AD. So that's a profound argument as well. Either way, we still get the New Testament within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses. That's the main

takeaway. Once you understand that, I think it helps not only with the genre topic that we were just discussing, but we're understanding these aren't immensely late developments or something like that. They're not like some biographies. For example, Alexander the Great's biographies are about three to 400 years later. I cite a Buddhist scholar who tells us that the Buddhist writings are 400 years after the fact and that they're only remembered by one arrogant monk those are all his words not mine not my interpretation um so that's those are like

dramatically different evidential uh arguments between those those different uh accounts there so i think balancing them out are helpful bernier and i try to close it on a provocative point from bernier's book because he says there's only two full-length books on the dating of the new testament and they both argue for very early dating and so if anyone disagrees with them well they got to put in some scholarship and put in some work and and put a book together so i thought that was a provocative way to kind of end that section but at the end of the day we've got the writings within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses it seems like apologists can do one of two things generally either try to argue for earlier dating as bernier does and that book is excellent by the way very

well reasoned and deserves a lot more attention and interaction like robinson's book did decades ago or you can just say i think strobel takes this in his interview in case for Christ just says, we'll just accept late dating. Still it's within the lifetime of eyewitnesses. And far earlier, like you say, this was, this was new to me.

You said in a, in a book called the heart of Buddha's teachings, and this is a well-known Buddhist scholar. I won't attempt to pronounce his name he says quote for 400 years during and after the buddha's lifetime his teachings were transmitted only orally it is said there was only one monk who had memorized the whole canon and that he was somewhat arrogant now i mean i I agree. Let's leave that comment aside. I don't know enough about it to even weigh into it. But you have one person who transmits all of it, according to this

scholar, 400 years later. We minimally have four gospels, not to mention the letters of Paul. And like you cite in another chapter, writers like Ignatius, of course, early second century, Clement of Rome, Polycarp in the mid to late second century, who also affirmed certain events around the life of Jesus. It's not even close when you compare Buddha with Jesus. Now, Buddha lived obviously earlier, centuries earlier, so that's a fair distinction. But in one sense, the details of life of Buddha don't matter it's the teachings of the Buddha if somebody else discovered those teachings then it would be fine whereas when it

comes to Jesus he is the Christ he is the fulfillment of the law and so having his words have far more supreme importance for Christians than it does for Buddhists. Hence, the reason to have so many different biographies so early. Good stuff in this chapter. Anything I missed, you also talk about Paul's writings and how the dating of Paul's writings. Maybe talk just briefly about that before we move on to number four of your evidences. Yeah, Paul's writings are helpful because we have an inside look into the church. They're not considered propaganda, they're in-house writings.

Maybe like, it's a terrible analogy, but like us having this conversation right now, we're having an in-house conversation. His letters aren't designed to try to persuade others of the belief of Christianity, they're already in the same camp. Part of my research was I found this profound comment, and I hadn't thought about it before, but it had to do

with the fact that we don't find letters or epistles in other world religions in their texts. We don't typically find those sorts of things. So it's interesting. We have Paul writing these in-house letters to the church in Corinth. They're doing a lot of of things. So it's interesting. We have Paul writing these in-house letters to like the church in Corinth who they're doing a lot of bad things. They're doing some good things too, but it's like you're seeing some correction reproof within the early church. And so sometimes that's encouraging for us today when we're like, Oh, what's going on?

Nothing new under the sun for us, I guess. But at the same time, from the historical point of view, we can understand, oh, look, this is how the church developed. There's a section in there. I don't think we're going to talk about today, but on creeds. Everyone familiar with tabernacles, you know, the timeline argument, those creeds, those give us insights into the early church and how they were unpacked, even in letters. So I think those are those are again helpful nuances to have because they're different they're a different genre they're in-house letters and they give the inner workings to believers there

are thoughts and workings to the life of the early church so New Testament creedal traditions is your number five we're gonna skip that one for sake of time number four is New Testament authorship and we're not gonna unpack this but I just want to draw two points make. I had not thought of it quite this way. You said that while the New Testament writings are technically anonymous, that doesn't mean they were functionally anonymous. That is so helpful. The mere fact that their name is not written into it, like Paul says, you know, I, Paul, etc., doesn't mean they were passed around anonymously. And you make the point that especially early church writers consistently, no matter

locale and time, attribute the Gospels to the same authors. There's no way that happens by chance if they weren't known relatively early by the authors that now bear their name. And there's no way that happens by chance if they weren't known relatively early by the authors that now bear their name and there's no debate about that early on so that's a short but excellent chapter i hope people read let's jump to number six this is what you call historical criteria maybe talk a little about why that's important and again how that advances the case for liability Yeah I should say Reliability not liability. Sorry keep going. Well, it's funny you say that because when I was getting my my master's and PhD I worked in insurance

