Parchment & Pen Blog

Last month I flew to Dallas to attend a historic debate on the text of the New Testament between Bart Ehrman and Dan Wallace. These two scholars squared off three years ago in New Orleans at the Greer-Heard Forum, which I was also privileged to attend. Eight hundred people turned out in the Big Easy, [...]

“Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:1) The Problem Romans 5:1 is our next textual problem study. As will be the case most of the time in this series, this verse makes the list because it contains a variant that is both viable (it has [...]

  CSNTM Press Release: SMU DEBATE The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) is proud to announce the SMU Debate between two noted New Testament scholars, Dr. Bart D. Ehrman and Dr. Daniel B. Wallace. The debate will be held on Saturday, October 1, 2011 at 7 PM in the McFarlin Memorial [...]

 ”If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.” (Mat 18:15 ESV) The Problem Matthew 18:15 is one of the textual variants in the New Testament that is both viable and significant. A textual variant occurs when there is [...]

There are very few people in my life that have influenced my thinking and confidence (in a positive way!) as much as Daniel Wallace. We have done much to expose you to him here at Parchment and Pen, as he blogs from time to time (ummm….Dan, we need a new post!), but I am very [...]

I don’t know about yours, but the copyright date on my Bible is 2002 (I usually read from the ESV). What does that mean? It means that the Bible that I read from, study from, and teach from has a nearly 2000 year gap between it and the original. How do we know that errors [...]

After driving for over eight hours from Bucharest to the northeastern region of Romania known as Moldova, we came to the second largest city in the country—Iasi (pronounced “Yawsh”). I have written about the road less traveled in another report, and will not go into much detail here. Suffice it to say that we traveled [...]

On May 24, 2010, a four-man team from the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts flew from Athens to Bucharest. We flew on a half-empty 737. There were manuscripts to shoot in two cities very far apart from each other—Craiova and Iasi (pronounced “Yawsh”). We needed to split up, so we rented two [...]

Last October I learned about a manuscript narrating Jesus’ life that was purportedly written by Joseph of Jerusalem, a first-century follower of Jesus. Although the claims were fantastic, I wondered if the manuscript that came with the cover letter could be at least an uncatalogued Gospels manuscript, perhaps of Matthew or Luke.  In December 2009, [...]

In a video that’s posted on Youtube and is making the rounds in popular Christian circles, an Arab Christian claims that there are three Arabic words in Revelation 13.18, the passage that speaks about the number of the beast. Here’s the link to the video: Walid Shoebat – Mark of the Beast Walid Shoebat claims [...]

As of today (November 15, 2009), there’s a Christmas sale at New Testament Textual Criticism (www.nttextualcriticism.com). Video DVDs are going for $7.50 each or 2 for $10 through the end of the year (a 25% to 33% savings), and the lifetime subscription to the TC Chart Timesaver has dropped from $40 to $30, also through [...]

I have received a lot of questions about this subject, so here it is again: I don’t know about you, but the copyright date on my Bible is 2002 (I usually read from the ESV). What does that mean? It means that the Bible that I read from, study from, and teach from is nearly [...]