Speaker 1Welcome back to the Apostolic Classroom, everybody. Thank you for joining us. I am your co-host, Stephen Gill, joined by my co-host, Andrew Herbst. And I'm excited about this episode. This is a topic that I cover quite a bit in our Hermeneutics class at Indiana Bible College. And it's one that I know that he enjoys talking about it as well. It's going to be great. Before we get into our topic today, I want to give a shout out to our sponsor for this episode, Live Hill Nutrition. Live Hill Nutrition is an apostolic company offering personalized one-on-one nutrition coaching that's sustainable and in alignment with your life. Their approach integrates health with your life rather than competing with your responsibilities. It's a spirit-led, time-conscious, and intentionally designed service with men and leaders in mind. Men aren't looking for more to manage. They're looking for what last. Live Hill Nutrition offers programs that are simple, sustainable, and designed to fit a man's schedule. When your health plan respects your time, consistency follows, and results come with it. That's stewardship. Protecting your capacity so you can keep showing up where you're needed. And this is why we're happy to recommend Live Hill Nutrition at this show. They're a great partner with us, great sponsor. We're thrilled to have them with the apostolic classroom this semester. If you're responsible for others, you are responsible for yourself. Take the next right step with Live Hill Nutrition at livehillnutrition.net. That's L-I-V-H-I-L-L-N-U-T-R-I-T-I-O-N.net. Live Hill Nutrition, dot net. The link will be in the show notes below. Again, that's livehillnutrition.net. Okay, so this week, we are going to be talking about quite a lot of things. We're going to be textual stuff. We're going to be talking all kinds of stuff, but I want to kick it over to Andrew Herbst here. He has a quote that he wants to read to us.
Speaker 2I want to get your reaction to this. Please do. You may have actually heard this before, read this, but this is, and you got to, you got to tell me what you think of this verse. Okay. So it says, Simon Peter said unto him, said to Jesus, let Mary leave us for women are not worthy of life. I'll read that again. Let Mary leave us for women are not worthy of life. Peter said that Jesus said, I myself shall lead her in order to make her male so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter. The kingdom of heaven. That is the gospel. According to transgenderism. It sounds relevant to today's
Speaker 1culture, but, uh, where is that from Andrew? That's from the gospel of Thomas, the gospel of Thomas. So that's not actually in the Bible. Yeah. Yeah. For those that might defend the inclusion of the gospel of Thomas in, uh, the Canon, uh, increasingly popular book for text critical scholars to spend time in. They, you know, so
Speaker 2our, our top, you know, we've got books like we just, I just read from the gospel of Thomas. There's books like everybody loves a good first Enoch story. Um, you have these books called, you know, the lost books, right? Lost in the sense of they're not in the Bible, but some people think they should be. So this, there's an issue here. Okay. We have a Bible. You've got one there. I've got one here. We've got a Bible with 66 books in it, right? Should there be 67? I don't even want to say that. My wife is a first grade teacher. So anytime that six, seven stuff comes up, she has to do it. But should there be 70 books in here? Should there be a hundred? Should there be 20? You know, why do we have 66? Why is that the number? So our topic for today, and then probably our next episode as well, is this issue of the Canon, the Canon. So, um, why maybe we could just start off with this. What is the Canon, Stephen?
Speaker 1Yeah. So I think that in, uh, vernacular today, people, when they hear Canon, they think of the, especially in regards to the Bible, they're talking about the collection of books. The funny thing about Canon with one end, right? Yeah. Yeah. Not, not like, yeah, not like a bowling, like not like a cannonball, like, you know, Canon is, uh, when people think of it today, they're, they're thinking of the agreed upon collection of texts that constitute the Bible. The, an interesting thing though, is that what Canon meant in the time that it became popular and in church history, Canons are issued. Canons are decided upon. Canons are issuances, um, that come out in the Catholic church. Uh, you talk about the seventh Canon of the first council of Constantinople. That's an issuance. It's an utterance. So if we're not careful, sometimes we can think of Canon in a biblical context as the books that have been decided upon by the Catholic church. Um, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and decided upon as
Speaker 2scripture and decided upon by humans, right? Yeah. There's this, there's this critique by, by, well, critics of scripture that would say, well, the Bible, the origins of the Bible were basically like a cafeteria. Some church leaders got together and said, I'll take a little Paul, but I don't want this. I'll take a little bit of Luke, but I don't want this. The Bible was collected like a cafeteria style with books. Um, this, this, and we'll hit some of these issues as we go. But Nicaea, we, we talked about the council of Nicaea in our first semester. There is this absurd idea that it was at the council of Nicaea that the Canon was established. And so there's all these ideas, where did the Bible come from? And so getting back to you here, this idea of the Canon as a collection. This was the collection of books that now is the Bible. That's the common idea of what Canon means. Yeah. And I
Speaker 1tell the hermeneutic students, be careful about framing it as the canonization process was deciding which books were scripture. The canonization process was not deciding which books were scripture at best. You could say the canonization process was acknowledging or archiving or listing. Or something like that, but not deciding it was already decided. And so when people to your point incorrectly say, well, the, the Canon was decided at the first council. And I say, well, first of all, if you hold that view, you meant to say Carthage council of Carthage, and you're still wrong. Like you're, you're, it did not happen at the council of Nicaea. It also did not happen at the council of Carthage, although that is sometimes claimed as well. Um, I, I, all I was going to say is that the, the idea that there was a canonization process, there was a canonization process, but there wasn't any time in history where a group of men got together and decided what the Bible is, is a fallacy. It never happened. Um, to be certain there have been councils throughout the generations that, uh, discussed, uh, vigorously the, the nature of, of the canon and was trying to clarify for people, usually in the context of what didn't belong, um, and making arguments for and against, uh, in those ways.