So and I was an insurance adjuster and so when I share the criteria and how to go about it I'll show a picture of my car from when I was in a car accident. And as we started going through it, if you were a police officer coming up to the scene, and you had to find out who was at fault, what would be some of the things you'd want to do? And some of those things, well, I want to see if there are any witnesses. And we often go, do you want one witness, two witness, three witnesses, you know, and the more the better. And so historians call that multiple independent attestation. We want multiple sources. Many reports we have in the ancient world come from just one source.

So if we get two, that makes something very strong evidentially. Again, whether New Testament, whether Roman history, whatever. So that's just one element. Another is, you know, know I joke if my wife was in the car with me when I got in a car accident she wasn't for the record but if she was and the police came over and was my husband is such an idiot he wasn't looking at the road and he crashed into that guy that's embarrassing testimony she's offering up information that goes against her interests it's

gonna it's gonna raise her in insurance rates and all these other sorts of things. But that's embarrassing testimony. We find things like that in the New Testament. I mean, Peter's called Satan by Jesus. It's just that to me is like one of the toughest things. It's like, I could just imagine Peter, you couldn't have left that part out, you know, that part of the discussion. But we see those things in the New Testament. And scholars look for them, and we look for them today. So I like the criteria. They're very intuitive. Enemy attestation is another one where we might have a rival or a competitor, but they're saying something positive about us. So those are all different elements that we start taking into account.

There's a number of different criteria that scholars use, but I just try to highlight a couple to give people the idea. But I think most of us do them intuitively to even today without thinking about it. I want you to tell me if you agree with this or not. It seems like there's two ways we can use the criteria. And I make this distinction. I teach whole class on the resurrection, as you know, at Biola. And I'll talk about, you can argue kind of bottom up through these criterias. This could be minimal facts, but doesn't have to be. Other scholars do it that don't strictly adopt the minimal facts approach, where we know Jesus died by crucifixion.

We can reason that the tomb was empty, that the appearances are reliable, etc. by using these criteria. But we can also use them top down. Like if the New Testament or the Gospels or say just the Gospel of Mark that you cited is reliable, well, then we also get the resurrection kind of thrown in, so to speak. And one way of checking reliability is, let's take this writer Mark. Does he include embarrassing material? And if Mark is reporting the eyewitness account of Peter,

which Papias and I believe Irenaeus also tells in the second century, and Mark includes the claim, get behind me, Satan. Of course, that's to Peter. Then that makes you go, whoa, wait a minute. Mark seems to be willing to report embarrassing material that lends somewhat of like evidence in the box of reliability for Mark. So do you, it highlights impartiality. That's what, uh, you're, you're, I think you're getting out there and that's, that's something that is refreshing a lot in today's society to see someone be impartial. Um, and, uh, if you're familiar with Vishal Mangalwadi, he's got an excellent book called The Book That Made Your World, and he says part of the reason he started seriously considering Christianity

was he started reading through the Old Testament, and it was so unlike his history that he was reading, because everyone was perfect, and everyone was maximally excellent in his histories, and then he reads about the Jewish history, and he's like the priests were sinning, the kings were sinning, the people were sinning, like everybody was accountable. No one was spared if they were doing something wrong. And so similar to in these reports, we see that, hey, they're not sparing details. And you can have those bottom up and

top down approaches, they definitely apply to beyond just the minimal facts they start because again historians do this in other in other fields and they're not maybe using a minimal fact approach but they're gonna say you know it's attested to by ABCD and then we also have this testimony as well so they're able to bring those all together whether it's a car accident or whether it's you know gospel of whether it's, you know, the Gospel of Mark. It is an interesting point tied to the Old Testament, which, of course, is a separate conversation.

