Theology in the Raw - 712: #712 - Can we trust the Bible? A conversation with Dr. Peter Williams

Episode Date: December 10, 2018

On episode #712 of Theology in the Raw Preston has a conversation with Dr. Peter Williams. Dr. Peter Williams is the Principal of Tyndale House Cambridge and a lecturer on Hebrew language at the University of Cambridge. He earned his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge studying ancient languages related to the Bible. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I have on the show today, Dr. Peter Williams. I don't know if you know the name Peter Williams, but Peter Williams and I go pretty far back. He was a professor at Aberdeen University when I was doing a PhD. He had recently got done with his own PhD at Cambridge University. I believe he was teaching for a couple of years somewhere else, and then he got hired on the Aberdeen University, I think a year before I got there. And Pete and I, and not only was he one of my professors there, but he was also a fellow churchman. We went to church together. We kind of served in ministry together there and we became family friends. We hung out as families. And I kid you not, Peter Williams is one of the smartest, most brilliant people I have ever spent time with.

And I've hung out with a lot of really smart people and he just is off the chart. This guy is so incredibly brilliant. And he wrote a book called Can We Trust the Gospels? Which is like a popular level treatment of that question. Are the gospels reliable? This book just came out and I read it right when it came out and it is so good. And he is so good and winsome and wise and shrewd in many ways and knowledgeable when it comes to understanding and defending and teaching the truthfulness of Christianity and the Bible. So I wanted to have Pete on the show just to talk about some of the nitty gritty kind of scholarly questions that surround the

veracity of scripture. So you're really going to enjoy this episode with Peter Williams. If you are a new listener to the show or even an old listener to the show and you want to support the show, if you've been blessed by the show, if you've been helped, encouraging your faith, then please do consider supporting the show through patreon.com. That's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw, patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. You can support the show for as little as five bucks a month for as much as $100 a month. There's a few people I got supporting the show at $100 a month. Got a whole bunch at $5 a month and would really appreciate your support to the show.

So again, that's patreon.com forward slash theallgeneral. Okay, without further ado, let's get to know Dr. Reverend Peter Williams. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology of the Raw. I am here with my friend from the past, Dr. Peter Williams. And thank you so much for being on the show, Peter. And I have to tell, for my audience that isn't watching this, but is simply listening to it, I'm staring at Peter and behind him, I kid you not, is the capital of the United States. He is apparently right in DC, right in the heart of DC. So thanks for waving the flag. Yeah, I was going to make a joke that he's wearing an American flag t-shirt or something. He is not. He is dressed very well. But thanks so

much for being on the show, Peter. Great to be with you. So I wanted to dive into the topic related to this book that you just came out with called Can We Trust the Gospels? And your publisher was kind enough to send me a free copy. And usually when I get a free copy of a book from a publisher, I kind of set it somewhere. And even if I want to get to it, I'm like, I just can't get to it. But this one, first of all, is a short book. It's less than 150 pages. And it just seems so interesting. And I know that when you address a topic, it's going to be super compelling and thorough. So I picked it up and I could not put it down. So yeah, it's super, super helpful. But why don't you start by giving us just an overview of why you wanted to write this book and maybe

give us some key arguments, some things that you address in the book to give the reader maybe a taste of what they're in for. Well, this is a book i started thinking about writing 22 years ago when i first began speaking on this topic and it seemed to me there was a niche for a short book laying out the case for trusting the gospels which could be handed out to people who are simply inquiring or not sure the foundations of the faith or whatever it is and it has to be sure and what i've seen is there are some good books around like craig blomberg's book on the reliability of the gospels but it's too long to be that sort of giveaway book and also it goes into some quite in-house discussions about theology um and about the new testament scholarship itself, which a lay person isn't necessarily going to be interested in.

They're wanting to know in their terms and their understanding, is there ground to trust the gospels? So that's where I'm trying to make sure that everything I say, I can document in such a way that if people want to chase down the footnotes, they're there so that they can see them. The other thing is I wanted to reset the way we argue to focus this title. Can we trust the gospels? It's very deliberately chosen because I want to argue that we all trust things every day.

