Truth Unites - Wes Huff is UNTOUCHED By Alex O'Connor's Critiques

Episode Date: January 12, 2025

Gavin Ortlund defends Wes Huff from the critiques of Alex O'Connor of several of his claims during his interview with Joe Rogan. Alex's video: https://youtu.be/I0qzvDSmKi4?si=zlkWHeQs0cwunCrv Wes' video on Jesus' divine claims in Mark: https://youtu.be/YwQF-SS-O_g?si=yUO3bMtfVNAWqbuC My video on Jesus' claims to be God: https://youtu.be/D86S26863VM?si=Ku-J5u6bDs2bFWwX Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

Alex O'Connor argued that Wes Huff got the Bible wrong in his interview with Joe Rogan. I'd like to address five points in an effort to give some defense to Wes Huff. First, the Dead Sea Scrolls. Let's listen to how Wes put it, and then we'll hear Alex's response. How similar is it to the Book of Isaiah that's in the Bible? So that one is fascinating. So this isn't true for all of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but when we discovered the Great Isaiah Scroll, previous to that, the earliest copy of Isaiah that we had was in the Masoretic text.

which is in the Middle Ages. Whoa. Yeah, so it was literally a thousand years. We literally pushed back our understanding of Isaiah a thousand years. And the thing that really shocked scholars, like I said, this isn't true for all of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but one of the things that shocked them about Isaiah was that it was word for word identical to the Masoretic text. Word for word. Word for word.

Wow. Yeah. Wow. That would be amazing if it were true. In fact, the Dead Sea version of the Isaiah Scroll is not quite identical to the Masoretic text. that is the one that we know from the Bible. Can you guess how many textual variants there are between the two? Take a guess.

One that Wes forgot about. 10, 100. Try more than 2,600. But it needs to be emphasized that the majority of these discrepancies are about tiny issues like spelling, not even necessarily errors of spelling, just differences. One scholar notes that these variations are mostly occasioned by considerations of orthography. Orthography is a conventional spelling system of a particular language. Kind of like how Americans might use this spelling, color, C-O-L-O-R, but the British people weirdly put a U in that word.

The great Isaiah scroll, it's under discussion here, contains spellings that reflect its own historical context. So that wouldn't affect the word-for-word claim that Wes made. Word-for-word doesn't necessarily mean word for identically spelled word. So the 2,600 figure here is potentially very misleading for onlookers. Now, to his credit, Alex acknowledges that most of these variations are very small. Now, most of these variants are small. Their differences in spelling, for example. But some of them are more significant.

For instance, in Isaiah chapter 2, the end of verse 9 and all of verse 10 are simply missing from the Dead Sea version. They're just not there. He proceeds to quote from the digital Dead Sea Scrolls project to buttress this point, and he's correct about the scroll in question. However, there are multiple scrolls of Isaiah found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in these different caves at Kumran. And one scroll is nearly complete. That's the Great Isaiah Scroll, but there's many other fragmentary texts. The same website that Alex quotes from to get the 2,600 figure, also notes around 20 additional copies of the book of Isaiah were found there, and in other manuscripts, that part of Isaiah 2.9 and Isaiah 210 are included, and that again

is noted from the same website that Alex quoted from. Now, if I heard him correctly, Wes seemed to acknowledge that not all of the Dead Sea Scrolls have the same degree of accuracy. So perhaps he was talking about the overall information yielded from the Dead Sea Scrolls as a collection of texts, rather than just one manuscript among them, because he was talking about he's certainly aware of the diversity of manuscripts that we have. It's kind of tricky because the Dead Sea Scrolls are, they're like a library that we refer to. So it's approximately 970 documents,

but it's distributed out between 10,000 and 11,000 fragments. So there's a lot going on there, right? So I'm not 100% sure what Wes meant by word for word. I'll leave that for him to clarify, and I've not reached out to him to ask him. ask what he meant because I imagine he is fairly inundated these days. And I don't have enough expertise in this area to even have a real fine-tuned opinion of how close exactly is the Isaiah of the Dead Sea Scrolls and of the Masoretic text. But the general point that Wes was making

seems totally correct here. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was a remarkable confirmation that the Hebrew text that we have had all along goes back into deep antiquity. This point is not unique to Wes Huff. It's widely recognized. My favorite commentary on Isaiah that I use whenever I preach from this book notes the overwhelming identity between these two as an astonishing tribute to careful copying. Here's how another scholar puts it, even though the two copies of Isaiah found in Kumran Cave 1 near the Dead Sea in 1947 were a thousand years earlier than the oldest dated manuscript previously known, 8,980. They proved to be word-for-word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95% of the text. But in one manuscript, the preserved text is almost letter for letter

with the Leningrad manuscript. And then it notes that this 5% variation is mainly variations in spelling or obvious slips of the pen or that kind of thing. Now, one thing we have to remember here is Wes was speaking, not from a manuscript, but spontaneously and organically in a three and a half hour conversation in a highly pressurized context. People have not done that, have no idea how challenging that is. He's also speaking at a popular level, which requires necessary simplification. So I think we should give some grace to matters of precise wording for someone to clarify the exact details. But the general point that Wes was making is correct.