But I wrote a blog, I don't know, maybe I can't remember, four or five years ago about embarrassing details in the Old Testament, like Moses's failures, even as the greatest prophet, arguably, in the Old Testament. Abraham lying a couple of times. Of course, David's massive failure. Solomon's failure. These are people who wrote the Old Testament. That seems to show that at least a willingness to report truth and a concern for truth. Now you use the word impartial. Let me push back a little bit. I don't know if I'd say Mark is impartial because he's biased

and he starts off by saying, I'm writing this in a sense you'll believe that Jesus is the son of God. So he's partial. But amidst that partiality, he's committed to truth, even if it casts certain characters in a negative light. Would you agree with that casting? Yes. So I would make the distinction. I love that topic. The first chapter of my dissertation was all about how can we know objective truth if we have subjective biases and predispositions and things like that. And there's a really short book title called Objectivity is Not Neutrality. We can be objective without coming from a neutral perspective. And so that's important. I wasn't

planning on talking about this, but I reffed hockey for 15 years. And I played hockey at Liberty, and I reffed Liberty's team after I played for them. And so you go, oh, how could you do that? You know, wouldn't you be biased? No, I don't. Like, if he slashes him in the head, it's a penalty. I can be impartial about that, even though I played for them. And we even had situations where Liberty played Virginia Tech, and I knew the coaches on Virginia Tech because I'd also played with them junior hockey. So we can be objective, even if we have different biases. The question is whether those biases become prejudices or whether those biases are paramount. And Kevin Vanhooser has been such a nice guy. I mean, he has a great analogy. Our worldviews or our

outlooks should be like cities. They can be renovated. They're not a prison. So he contrasts them with people who think they're a prison versus cities that can be renovated. So we want to let evidence guide us. And to go back to your top-down, bottom-up approach, I do make the distinction. I kind of use the analogy of Google Earth. When we're looking at reliability, you got to understand where you're at. Where are we situated? Because if we're looking for Miami on the map, well, there's a bunch of different Miamis. Which Miami are we talking about? Just because it says I'm in Miami. If I'm looking for Miami, Florida, I got to make sure I'm in the right country. Then I got to make sure I'm in the right state. And then as you start going down, you can understand you're in the right place.

But if you just start on street level, it's going to be really hard for you to know, is this the actual city or is this just another big city? So I try to have those analogies. The criteria, they're like a street level view of reliability, whereas something like possible dating is like, okay, are we in the right country? So having those layers, we're zooming out, zooming in, I think those are helpful and trying to tie those back into understanding where we're at as far as what level are we talking about here and what angles are we assessing trustworthy, reliability questions from. Now, you may be a better man than me, but I played basketball at Biola and I could never ref a Biola-Basel game. I would admittedly be so biased, especially if it's one of our rivals. And if I wasn't, my team and coach would never forgive me, but we will let that slide. JP Moreland and Bill Craig make a distinction in

their book, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, between psychological objectivity and rational objectivity. You might have a psychological commitment towards something, but it doesn't mean you can't be rationally objective if you look at the facts and weigh it carefully where it goes. I think that's a helpful distinction to keep in mind. All right. Fair enough on a historical criteria. That's a great chapter, by the way, about multiple attestation, criteria of embarrassment. This is, to me, one of the most helpful chapters for people who want to understand reliability to maybe skip to if they want to jump around.

But nonetheless, your next one, I think in part because of Lydia McGrew's book, has been a part of discussion more recently, even though as far as I'm aware, it goes back to the 1800s, if not earlier, that people talked about what are called undesigned coincidences. Now I had Lydianne, we did an entire show on this, but just remind us what are undesigned coincidences and maybe give us just one example that you find interesting or instructive or helpful in the new test. Yeah. And I think these are good. They're another zoomed in level, street level type element of reliability. Her overlap in details where if they were inventing it, it doesn't make sense that they would align in the way that they do because of the things that they corroborate.

I think it's best to give an example to help articulate it. The short answer is they're like two different puzzle pieces that didn't know they were part of a puzzle. Yet when you put them together, they line up very well, almost as if they're describing the same event from different perspectives. So one example is from John 6, 5 and 7, the feeding of the 5,000. And Jesus asks Philip, hey, where do we get some food around here? That's the Ben Shaw paraphrase.