And it's not that we're saying that everything to do with Christianity is on some super amazingly high evidential level, actually what we're saying is that there is good grounds to believe it and trust it, like all sorts of things that we're already trusting. And I think it's quite important to get that distinction right. And trust it in a sense, not that you have to believe it or that this is true, but that the gospel, the presentation of this person named Jesus of Nazareth in the gospels is a reliable historical representation of what he did and said. Is that? Sure. So I'm saying trust in a historical sense, trust in terms of what Jesus said, trust your life with, but i also want us to be using the right sort of categories of evidence

um so okay often what people are trying to do is thinking that they need to prove something uh the way a historian might uh prove something but let's remember history departments aren't about establishing truth they're about applying a very rigorous method to reconstruct the past. But you wouldn't want to apply the historian's method, for instance, to a rape case. In fact, it'd be positively cruel to do so. It simply wouldn't be appropriate.

And that's where we've got to distinguish between these sorts of methods and what we base our lives on. Likewise, people sometimes think there should be some mathematical proof for faith. But you know, there's no mathematical proof that my mother loves me. But I think it's manifest that she does. And it's important that she does. So I think that's where we've just got to make sure that people are expecting the right thing. And I'm saying we base our lives on trusting other people. Otherwise, you curl up and die on your own because you wouldn't accept food from anyone, buy food, anything like that.

We're fundamentally social creatures. And so God presents us with this socially based evidence. And so God presents us with this socially based evidence. We are equipped to assess whether it's trustworthy and the gospels do really well on that basis. What are some of the challenges? Let's dive into the material. And what are some big common pushbacks that people raise when they want to kind of discredit the truthfulness of the gospels? What are some of the big things that, you know, the name that always comes to mind is, you know, Bart Ehrman, or I'm sure there's others out there that like to say, well, what about this? What about that? This clearly shows that we can't

trust the reliability of the Gospels. What are some of those things and how do you respond? Well, I think we've really got to distinguish two groups. And one is this sort of popular consciousness group where there's almost no information background. And so you can basically say what you like, you know, you can say, oh, it's not evidenced, you know, it all was made up lots later, but they're not actually dealing with any of the evidence and information. So they're not really accountable to that. Then you have the skeptical scholars. The skeptical scholars do deal with the information. But one of the things that skeptical scholars do is they actually concede a huge amount of ground without tending to say it.

So even quite skeptical scholars of the gospels would concede all sorts of ground that the popular skeptics of the gospels wouldn't. For instance, they would assume that the gospel writers must have some information to the geography of Jerusalem, the layout. They get the Mount of Olives right, Bethany, these sort of things. They just, yeah, they take it for granted that that's the case. Actually, in the popular consciousness, that hasn't been connected up, that really the gospel writers do know the layout and the geography of the land. know uh the layout and the geography of the land um again skeptical writers assume that gospel writers have got quite a bit of knowledge of judaism and of the old testament um skeptics would not necessarily think that they had that much cultural knowledge uh you know popular skeptics

so one of the things i'm doing in my book is simply bringing to popular consciousness all sorts of things that everyone agrees about the gospel writers that they've got this much information. Yeah, I think it's second or third chapter. Oh, what is it? Third chapter is probably, did they know their stuff? Yeah. Yeah, did the gospel writers know their stuff? To me, that chapter where you show just from several different angles how the gospel writers were so steeped in the first century context. They were getting geography right, culture right. They were getting all these things correct so that already the historical weight of evidence would at least lean toward them getting Jesus and his words correct. And you even compare that with second century writers that weren't in the same context, and they didn't talk about hardly any geographical stuff

or show awareness of Jewish culture. Yeah, can you maybe dive in a little deeper? Yeah, so I mean, all four gospel writers do this. They all have information which no other gospel has, and in fact, no other written geographical source we know of has um so whether you're looking at ancient writings like strabo or um uh josephus none of them have um all of the things you have in the gospels and they know where the land goes up and down they know where the water is they know where people have to pay tax. They know, you know, all these sorts of things, traveling times.