Speaker 2But, but we need to unpack that because that I think really stems the rest of the conversation because there, there is a difference. So I use that example of the cafeteria style. I like this, but I don't like this. So we're pushing this away. That is not the historical evidence that we see. What you just articulated there is that the canon was more of a defensive measure to say, these are the books that we have been given. We know that these books over here, are, were not given by the apostles. So we will defend what we know was given to the exclusion of others. That's a totally different issue. Now with that said, I'll just lay a couple things out here and then kick it over to you when we say can now you and I were, were Bible believers. Jeremiah will be back with this shortly. I think he's a Bible believer. So we talked in a previous episode about inerrancy. We talked about inspiration. We sitting at this table, believing in those doctrines. When we say Canon, at least maybe I can ask you when you say Canon, do you just mean scripture? Yeah, because that, that is, that's really how, how I, uh, portray when we just say Canon, we're just talking about the Bible. We're talking about God's word. We believe that God inspired, uh, the scriptures. So this is a very important element here for Christians is that when we're talking about the Canon, it is primarily, and I'm, I'm trying to be deliberate here. It is primarily a theological issue. Now, if we were talking to an atheist or a critic, probably I would not start here. We would start from the history, but primarily we have to ask, what did God give? And that is a theological issue. First, it is the Canon is a, as I'm trying to speak clearly and I'm getting tongue tied, the Canon is primarily a theological issue. And second, it is a historical issue. So we are going to spend a little bit of time today looking first at the theology of the Canon, the theology of scripture. And this ties to our second, I believe it was our second episode where we talked about inspiration and inerrancy. And we, we looked at those passages from, um, second Peter and first Timothy. So I'll say this and then kick this back to you to reiterate what we talked about in the, in that, that particular episode that God gave his word, he has kept his word. and he has protected his word. So when we say canon, that's what we're talking about. The scriptures, God gave it and humanity received it.
Speaker 1Yeah. And I think that starting there is important because if you look at the historical record with that belief in mind, and we're not the first people to believe that, that claim, when you look at the historical record with that belief in mind, you understand better the arguments that were being presented in the first, second, third centuries about this very issue. You know, we're not the first people to think up this problem of, you know, what books, you know, what is the Bible and what isn't the Bible. And what you find through the, especially the first three centuries AD is exactly to your point is that the argumentation is not these books, these books are the Bible. And this, the, we, we say these books are the Bible. This is, you know, a claim that we're making to, um, as though it were dependent upon us or something. What they're really doing is defending a claim that it is at most these books. And this is why, and the, you know, the, this comes up in, in hermeneutics a lot, uh, in conversations with students. And I like having the conversation, but maybe we can start with, okay, our Bible has 66 books. Uh, the Catholic Bible has 73. Why the disparity? Like, let's, let's talk first about like, we acknowledge that there are other books in history that have the gospel of Thomas we started with.
Speaker 2Why is that not?
Speaker 1Yeah. And, and also maybe let's, we could help sort out for people. What is the difference between an apocryphal book and a pseudo epigraphal book and a, you know, feeling it because there's all of these categories. Yeah. Categories and people don't know the difference that you're saying is a Bible. Is it not Bible? Right. But there are degrees of there, there are different degrees of value for these. Books. You know, one thing that people may not know, uh, is that when the King James version Bible was first printed in the 17th century, it included the apocryphal books as an appendix. Um, that does not mean that they were considered scripture and the book printers acknowledge that they were not.
