 Okay. Welcome back everybody to second lecture on Christian Apologetics. There's a question here in the chat from Jaqin. I heard Darwin himself made a journal and accepted that his theory was wrong and it's very difficult for him to come to terms with his own knowledge and discovery is a wasted one. Is this true? It's just that it was and that it was not published. Jaqin, I have no way to verify this. I haven't necessarily seen confirmed source as yet. Maybe it's there. Maybe it's not there. I haven't necessarily searched for that. So I don't know. But I have heard people make these statements. But I'm sorry. I can't say for sure. Maybe you'll have to research that and find out if that's exactly what he said or if there's a reliable source for it. We need to check on that. Yeah. All right. Any other questions? All right. All right. Let's go to our next lesson. We are not going to change our topic. So we've kind of we're leaving this whole topic of creation, creator existence of God behind. Now next topic is on the Bible. So we as Christians, we have many times we say Bible says, Bible says, Bible says, okay. So if you talk to an atheist, you talk to a non-Christian, obviously, why you how you know Bible is correct. You're saying everything Bible says, Bible says, Bible says, it's fine. Why? How do you know Bible is reliable? How do you know it's correct? You know, sometimes some people think, Oh, no, no, somebody sat and wrote something. Somebody sat and wrote something, you're reading it, you're believing it. How do you know this is correct? Right. So that's the first thing. Then they would even ask us, why are there so many different versions of the Bible? You know, if there's only one Bible, why you have so many versions? I mean, especially in English, we can understand if there's different language translations, because people will have to read it in their own language, that is understandable. But in English, you have so many versions of why you need so many versions. Does it mean you have so many different papers? So that's a big question, confusing question. So we need to, I'll just look at that. And one is for our own benefit that we ourselves should be very clear. And then we need to explain a little bit to somebody who asks, right? I'm not saying that, you know, everybody's going to understand everything, but you share a little bit, depending on how much they're willing to listen, how much they're willing to accept, right? So that's what we want to talk about in this thing. And, you know, how do you know, so the three important questions, okay, how do you know only these 66 books are God's word? Why can't we add some more books? Some good writings, some good authors, just add it. You know, why only these 66? All right, we have to think about it, right? A very important part of our response is to also share about your own personal testimony and how has the Bible helped you as you read it, right? That it's not like reading the newspaper. Something is different. Newspaper news, you'll read something. Okay, yeah, it's just information, fine. But when you read the Bible, how the Bible has changed you? How the Bible has changed you? How it speaks to you today, right? So that is a very important part that you can present. Just share with people, hey, see, when I read the Bible, God is speaking to me. My life is changed. Just leave that thought there because the fact that what you're reading actually changes your life is a powerful testament, right? As compared to reading some storybook. You read a storybook, it makes you feel happy and you leave it or you read some news. But this book is changing, it's motivating, it's transforming. So just put that thought out there, that's important. Now, when we talk about the Bible, the Bible is the most loved, also most hated book. Some people have tried to completely destroy the Bible as far back as 300 AD. Just as soon as the Christian church started and they started having scriptures, somebody wanted to destroy the Bible, the Roman emperor there. Now, tried. It's around 1600s, Walter, the French writer, he said, oh, within 100 years, Bible will be gone. He is gone, Bible is still here. And it is stated that the Bible Society bought this house and in his house they were printing Bibles. See how things worked out. So today, nobody hardly, anybody knows Walter, but the Bible is everywhere. All languages in all forms, it's just grown. I mean, I tried to validate it. I think it is true, but like 100%, I'm not sure, but I tried to check and I felt there's information on that. So I included that. So what does the Bible claim for itself? Bottom of page 39 and top of page 40, the Bible is saying it is given by inspiration of God. That means man wrote it, but God inspired it. So people actually sat and wrote, of course. They wrote it in their language, but God inspired it. So starting from Moses. Moses was born more than 2000 years after creation. So how could he say, day one this happened, day two this happened. He was not even around. Well, one, God reveals. So he captured in his language what God