And that's they know the language. They know people's names, the right sort of types of names. These are all quite impressive things because of the level of specificity you have in the Gospels. Now, again, someone could take a skeptical approach, but many people who take an initially skeptic approach simply haven't read the Gospels. I mean, I would say, you know, just read them, see just how Jewish these things are. And of course, the Judaism fits far better on early on because we know that Christianity rapidly becomes more Gentile in its flavor. Christianity rapidly becomes more Gentile in its flavor. So the fact that we have these very Jewish gospels, that they really know the geography of the land, that they know the types of names people had, that all fits well. I mean, it fits easily if you say the gospels are written early. And it's hard to explain it otherwise. Yeah, yeah. Now, you do have some extra biblical sources like Josephus and, oh, who's the other one?

Is it Pliny or? Yeah. No. Pliny the Elder. There are other sources you could get information from, but you wouldn't get the same amount. Now, with Josephus, though, and you addressed this. I'm just throwing you a softball here. Now with Josephus, okay, with Josephus though, and you addressed this, I'm just throwing you a softball here. With Josephus, the thoughtful person's going to know that, well, wait a minute, the manuscripts of Josephus were copied and passed down by Christians. So obviously Christians sort mentioned one of the two references from Josephus to Jesus.

And I mentioned the one which is less often disputed. And I think you can make a defense that both lots of Josephus texts were well handed down by Christians. But I think it's important also to recognize that you know christian scribes rescued the classical civilization um you know the literature of the classical civilization has been handed down by christian scribes um the greeks and romans didn't hand down the cultures that preceded them you know um this is a remarkable thing and uh we know basically that they record all sorts of things about all sorts of roman gods without changing them so i think the thought that later scribes change decks um needs to be challenged um there's also there's a question

of their linguistic competence to change things, because when you're writing, copying a manuscript hundreds of years later, can you really write the language competently of several hundred years earlier? There's also the question of motivation. People in the medieval period are not trying to prove that Jesus existed against skeptics who said he didn't. You know, so again, why are they why would they be putting in references to Jesus like this? And if they were putting in references to Jesus, wouldn't they want to put in more reverential references to Jesus? So I'd say I would expect something much more obviously anachronistic if that was the case. obviously anachronistic, if that was the case. You know,

I mean, look at the way Pharaoh talks in the Quran, I think would be a far better example of how I say a later writing might imagine someone from a much earlier period speaking. So it's kind of anachronistic and it's a bit anachronistic to say

that like, oh, they were a bunch of medieval apologists trying to, you know, inflate this account to prove who Jesus was. That's a very kind of modern atheistic, neo-atheistic agenda. But that's not what the medieval scribes were after. Likewise, you know, with Tacitus, who, you know, is an important witness to early Christianity, the manuscripts of tastas nearly got entirely lost you know because if i can say there was that little interest in the middle ages in tastas so the thought that people have preserved this because uh they wanted to help apologists in the 21st century it just doesn't make any sense um and even um when tastas records things

he records that in in rome there was a group that the crowd called christians who were named after christus christ and that's really interesting because again no christian who would be writing that text would write the crowd calls them christians the the christian would generally write christians they'd write their name properly you So again, this is exactly what we'd expect when we got an independent, non-Christian source talking about Christianity, it really fits. Okay. So I went ahead, I'm going to try to play, I'm going to try to stump the scholar here. I went online and typed in contradictions in the New Testament. Now, most of the sites that pop up were kind of Christian apologetic sites,

but the second website that popped up was by, I think, an atheist trying to show that Christianity is untrue. So I was just kind of skimming through these. Would love to hear your thoughts on it. The first thing he raises is the genealogies in Matthew and Luke clearly contradict themselves. You have a genealogy for Joseph in the book of Matthew, and then another genealogy in Luke.

