Wes Huff is Untouched By Alex O'Connor's Critiques

Summary

Alex O'Connor raises criticisms against Wes Huff's interpretations of biblical texts, focusing primarily on Huff's comments in an interview with Joe Rogan. The discussion delves into specific points such as the accuracy of the Dead Sea Scrolls compared to the Masoretic text, Jesus's self-identification as God, the dating of the Gospel of John, and attestations of Jesus's resurrection. Huff's interpretations, while conservative, are discussed as being within the scope of traditional Christian views, with Gavin Ortlund defending Huff's positions, outlining the broader scholarly context, and appealing to the historical resilience of evidence for Jesus’s resurrection.

Highlights

• Wes Huff remains unfazed by critiques, defending traditional Christian interpretations with poise 📚.
• The Dead Sea Scrolls controversy is a fascinating dive into textual fidelity and historical documentation 📜.
• Jesus’s divinity claims stir significant debate, revealing contrasting interpretations of biblical evidence 🙏.
• Dating the Gospel of John highlights shifts in scholarly perspectives, reflecting evolving academic discourse 🔍.
• Paul's mention of 500 witnesses in 1 Corinthians provides compelling support for the resurrection narrative 👀.

Key Takeaways

• Wes Huff confidently defends his interpretations amidst critiques, staying grounded in traditional Christian views 📘.
• The Dead Sea Scrolls' accuracy compared to the Masoretic text is complex, often down to linguistic nuances 🗣️.
• Alex O'Connor and Gavin Ortlund debate over Jesus's claimed divinity, showcasing different interpretative lenses 🤔.
• The dating of the Gospel of John spurs discussion, illustrating shifts in scholarly consensus and debates 📅.
• Ample historical references support Jesus’s resurrection within early scholarly discussions ✝️.

Overview

Wes Huff's interpretations in his discourse with Joe Rogan sparked a thoughtful debate with Alex O'Connor. Huff's confidence in his claims is central to the ensuing discussion, notably reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls' comparison with Masoretic texts. His assertions, while conservative, find grounding in traditional Christian scholarship, even when scrutinized by O'Connor and others.

The highlighted critique about Jesus's self-identification as God invites a broader theological inspection. While O'Connor questions the explicitness and distribution of Jesus's claims across gospels, Huff's defense is rooted in a recognized Christian narrative, as interpreted by Gavin Ortlund. The debate emphasizes differing interpretative frameworks present within theological dialogues.

The conversation extends into the dating of the Gospel of John, showcasing an engaging back-and-forth on scholarly consensus about early Christian texts. Furthermore, the attestation of Jesus's resurrection through Paul's writings provides a historical foundation that, while contested, maintains its significance in theological scholarship. This discussion underscores the dynamic interplay between historical evidence and religious belief, illustrating the ongoing academic exploration in this field.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 10:00: Dead Sea Scrolls and the Isaiah Scroll The chapter discusses Alex O'Conor's argument against Wes Huff's interpretation of biblical texts, specifically regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Isaiah Scroll. O'Conor critiques Huff's interview with Joe Rogan, and the chapter aims to defend Huff's position by focusing on five key points. One of the main points is about the similarity between the Dead Sea Scrolls, particularly the Isaiah Scroll, and the version of the Book of Isaiah found in the Bible. It highlights the significance of the discovery of the great Isaiah Scroll, which predated the previously earliest known copy in the Masoretic text.
• 10:00 - 20:00: Claims of Jesus as God The chapter discusses the shock among scholars upon discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls' version of Isaiah, noting the claim that it was word for word identical to the Matic text. This belief was later challenged, as it proved not entirely accurate. The discussion emphasizes the significance of this period in terms of biblical scholarship.
• 20:00 - 30:00: Dating of the Gospel of John The chapter titled 'Dating of the Gospel of John' discusses the large number of textual variants found within the biblical text. Specifically, it highlights that there are over 2,600 textual variants, although the majority of these discrepancies pertain to minor issues such as spelling differences, rather than errors. The text emphasizes that these variations are primarily due to orthography, which refers to conventional spelling methods.
• 30:00 - 40:00: Non-Canonical Gospels and Agendas This chapter explores the concept of non-canonical gospels and their varying agendas. It uses the analogy of different English spellings, such as the American 'color' and British 'colour,' to illustrate how different texts can reflect their own historical contexts. Specifically, it refers to the great Isaiah scroll and discusses how its unique spellings don't necessarily contradict claims of direct transmission (word for word) because these variations are contextually driven. The chapter raises the complexity behind textual transmission and raises questions about the 2,600 figure, suggesting that the number may not be straightforward.
• 40:00 - 50:00: Paul's Testimony and the Resurrection The chapter discusses the significance of textual variations found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, particularly in the book of Isaiah. Some variations are minor, such as spelling differences, while others are more significant, including missing verses. The text specifically points out that Isaiah chapter 2, verse 9 and all of verse 10 are absent from one version in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This point is reinforced by referencing the digital Dead Sea Scrolls project, highlighting that while the mentioned version lacks these verses, there are multiple versions of Isaiah within the Dead Sea Scrolls collection.
• 50:00 - 56:00: Conclusion and Call to Faith The chapter discusses the discovery of various ancient scrolls in the Caves at Qumran. Among these, one scroll is almost entirely complete, known as the Great Isaiah Scroll. Additionally, there are numerous fragmentary texts. The website, which provides a figure of 2,600, also mentions the discovery of approximately 20 more copies of the Book of Isaiah, as well as fragments from Isaiah chapters 29 and 210. These findings emphasize the significance of these ancient texts.