The accuracy of the textual transmission of the Book of Isaiah is remarkable, and the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was a significant testimony to that. Joe Rogan was right to say, wow, about this. We should all say, wow. It's kind of an amazing discovery. Second issue, did Jesus claim to be God? First, West says that Jesus was audaciously going around claiming to be God himself. I don't think that's true.

Nowhere in Mark, Matthew, or Luke, does Jesus actually claim to be God in his own words. At best, it's just in John's Gospel that divine claims begin to appear. I and the Father are one. Whoever has seen me has seen the Father before Abraham was Ego Amy. I actually still don't think even these count, and we'll explain why in another video, but let's just say that they do. Even if this was Jesus explicitly claiming to be God, don't you think it's a bit suspicious that these claims only show up in our latest gospel? If Jesus was known to be walking around, claiming explicitly to be God himself, did the other three gospel authors just not think this was relevant? A minor unimportant detail, not worth including.

Now, Alex introduced the adverb explicitly there. if you listen carefully. That's not necessarily what a Christian must maintain. I don't think that's what Wes said. He was pretty much just summarizing a standard Christian view in the context of making other various claims. He was walking around for a century Roman-occupied Judea. He's making some pretty audacious claims, claims to be God himself. And then he predicts his own death and resurrection. Wes has a whole video about this focusing on Mark's gospel. Check that out in the video description. I, and I think Wes's position is very strong here. I've argued for this at greater length in this video, that's also in the video description. Let's just summarize this to defend Wes's

claims there. First, even in John's gospel, Jesus does not walk around saying, I'm God. The claims of deity are still kind of oblique there, and they come up in the context of ministry and his conflict with the Jewish leadership. Similarly, in the earlier three gospels, Jesus makes claims of divine authority and divine identity in the context of ministry and in a very Jewish way. Now, it's not necessarily surprising that the way Jesus claims to be God in Matthew, Mark, and Luke will look a little different from how he claims to be God in John, because everything in Matthew, Mark, and Luke is a little different from the Gospel of John. Nonetheless, there is substantial evidence from these first three Gospels that Jesus did claim to be God. First of all, he receives worship,

which is a significant point of testimony. Second of all, the whole plot of these Gospels is getting crucified for blasphemy. That's the whole narrative that drives everything. And at the start of Mark's Gospel, you have the Pharisees saying, who has authority to forgive sins but God alone? And Jesus is responding, saying, I have that authority. At the end of Mark's Gospel, Jesus claims to be the figure of Daniel 7, who has divine authority to judge the world. Here's the thing. A passage like that, this is why I emphasize the Jewish context and the context of ministry.

Jesus didn't come into the world just to teach systematic theology. He's doing ministry, but we may not realize the significance of what he's saying from Daniel 7. but his contemporaries did. You can see their response there. I'll put the text back up there. They're tearing their clothes and crucifying him for blasphemy here. Now, Mark 2 and Mark 14 are generally taken to go back to the historical Jesus, even by critical scholars, and they're consistent with the general portrait of Mark's gospel and the general conflict, the general plot, as well as the general portrait of all four gospels, albeit with variation. We have here a man whose ministry gets him crucified for blasphemy. So while it's true that Jesus

doesn't walk around saying, I'm God or God is a Trinity and I'm the second member, we wouldn't necessarily expect that. His claims of divine identity and divine authority come out in the context of what he came to do in inaugurating the kingdom of God, and they have kind of a Jewish accent, but they're there. And that's the fundamental conflict that shapes the narrative of the gospel. For a fuller case for that, this is a shorter video. See my longer video. Now, of course, Alex is certainly in his rights to take an opposing view, but this is just pretty much a traditional Christian versus non-Christian kind of dispute. I'm not really seeing any errors here in Wes's representation of the Christian view.

I think he did a great job, actually, throughout the whole interview. Here's a third issue, the dating of John. But Wes Huff thinks, based on his confidence that P-52 is from the second century, that we can, again, at minimum and comfortably place the Gospel of John in the first century. Once again, as with the Isaiah Scroll, I think he's just speaking way too confidently. And to be clear, I'm not claiming that John was written late. For all I know, it could have been written the day after Jesus ascended. The point is that the authorship of the Gospels is a hotly contested issue.

