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Wes Huff on Joe Rogan: The Dead Sea Isaiah Scroll and the Hebrew Masoretic Text
Huff, O’Connor, and Rogan
Popular agnostic or atheist Alex O’Connor, not as popular as Joe Rogan but more than everyone else in this story, has caught onto an error made by evangelical apologist Wes Huff on Rogan’s show. O’Connor sees this as very important in a greater scheme of things. He also targets the cover-up of the error by Huff and many others who defend him. They won’t admit wrong or concede the error. These also talk like experts, yet saying with great confidence false things as though they were true.
Wes Huff and those who defend him are not know nothings. They show a wealth of Bible knowledge, but Huff and many of his defenders get their attention mainly from their presentation and production value. They know how to connect with a modern audience on youtube and podcasts. However, when they get their content wrong, it devastates their credibility in front of the world. And then it only gets worse when they then spin their mistakes. All this makes an Alex O’Connor seem more credible than they are.
What raises the level of this clash between Huff and O’Connor is the tangible perception of Joe Rogan. Rogan has said twice that a miracle occurred with the finding of the Isaiah scroll and its identicality (according to Huff) to the Hebrew Masoretic Text. A thousand year gap exists between the Great Isaiah Scroll, 1Qlsaa, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in Qumran on the West side of the Dead Sea in 1947, and the Hebrew Masoretic Text, also called the Leningrad Codex. The latter is often called The Received Text of the Old Testament.
Miracle Claim
Even though 1Qlsaa is very close to the same as the Hebrew Masoretic Text of Isaiah, and the estimates are one to seven percent word difference, there are hundreds of variations. It is not close to word-for-word identical. Alex O’Connor focused on this because Joe Rogan called it a miracle. Rogan saw this kind of preservation of Isaiah as supernatural. He couldn’t stop thinking about it.
O’Connor appeared on the show of another popular youtuber and asked the host what was significant to the miracle claim of Rogan. O’Connor then answered his own question, saying that it implied the work of God and in particular the work of the Holy Spirit in this identicality of the Isaiah scroll and the Hebrew Masoretic Text. It is saying that God did something, so God is real and actively intervening. O’ Connor speaks of divine preservation of scripture. That’s Rogan’s thinking. If scripture is divine, people expect perfect preservation by God.
The Promise of God and Preservation of Scripture
Neither Huff nor any evangelical host then says, “Yes, God preserved it with perfection like God promised.” None of them say that. O’Connor asked an evangelical podcaster, “At what percentage of difference would it become a concern to you?” The podcaster pauses and says, Not fifty percent, but I would say, seventy-five percent (I’m paraphrasing). I contend that evangelicals like this man are conditioned to a degree of difference. They adjust their expectations for what God can and will do.
Sure, God can save. He saves. The most frequent thought is that God could have kept His Words. He just didn’t. He didn’t do it, and so He didn’t promise it either.
Does this sliding scale kind of approach to preservation of scripture do anything to the faith of professing saints? Of course it does. Rather than embrace a presuppositional approach that believes what God said He would do, they follow what they think is the so-called science. What I’m saying is real and evangelicals should stop acting like it isn’t. Alex O’Connor gets it, which is why he was hot on the trail of this Joe Rogan story. Everyone gets it, it seems, except these evangelical leaders. People in the pews of churches get it. The low percentage of confidence is intolerable to the normal Christian.
Great Isaiah Scroll Related to Hebrew Masoretic Text
Let me return to the Isaiah scroll and the Hebrew Masoretic. The actual physical manuscript, the Hebrew Masoretic, the Leningrad Codex, is one thousand years old. The Isaiah scroll is physically older, predating Christ’s physical appearance on earth. But the Hebrew Masoretic is the original between the two. Even the textual critics say this. Leading textual scientists say they know the Hebrew Masoretic Text (not the physical copy) was the master for the Isaiah scroll.
The scribes of the Isaiah scroll took a free or liberal approach to the text, which contains editing, morphological smoothing and updating, and a modernization of terms for an audience of second temple Judaism that no longer understood classical Hebrew forms. The scroll represents the language of Palestine in the time period of its copying. Textual scholars see the variations as that of a nonofficial, vulgar text. The Isaiah scroll is apparently closer to the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament, both of which represent a free rendering of the text.