was showing him. This is how everything began. First five books written by Moses. How did he know? First got it. Second, there is also historical, that means things that were passed down. So Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, so on, these were passed on. So both there is inspiration, God revealing, and there is historical information that Moses recorded for us. And of course, from Exodus on, he's involved. He was there. He saw it. So scripture is given by inspiration. So you think about Apostle Paul. Almost every Sunday we quote, you know, about when we are having Lord's communion. We say, Jesus said, take it. This is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. This is my blood. Paul wrote, but Paul was not there. He was not sitting there. How did he know Jesus said these words? Paul said, the Lord revealed to me. God revealed. So through revelation, he knew what happened there in the last supper. These were the words Jesus spoke, and he wrote it down. So like there's so many things. So the scriptures were inspired, were given by inspiration of God, and then there is historical information which people communicated verbally or they communicated through writings. They communicated. So there's historical information as well. So when we look at the scriptures, we know that there's some bottom of page, what page is this, 14, that the Old Testament was written mainly in Hebrew. A few potions were written in Aramaic when they were taken into captivity, Daniel and Ezra. The New Testament is all written in Greek for a period of 45 years. So 1,000 years plus 45 years, 66 books, 40 different authors, and we have this compilation of the Bible. Now how did the Old, and on page 41, how did the Old Testament get written? So in those days, they used to write on paper that was also known as papyrus. Then they started writing on leather scrolls which were made into book form or called codex, and it was all handwritten. So there would these be bottom of page 41, you will see how a scribe will sit and write. It was just meticulous, hard work sitting and writing. Not easy for us like computer, delete, we can do copy paste, everything we can do. Those days, everything had to be handwritten. If you make a mistake, start again. It's not easy, everything has to be carefully written. So it was hard work, but these works, scribes, scribes means they were dedicated for this work, sit and copy, sit and write, very carefully. So when one, the original was written, people would copy it, make copies. And the copies will go to different places or different people who could afford them or where they wanted it to be circulated. So they spread throughout the Middle East. So copies were taken to different places and preserved there. Now on page 42, we just want to do a little comparison with ancient text. Now Plato, Plato was a Greek philosopher. So he was a philosopher about 300 years before Christ, 300 BC. Of course, not, the Old Testament was written much before that. But we have, we're starting with Plato as a reference because we're saying, okay, here is a Greek philosopher. Sometimes people quote, take his quotes, they say Plato said, Socrates said. So we are talking about people who express their ideas about 2000 plus 2000, more than 2000 years ago. And people, oh, this is what Plato said, this is what Socrates said like that, they quote. Fine. But what are you quoting? Where are we getting that information? So if you look at it, the number of manuscripts that original old manuscripts that have their writings are in these numbers like 250 manuscripts, 250 ancient manuscripts that have the right, the teachings of, or the ideas of Plato old. And these manuscripts are about, are from 9th to 13th century, 900 to 1300 years around that time. So that means earlier manuscripts have been lost. So example, Plato's writing, he wrote it around 300, 400 BC, 400 years before Christ, BC. His ideas he wrote. Then 400 years, so copies that were made those days lost. But I mean lost from our point of view. So there were copies made, copies made, copies made. And finally around 1300 or 900 AD, some more copies were made, 1000 AD, 1000, 1000, 100,000, 200,000, 300 copies were made. So the earliest copies we have are from around 900 AD. The copies made before that are gone, destroyed. So that is called as a time gap. That means the time between earliest copy, what we have, which is around 900 AD to when the original would have been written around 400 BC. That is called time gap. So there are two things we have to look at. How many manuscripts do you have of his works? And when is the earliest copy? And what is the time gap between the earliest copy we have and to when he would have actually written the time gap? You are understanding, how many copies of manuscript do we have? If you have more manuscripts, then you can check between the manuscript. They're all saying the same thing. If every manuscript is saying something different, say, hey, each one has written something else. It's not a copy of the original. But if all the manuscripts are saying