But so, you know, you might go, why is he asking Philip? where do we get some food around here? That's the Ben Shaw paraphrase. But so, you know, you might go, why is he asking Philip? And in John 1, we learn that Philip's from Bethsaida. And so you're like, okay. So John gives us these details that he's asked where to get food and that he's from Bethsaida. But Luke is the one that tells us that this feeding the 5,000 occurs in Bethsaida so now all of a sudden you're like oh it makes sense you're going to ask the local guy where's the food so I think that's a good example because there's no way they're corroborating just to explain why Philip is being mentioned here plus if you're inventing something why not use someone like Peter to go ask a bigger disciple so I think that's a good analogy.

There's a number of them within the New Testament as far as more undesigned coincidences like that. But there's also examples from outside the New Testament as well. So where the New Testament writers may line up with non-New Testament authors in an event. And so an example of that would be in Acts 19, there's a riot that's starting to break out in Ephesus, and Luke records that there are pro-councils. Someone says there's pro-councils. Now the issue is he says pro-councils plural, and it was widely known back then that there's just one

procouncil there's not a plurality of procouncils just one so did luke just get this wrong what's he talking about but tacitus reports that around the same time uh that the procouncil i think it's selenus is assassinated and so his uhouncil, I believe, would have about three managers below him helping him. And so they would have been the ones in charge. So they would have been acting pro-councils at the time. I wouldn't imagine Luke wants to take the time to unpack all that, rather because that's not the point of what he's describing in Acts. But now that brings light to, why is he saying procouncils?

And so we see those two texts kind of come together there and explain one another. Lacona uses the phrase illumination as a criterion. I think that's another way maybe to consider the undesigned coincidences. They illuminate the scene better. What's interesting about undesigned coincidences is they're both internal if you take the gospels alone but they're also external like in the case of josephus so as as you know i mentioned earlier i did my doctoral work on the death of the apostles and this occurred to me with the help of a scholar friend of mine in my 10-year update, which I just finished, is in Acts 12.2,

it reports that Herod calls for the death of James, the son of Zebedee. And then there's a little line in there that refers to to please the Jews. Well, that certainly doesn't refer to Herod the Great, right, who died decades earlier. He was, before Hitler, maybe the greatest foe of the Jews. But the Herod at the time, this is probably, I don't know, maybe 42, 43 or so AD, Josephus independently tells us he acted in a way with the desire to please the Jews. So you see this lineup between Acts 12-2, this incidental line dropped in there that's not really necessary, but maybe just explains why Herod did it, confirmed when you look externally in Josephus, and that's the kind of thing that would not be invented to tell that story so it kind of confirms the account

and so i think your example the 5000 is fascinating because that's the only story that matthew mark luke and john all tell that story so philip's from bethesda bethesda we're told in john 1 but it's luke who tells us specifically some of the details that help explain, you know, the feeding itself, why he at that he's from Bethsaida. And then in John, that's why he asks him, where's the food? Like, these are incredible pieces that put together that they're not at minimally kind of, what would you say, just working together to secretly plot this out. Now, do you think this is positive evidence or do you think this is just a sign that this is

what we would expect if they were independent accounts? I think it's a little bit of both. It's positive evidence for that specific account. That's that street level. And then it's also, to use the line from F.F. Bruce's book. It shows a habit of accuracy, just as we know people who are habitually dependable and reliable. And we know people who are habitually unreliable and not dependable. We see here these are examples, among many others, of why they are, in fact, reliable. They're showing a habit of it it and so when we start to get to areas where we can't maybe we can't we don't have all these different levels and layers of

corroboration but we can trust it because when we do have those layers and levels we we see it's trustworthy that's a good way to put it so the story of the 5000 you know undesigned coincidences helps affirm that that story took place not to mention we have four witnesses of it, depending if we consider Matthew, Mark, and Luke independent witnesses in that whole question, but also brings reliability to the authors themselves because they seem to be getting these details right, gives confidence when we cannot check other such details in other areas. Good stuff. That's helpful go ahead just to add a little point to it what would they gain from say Luke and John did corroborate you know is the thing that they're like hey we need to corroborate on something the location of the feeding of the 5000 do you think that's like the big thing they're trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes about like that that's what I think is interesting about a lot of these undesigned coincidences they're in these

secondary and tertiary aspects of the story uh that maybe that we would expect some of the writers to assume because they're in it every day you know they lived it and um whereas someone else they're they're just they they're approaching it from different perspectives so different parts are going to be important to them. That's a really helpful way to put it. All right, let's jump to your number eight. It's our one, two, three, four, five. It's our sixth of the day.