What does he say? He says, oh, Christians try to say that's a genealogy of Mary, not Joseph, but that doesn't work. He explicitly says that it's Joseph's genealogy in Luke 3, 23. So yeah, I could read more, but I know you're familiar with this. What do you say about the two contradictions? I think one of the very first things we've got to do is we've got to set our evidential gauge right. Because what I think tends to happen is a skeptic asks a question like this, and the assumption is, unless the Christian can come up with a really good answer, then the case for skepticism stands.

And I don't want to say I don't think that holds at all, because we've got cases where all sorts of writers write things that it's difficult to fit together with other things that doesn't lead us to skepticism. So I'd want to try and get some sense of where someone's going with this. I mean, how would you expect there to be about nine hours of text, which is what the gospels is where you've got, you know, four accounts of similar things and for

then not to be um tensions and uh differences often we can find that such things when you go deeper in uh can be reconciled but again how how plausible does a reconciliation have to be? Does it have to be 2%, 3% plausible or what? Before you start saying the entire view that the gospels are trustworthy needs to be questioned. And for me, it's not obvious to me that the burden of proof lies on me at all. I don't want to say, well, surely if you as a skeptic are wanting to say that this text contradicts this text then you have to show me that there is no possible way that

they can be reconciled the burden of proof is simply on you i'm not i'm not even going to begin um to do uh your work for you you've got to show me that um uh and and so i i do i do want to start with that um because i think that's a perfectly normal way of working things uh now are there ways that the things can be fitted together yeah sure there are multiple ways my problem is i don't know which way and i don't think that ways that they fit together have to be more than 50% probable before they can be brought in. So there are all sorts of things in life that happen that have lower than 50% probability. So I'm fine with that. I mean, if I were constantly having to appeal to low probabilities on everything, at every corner as I read the gospels,

then I should be really worried. But I don't have to do that. So I think I've got lots of high probability things on my side. They may think they've got high probability things on their side. And I want to say, well, who's got more? You know, and let's look at it like that. So, I mean, I'm happy who's got more you know um and let's look at it like that so i mean i'm happy to go into you know the way um eusebius will quote you know julius africanus on these

genealogies and and so on and we we can go into that and you know there's some basis i could maybe get onto that in a moment but i want to sort of get the gauge right does that make sense yeah so just if i could summarize just so i make sure i understand so you're saying that like I could maybe get onto that in a moment, but I want to sort of get the gauge right. Does that make sense? Yeah. So just if I could summarize just so I make sure I understand. So you're saying that like all of these kind of classic contradictions, these things that skeptics point out, you know, we have to understand that they are within the that when we approach those, we're approaching the text with a night. Let's just arbitrarily throw out 90 95 is remarkably accurate so we're dealing with a really small percentage and then you're saying then you would say that i'm quite happy with there being several possible responses and you're saying you don't

need to have an airtight black and white here is how you respond to that as long as there's other probable options because it's when the with it's within the larger framework uh there's remarkable accuracy on the whole so um i would say this is the way we treat our friends that if our friend uh makes a reason for not doing something which to us at a sort of initial assessment would seem quite unlikely, if we trust our friends, we'd say, okay, I take your testimony for it. You know, or your friend might tell you something that seems like a highly improbable series of events. But again, the testimony carries for it.

So I want to say, what does testimony count for? Now, we then get to the specifics and remember that um in the story in matthew um joseph's got this great idea uh of uh mary's pregnant he finds that out and so he's going to divorce her quietly and save the family name um has he spoken to anyone at this point well maybe let's say he's spoken to his dad uh and he's spoken to his dad and he says well i'm going to divorce her and dad says yeah that's a really good idea um and um a little while later joseph comes to his dad and says look an angel's appeared to me and says i really should marry her at that

point dad says you're not my son anymore you know um uh that that's that's really quite plausible now i'm not saying that happened i'm just i don't know but that's perfectly consistent with events i mean the whole question of of shame and honor of a family with an out of wedlocklock child at the time, absolutely huge. And we know in society today, loads of people have two fathers. You know, one legal, one biological. That's perfectly normal. So is there a problem with the idea that, you know, Joseph had more than one father? I don't see any problem with that.

