When Christians talk about inspiration, they are not saying that words are only inspired on the first copy, but also on all subsequent copies that contain the same words. It's the words that are given by God, not the physical manuscript. So God doesn't specifically inspire papyrus and leather. God breathes words. And so therefore,

if you don't have the original papyrus or leather that they were written on, you really don't

care. Welcome to the Crossplay podcast, a show where we sit down with authors each week for

thoughtful interviews about the Bible, theology,

church history, and the Christian life. I'm Matt Tully, and today I'm talking with Peter Williams.

Peter serves as the principal of Tyndale House in Cambridge, a research institution dedicated to developing

Bible literacy in the church and beyond. He's also the chair of the International Greek New

Testament Project, a member of the ESV Translation Oversight Committee, and the author of many

articles and books, including Can We Trust the Gospels with Crossway? Today, Peter answers a crucial

question, can we really trust the New Testament Gospels? We discuss what it means

that the Bible is inspired, why we can have confidence that our modern English Bibles are

consistent with the original manuscripts and how we should approach apparent contradictions in the New

Testament. Let's get started. Peter Williams, thank you for joining us on the Crossway podcast.

It's great to be with you.

So you did your PhD at the University of Cambridge.

Yes.

And you're a member of the ESV translation committee.

You currently serve as principal of Tyndell House in Cambridge.

And so I think all those things combined and

many other things that you've done, pretty safe to say that you've devoted your, really, your

entire professional career to studying the Bible. One of the main arguments that we often hear

against the reliability of the Bible as a whole,

...