Such great fun today at the 2026 Clearview Apologetics Conference in Henderson, NC! My thanks to pastor (and former personal assistant) Abidan Shah for his invitation to be a speaker at the event today. Abidan is an outstanding churchman and textual scholar and has a vision for equipping the informed layperson -- any literate member of the church without specialized expertise in a specific technical field like textual criticism -- in how to go about resolving textual difficulties.
I also got to meet some internet friends for the first time, including Dwayne Green (far left) and Mark Ward (next to Dwayne).
I thoroughly enjoyed both of their presentations on the Byzantine text. I'm afraid during my own presentation I may have gotten a bit carried away and gone from lecturing to preaching haha!
The field of New Testament textual criticism is so vital to the health of the church! No original manuscripts exist, and the 5,500 plus existing copies of the New Testament contain variants. Textual criticism allows for a high level of confidence in the text of the New Testament, ensuring that modern Bibles are based on sound evidence. Thank you, Abidan and Clearview, for hosting these amazing apologetics conferences. Conferences like these are essential for equipping believers to confidently defend their faith with both reason and compassion.