What Wes Huff is leaving out is just how absolutely disputed almost everything he's saying is. But I didn't take Wes's comments here to be deceptive in his summary about John. He's allowed to advocate for his own conclusion from the data, and that conclusion is not unique to him. And he's correct that there has been a significant revision in the scholarly consensus about the dating of John and just its more general perceived historicity. For example, in 2019, James Charlesworth of Princeton Seminary, wrote a book, Jesus, Mirrored, and John, and he discusses the paradigm shift in the scholarship

away from a consensus of a later date for John. He even gives his own view that it could go back prior to 70 AD. Now, this book was published in 2019. It's fascinating to see where the scholarship is going right now. before 70 AD seems super early, but it's interesting to see how many other serious New Testament scholars are sympathetic to this view. At least they take this very seriously. Richard Bachham and NT. Wright and others, if I understand from their remarks in interviews, they take this very seriously. I'm not saying they all agree on exactly the details, but they all date it very early.

Now, Alex discusses an important 2005 article in the Harvard Theological Review, that journal, that contests the date of P52. But here we have to recognize the later date for P52 wouldn't require a later date for John. It just allows for that. And there's other reasons why, especially in just the last few years, a lot of scholars are advocating for an earlier date to John,

and a lot of it is coming down to internal evidence. So, for example, George Van Cootin, who is the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University, is now proposing a very early date for John based on considerations like John 5-2, and its present-tense description of the Sheepgate. All of this is very complicated, like Alex points out, all of this is contested, and this is not my field, so I don't really have an opinion on the date of John. My scholarship is more in church history and theology, but I don't see any problem with what Wes

is summarizing here, and his perspective on John is a mainstream one that others argue for as well. His description of the scholarship on this point seems fair. Granted, there's a lot more to discuss about all this. By the way, I'm not really getting into the authorship of John's Gospel in this video. If you want more on that, see this excellent case by Richard Baukham. So far, again, I'm not really seeing anything that should rile anybody up. Wes is basically just giving like a pretty traditional Christian account of this topic, both John's authorship and date.

Fourth, real quick note on the canonical Gospels as a whole. This is another thing that Alex took issue with with Wes. He's basically pointing to the non, because Wes is pointing to the non-canonical gospels, like the Gospel of Thomas, for example. And he's saying, look, these are relying on earlier material and they have an agenda and so forth. And Alex is saying, well, the canonical Gospels do the same thing. He also says that another problem with these non-canonical Gospels is that some of them appear to have an agenda.

And some of them have an agenda to them? But one of the most discussed topics in New Testament scholarship is the agendas of the canonical gospels. Matthew's presentation of Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy. Luke's concern for the poor and the marginalized. John's gospel seems to contain polemical material, such as strongly emphasizing that John the Baptist is not the Messiah, probably because there were people around at the time who believed that he was. So when Wes Huff says, part of the problem with some of these other books is they appear to be almost completely reliant on the other books. So you do have, and some of them have an agenda to them, he's just told us that he's got a problem with the New Testament.

But I think greater clarity would sort of fall out here if we played the tape a little longer and see what Wes explains by having an agenda. Here's what he said with Joe Rogan. Part of the problem with some of these other books is they appear to be on. almost completely reliant on the other books. So you do have, and some of them have an agenda to them. So like the Dossetic Gospel of Peter seems to be uncomfortable with the fact that the biblical gospels, Matthew Mark and Luke, have women being the first witnesses to the empty tomb. Because in the ancient world, women were not seen as good eyewitnesses. So you almost have this apologetic trying to solve that problem by having all the right people be witness to the

So you have all the Roman and Jewish officials camping out in front of the tomb, which also gives away the fact that like no Jewish priest on the eve of Passover is going to be camping out in front of a dead body. Like they didn't do that. So it betrays that the author of the gospel of Peter has no understanding of purity ritual rights within first century, second temple Judaism, but is also clearly trying to remedy this embarrassing fact. And I'm quite confident that if we were to sit down with Wes Huff, he would be very capable at giving us reasons why the nature of the agenda in, say, the Gospel of Peter, is more undercutting with respect to historicity than the nature of the agenda in, say, the Gospel of Matthew. Some of these non-canonical Gospels are pretty out there. So I think at best, this is just an underdeveloped point in the discussion, not an error on Wes's part.

Again, we have to be careful in the expectations we bring to an interview because if it's sort of spontaneous nature. Fifth point, let's talk about Paul and the appearance to the more than 500 or just 500. How many people saw his body, right? Well, Paul says that 400 people saw him all at once. 400 people saw him all at once. Four hundred people saw the crucifixion. No, saw the resurrected Jesus. Yeah, 1 Corinthians 15. Paul says that Jesus appeared to the disciples and then he appeared to 400 people all at once. West gets this slightly wrong as Paul actually says that Jesus appeared to 500, not 400 people at one time, but this only makes it all the more amazing. 500 people witnessing the physically resurrected Jesus would be an amazing proof of his resurrection.