Now, what... So because just just so people know the problem so Matthew has a different father for Joseph and Luke has Eli but again I don't think that has to be a problem now then people say well yeah but then shouldn't they have a common father and so on um and I'd want to say uh yeah but then again you've got to look at the law of lever at marriage uh where it's claimed, you know, by Julius Africanus that there was this thing going on where people would raise up to a brother who had no children offspring through their wife. um and so this this is the sort of thing you need to bear in mind now i'm not saying this happened at all i'm just saying yeah we've got luke we got matthew we can do some studies of luke's genealogy because basically um luke's genealogy goes back a thousand years or so from

jesus to david and beyond but between between David and Jesus, there's almost no name that he gets from the Old Testament. So then you start saying, well, if he were just making up names, would he be able to get the plausible sorts of names for a thousand years of genealogy before Jesus' time? And if, for instance, he were giving a name like Philip or Herod at 800 BC, I would be really worried because there'd be Greek names and that would be just wouldn't fit. But thankfully, he doesn't. Actually, there is certain plausibility to the family tree he gives there. Luke, you can see it's the family tree from David through his son, Nathan. Nathan means to give or it's the root give. And you will see a huge number of the names in that genealogy are repeating that root.

And we know from studies of biblical genealogies that very often you get particular names and themes or roots and themes that are favored within particular genealogical lines. So, for instance, we know in the Old Testament that Gera, G-E-R-A, is a name used in the tribe of Benjamin. All four people who have that name are from the tribe of Benjamin. You have certain things that happen with particular tribes, particular groups. things that happen with particular tribes, particular groups. And so there's a plausibility to Luke's genealogy early on when you think, well, look, this really does look like it comes from decent testimony. So I'd want to say we've got to build that case in. And I don't think that the Christians need to wring their hands in worry if they can't unite behind a single explanation for how this fits with that.

Okay. No, that's super helpful. That's been how I've... And I'm not like an apologetic kind of person, like this isn't my area, but when I do face tensions, potential contradictions, that's typically how I've done it intuitively. I don't need to have everything ironed out so neat and tidy. And because again, the overarching

historicity, but also just the beauty and coherency and compellingness of the Christian worldview as it's mapped on the biblical story to me is like the best of all the... I tweeted the other day, I said, you know, whenever I doubt my faith, the one thing that keeps me going is the legitimacy of the other options. And the other thing I don't need to have every, every, everything tied tied. So we need to remember that the Bible is supposed to have evidence against the Bible. Now, what I mean by that is in the biblical story, since humans first fell, God has been revealing himself and hiding himself.

And he does both. And the supreme example of this is on the cross. Great account in Luke where one thief on a cross is mocking Jesus. And the other one is seeing that the person next to him is about to come into a kingdom. Now I would have thought that a pretty good piece of evidence that Jesus is not the Messiah is that he got crucified. I mean, that is, you know, that's a sure sign. The Romans are winning.

So people can stand there underneath the cross and say, wow, we're getting an evidential overload that this guy's an imposter. You know, that's happening just as God is most clearly revealing himself to humanity. So in other words, you have the moral structure of evidence in Scripture whereby it's made so that if you seek, you find. And if you do not seek, you stumble. That's the structure it has. and if you do not seek, you stumble. That's the structure it has. So that means if you do not seek God,

you will find mountains of evidence to support your case. It's actually structured so that you will constantly find more and more evidence to support your case. If you seek God, it's made so you'll find more and more evidence to support the truth of Scripture. Wow, I've never thought of it like that. I mean, does that make sense? Well, as you're talking, it made me think of Isaiah 6, and his preaching will harden the hearts of those who don't believe.