Wes Huff is Untouched By Alex O'Connor's Critiques Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Alex oconor 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 uh in the mastic text which is in the
• 00:30 - 01:00 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 the dead sey Scrolls but one of the things that shocked them about Isaiah was that it was word for word identical to the Matic 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 mastic text that is one that we know
• 01:00 - 01:30 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
• 01:30 - 02:00 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 um 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 uh potentially very
• 02:00 - 02:30 misleading for onlookers now to his credit Alex acknowledges that most of these variations are very small now most of these variants are small there are 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 butress this point and he's correct about the scroll in question however there are multiple Scrolls of Isaiah found among the Dead Sea Scrolls
• 02:30 - 03:00 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 29 and Isaiah 210 are included and that again is noted uh at from the
• 03:00 - 03:30 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's certainly aware of the diversity of manuscripts that we have it's kind of tricky because the Dey scrolls are they're like a library that we refer to so it's um approximately
• 03:30 - 04:00 970 documents but it's distributed out between um 10,000 and 11,000 fragments so there's a lot going on there yeah 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 what he meant because I imagine he is fairly inundated these days uh and I don't have enough expertise in this area to even have a real fine-tuned opinion of how most
• 04:00 - 04:30 exactly is the Isaiah of the Dead Sea Scrolls and of the mastic 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 uh it's widely recognized my favorite commentary on Isaiah that I use whenever I preach from this book uh notes the overwhelming identity between these two as an astonishing tribute to
• 04:30 - 05:00 careful copying here's how another scholar puts it even though the two copies of Isaiah found in Kuman cave 1 near the Dead Sea in 1947 were a thousand years earlier than the oldest dated manuscript previously known 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 forl with the lenrad manuscript and then it notes that this 5% variation is mainly variations in spelling or
• 05:00 - 05:30 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 in a at a popular level which requires necessary simplification so I think we should give some Grace uh to matters of precise wording for someone to clarify the exact details but
• 05:30 - 06:00 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 uh 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 Wes says that Jesus was audaciously going around claiming to be God himself I don't think that's true nowhere in
• 06:00 - 06:30 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 am the father arean 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
• 06:30 - 07:00 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 was walking around for a century Roman occupied Judea he's making some
• 07:00 - 07:30 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 than 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 are still kind of oblique there and they come up in the the context of ministry and his conflict
• 07:30 - 08:00 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's substantial evidence from these first
• 08:00 - 08:30 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 every 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 is that
• 08:30 - 09:00 that 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 you know he's doing Ministry but um 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 calling 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
• 09:00 - 09:30 Mark's gospel and the general conflict the general plot as well as the general portrait of all four Gospels albe it 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
• 09:30 - 10:00 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 2 century that we can
• 10:00 - 10:30 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
• 10:30 - 11:00 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
• 11:00 - 11:30 70 AD now this I 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 bacham and entt 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 uh
• 11:30 - 12:00 2005 article in the Harvard theological review that uh Journal that contests the date of p-52 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 uh date to John and a lot of it is coming down to inter internal evidence so for example
• 12:00 - 12:30 George Van Cuttin 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 52 and its present tense description of the sheep gate 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 uh my scholarship is more in church history and theology but I don't see any problem with what Wes is
• 12:30 - 13:00 summarizing here and his perspective on John is is a mainstream one that others argue for as well his description of the scholarship on this point seems fair um 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 bacham but so far again I'm not really seeing anything that should rile anybody up Wes is basically just giving like a pretty traditional Christian uh account of uh this topic of both John's