Archaeology. Now, again, this could be a huge class or multi-volume book in itself, even just on the Gospels. But maybe give one or two examples and how you think this advances reliability. Yeah, so I just tried to think about, you know, I wasn't going to have any pictures, so I tried to think and stick to the best examples where, you know, pictures aren't needed. But I think Titus Kennedy just had a book come out on archaeological discoveries. So yeah, huge books on the subject, Kennedy just had a book come out on archaeological discoveries so yeah huge books on the subject and we're trying to just highlight some of those findings in

ten pages or so I always like the temple warning just because I think it's refreshing for today's society because the amount of individual responsibility in the temple warning is strong and so they discovered this inscription that would go along the border of the temple and I'm going to paraphrase it but it goes you know stay on the outside of the barrier and then this is the part that is interesting stay on the outside of the barrier but those who enter will have only themselves to blame for their ensuing death so there's a clear partition where they're not

supposed to enter the temple area. But if they do, they're going to be killed and their only blame is themselves because the warnings are there. They're very clear. We see references to that in the New Testament. I believe it's in Acts. I can't recall the verse. I believe Paul in Galatians talks alludes to it as well as far as the the Wallace separation being torn down. So that's kind of that's kind of an interesting one a famous one in the in Resurrection research is the yoho hanan crucifixion victim where they find the nail in his heel bone and the nail appears to have hit a piece of knot in the wood and it creates like a fish hook at the end.

So when they tried to take it out, they couldn't do it. And we find that this was a crucifixion victim who was crucified around the 30s AD. He was buried. So we're starting to see all sorts of corroboration. Or as I believe it's Dr. Evans says, verisimilitude, verisimilitudeitude we're seeing that with the New Testament and so we see that crucifixion victims could get buried that nails were used and

those are all things are consistent with what we find in the New Testament so archaeology has some different limitations with it because it's difficult to identify specific events so like we have Caiaphas' tomb, for example, it's ornate, but it can't confirm anything he said necessarily. So some limitations there. But another one that's interesting is the discovery of the five porticos mentioned in John 5. And that's in Bethesda. In John 5 it mentions these five porticoes by the sheep gate in the pool there.

And scholars would doubt it, saying, oh, we haven't found it, or whatever the case was, but then they found it. And so now we're like, okay, this is a pretty big discovery. And so that's another, again, it highlights that they're reporting things. They're not making up locations or places, but real events, real places. So I think that all lends light to it. And then at the very end, I only mentioned him, but he's worth noting. Sir William Ramsey, he was a skeptic from the Tubigin School, which is a very skeptical school he went did all these in archaeological searches

and found that the New Testament was incredibly reliable as far as archaeological discoveries went and so he like totally reversed his views so the archaeological discoveries have been fascinating and we don't see them contradicting the New Testament I think archaeology is one great piece of a larger cumulative case that you're making here. It's important for people to see that you're saying here's the textual tradition. Here's non-Christian authors. Here is embarrassing detail and criteria. Here's archaeology.

Very similar to the kind of case that my dad and i make in evidence and often when i when i speak but this point about the the nails is really helpful you showed this is the yeho hanan discovered in 1968 and for years skeptics would say the idea that people are crucified with nails is not reliable it's not trustworthy it's, it's added later. There is ancient literature you cite, and of course this is from Martin Hegel's book on crucifixion, that attests to the use of nails during crucifixion. But Yehohanan is a physical discovery of a crucified victim in the area of Jerusalem, I believe, late 20s. So about as close locale and time as you can get to the person of jesus but what's helpful is you said this find is significant because it validates what other literary texts indicate

that crucified victims could receive a proper burial and would ultimately be placed into an ossuary so we often hear and dominant cross and others have said the body of jesus is probably thrown into a shallow pit or a grave with other bodies, would not have been given an honorable burial. This shows not only that victims were crucified with nails, but also shows you could be crucified with nails, the highest form of dishonor, and that place and that time still receive an honorable burial. Now that doesn't show that the gospel story is true, but it shows that the archaeology doesn't contradict it and certainly lines up with it.

