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“To Cast the First Stone” with Tommy Wasserman

To cast the first stone is an expression in English and in Swedish.  It comes from a beloved passage in John’s Gospel (7:53—8:11). 

Tommy Wasserman talked recently with David Capes on The Stone Chapel Podcasts about a book he co-authored with Jennifer Knust.  It is entitled To Cast the First Stone: The Transmission of a Gospel Story (Princeton University Press, 2018).

Who Is Tommy Wasserman? 

Tommy Wasserman grew up in Sweden and became a follower of Jesus during his teen years. He has distinguished himself as one of the world’s top textual critics of the New Testament. 

His judgment and attention to detail sets him apart in the discipline.  His enthusiasm for textural criticism is infectious.

He is a professor of New Testament at the Örebro School of Theology in Sweden and a professor of biblical studies at the Ansgar Theological School in Norway. 

To Cast the First Stone Stories

One of the well known stories from the Gospel of John has to do with a dramatic confrontation between Jewish leaders and Jesus over a woman “caught” in the act of adultery. 

Even casual Bible readers observe a change in the type or the addition of brackets around the story.  If they read in the margins, they discover that the earliest and best manuscripts do not contain that story. 

So, it is unlikely that it was in the first version of the manuscript.  Only later did this episode enter into the tradition. 

Jennifer and Tommy take great care to trace how this account came into the early manuscripts and has become a mainstay of our own Bible tradition

What Scholars are saying about the book

Here is what Chris Keith has to say about it:

“Knust and Wasserman use the story of the adulteress to illustrate the fascinating transmission history of gospel literature and the various personalities and forces that contributed to the process. To Cast the First Stone will undoubtedly become the standard book on this story.”

―Chris Keith, author ofThePericope Adulterae, the Gospel of John, and the Literacy of Jesus

To watch the panel discussion featuring Tommy Wasserman and Dan Wallace click here.

To watch David Capes’ interview with Tommy Wasserman and Dan Wallace at Biblical Literacy (Champion Forest Baptist Church) click here.  

More resources

To hear the podcast (20 min.) click here.

Want more Stone Chapel Podcasts on some great topics. Just click here.

What’s more, you can get information on upcoming lectures at Lanier Theological Library. Just click here.

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A Visit to Tyndale House with Peter Williams

To hear the podcast (18 minutes) click here.

Cathy, my wife, and I visited Tyndale House recently when we were in the UK. 

It was our first time there, and we were welcomed warmly by many including Peter Williams. Peter is the Principal and CEO of Tyndale House Center for Biblical Research in Cambridge.

Tyndale House

Peter describes Tyndale House as “a residential research library and worshiping community.” 

It started in 1944, before D-Day, as a center for Bible research.  While Europe was engulfed in war, many with vision saw the need for such a center. And they imagined it in the shadow of one of the world’s great universities.

Peter has been with us before on The Stone Chapel Podcast to talk about Tyndale House.  To hear that podcast (18 minutes) click here.

A New Initiative

On this visit to Tyndale House Peter and I discussed an important plan the staff has to become a greater and greater resource to majority world scholars. 

The fact of the matter is that resources (like colleges, universities, libraries, accommodations, and lecturers) are not spread evenly around the world.

Most churches in the world are not staffed by trained pastors. And as the church in the west grows greyer, the church in the global south is younger and more energetic.

What Tyndale House is doing

So Tyndale House is making more space and greater resources available to church leaders from Madagascar, Egypt, Congo, Brazil and many other countries around the world.

Some of these church leaders and scholars come from war zones and countries where Christians are in a persecuted minority.

For them Tyndale House is an oasis in the desert, but inevitably all return home with friendships, connections, and learning that lasts a lifetime.

To learn more

To learn more about Tyndale House go to their website: Tyndalehouse.com.  They have podcasts, newsletters, and other resources available. 

Peter was one of our earliest lecturers at the Lanier Theological Library.  To watch his first lecture with us click here.

More resources

Would you like a transcript of this podcast? Click here.

And you can get more Stone Chapel Podcasts on some great topics. Just click here.

What’s more? You can get information on upcoming lectures at Lanier Theological Library. Just click here.

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Formatting the Word of God with Dan Wallace

In May 2023 Dan Wallace lectured at the Lanier Theological Library. His topic was “Formatting the Word of God.”  Before the lecture, he sat down to talk with David Capes for “The Stone Chapel Podcasts.”

Who is Dan Wallace? 

Dan Wallace is the CEO and executive director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) in Plano, Texas.

Formatting the Word of God

From the beginning, people who hand copied the New Testament manuscripts put into the manuscripts features which made the reading of Scripture easier.  But these features led to certain interpretations.

The Bible has certain formatting to it. It has to. Every literary product has to. For example, how wide should the margins be for a text? How wide should the text be? Is it going to be on a three-foot papyrus roll? So, there’s some formatting.

Certain features, for example, make it easier to read in public.  Other features of copying indicate respect for and devotion to Christ. 

Dan’s lecture will be rich in imagery drawn from the thousands of photographs of these amazing manuscripts that this organization has taken over the last decades. (You can find a link to it below. It was a little over one hour long.)