• 13:00 - 13:30 authorship and uh date fourth real quick note on the canonical gospels as a whole this is another thing that Alex took issue with with Wes um 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 uh 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
• 13:30 - 14:00 is that some of them appear to have an agenda and some of them have an agenda to them but one of the most disgusted 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 belied that he was so when Wes
• 14:00 - 14:30 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 almost completely reliant on the other books so you do have and some of them have an
• 14:30 - 15:00 agenda to them so like uh the docetic 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 resurrection so you have all the Roman and Jewish officials camping out in front of the tomb which also gives away
• 15:00 - 15:30 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 they didn't do that so it it betrays that the author of The Gospel of Peter has no understanding of Purity ritual rights within first century second temple Judaism um 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
• 15:30 - 16:00 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 of its sort of spontaneous nature fifth point let's talk about Paul
• 16:00 - 16:30 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 the crucifixion no saw the resurrect resurrected Jesus yeah 1 Corinthians 15 Paul says that Jesus appeared to the disciples and then he appeared to 400 people all at once Wes gets this slightly wrong as Paul actually says that Jesus appeared to 500 not 400 people at one time time but this only makes it all the more amazing 500 people
• 16:30 - 17:00 witnessing the physically resurrected Jesus would be an amazing proof of his resurrection unfortunately 1 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 First Corinthians nothing nothing at all after this Alex goes on to emphasize how little we know about this event and he argues that the
• 17:00 - 17:30 term more than or over in 1 Corinthians 15:6 perhaps means over them as in 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 could say it's not more than 500 it's just 500 two observations first Wes 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
• 17:30 - 18:00 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 1 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 uh an appearance to hundreds
• 18:00 - 18:30 of people at a time when there's ample opportunity for factchecking and people can say where is Paul getting this but even if you throw out verse six 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 1 Corinthians 15 is sort of getting overlooked here we have to work through the 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
• 18:30 - 19:00 Apostles himself and this is happening within living memory of the ministry of Christ that is the important point that I took Wes to be making and so these are written within a time period when you have people who would have seen Jesus's Ministry who were there say at something like the feeding of the 5,000 who could have been able to verify or um debunk some of these things that are being said so all of this focus on the
• 19:00 - 19:30 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's death and for ancient history that is remarkably early attestation for an event now Alex claims that Paul himself didn't actually uh experience or even claimed to experience the resurrected Jesus In the Flesh Paul
• 19:30 - 20:00 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 Flesh which I think is what Rogan is looking for here but this runs contrary to how Paul interpreted this event uh he says he appeared to me uh elsewhere you know you find others like Barnabas in the book of Acts interpreting this event by saying
• 20:00 - 20:30 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 First 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 just I guess I want to just Reit at the larger picture and that is
• 20:30 - 21:00 we have a lot of references to Jesus's resurrection early on multiple independent attestation is very powerful for relative to how ancient history usually goes and this is why Mike Lona lists these three facts on the screen as so 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 strong but not quite as widespread attestation among
• 21:00 - 21:30 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 yield to it but it's compelling to me it's endearing the nature of the the of the data and if it's true it means the happiest
• 21:30 - 22:00 news imaginable if Jesus rose from the dead it means our sins can be forgiven it means we can have everlasting life and 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's resurrection in ways which I think require more clarification at least and which run against the scholarly consensus I actually don't recall too
• 22:00 - 22:30 many instances where Wes went against a scholarly consensus now I might be forgetting something uh it's fair to say he took the more conservative position on some matters but it's also 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