Is that how you see it too? Yeah, exactly. I think there's a lot there with testimony. And scholars seem to be very skeptical of New Testament testimony. But when we find these different evidences for these other circumstances that are very consistent with the New Testament and they're corroborated, it's like, well, I think these guys know. They're in a position and a place to know. There's a classicist, Donald Kagan,

I believe is his name. I forget which Ivy League he he was at but he was making the case uh similarly um when it came to some greek coins and the texts indicated hey they use these coins here for trade and some archaeological um arguments against him were like we haven't found them he's like well i'm trusting that these guys know that's why they're writing about it otherwise their audience would be thoroughly confused sure and then sure enough they found some of those coins so uh yeah I think it's just a helpful corroboration of of the settings all right let's look at your number seven you call non-christian sources and of course there's dozens of sources, depending on how far you take

this moving forward. But maybe tell us what you think this contributes to reliability. Yeah, yeah. And like you mentioned earlier, there's entire dissertations on this subject. There's entire books on this subject. So we're just trying to introduce readers to some key non-Christian authors who write on Jesusesus but one of the takeaways i want to make sure that that i highlighted was um so josephus and tacitus both refer to jesus's death jesus is dying in jerusalem it would be incredibly different if they both said that jesus died in athens we'd have a totally different story on our hands. And we would be wondering, are they talking about the same Jesus? What's going on here? But the fact that they

corroborate what we find in the New Testament is just another layer, again, of attestation as to what the New Testament is claiming. It was well known. They weren't making something up about battles in Egypt or anywhere else, but it's consistent with the New Testament finding. So I think that's an important element to highlight there. And then I also wanted to show too what it was like for earliest believers, because we introduced Pliny, this letter from Pliny the Elder, or the Younger, talking about what to do with Christians who are being persecuted, because he didn't know what to do. And so he asks Trajan, hey, what do I do with these guys?

I'm just taking them out, basically. I'm trying to do a little questioning, trying to see what I can do. And then we include Trajan's response because it's helpful for us to realize, like, this is a historic faith that we have that goes back. And so just seeing those things and understanding there were Christians right out of the gate who had challenges and issues, I think it's just another helpful element to consider. But the primary one of that chapter is showing the corroboration, that they're consistent with what the New Testament does.

So I thought this was one of the things in your book you do multiple times that I thought was helpful. So you said at the end of this chapter on non-Christian sources, and you kind of referenced this. You said, consider, for example, what if instead of saying that Jesus' death occurred in Judea, Tassius reported that Jesus died in Greece? Or perhaps rather than Jesus being condemned as a criminal, what if Josephus reported that Jesus died during a battle in Galilee? I've never really thought about that, because there's a lot of things that is not recorded. We wish was recorded. We wish we had

more sources. And you talk about why we shouldn't expect to have more sources. But we don't often say, well, what if Josephus reported something that totally contradicts? Because there's nothing in Josephus that contradicts. Now there's the debate about whether in antiquities of the jews he really refers to jesus being the messiah or not but that's that's a separate issue we don't know if that was interpolated or not probably was but to think about what if they did reference jesus completely different from the new testament we'd have a mild scandal on our hands but there's nothing like that until you're so far removed that we know these kind of sources are not reliable. So that was a helpful way. I've got to give you kudos for that. One other thing in your chapter, again, each one of your chapters, there's like at least one or two things was like,

I've studied this, but that's helpful. And I've read Bart Ehrman's book on this for some reason, just forgot it. He said, you know, the idea that we can't use Christian sources to refer to the events of Christ, presumably because they're biased. He said, skeptic Bart Ehrman argues that no historian would reject early accounts from the Revolutionary War just because their authors were Americans. That's totally true and shows a double standard when it comes to the New Testament writers. Yeah, and I think I put a note in there too, just trying to be kind of silly, but that's the whole point of all the chapters prior to that chapter on non-Christian sources, because we've just gone over 10 or 11 different reasons why the New Testament is reliable historically. So we don't have to go and look outside of the New

