Responding to Criticisms of Wes Huff on the Joe Rogan Podcast

Wow. Social media is a crazy place. A few days ago, Joe Rogan, who hosts what is today known as the world’s most popular podcast, dropped an interview with Canadian Christian apologist Wes Huff. Nearly five days later, the current count is nearly up to 4 million views, listening to a 3-hour interview with an evangelical Christian, working towards his PhD studying New Testament manuscripts. Nevertheless, the social media feedback from friend and foe alike have been pouring out.

Some of the oddest responses have been from fellow Christians, some of whom say that Wes Huff never shared the Gospel with Joe Rogan during the 3-hour interview. Some wonder why it is such a big deal that Wes Huff has some scholarly credentials and academic training: Just share the “Roman Road” with Joe Rogan and leave it at that.

Let me respond to this. We live in a day, particularly in the West, when people have a lot of questions about Christianity, when biblical illiteracy has sky-rocketed, despite us living in an information age. If you listen to the podcast, Joe Rogan asks Wes Huff plenty of questions about the Christian faith. But Wes Huff was prepared enough to give credible answers to Joe’s questions. There is even a compilation of the moments during the interview when Joe Rogan said “Wow” in response to Wes’ informed responses to such questions.

Here is the point: When you have millions of people tuning in to listen to a Christian apologist explain where our oldest New Testament manuscripts come from, the majority of whom are young men between the ages of 18-35, you have to wonder why is it that so many of our churches are not doing more to step up and provide more educational resources for people to become better informed about their faith. Sadly, the exact opposite has happened, whereby many churches try to “dumb down” the message, for fear that people might become overwhelmed with too much Bible, too much Christian history, too much Christian apologetics, etc.

In my view, the lesson learned from Wes Huff’s appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast is that many churches tend to “dumb down” the message way too much. Folks like Joe Rogan are hungry for answers. You do not have to be working towards a PhD like Wes Huff is doing. Having academic training does not make you a better Christian. But every Christian can learn better ways to answer curious questions from their non-believing family members, friends, and co-workers. The Christian faith is based on particular truth claims, which can be examined and studied. If we believe in the concept of truth, we should be doing what we can to defend that truth, and not skirt around difficult questions.

As far as the skeptical response goes, it is true that Wes Huff did slip up a few times during the podcast. But my goodness, it was a 3-hour interview!! No one not working off of notes in front of them would nail down everything with perfection in such a conversation.

Perhaps the most noticeable gaffe was when Wes Huff claimed that the Great Isaiah Scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls, dated a thousand years before our other earliest copy of the Book of Isaiah, copied during the Middle Ages, matches “word for word.” (Look through the transcription of the podcast to find this). Alex O’Conner, formerly known as the Cosmic Skeptic, has one of the most popular YouTube channels challenging the truthfulness of the Christian message, and Alex pounced on that fumble in a video response.

Actually, there are a number of variants between the Dead Sea Scrolls and what we have in the 10th century Aleppo Codex, with the Book of Isaiah. But the vast majority of those variants are very, very minor, as in spelling differences. For example, consider the differences between how Americans and the Brits spell different words. Both groups speak English, but they vary on how to spell words like “color” (“colour“) or “honor” (“honour“).  So who is correct here? Are the Americans spelling such words correctly and the Brits are in error, or is it the other way around?

Frankly, I do not care…. and frankly, neither should you.

Such supposed “errors” do not rise to the level of compromising what might best described as a flexible, nuanced view of biblical inerrancy. Wes’ point during the Joe Rogan podcast was to testify to the remarkable agreement between the Great Isaiah Scroll found at Qumran and our other later manuscripts, despite the existence of minor errors. Gavin Ortlund came out with a helpful response video that addresses these and other concerns made by Alex O’Conner.