© 2023, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. Introduction I came across a short video on YouTube that had the provocative title “When the God of Israel Was Defeated By Another God.”[1] In this video, one Dan McClellan, a Mormon, discusses 2 Kings 3, which, he says, “tells a fascinating story where the God of Israel promises victory in a military invasion of another country but is unable to deliver …
© 2023, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. It is difficult to be surprised any longer at the uncritical alacrity with which evangelical scholars and apologists follow the unsubstantiated claims of liberal scholars that undermine the credibility of the New Testament. From late dating of the Gospel books to literary dependence to Markan priority to extreme late dating of the Gospel According to John and embracing of the error-ridden Nestle-Aland …
© 2023, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. Introduction Skeptics bring many charges of contradictions against the Bible. Most of them are trivial and easily answered. Others require more careful analysis, and there are a few that seem to stump Evangelicals, who seem unable to come up with a convincing answer[1]. One of these latter is the apparent contradiction between Mark and John regarding the time of day at which …
© 1996, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. Please note – The following link is to a temporary PDF file of John Tors, Master of Divinity Thesis, a clear text copy will be posted at a later date: The Westcott-Hort Theory Reexamined Master of Divinity Thesis by John Tors
© 2023, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. THE PROBLEM In 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, Paul writes the following: “For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.” Christ’s death for our sins and His burial are clearly foretold …
© 2023, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. Introduction Until the printing press was invented in the Western world in the mid-15th century, all writings (including the New Testament books) could be reproduced only by copying by hand (a handwritten copy is known as a manuscript). Since no copyist (“scribe”) is perfect, differences at points in the text (“variants”) are found among the extant manuscripts[1]. The attempt to recover the …
© 2023, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. Introduction Until the printing press was invented in the Western world in the mid-15th century, all writings (including the New Testament books) could be reproduced only by copying by hand (a handwritten copy is known as a manuscript). Since no copyist (“scribe”) is perfect, differences at points in the text (“variants”) are found among the extant manuscripts. Some manuscripts were copied very …
© 2023, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. February 1, 2023. Wow. Three days ago, I posted about an article titled “Did Meteors Trigger Life on Earth?” I pointed out that the study in no way justified the headline, and I made the comment that it was quite common for evolutionists to publish articles with headlines that lead an unsuspecting public to believe that further support for the theory of …
© 2023, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. On Friday, an article titled “Life on Earth triggered by meteorites 4.6 billion years ago: study” was posted on MSN.com[1]. One wonders what sort of study this was and how it could look back 4.6 billion years to determine what had happened back then. Let us see. According to the article, Life on Earth was triggered by blazing fireballs from the outer …
© 2022, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. The Problem In Matthew 27:27-28, we read, 27 Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole cohort around Him. 28 And they stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him. On the other hand, in John 19 we read, 1 So then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him. 2 And the soldiers twisted a crown of …
© 2022, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. Introduction Dr. Bart Ehrman is a former evangelical who turned agnostic[1] and now spends his time trying to debunk the truth of Christianity. Ehrman, James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has written or edited thirty-three books and is a soi-disant “world-renowned New Testament expert.”[2] He is considered to be one of the …
© 2022, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. The Problem One of the seemingly most intractable apparent contradictions in the Gospel books concerns Jesus’ foretelling, at the last supper, Peter’s denial of Him. All four Gospel books include this. Matthew records the following: 31 Then Jesus said to them, “All of you will be made to stumble because of Me this night, for it is written: ‘I will strike the Shepherd, …
© 2021, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. Introduction There are two problems with atheism. First, it is impossible, as logic and the laws of science show[1]. Second, it precludes any objective meaning to life (and objective values), beyond personal preferences. The latter problem does not, of course, disprove atheism, but the former does. We addressed problems with atheism in our “Atheism and the Meaning of Life” podcast (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPTRID8ak94 and …
