Jamie, Pull Up Those Rebuttals

In my last post, I pointed readers to the now popular Wesley Huff appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast. Given the popularity of the episode, it came as no surprise that several responses came out. After all, internet atheists and academics who are far too high on their own flatulence, can't sleep at the night when a Christian is given a large platform and makes good use out of it! With that, too, is a degradation of the presenter; thus, we have this post from textual critic Brent Nongbri: https://brentnongbri.com/2025/01/11/p52-on-the-joe-rogan-experience-fact-check/?fbclid=IwY2xjawHwP5RleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHQUSZyvkNuQ9q6TOb_zCCMipqHwF-nI56iwEprKnrPVD60q-xeNfI0zCtQ_aem_rAN1JNrIL98wmPyAYcAFdQ

Dr. Nongbri is a legitimate and well-respected NT textual critic. I don't have too much to say about the fact checks themselves, but it is insightful to see that Nongbri refers to Wes as "the apologist" and using "standard apologetic talking points." Yes, Wes does apologetics, but he is also working on his PhD in Nongbri's field: textual criticism. Feel free to fact check that. 

Secondly, Rogan's conversations seldom ever discuss the intricacies and developments of the fields themselves. Rather, the episodes are much more focused on the individual on the opposite side of the table. Hence, when Wes talks, he is giving his views. Furthermore, in a 3 hour podcast, one is bound to go over a lot of those views, a lot more than the 5 bullet points on Dr. Nongbri's post. 

By the way, Wesley was ever-gracious and left some comments on Nongbri's post. Check those out.

Lastly, I'd like to go over one of the bullet points, namely, the one on Christian usage of the codex. I agree Wes could have worded this a lot better, so I will use this as a springboard to quote several passages from New Testament scholar and textual critic apologist (?!) Charles E. Hill in his wonderful book Who Chose the Gospels? (Oxford University Press, 2010).

“…papyrologist C. H. Roberts made an interesting observation: ‘All Christian manuscripts of the Bible, whether of the Old Testament or the New Testament, attributable to the second or the earlier third century, are codices, all written on papyrus. With Christian manuscripts other than biblical, practice varies; some, possibly because they were candidates for the Canon, others more probably on the analogy of the biblical texts, are in codex form; others, and not only scholarly treatises when pagan practices might be expected to be followed, but texts such as Tatian's Harmony of the Four Gospels (found at Dura Europos and so written before the destruction of the city in A.D. 256) and one of the Logia papyri, are in roll form.’” (p. 111)

“One might think that in the wild and woolly world of the early church (as often represented), when Gospels were 'multiplying like rabbits', Christians would certainly have produced codices containing an endless variety of Gospel combinations. It may, therefore, be surprising to learn that, ‘The Gospels that were rejected from that fourfold collection were never bound together with any or all of those four. There are no manuscripts that contain say Matthew, Luke and Peter, or John, Mark and Thomas.

Only the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were considered as scriptural and then as canonical.

It could be that the reason why the Christians adopted the codex long before anyone else was to safeguard the four Gospels from either addition or subtraction.

This is in effect the operation of ’” (pp. 116-17 citing Elliot, Manuscripts, the Codex and the cannon, 107)

In the middle of writing this post, and the section on Alex O'Connor, a.k.a CosmicSkeptic in particular (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0qzvDSmKi4&t=1266s) I saw Gavin Ortlund gave a good response over on his channel: https://youtu.be/UxAnxJD3ZYM?si=_91Pjt-KMBNQiCGq. He covers a lot of the ground that I was going to, so, for the sake of brevity, I will point readers to Ortlund's video here.

Wesley Huff on Joe Rogan

 As the title suggests, Wesley Huff, apologist and soon-to-be PhD, went on Joe Rogan's podcast, which is linked below. 

Wesley did fantastic and it was wonderful to see Joe Rogan thoughtfully listening to what Wesley was saying. Furthermore, I think Wes was a great choice for this venue. Unlike some apologists, Wesley has a much more "normal" feel to him, i.e., just another one of the 'bro's' that listen to Rogan's show. Of course, not being an example of such is not a knock against them! 

With the size of Rogan's audience, this is sure to draw some attention--and not just from non-Christians. I expect more believers to being taking apologetics more serious. 

Podcast: https://youtu.be/HwyAX69xG1Q?si=o6VhWLZk2KkLIJw3