something, the same thing, then you know, okay, this is the original text. That means they all copy the same thing. It is correct. But if they're all saying something different, different, different. So it happened both horizontally and linearly. That means over time. So example, he would have written the first say, let's say the first one is written 400 BC. That time, let's say 10 people made copies. There were 10 copies, example. Then from each of the 10, around 200 BC, let's say, somebody made from each of that another 10 they made. So now you have about 110 copies. Then say around 180, somebody made some more copies. So the number of copies are increasing, but it is being made at different points in time. If all these manuscripts are the text is the same, then you know the copies are correct. But if the text is different, then you know these people either they didn't copy correctly or they're writing their own things. That means something is wrong with the text. You can't depend on it. We can't say this is what Plato said, because it is not matching with other manuscripts. So something is corrupted. So we're going to look at how about the Bible, but what we're doing is we are comparing with different ancient texts, like how many copies of those texts do we have? What is the time gap? And then how does the Bible compare to these two? Because these are two important criteria to show the reliability of a text. If you have good number of manuscripts and if you go as close to the original, then we say this is very reliable. So that is what we are trying to do. We are looking at number of manuscripts and time gap. So you'll see some other history books like the Greek historians. There are only eight manuscripts that are there. Time gap is 1300 years. That means the earliest we have is 1300 years. Roman history, other historical books, just given a list here, so you get an idea. Even in Shakespeare's plays, which is from around 1500, there are passages that are missing. There are passages which have many different versions, so you don't know exactly what Shakespeare wrote. We don't know because somebody else wrote something. It's all got mixed up in certain texts. So we don't actually know the original that Shakespeare would have written. Now, if you look at the Old Testament, see a little chart over there on page 43. If you look at the Old Testament, Malachi, if you look at the last book, Malachi. So till Malachi, just imagine, copies were made till Malachi. So you've got the entire Old Testament till Malachi written or copied by these scribes around 400 BC. So now, okay, just imagine, you've got the completed Old Testament 400 BC, say copy was made. Now, until 1947, the oldest known copies of these Old Testament manuscripts, oldest copies that we had, was from 900 AD. That means we're saying 1300 years gap. Okay, Malachi, last book, 408 BC. We had manuscripts that were written in 900 AD. They were written in 900 AD. That means there's a big gap, time gap of 1300 years between what the last book was written and what manuscripts we have. So that is fine. So King James, other books and all were translated from those manuscripts. Then what happened in 1947 is there was a shepherd boy in near the kumran caves. He was taking care of a sheep. Suddenly some sheep went, so he went searching for a sheep and he came into these caves called the kumran caves near the Dead Sea. And there he saw jars safely kept inside the caves. Inside the jars were scrolls. This is 1947, not too long ago, around how old India is as a country. Hey, he saw these jars, the scrolls were there. Then of course, this is a discovery. So people came, they looked at the scrolls, so they found in these scrolls, they found the entire Old Testament. Among other things, all put in jars, sealed, kept safely. And these scrolls were from, when were these scrolls from? One, if you go to page number 46, these scrolls were from 150 BC. That means they were written very close to Malachi. Malachi was 400 BC. These scrolls were from 150 BC to 70 AD. Around that time they were written very close to Malachi. And they were sitting in these caves, full Old Testament, in scrolls, put in jars. So now, remember, the oldest copy we had of the Old Testament was from 900 AD. Now we have found manuscripts from 150 BC, almost 1000 years. So they compared the scrolls. Is it matching or not? And they found everything was matching. Small, maybe negligible difference, copy is small. Otherwise, everything was matching. This is the book of Isaiah, verse 7. That means, even though there was 1000 years, you and I may live 70 years, 80 years, 1000 years of gap, even though there was 1000 year gap, the manuscripts, the text in the manuscript remained almost unchanged. That shows how carefully these people were copying, making the copies. So suddenly, the time gap became very small. Between the last book of the Old Testament, when the whole, full Old Testament would have been compiled to the earliest set of manuscripts, it dropped to about 250 years, very close. Whereas, like we said in the earlier table, some of the