© 2020, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. Introduction While Creation Ministries International (CMI) is very good on their core competency – scientific creationism – when it comes to other matters, they are less than stellar. Their Christmas Eve article this year[1] contains four plain errors, of varying degrees of importance. We discuss them below. Quirinius and the Census One of the most common attacks on the historical reliability of …
© 2020, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. The Problem One alleged contradiction in the Gospel books that skeptics point to is the difference in Matthew’s and Mark’s accounts of Jesus’ cursing of the fig tree. The accounts are as follows: MATTHEW 21:10-22 And when He had come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, “Who is this?” So the multitudes said, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth …
© 2020, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. Introduction The doctrine of the Triunity of God, that the one true God exists eternally as three Personae – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – is fully revealed in the New Testament, but there were certainly hints given of it in the Old Testament, particularly in the form of indications of plurality within the Godhead. Therefore, when it was fully revealed, people …
© 2020, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. In “One Man and One Woman: Not the Only Biblical View,” published in American Atheist (3rd Quarter, 2013)[1], Drs. Hector Avalos, Robert Cargill, and Kenneth Atkinson, who identify themselves as “academic biblical scholars,” claim that the biblical texts do not support the frequent claim that marriage between one man and one woman is the only type deemed acceptable by biblical authors. However, …
© 2020, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at …
© 2020, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3-4) παρέδωκα γὰρ ὑμῖν ἐν πρώτοις ὃ καὶ παρέλαβον ὅτι Χριστὸς ἀπέθανεν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν κατὰ τὰς γραφάς καὶ …
© 2020, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. We have recently been contacted regarding three charges brought against the Majority Text theory[1] by advocates of the so-called “critical text.”[2] These charges may seem plausible at first glance, but upon examination they are found to have no substance. In the following we list the charges and refute them. 1) As we find new texts the majority can change the text so …
© 2020, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. Introduction “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other.” (Matthew 6:24a) In His sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught the truth that one cannot truly serve two masters, that each one who tries to do so will eventually choose one …
© 2020, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. Introduction As we have seen numerous times in the past, whenever Creation Ministries International (CMI) functionaries wander away from the organization’s core competency, scientific creationism, and dabble in other areas, trouble may follow.[1] Their foray into the area of Biblical inspiration, “The inspiration of Scripture comes in various forms,” by Lita Cosner and Robert Carter[2], is no exception. It is problematic from …
© 2020, by Sonya Tors. All Rights Reserved. Introduction There are many different translations of the Bible into English, some of which are very good (e.g. the KJV, NKJV, and EMTV).[1] What is better even than the best translation is the text in the original language.[2] You can, of course, gain an excellent understanding of the Bible by reading an English translation, but learning New Testament Greek does provide certain …
© 2020, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. Introduction On January 11 of this year, I debated Muslim scholar Dr. Shabir Ally; the debate topic was “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?” Subsequently, the video of the debate was posted on YouTube,[1] and it elicited various comments from both Muslims and Christians. The lengthiest and most detailed were posted by one “Br. Ijaz” under the rubric “Calling Christians.” A quick …
© 2020, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. The Problem The Euthyphro Dilemma is a philosophical conundrum posited by Plato in his dialogue Euthyphro. It asks, “Are pious things pious because the gods love them, or do the gods love them because they are pious?”[1] Eventually, that question was asked of the Christian God: Is something good because God approves it or does God approve it because it is good? …
© 2020, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. The Problem The Bible is not a single literary work but a collection of sixty-six separate books written across a time span of about 1,500 years by more than thirty different authors, all of them “carried along by God” (2 Peter 1:20-21) so that what they wrote is “God-breathed” (θεόπνευστος), making us “complete” and “thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy …
© 2020, by Dr. Adrienne Tors, MD. All Rights Reserved. Over the many years since I graduated from medical school, the knowledge of how the complex and unique DNA molecule functions in the cell has increased greatly. Much of what is now basic knowledge of molecular genetics was only touched on when I was in high school and medical school. The human genome had not yet been fully decoded. The …