Yeah, so I think evidence is morally structured. And one of the problems with certain types of evidentialist apologetic is that they want to sort of claim and there's some validity to this that the evidence is really overwhelming and so what they do is they therefore want to use all sorts of superlatives about the evidence which um are problematic because they don't also deal with the fact that god is hiding um you know god could clearly make himself clear and he does yeah i'm glad you admit that because i often think that people don't admit it i can look out at the sky behind me and say wow this is this is all evidence for God. I mean, I think it is.

I really do think it is. I think we're surrounded by mountains of evidence of God. But at the same time, it's not that I've got his name written up in the sky or that he sends an angel every time I ask. So clearly there could be more. And we're involved in a moral enterprise. And that's where faith – I mean, it's kind of cliched, but isn't that where faith comes in? Yeah, I just don't like the word faith as used today

because it's so often used to mean believe anyway. And that's where I prefer the word trust because I do think it's closer to pistis. I think it's closer to Latin fides, that sense of, of course, there's evidence for this. And it's also got a good sense, it's a to latin fides that sense of of course there's evidence for this and it's also got a good sense it's a personal word you know we trust people and i think that really helps um us think about the fact that we can choose not to trust people we can choose to trust people there are consequences either way yeah pete we've been talking for almost a half hour we haven't even

i want to i want to go back and just have you talk a little bit about your your upbringing and who you are uh you know i i said in the intro some basic stuff about you being the warden of tyndale house and what that is but um did you grow up uh like speaking latin at the age of five or something i think i heard that so i wasn't able to start Latin until I was 12. And I didn't start Greek until I was 14. Oh, you poor soul. Yeah. And I had to wait until I was 20 before I did Hebrew. So I had a very deprived upbringing. No, seriously. I've been blessed with a family that were really interested in books and learning. Both my parents were Christians. In university, I had a rough time with, you know, thinking through Christianity.

I was a Christian at the time, but went through a period of doubt because I think at university, all sorts of questions are opened. And you start realizing that all sorts of answers that are being given are not good enough. And actually to realize that there's a plausibility with all sorts of other views in the world. You know, intelligent people hold them. They're not straw men. And you really have to engage with that. But then, you know, God brought me through that.

And I think I now feel, wow, we're just, there's so much evidence that there isn't even time to publish it. There's so much that could be researched. So a lot of your scholarly trajectory lingering in the background, has it been exploring and unpacking the evidence for Christianity, a broad apologetic? Is that always shaping what you do? It is something I'm very excited about, but I think, let's put it this way. If no one was debating or doubting the Christian faith, we wouldn't have any need for apologetics. So it's far more interesting simply to explore what God has

to say to us in scripture. And often the most exciting thing is is you know the message of the scriptures and it's also the best apologetic so often um what happens is people have got apologetics far too big and scripture far too small it's almost like they're embarrassed to the bible they don't want people to get to the bible they need to put their arguments in the way. And I think, no, apologists should do their work enough to get people reading the scripture and then get out of the way. And they can come back every time they're called for by a Bible reader. And the Bible reader says, well, what do you make of this or whatever? Then they can come in. But otherwise, get out, you know, let God do his work with his word. Speaking of Bible reading, you have been working on a new Greek New Testament, which you want to show that to us and talk a bit about that? Yeah, so I came out with that a year ago, the Tinder House Greek New Testament.

And I think it's the most carefully printed edition ever made. And I mean, I really do. Every single paragraph comes from early manuscripts. And we've now just got a reader's edition coming out with half the page full of vocabulary, you see. So, you know, any vocabulary that occurs 25 times or fewer will be down at the bottom and all the difficult verbs are there and so that's just trying to encourage people to read it so I think people make it sound as if Greek is harder than it is obviously it's hard to master it but to start it to get something it's not that hard i think in a lot of ways it's like as a parent i have to read the ingredients on tins and i know i'll never be a dietician

but i couldn't as a parent not read um nutritional input ever you know i think for me not to read would be almost immoral nowadays i think the same way you don't need to say I'm going to be a Greek grammar expert to say I'm interested in what God has to say. I'm therefore going to take an interest in the languages. Yeah. All right. So I'm going to challenge my audience here because I think I know what you're going to say. Because I get asked this question quite a bit from aspiring pastors, somebody that wants to be a Christian leader. And the question comes up, do I need to know Greek?