Greek philosophers, historians, the time gap is like 1000 years, 1300 years. But now Old Testament time gap dropped to 250 years. You understand it? Now, of course, New Testament is a little bit more easier because it is more recent. Let me also, bottom of page 46, we also found the Old Testament manuscripts, copies of the Old Testament, which were made into Greek from Hebrew, made into Greek around these times, around 325 AD to 480. And these are, these different copies are in Greek, are given different names based on where they are being kept. So we have the Greek version of the Old Testament. These are Greek translations or substitutes. The New Testament, more recent, so lots of manuscripts are available. Written in Greek, from Greek, they were translated to Latin, and then they were also translated to other languages. So we have lots of manuscripts of the New Testament. If you want to, if you want to summarize all of this, there's a table there on page 47. You look at that table and you look at the number of manuscripts, look at the time gap. So Old Testament, we have more than 10,000 manuscripts, so many copies. Time gap is down to about 150 years. New Testament, 24,000, time gap is about 50 years. That means if in terms of credibility of the text, the Bible is more reliable than some of all the other ancient books, which people quote nicely, so and so said this, so and so said that. But you don't know, you're reading some manuscript 1000 years later, we don't know whether it's correct or not. For Bible, we say, hey, we are so close to the original and we have so many manuscripts, everything is saying the same thing. We know this is what the correct text is. Yes, speaking of the mic, go ahead. Regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls that were founded and we were told that they are about 150 BC to 70 AD. And it's like how we can say that, like is there any proof? Because of the people who stored them. So this tribe or these people who made copies, they were living at that time. So example, if you say some tribe, they were there or a group of people, they were there at that time. They are the ones who made these copies. They are the ones who put it here. So we know when they were living. So based on that, we can say that this is from that period of time. That's why we have a range like 150 BC to 70 AD. That's when these people are living here. They were living in this part of the world. They made these copies and they put it for safety. They kept it here. They were here at that time. So that's how we know it's from that time. And then of course, wars happened, things happened. We were destroyed, killed, but these things were preserved. So that's how we know the date. Anymore? Yeah, it's possible. Because in the news, we keep reading, you know, somebody, sometimes they will unearth a city. While they are digging for something else, they'll excavate, oh, there was a city here. Of course, they find it. And then they start digging very carefully. They find, okay. So in that area of Palestine, Middle East, so it is possible that in that area, as people excavating, they're digging for various reasons. If they run into, hey, there was a city here. And maybe somebody bought some scrolls and preserved it somewhere. How they used to keep it in jars in those days, we can still find. So possibility is there. But this was, the Dead Sea Scrolls was a very big thing, especially to show us that the text of the scriptures had not changed over time. First of all, one more question about this translation, like from the Old Testament, if you see, it's actually written in Hebrew. And then it was translated to Greek and then to English. Like I heard, like from now, this Old Testament from Hebrew is directly translated into English, is it true? Yes. Yeah. So actually, many of the English translations, they work with these original manuscripts. So they will start from the Hebrew or they will start from the Greek. And they will translate it into English. So that's generally how all our translations are made. And they will, we will explain, like, you know, depending on the philosophy of how they want to go about doing the translation, we get different versions of the Bible. And we also have, you know, these footnotes that will say, this text is not found here and not found there. Why are they saying it? We will explain that based on what set of manuscripts they want to use and how they're going about translating, they make these comments. So we'll come to that. So when you compare the scriptures to, you know, other Greek philosophers or so on, the Bible is way ahead of other ancient texts. Now we have more manuscripts, time gap is smaller, therefore the manuscripts, the text in the manuscripts are more reliable. All right. So in a similar way, I mean, and I don't want to kind of, I mean, we're not here to like, make, you know, what to say, put other religions down kind of, we're not here to criticize, but we could, you know, talk about the Bible, the text of the scriptures in comparison to say the Quran or the Vedas. Again, we're not