Truth Lost the Debate in my Opinion

UPDATE:  Another comment from a reader:

Barbara Ogg wrote a great comment and I wish she'd posted it here instead of on a different post.   She rightly appreciates Chris Pinto's contribution which I'm afraid I slighted (although I agree with her) because I got overwhelmed with the externals of the debate itself, and her assessment of the whole debate and its significance is excellent.  Go check it out at the post titled  Chris Pinto to Debate James White

UPDATE:  Comment from reader

Steven Avery who wrote a comment on this blog post -- it's at bottom, please  check it out -- follows the scholarly questions about all this far more than I do or probably ever want to do, though I'm glad to hear what he has to say and may make an effort to upgrade my information from him.  If you go to his links to discussion threads you'll see how convoluted the issues can get.

I'm certainly OK with not having to think of the papyri in conspiratorial terms, those fragments found since Sinaiticus that are used to corroborate Sinaiticus.  In fact it's a relief not to think in conspiratorial terms.   And Sinaiticus remains a corrupted manuscript whether there was any conspiracy involved or not.  Avery doesn't agree with me that the Bible is called into question even if these are all authentic ancient manuscripts, because they are corrupted.

Maybe a different definition of "authentic" there.   My point was that if you try to defend the faith from them as White does, that you are FEEDING the Bible critics like Bart Ehrman and the Muslims, rather than answering them.   In spite of yourself you are supporting the argument against Bible inerrancy.  I don't know why this isn't obvious.

I suppose I end up agreeing with my own assessment at the bottom of this post, that concerning the Alexandrian manuscripts I'm with Burgon still, and ultimately it's a matter of spiritual discernment.

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UPDATE:  Questions about Simonides

 Find myself pondering questions I've had in the back of my mind about Simonides that never quite came to the surface, that I more or less thought would get answered down the road somewhere, since as Pinto characterizes the situation it has remained rather mysterious overall so you don't expect all questions to be answered right away. 

1)  White brought up one of them:  Why in an orthodox Greek monastery would they have had an Alexandrian manuscript from which Simonides worked?  I think White said they normally used the Textus Receptus.  (But maybe I misunderstood that in some way.  If they wouldn't normally have that sort of text, how was it they had Codex Sinaiticus which  Tischendorf supposedly found?)

2)  Why would Simonides have produced a manuscript so riddled with errors and corrections if it was intended to be a gift to a Tsar?  This one has bothered me all along and I kept assuming there must be some kind of reasonable explanation but nothing has come up.

Those two lead me now to raise this one:

3)  If it wasn't his own production, what would he hope to gain by arguing about it in the newspaper for such a long time?   (= Since I can't see any personal advantage for him in it, I have to admit it leads me into conspiracy type questions:  who benefited from his claim and his ultimately being discredited?

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Original Post.  First response to the debate: 

James White "won" it, at least as far as the Simonides episode goes, but that was the main focus of the debate after all, if not its real significance.  It colors all the other issues, however, unfortunately, the role of Tischendorf and the basic question about authenticity of Sinaiticus, and to my mind that means the Bible and Christianity lost.  I look forward to what Chris Pinto has to say about this in the days to come, but for myself I can always put the Simonides episode on hold and go back to Burgon. 

White thinks the papyri make Burgon obsolete.  I think Burgon was right to suspect that there was a lot more to the Westcott and Hort fraud than meets the eye, and yes, as White asked Chris at the end, would I suspect the fraud to continue even to the papyri, and my answer is yes I would. 

To my mind Chris Pinto has thoroughly proved through his films and talks and articles, entirely from the evidence, mostly the quotations of others, that there is such a thing as a true conspiracy, in this case by the Antichrist himself.  I guess White isn't going to be persuaded, I shouldn't have considered that as a possibility for a moment, he's completely persuaded by the corrupted manuscripts, and for now at least, that is that.

 I do think White raised enough questions about the processes Simonides would have had to go through to create the Codex to bring his story into doubt, but that just leaves it still a huge mystery why Simonides would ever have come forward to claim to have created the manuscript himself, what on earth would he have had to gain by that claim?  And I'm afraid White makes a good case about how Tares portrays Tischendorf too, which bothered me the first time I saw it, as overacting at least.  The actual statements made in the film may not convict Tischendorf but the images that portray him do.  I think there's plenty to question about Tischendorf, but the case isn't made in the film well enough for the image of him they created.

Those are flaws in the film and that's too bad because they then can be used against the real point at issue, the authenticity of the Greek manuscript Tischendorf claimed to have found.  The idea that you can defend the faith with manuscripts that contradict the traditional Bible is absolutely ridiculous.  White keeps saying these newly discovered "most ancient" manuscripts are a great blessing to the Church, but there's no way that is the case.  They call the Bible into question, period.  If they ARE authentic then we essentially have no more Bible.  Forget it, people CAN grasp the implications of such discrepancies.   Bart Ehrman and the Muslims are right about that.

I don't believe they are authentic, of course.  That doesn't depend on how the Simonides story turns out though I'd still love to see some smoking gun evidence in favor of that theory.  But even if it never turns up I think Burgon had the right instincts about a conspiracy to enshrine what he said the Church had formerly known to be corrupt manuscripts.   And besides the fraudulent use of those manuscripts against the instructions given to the revising committee,  there was also the fact of the thousands of unnecessary changes, in Burgon's opinion and in Bishop Wordsworth's opinion at least, the whole ugly result being a mutilation of the Bible and no revision.  Burgon saw the implications of the mutilation in the destruction of the Biblical witness. 

We start with that simple discernment:  the revision destroyed the Biblical witness, destroyed it.   If there isn't any identifiable conspiracy to bring about that effect, that is nevertheless the effect.

What Pinto has done is collect a ton of circumstantial evidence that there is a LOT more going on than meets the eye involving the Bible versions controversies.  But if you think the Alexandrian texts and the proliferation of Bibles is a "blessing" none of that is going to mean anything to you anyway. 

So I've come to believe that it's very possible for a highly complex covert conspiracy to be ongoing down the centuries.  We may never be able to pin it down in this life, of course, which means we won't be able to do anything about it in this life.  Except pray.  And that's no small thing but when you don't have anything you can actually DO to turn people away from the false Bibles you can feel pretty helpless.  My strength is made perfect in weakness just went through my head.  Well, if we prayed as we should we might see the Lord work. 

But again, even forgetting the possibility of such a conspiracy, the 1881 Revision was an absolute disaster for the Bible and for the Church.  White is simply wrong about that.

In the end it's a matter of spiritual discernment.