And I don't want to say categorically, no, you can't be a pastor and not know Greek. I don't want to say that. At the same time, if you have any possible opportunity to learn Greek as a Christian leader or pastor, then I would say, yes, absolutely. You need to pursue that. What would you say to somebody who wants to be a pastor? What if a parent were to ask me, do I need to know or think about nutritional input for the food I give my children? And I will say, well, what sort of parent are you? Are you going to be a responsible parent? So if a pastor who is is a shepherd who is a feeder of the flock right is asking me do i need to care about precisely what god says i would say yeah your job is chief food supplier how can you not care about

precisely what god says about getting that? Now, does that mean you need to become a language expert? No. There's software. There are things too. But should you constantly be taking an interest? Should you be obsessed by the question, what exactly has God said? Yes, that's a big part of your job.

said yes that that's a big part of your job so i'd want to say um that you know it's not as if we're asking people to um learn a modern language where of course the emphasis is on gaining fluency and so on we're asking people to say uh look i've got i've got to teach this book from god's word how can i make sure that what i'm teaching is as accurate and as full as possible that i'm seeing the connections how and i think this is why i'd say look every pastor has to be obsessed by scripture that's that's yeah a key part of it and so how could you be obsessed by scripture and never want ever to look up a word in the original. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense to me at all. Yeah. I'll never forget, Peter. I don't think I told you this, but I felt like coming into my PhD and you were, I think you're in your second

year teaching at Aberdeen University and we had that Philo reading class. And I felt like I was decent at New Testament Greek. I was by no means, that was not my strength, but I was, you know, took, you know, three or four years and did a lot of reading or whatever. But when I cracked open the Greek of Philo, I could not read more than half a sentence. And ever since that day, I stopped saying, people say, do you know Greek? I used to say, oh, yeah, I know Greek. After trying to read Filo and you just like reading it like I would read the English, I was like, oh, my word. I mean New Testament Greek is quite a bit easier and different than actual classical Greek. Yeah, but this is where I'd say – and perhaps now I'm 48 and a bit more mature. I've changed my view on things.

and a bit more mature, I've changed my view on things, where I think there's a tendency, if you're quite good academically, to focus entirely on gaining new knowledge and sort of trying to become a brainiac and know everything. And I think it's good for us to celebrate the feats that our brains can do, because God gave us them, and that's great. But I also now want to celebrate what my brain cannot do. You know, the fact is I'm a creature. I am therefore meant to have limited knowledge and God's got all knowledge. And actually that's really cool. And so I'm great about the fact

that there are all sorts of things I'm not very good at. And people can tell me the difference between amps and volts a thousand times and I'll just forget it a thousand times. i can do biblical languages and and so on and for people to know what they're good at what they're calling is but to use to celebrate that they can use their brains to learn more about god's word but also not to get um depressed by the fact that there are people who know more or that there are limits to what they can learn and so on that's all fine we're not meant to be unlimited you know we're we're god's creatures and we can celebrate that and celebrate the fact that we have an all-knowing

all-powerful savior you know so i think again there is this tendency for, you know, Christian pop culture to put, you know, people who've got some in some circles, people who've got, you know, high levels of education on a particular pedestal as if they're then supposed to know everything. And they become the answer person for everything. And you just think this is ridiculous. No one's supposed to know everything. You know, we're actually not supposed to know everything. Can't we celebrate that? You know? Yeah, you definitely didn't tell me that 10 years ago.