doing, again, don't get into any argument with people on this, you know, say our goal is not to put people down. Hey, you know, what we should do is, if they ask us why you believe the Bible, then we can give this answer. But don't say Bible is better than Quran or the Vedas. That is not our approach because it will offend people. But at least we can say that this is authentic the scriptures are authentic and the content is inspired by God. It was written by man, we accept that, but the content was inspired by God. And we understand also that it has both revelation and history, meaning, yeah, it is recording actual events, but it also has revelation, meaning insight that God gave to the people. So we accept, that's how we present, but we don't argue with people on, oh, this is better, that is better. No, we'll give you information, you decide. Yeah. We are just, I mean, giving this proof because of this number of manuscripts, the, I mean, maximum number of manuscripts and time yeah. So and, and when we, when we come back to this Vedas also, the people were telling, we also have manuscripts and all. I mean, what, what do you take on that? Yeah. So, so the Vedas, at least from what I know, a lot of it was verbally transmitted, like, you know, orally transmitted, they call it. And, and then compiled, written down, right. And so yeah, they have these manuscripts and so on. And again, we're not going to argue with that. So one is fine. We are just showing that the scriptures are authentic, are reliable. And, and they will have their position on the Quran or the Vedas. Now, of course, Quran, they will also argue, you know, it is, it is clean, it is written in Urdu Arabic and whatever that it's all of those things. Fine. And they will criticize us for having so many verses and so on. So we can respond to those arguments. But our goal is not to try to put any of their scriptures down. We accept that. Yeah, you have copies or you've maintained the example of the Quran, you've maintained, you've kept it only on, I think only recently they started, you know, allowing translations in English, but it was always kept in the original text. So if you had to read Quran, you have to read it in the original language. So those, those kinds of things are there which they can use as arguments. But we can present what we know and leave it at that. The people who are converted from Ramans to Christians, they got to know Jesus. When, when these people became the preachers, they were telling like, there is Jesus in Vedas. Like, is there really Jesus in Vedas? I mean, I've also studied when one of the thing, and I've also got for the conclusion, I mean, the characteristics, what they were explaining, it's actually a resemble Jesus in the whole scriptures of Vedas. Can we, can we mention, I mean, all these Vedas things in our, when we are preaching, we can use that or So I, yeah, so, you know, I've heard both. Yeah. Like, just like you're saying, Hindus have come to Christ and also Muslims who have come to Christ shared that. In fact, I was listening to a testimony of one Muslim who was, was, was actually a Imam, you know, and he, when he was reading the scripture, his scriptures, he found that it was pointing to Jesus. Then he came and explored Jesus and he came to Christ and today is a preacher. So these testimonies are very powerful, but, and so, so God has used that to bring them to faith in Christ. No doubt, no doubt. Same thing with, say, from the, from the people who have read the Vedas and then from there they've explored the Christian faith and then they've come to faith in Christ. No doubt that these testimonies are valid, they are preaching and serving the Lord today. But I would say we shouldn't personally go, we shouldn't go and say, see the Quran is pointing to Jesus and the Vedas is pointing, you know why my thought is this, that if we say that, then the immediate question in the mind of the listener is, that means the rest of the scripture is also correct. If you're saying one part is correct, that it is correctly pointing to Jesus and the rest of it also must be correct. Why you're telling only one verse or one part is correct and I should disregard the other, because that's a logical question, it's a very valid question. Correct? So it's very dangerous for us to use that as a basis. So that's when you say, when you're comparing Bible with Quran and Vedas, okay, we understand there are other scripture texts, we're not going to fight, we're just going to say this is how the Bible came to us and we realize, you know, there is the Quran, there are the Vedas, this is how their scriptures came. But we are not going to use that content of the Vedas, the content of the Quran to point to Jesus. Let God use that. I mean, as we see in these cases, these testimonies where people were reading the Quran and they found something that pointed to Jesus and then they went and explored more about the Christian faith and came to faith in Christ, which is okay, which is good, God used that. But if we try to use it, then these will be the logical arguments and then, you