Testament the New Testament is a good source as it stands the same way we want to know what was George Washington thinking about you know these different battles and so his comments great I like a Habermas says this a lot of times you know you better use the New Testament because the skeptics are going to and so it's a good reminder like hey we don't just punt to non-Christian sources. We want to use the non-Christian sources, but we also don't want to act like the New Testament sources are, you know, not good at all. Clearly, they're very well evidenced. All right, so the last one, which makes sense that you put it last, and this raises a million questions we can't get to. But your 12th reason, I guess it's the last one we'll discuss. There's one more you put at the end we won't go into unreliable, and so on. Effect or impact does not confer trustworthiness,

but is consistent with it. So talk about what you mean by that and how you think it advances your larger case. Right. Yeah. Thank you for quoting that because that's an important distinction there. You can have false books that make huge impacts. We can spend time talking about those or just even using our imaginations. You can have a perfectly inerrant book that makes no impact as well. If you have a perfect math book, for example, it's inerrant, right? It's got all the formulations and they're all perfectly demonstrated. But again, that may not be impact. What we have with the New Testament is certain claims that there should be impact within the world. These things should have an impact in the daily lives of individuals, but also in communities.

Genesis, I know this is the Old Testament, but Genesis says, you know, Abraham is going to be a blessing to the nations. We think the same thing with Christianity. So what do we mean by that? And I talk about direct and indirect evidence. And so the direct evidence is going to be in the lives of an individual believer where they recognize these truths and commit themselves to Jesus, and they start seeing this radical change. And I use guys like Peter Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens' brother. He tells a very powerful story himself. And I use Vishal Mangawati as someone else in there as well. Now, this doesn't mean, again, that the New Testament is therefore true. That's not the argument. But if what the New Testament says is true, we would expect to find these things. And that's the point. If we didn't have these things

and the New Testament was true, that would be strange. That's kind of the takeaway from that chapter. But I also want to highlight indirect evidence. And that's where even skeptics are acknowledging, wow, yeah jesus made a difference in his life i i'm seeing a transformation in his life i'm not a i'm not a believer but i'm recognizing something's going on there we've got multiple examples justin bradley has that book that just came out the resurgence of god or resurgence of belief in god stephen meyer has uh the return of the god hypothesis which which I think is pretty interesting. But even Dawkins is saying he's a cultural Christian. You got guys like Douglas Murray, who I think calls

himself an atheist Christian, Tom Holland. And then we're seeing a number of other people just seeing the differences of Christianity and the impact it is making in the world. So I think the point of that, too, is to have a holistic component. It's not just the head. And we don't just, whether it's New Testament or whether it's the French Revolution, we don't just study with our head. But we have those elements that we mentioned earlier, where we have these initial thoughts and insights, some initial biases. And so these are the sorts of things that can create renovation within our city.

And so that's why I thought this chapter was interesting and an important one to consider, especially, again, if we didn't have it, then it would be strange within the New Testament for it to be true. I actually think of all your chapters this chapter that we consider our last number eight is the one that could have the most scholarship and dissertations behind it like the least developed and i mean by that is maybe i don't know maybe three weeks ago i interviewed henry cloud just kind of world-renowned psychologist and he wrote an evangelistic book and the last chapter is he has i think if i remember cook about two dozen kind of criteria from modern psychology about what it means just to be a healthy person who's flourishing and he says all of these are

modeled or taught in the new testament and to him as a psychologist, he said, he used these terms, he goes, this proves the Bible is true to me. And I told him, I was like, I know this is not your lane, but I love that last chapter to be an entire book or an entire study. That helps, as you say, part of this larger cumulative case that what we discover about how you flourish relationally, you flourish in terms of a good self-image, you flourish in terms of not being anxious, these principles are taught and modeled in the scriptures, which is the way you frame it, what we would expect if they were true.