Still thousands of manuscripts remain unphotographed.  But his organization has discovered many other manuscripts not previously catalogued. 

Even the form of the book itself—the codex not scrolls or rolls—has a certain interpretive significance. 

The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts

Because these manuscripts and inks are organic, over time they will decay, fade, and become unreadable.  That’s one reason Dan started the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts: to preserve these valuable artifacts. 

But there is another reason.  The goal of the center is to make high quality, digital images available to all people.  If the staff  meet their goal, then in the future anyone in the world with an internet connection will be able to view images of available manuscripts. 

Formatting Today

Modern Bibles continue the interpretive features.  Chapters, verses, columns, italicizing, page numbers, cross-referencing, and interpretive notes are employed by publishers and these guide readers to interpret the texts. 

For the website of the CSNTM, go to www.csntm.org

To hear the complete lecture click here.

To hear Dan Wallace’s previous podcast on the history and mission of the CSNTM click here.

Would you like a transcript of this podcast? Click here.

More resources

Want more Stone Chapel Podcasts on some great topics. Just click here.

What’s more, you can get information on upcoming lectures at Lanier Theological Library. Just click here.

To hear the podcast (22 minutes) click here.

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Capturing Christianity with Cameron Bertuzzi

To hear the podcast click here.

Capturing Christianity is an apologetics ministry directed by Cameron Bertuzzi, assisted ably by his wife Brittany.  Cameron stopped by the Lanier Theological Library to talk with David Capes about his ministry on “The Stone Chapel Podcast.”

Who is Cameron Bertuzzi? 

For years, Cameron made his living through photography and photo-editing.  But when his brother came out as an atheist a few years ago, Cameron began a journey in apologetics that has led to this ministry. He wanted to know whether Christianity could be rationally defended.  He wanted to explore some of objections raised by skeptics about its truth.

Like many people, Cameron had never thought deeply about his faith.  He attended church and performed in the worship band, but he had never considered the rational basis of faith.

Capturing Christianity

Cameron and his wife work together in this ministry.  Along his journey, Cameron began listening to apologists and soon found an intellectual hero in Dr. William Lane Craig. Today, Cameron works consistently with Dr. Craig.  Dr. Craig lectured at the Lanier Library in 2021. For a link to his lecture click here.  

Then watch his panel discussion here.

The ministry started as a blog in 2017. Cameron worked on it in his free time for the first two years.  Now he and Brittany work full time. He hosts dialogues, does interviews, and features what he calls “CC Exchanges.”  At the heart of it all, they focus their conversations around “atheistic apologetics”.

The Capturing Christianity YouTube channel today has 178,000 subscribers.  It has taken off.  About 5000 people a month find his ministry.

CC Exchange

The next CC Exchange will be May 6, 2023 at the Lanier Theological Library.  Cameron will host the exchange with Justin Schieber (atheist) and Eric Hernandez (Christian). Their topic is “Does God Exist?” To learn more about the event or to attend click here.  The event is free and open to the public thanks to the generosity of the Lanier Foundation and the good people at Capturing Christianity. 

If you can’t attend, it will be streamed live and recorded for the Capturing Christianity YouTube Channel.

For the website to Capturing Christianity click here.

For the Capturing Christianity YouTube Channel click here.

More resources

Here’s a transcript of this podcast. Click here.

Want more more Stone Chapel Podcasts on some great topics. Just click here.

What’s more, you can get information on upcoming lectures at Lanier Theological Library. Just click here.

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Broken Planet with Sharon Dirckx

Dr. Sharon Dirckx

Broken Planet is the title of a new book by Sharon Dirckx (PhD, Cambridge) with InterVarsity Press (2023). The subtitle describes the question she hopes to address: If There’s a God, Then Why Are There Natural Disasters and Diseases?  She joins David Capes on The Stone Chapel Podcast to talk about her most recent book.

To hear the podcast (approx 20 minutes) click here.

Who is Sharon Dirckx, author of Broken Planet?

Sharon Dirckx is a freelance speaker and author who occasionally teaches courses for OCCA, The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.  She has been with us before on this podcast and has lectured at the Lanier Theological Library in Houston in November 2022. Links to those episodes and to her other books are below.

While her PhD from Cambridge is in brain imaging, Dr. Dirckx has turned her attention to our broken planet. She and her husband live in Oxford, UK.

Are we living on a Broken Planet? 

A great deal of suffering is caused by natural disasters: tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, pandemics, and other catastrophes. How do we account for such disasters if there is a God who is all powerful?  Is our planet broken or is this the best of all possible worlds as some regard it?

It is one thing to make a case for the origin and impact of moral evil or “man’s inhumanity to man.”  But it’s quite another to talk about the planet itself as being our home and our nemesis.

Dirckx mixes her own style of apologetic argument with stories of people who suffered and survived to create a compelling book. This podcast captures a bit of her book and aims to help readers deal with those tragedies not caused by humans.

Click here to watch Sharon Dirckx’s lecture at the Lanier Theological library, on her second book, Am I Just My Brain.

Watch a short video here of Sharon discussing the topic, Can you be a credible scientist and believe in God.

For Sharon’s Podcast’s on her book, Am I Just My Brain, click here.