know, then it's pointless. So better not even to go into those things, leave it alone. And I wouldn't use it, even though I know some people do use it. Friends, religious friends, like one pastor was saying, we can, I mean, to just God to know, like to just inspire them from the scriptures or to make them understand little more deeper, like we can use the scriptures to point to point to Jesus, to lead to Jesus. Paul just used their culture. So he saw what he observed. So he saw that they had this inscription to one stone saying, to the unknown God. So he used that saying, okay, I'm going to tell you about that unknown God. And he also quoted one of the poets, you know, was one of your poets have said, in him we live and move and have a being. But he was not validating the rest of anything. He's not validating the rest of their culture. Yeah, you can worship many gods. He's very careful how we used it, like something in their culture as a starting point, something in their literature to get them to understand, you know, how we can have a relationship with God. But that was it. So definitely we can use things that people are familiar with to present truths. But I think, you know, getting into this area of the Vedas is talking about Jesus or the Quran is talking about Jesus. I think it's a dangerous area because the obvious question is that means the rest of the Vedas are correct and the rest of the Quran is correct and everything else is correct. Why are you telling us to disregard? So that is a logical question. And we can't do that. Right. Yeah, there's a lot of dimension. Prince, your question? When we are speaking about even Vedas and Quran has the scriptures, manuscripts that were old and we were told, like, we accept that when they told we accept that they have manuscripts, which are old. So sir, is it not like accepting also what they're believing is true, like accepting their manuscripts were reliable? Like, is it not accepting what they're believing is true? So we are not disregarding the fact that there are ancient, I mean, that the Quran or the Vedas are not reliable texts. I mean, we're not saying, okay, that doesn't exist. Yeah, they do exist. We respect that. So then, so one is we present the validity of the scriptures that this is how we see that the scriptures of our Bible is valid. The next major difference is the content. The content of the scriptures is inspired by God and that difference, they will see, they'll open their eyes and say, no, for example, you compare the Bible with the Quran with what Muhammad did. And so the Quran has part of Muhammad's life and all of that. So you compare, let them compare, let them see the difference. You know, and I've heard estimates, I read a book, I forget the title. It was written by one Hamas leader, so the Palestinian thing, where he himself, you know, he was of course raised up as a Muslim and then when he was given a copy of the New Testament and he started reading the New Testament and he started reading the life of Jesus. I say, hey, the life of Jesus is so different from that of Muhammad the prophet. So different and that really touched him. And that itself, just reading the Gospels, reading the life of Jesus and the book, name of the book, I think is called Son of Hamas. He was a son of one of the leader of this group, the Palestinian group. So just reading that the Gospels, sorry, it just drew him to Christ. And he made a decision to follow Jesus. Of course, his life was at risk and he had to leave. But what I'm saying is, okay, in the natural level, yeah, we need to show that the Bible is valid, ancient text. We agree that there are other ancient texts. We're not disregarding it, but the next major difference is the content. What is in there? You read that, you read this. Let God work here. Or if they ask us questions, we can explain. I'll just answer one question on the chat here. Is the Torah and the Bible the same? What's the difference between Torah and the Bible? So the first five books of the Old Testament and the books of Moses, so that's the same. So to that extent, it's the same. And then of course, the Jews have other texts, the Talmud, which is I think the interpretation of the law. That means how do you apply the law in everyday life? So that is not part of the text. But the first five books of Moses are the same. The Bible, of course, is much more than the first five books, but the first five books are the same. All right, let's pause here for today. We will pick this up next week. Continue this. I will talk about the scriptures and get into other topics. Okay, somebody can close in prayer and the bill dismissed, please. Jesus, we thank you for this day and for this time that we can come together to know of your word and also to see the perspectives of different people as well and for us to know which is the right doctrine and to follow it. And Lord, I pray that we will continue to go on the right path and to now go astray and thank you Jesus for this class and in your name, amen. Okay, thank you everyone. Well, pick this up next week. See you soon. Bye.