And even comparing and contrasting those with other faiths would be a very, very interesting study to look at. Now, last question. So these are your 13 arguments for the reliability in the New Testament. What do you consider the biggest objection to the reliability? Like if you had to pick one, there's obviously more than one, but what do you think is the biggest challenge to reliability? Is it a particular one in any of these chapters or is there a whole nother area? Maybe it's moral arguments, maybe it's contradictions. I'm not trying to feed stuff to you that's not there, but I'm curious what you would think would be the biggest objection that you hear or you encounter against reliability? viability? It's a good question. I think it just varies individual to individual. I think some

people think the New Testament was written in 350 AD, like we mentioned earlier. I think a lot of people assume maybe that Constantine invented Christianity, or that we don't know what the Bible really said, or miracles may be a problem for others. So I think it just kind of depends on the individual. It's tough for me to just pick one individual one. And that's, I don't know, that may be a little my jujitsu coming out there, where I don't want to pick a particular one. It just depends on the individual we're going against with there. But, yeah, I think that's kind of the takeaway. Plus, my mind's still stuck on your interview with that psychologist because I had this quote from Albert Ellis in my head.

And just to go back on that for a second because it's very profound. Albert Ellis is the founder of what's often known as rational emotive behavioral therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy, which has influenced so many people today. Guys like Jonathan Haidt and his book on the coddling of the American mind, they kind of talk about that. But Ellis, he despised Christianity, and he thought it was very legalistic. But he, in the 90s, towards the end of his,istic but he in the 90s towards the end of his uh well just in the 90s he uh he made the comment that the New Testament or the Christianity has done more

for the wealth uh the welfare of the minds of individuals than like all other types of counseling and psychological methods and for someone like him to say that it was such a profound thing. So my mind got hooked on that. But when it does come to the objections, it typically is just a case by case. I just try to meet the person where they're at. I know there's a lot of people, maybe it's a good segue for the 13th chapter. 13th chapter is, hey, say I'm wrong on those first 12. We have the minimal facts argument. So, you know, if I'm totally off on all those 12, but we have the minimal facts argument. So, you know, if I'm totally off on all those 12, hey, the 13th is still strong. And I allude to different books because I know people are probably wondering, well, you don't deal with objections. That's not what the book's about in the sense of like, it's not a contradiction book. There's tons of contradiction books that

engage those subjects. You mentioned Lacona. And I mentioned Lacona's book. I mentioned Howe and Geisler's book. There's big books that address all those things. So there's a time and place for that. But the goal was to keep my book about 150 pages max. I didn't want it to be a huge thing. I want it to be something that everyday believers could pick up and get. So they don't have to, you know, we need disciples in all disciplines. So how do we, how do we help equip those guys who may not go to seminary, uh, but they want to be faithful at their church, faithful at their job, be more equipped, uh, especially because people out in the world are going to speak to more non-believers than most pastors do. So we want to, we want to help do that as part of the goal here.

Well, you met your goal. It's 140 pages and none of the chapters felt rushed or felt like you skimmed over things i think one of my favorite things about your book is it's obvious to me if i didn't know you and read it that you are a phd and a scholar because you nuance things very carefully which i appreciate as apologists we believe this and want to convince people that christianity is true now you have an evangelist heart, but you nuance things very carefully and don't overstate your case, which I think is hard to do in 140 pages. So maybe the biggest objection

is also kind of a cumulative objection. Well, I have a problem with miracles. I've heard about contradictions. I'm not sure if the gospels were really, you know, maybe they're anonymous. And so as a whole, this would be a great place to start, I think, for a believer and for a skeptic who wants an introduction to the kinds of arguments being put forward for the reliability of the New Testament. So I'll tell you this, Ben, your book, Trustworthy, that's probably the name you need to look for,

Trustworthy by Ben Shaw, will be at the top of the list of books I'll be recommending for folks for a substantive, yet understandable and beginning book on the reliability of scriptures. Well done. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks so much. I appreciate it very much. Thank you. Yeah. Don't forget to click subscribe. We've got some other shows coming up on reliability of scriptures. We're going to go back to near death experiences. Again, we've got some people with former Muslims coming on a whole host. In fact, have a survivor from 20 years ago, the tsunami that killed a quarter million people, a survivor. And it was part of surviving that actually drew her to faith. So make sure you hit subscribe. You won't want to miss any of these interviews. And if you want to study apologetics, check out Liberty. We are all in this together, Ben. You guys have a wonderful program. We got a partner as a whole.

Or check out and come join and study with me at Biola. We have information below. We have a certificate program. We'd love to train you or also equip you in apologetics to go out and make a difference in the world. Ben, we'll do it again. Keep up the good work.