The Hebrew Masoretic is not the Great Isaiah scroll. The former is original. It represents the text from which the scribes of the Isaiah scroll produced their rendering, which differs. Nonetheless, the two are amazingly similar and point to a dovetail moment in time. According to textual criticism, the two Hebrew texts are the same, but not word-for-word identical. Historically, however, the Isaiah scroll says that the text of Isaiah existed at that time. In fact, the copy of the Isaiah scroll in the Jerusalem museum was a copy of an even earlier copy of Isaiah, modernizing it to a small degree.
True Apologetics
Joe Rogan, thinking that Wes Huff said, “word-for-word identical,” says, “That’s a miracle!” It would take the providence of God, divine intervention, to get perfect preservation like that. Yet, what Rogan thought Huff was saying, he wasn’t saying. As O’Connor said: the Holy Spirit would be involved. Where did O’Connor get this idea? He studied the Bible at Oxford. O’Connor perhaps knows about this historic doctrine of preservation or at least the expectation of the supernatural related to the Word of God.
Moslems would seize gladly the imperfection of the text of the Bible, the non-miraculous nature of it. Apologetics proceed from giving scriptural answers and stand for the faith. Textual scientists dealing in percentages and incomplete assurance, that is not apologetics. Without faith, it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). Genuine Christians should not capitulate to such squishiness.
What God Did
The Great Isaiah Scroll was gone for over two thousand years, lost in the Qumran Caves in Israel. It was not available to God’s people, unlike the Hebrew Masoretic Text. That text continued before, after, and still today. Israel and then the church received the Hebrew Masoretic Text and translated it to many different other languages. Wes Huff could have told this story and explained why the Isaiah scroll was lost until 1947.
On the other hand, what a gracious discovery, the Great Isaiah Scroll. The book of Isaiah, a prophetic book, predates the fulfillment of many, many of its prophecies. Those were prophecies! We believe that, but here came a document that afforded evidence of that reality. But finding those copies in that cave, that isn’t a miracle. Any Christian already assumes, based on God’s promises that God preserved every Old Testament Word in the Hebrew Masoretic Text.
What About the Accusation of So-Called “Mystical Explanation” or “Omniscience” Against a Perfect Original Language Preservation of Scripture?
A New Attack on Verbal Plenary Preservation of Scripture
Ross-White Debate
After the Ross-White debate, I saw one particular regular attack on the biblical and historical doctrine of the preservation of scripture. This is the perfect or verbal plenary preservation of the original language text of the Bible. Critical text advocates, who deny that doctrine, call the opposing position a “mystical explanation,” “omniscience,” the “Urim and Thummim,” or “Ruckmanism for all intents and purposes.” The part about Ruckman hints at double inspiration thinking. You say you believe the church possesses a perfect text of scripture in the original languages. They say that requires a work of God like inspiration or a mystical gift on the level of omniscience.
The historical doctrine of preservation says God preserved His Word. That is a supernatural explanation. God did it. Something supernatural occurred. Any claim of supernaturalism could be prey to the attack of mysticism, omniscience, saints possessing the Urim and Thummim, or the Ruckman charge. If copyists make errors and manuscripts have variants, how do believers know what the words are? Do they flop back into a trance-like state and their body moves like a puppet to the correct word?
The Imagery, a Mockery
The imagery painted by critical text advocates accuses men testing a variation between texts with a seer stone or divining rod. Someone printing a New Testament edition swoons into a condition where his body becomes taken over by God in the decision of a correct word in a text. It really is just a form of mockery, because none of their targets for this ridicule come close to this description.
The critical text advocates leave out a supernatural explanation. They don’t like that criticism. They don’t want theological presuppositions to guide, only the so-called science. Someone might claim perfection, if it’s God working. They rather defer to human reason as a tool. That allows for the error they favor as an outcome. They won’t say it’s God. At most, a few might say that God designed human reason like He did for the invention of a new vaccination.
The Providence of God
Used for Preservation of Scripture
The language used in the supernatural intervention in God’s method of preservation with and through His church is the “providence of God.” The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) reads:
The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which, at the time of the writing of it, was most generally known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God, and, by His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical.