I think you are reflecting maybe more of a UK version of Christianity, because in America, in many circles, American evangelicalism is almost flipped to where people are nervous if you have a high degree. And they're like, oh, people again you know there's this sort of awkwardness um that people have um where in a sense people you can have a chip on your shoulder about not knowing things but i think part of that again comes back to you know people who have done study shouldn't be bragging about it i mean i think we can celebrate uh again that god's given some people amazing athletic abilities god's given some people amazing mental abilities in particular areas you know it's not in every area typically um you know sometimes those people are lacking social skills you know they've got more in one area than another um but i think we celebrate the you know the way uh we've been made

and recognize that god's made us complete uh beings we do need to use our brains we're meant to love god with all our minds and so you know my challenge to people would be say well what what mind are you being given you know make sure you're stretching that studying but don't get depressed about all the books you haven't read you know yeah that's good i i fall into that i i especially sexuality and gender there's so many layers and layers and layers this conversation i'm constantly feeling like for every book i read there's five more i need to read and so that's but can you help people without having read every book yeah yeah of course yeah yeah well we have a few more minutes. I want to talk just briefly about Tyndale House. So Tyndale House is one of my favorite places on earth,

and it's in my favorite city, at least in the Western world. I absolutely love Cambridge, and you've been there for over 10, what, 12 years now or something? Tell us a bit about what Tyndale House is. So TyndaleHouse.com, you want to look up our website. It's the top evangelical research center for the Bible. And so we've got 50 researchers there every day, basically working at the doctoral level and above, researching the Bible.

So more things written there than, you know, other places in terms of research. And people doing degrees doctorates people on sabbatical we've got our own staff um and you know our aim is to uh show that you you know can really uh be a christian you could be an evangelical and use your mind to celebrate that um in the study of the scriptures and so we want the um entire global church to raise its game uh in terms of the um thinking about scripture there's just so much there to be thought about and from uh tinder house you know has come all sorts of uh research which

has helped a lot of people even though they've never heard of us. So often when people are using Bible translations, whether it's the ESV, the NIV, the New Living Translation, all sorts of other ones, a load of the people who are inputting on those translations have actually spent time at Tinder House. Yeah. You guys pride yourself on having all or at least as much as you can books related to biblical studies. So if you're doing research on anything in the Bible, not necessarily theology or philosophy, but biblical studies, you have this library, which doesn't seem very huge, but when you wander its hallways,

it's just like there is not a single commentary or relevant book on the Bible that's just not here. Yeah, and I think it's also you know who comes through that so i mean my my guess is that you know um a third to a half of all of the prominent evangelical scholars in the world have spent time at tinderhouse you know yeah oh yeah yeah you know i met i was there well a few times back when i was doing my phd and towards the end of my doctorate uh John Piper was there doing research. I remember I was in the kitchen making soup or something. I turn around and there's John Piper. And he introduces himself with a big smile.

Hi, my name's John. I'm like, yeah, no kidding. And yeah, I think there was, yeah, whenever you're there, you kind of, I think it is the social kind of vibe that is created there. Do you guys still have, you bang the gong and everybody has to break for 10 minutes of tea and coffee? Absolutely, there's something that never changed, yeah. Oh, it's so good, so good.

So if anybody is listening, I mean, could anybody go if somebody is, say they have a master's degree, but they just want to go somewhere for a month and study, are there requirements? Yeah, so we're going to prioritize researchers. And particularly that will happen in peak months, like June, July, when, you know,

we're crowded out even more than usual. But other times, yeah, there can be space for other people. Okay. I was just talking about your magazine, which is free, which is called, you can, again, sign up at tinderhouse.com, which is called you can again sign up at tinderhouse.com which is called the ink magazine and if you get tinderhouse

and ink you get think and that's really trying to celebrate you know celebrate the bible and get people you know wanting to know it more yeah oh great I might you know I'm I'm due i've never had a sabbatical i'm due for one so you may yeah get an email from me in the near future asking for

some space uh yeah down the road at tindale house they'd be so much so much fun but um pete thanks so much for being on the show really appreciate it again the book is the book is can we trust the gospels? It's put out by Crossway. And then also check out the new, is it Tyndale, the Greek New Testament? Or what's the official name if people were searching for it? It's just called The Greek New Testament, but it's produced by Crossway. And yeah. Okay, sweet.

Thanks so much, Pete, for being on the show. Great to be with you. you