Unfortunately, 1st Corinthians chapter 15 is the only mention we have of this event anywhere. It's not in the Gospels, nor in Acts, nor in any other historical source. So, what do we learn about this event from 1st Corinthians? Nothing. nothing at all. After this, Alex goes on to emphasize how little we know about this event, and he argues that the term more than or over in 1st Corinthians 156 perhaps means over them, as in the sky above them. But even if we granted that, that doesn't really seem to move the needle too much.

We can just say, fine, okay, for the sake of argument, we can say it's not more than 500, it's just 500. Two observations. First, West didn't place a ton of weight on that one particular point. This was just one piece of data that was given in response to Joe's question about how many people saw Jesus. Second of all, Paul's testimony should not be written out of court simply because he doesn't give us any details about all these appearances. Remember that Paul is writing this letter in the early 50s AD. This is from 1st Corinthians, so written around somewhere early 50s, and he's likely quoting an even earlier tradition in this passage in 1 Corinthians 15.

So we are within two decades of Jesus's death. Some scholars make the argument that it's implausible that Paul would fabricate an appearance to hundreds of people at a time when there's ample opportunity for fact-checking. And people can say, where is Paul getting this? But even if you throw out verse 6, okay, take the reference to the, I worry here, that the focus is getting put so much on these 500 people, this appearance, that the rest of Paul, and even the rest of 1st Corinthians 15, is sort of getting overlooked here. We have to work through the other people mentioned in this passage and in other passages in Paul. Paul is identifying by name, eyewitnesses of the resurrection, like James, the other apostles, himself. And this is happening within living memory of the ministry of Christ. That is the important point that I took West to be making. And so these are written

within a time period when you have people who would have seen Jesus' ministry, who were, there, say it's something like the feeding of the 5,000, who could have been able to verify or debunk some of these things that are being said. So all of this focus on the particularities of this appearance to the 500 and other things that come up like when we date the Gospel of Luke can obscure the larger point that Paul's writings provide named eyewitnesses for the resurrection within 20 years of Jesus' death. and for ancient history, that is remarkably early attestation for an event. Now, Alex claims that Paul himself didn't actually experience or even claim to experience

the resurrected Jesus in the flesh. Paul never claims to have encountered the physically resurrected Jesus. Even his conversion story in Acts just describes him seeing a flash of light and hearing the voice of Christ while on the road to Damascus. He never even claimed to meet the risen Jesus in the first. flesh, which I think is what Rogan is looking for here. But this runs contrary to how Paul interpreted this event. He says, he appeared to me.

Elsewhere, you know, you find others like Barnabas in the Book of Acts interpreting this event by saying he had seen the Lord. So Paul understood the light and the voice on the Damascus Road to constitute seeing Jesus. And this Jesus is a resurrected Jesus. That's Paul's great emphasis in 1 Corinthians 15. Furthermore, we're told that there's other occasions on which Paul saw Jesus, for example, in a trance in Jerusalem. Now, look, there's so many little details that we would need to work through here to cover all these points,

but I guess I want to just reiterate the larger picture, and that is we have a lot of references to Jesus' resurrection early on. Multiple independent attestation is very powerful for relative to how ancient history usually goes. And this is why Mike Lycona lists these three facts on the screen as so social strongly supported by historical data that they're affirmed as factual by an almost unanimous and heterogeneous consensus of scholars. And then he includes four other second order facts that enjoy a strong, but not quite as widespread attestation among historians. At the end of the day and the bottom line, and I guess I'll just say this with all of my heart to encourage people to consider it,

and this is not what I expected when I started looking into these things a few years ago. the historical evidence for the resurrection of Christ is surprisingly resilient and compelling. And if it's not the kind of thing you can beat someone up with a hammer and make them yields to it, but it's compelling. To me, it's endearing, the nature of the data. And if it's true, it means the happiest news imaginable. If Jesus rose from the dead, it means our sins can be forgiven. It means we can have everlasting life. It means we can have relationship and fellowship with the God who created us. All we have to do is respond. to Christ in faith and repentance. That's the best news imaginable.

The main thing is that Wes Huff is making confident claims about who wrote the Gospels and when and about attestations to Jesus' resurrection in ways which I think require more clarification at least and which run against the scholarly consensus. I actually don't recall too many instances where Wes went against a scholarly consensus. Now, I might be forgetting something. It's fair to say he took the more conservative position on some matters, and it's also fair to say that there's a need for further clarification and discussion on many of these points. So I hope Wes will get to talk to Alex. I hope I would love to talk with Alex as well someday because he's a fantastic representative of his viewpoint. Hope this is helpful to people.

Thanks for watching everybody.