You can read the language there, “God . . . by His singular care and providence.” In 1680 preacher of the gospel, John Alexander wrote: “seeing the Scriptures by the Providence of God kept pure . . . . seeing the Scriptures as they now are were transmitted to us by the Church, unto whom the Oracles of God were committed, and against whom the Gates of Hell shall not prevail.” In 1721 Edward Synge wrote: “Still it pleased God, by his overruling Providence, to preserve his Written Word, and keep it pure and uncorrupted . . . . by which means the Fountain, I mean the Text of the Holy Scripture, was kept pure and undefiled.”
Its Meaning
John Piper in 2020 wrote a very large book, entitled, Providence. In the first chapter, he gives a lengthy explanation of the word, concluding that it means concerning God, “He sees to it that things happen in a certain way.” He points to Genesis 22 as a classic description of providence, when in verse 8, Abraham says, “God will provide himself a lamb,” using “provide.” Later, verse 14 uses the root meaning of that word “provide”:
And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen.
In the word “providence” is the Latin vide (think video), which means, “see.” Notice in verse 14, “it shall be seen.” The idea is that God sees, but even further, “He sees to.” He saw the ram in place of Isaac and He saw to the ram for Isaac.
Heidelberg Catechism
As providence relates to scripture, God sees to it that every word is preserved and available to His people, just like the ram was provided and available to Abraham and Isaac. The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) defines the providence of God:
The almighty and everywhere present power of God; whereby, as it were by his hand, he upholds and governs heaven, earth, and all creatures; so that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, and all things come, not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.
Providence is not by chance. If God is keeping the original text of scripture pure by His singular care and providence, He is not leaving that to chance. Since He will judge men by every word, which He says He will (Matthew 4:4, John 12:48), He will provide every Word. He will “see to it.” I know the question then arises, “How did God see to it?”
Providential Preservation
Spurgeon
Men who believe in providential preservation do not believe that God requires a trance-like state to accomplish perfect preservation of scripture. If you asked, “How did the ram appear in the thicket to Abraham?”, you might find the answer difficult. “He just did.” He said He would provide, so He did.
C. H. Spurgeon in a sermon on the Providence of God says this: “If anything would go wrong, God puts it right and if there is anything that would move awry, He puts forth His hand and alters it.” This is how I read the description men who believed in providential preservation.
Capel
Richard Capel represents the position well (Capel’s Remains, London, 1658, pp. 19-43):
[W]e have the Copies in both languages [Hebrew and Greek], which Copies vary not from Primitive writings in any matter which may stumble any. This concernes onely the learned, and they know that by consent of all parties, the most learned on all sides among Christians do shake hands in this, that God by his providence hath preserved them uncorrupt. . . .
. . . . As God committed the Hebrew text of the Old Testament to the Jewes, and did and doth move their hearts to keep it untainted to this day: So I dare lay it on the same God, that he in his providence is so with the Church of the Gentiles, that they have and do preserve the Greek Text uncorrupt, and clear: As for some scrapes by Transcribers, that comes to no more, than to censure a book to be corrupt, because of some scrapes in the printing, and tis certain, that what mistake is in one print, is corrected in another.
You should notice that Capel uses the word, “providence.” This doesn’t sound like the exaggerated, deceitful attacks of the critical text proponents. I love the last sentence of that paragraph as an understanding. I ask that you read it again: “As for some scrapes by Transcribers, that comes to no more, than to censure a book to be corrupt, because of some scrapes in the printing, and tis certain, that what mistake is in one print, is corrected in another.” These are not words you will hear from critical text, modern version men.
God Keeps His Words
I say God keeps His Words. He uses His institutions to do it. I also say God keeps the souls of the saints. He uses many various means to do that. It is difficult to explain how that He does it, but He does. That too is supernatural. Do the opponents of perfect preservation believe that God sees to that? They do and they base that on presuppositions without resorting to words like “mystical explanation.”
The method God uses to preserve is a true one. It is true like innermost machinery and function of a cell. It occurs. The DNA strands of a human being, designed by God, result in a fully grown, healthy person. God did that. He keeps working in His world as He sees fit. His doing that with His words is also science. It is supernatural and it is science.
More to Come
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