Speaker 2Well, and the translators did too, right? They emphasize this is not the Bible. This is not scripture, but
Speaker 1it just goes to show that they're not only their familiarity with the books, but also their, uh, their tacit acknowledgement that they were both read and, uh, that the early church, uh, writers, the first, second, third century, that they were also familiar with them, et cetera. And I don't know that people always know that. I think sometimes the attitude of, of modern, uh, of, of younger, I'll say bought at Bible students is that their attitude is, well, we had these 66. And then over time we've discovered more. And so in discovering more, shouldn't we be adding them to the Bible? And that's just not the historical record. That's, that's not what happened. Um, if anything, we have less, familiarity now with those ancient texts as other ancient texts, we have less familiarity now than they did with them.
Speaker 2And I want to make a point of that a little bit later, but you know, Luke says that other people have written things down. Luke one, he's writing an orderly account. Um, whether I don't know if he's referring strictly just to Matthew and Mark, or if there were other people writing as well. Um, or, or even, you know, Paul and Peter, they, they talk about, um, false teachers and, and people are twisting writings. And so we know that there were other things written. And in some cases we know that there were some very terrible things that were written. And so to reemphasize what we're talking about is that the early church, they knew that there were books that the, that were tied to the apostles, whether written by Paul himself or endorsed by Paul, like Luke or, um, Mark with Peter. And we'll get to some of this stuff later, but there was an apostasy. Apostolic connection, connecting to the apostles that the early church knew these books came from known sources and they have apostolic, um, endorsement. These other books, we don't know where these came from. And we have examples of these cases. And again, I, sometimes I know we're framing the argument. So we're saying, well, we'll bring more specifics here in a second. But if, if we say something like, okay, the book of Luke, we're going to have to write a book that's going to be written by Paul. And we're saying the book of Jude quotes Enoch. If we say something like that, and then we say an Enoch, therefore should be in the Bible. Really what this argument does is that it opens the room for God to be less powerful. Because if God, if the word is forever unsettled, how can we trust anything in the Bible? If God is not powerful enough to keep his word intact and the, the word as in, scripture, the canon is just in the hands. It's like putty in the hands of, you know, any church leader throughout time. Well, then we can never have full confidence to what scripture actually is. That's why as Christians, this is primarily a theological issue.
Speaker 1And can we start real quick with like, okay, so the, is what you just brought up as an important qualifier there about, uh, what constituted scripture to the new Testament church. Okay. Maybe can we start with the old Testament? Because like that, one of the questions that comes up, yes, the, the Enoch thing, well, they quoted Enoch, right. And Paul quoted up amenities, you know, but nobody thinks that scripture.
Speaker 2So because that is something I did want to get to as well. So maybe we, since we're here, we can just work through this and then get into, cause it's related what you just said with the old Testament. Yeah. You have Paul in act 17, referencing Greek philosophers, uh, Titus one, right. The, in, in Crete. Um, and who did you just mention?
Speaker 1Uh, but yeah, Paul and Paul with epimenides. And then we were talking about Jude with, with Enoch because it's used as a defense.
Speaker 2Yeah. So we see that Paul references pagans. That doesn't mean he's endorsing them. Yeah. And so just because something is quoted, that does not mean it's an endorsement. The other thing I would say in, in connection to Jude.
Speaker 1Well, can I qualify that as, as in acts, it is kind of an endorsement. It's not saying it's scripture like that. That's the important. Yeah. Cause I see the same thing with Jude. Like the, the interesting thing about Jude with Enoch is, uh, people would say, well, because it's quoted at scripture. No, but you're, you're, I understand the motive. Like they're saying that like, well, wasn't it authoritative or something like that? And it's, well, hold on just a second. You need to sort these out because the book of Enoch was preserved by the Jews and they don't consider it scripture.
Speaker 2They, they haven't considered it scripture for thousands. I think that wasn't it. There's only one community that we specifically know of. That, that I'll say endorsed or looked at. Yes. Looked at Enoch as being authoritative.
Speaker 1And so, yeah. And, and then there's, and then on the flip side of it, you have like the books of the Maccabees that the Jews do use every year, read it very thoroughly. Orthodox Jews are much more familiar with the books of the Maccabees than we will ever be. And they still don't consider it scripture, but the Catholic church does. And you get like these weird, this weird interplay where what was quoted and what was read. And I think the first place to start with people is just because something was quoted or read or because a writer demonstrated familiarity with it does not mean that they endorsed it as scripture. How do we know what the first century church endorses scripture? It is not just by what they quoted. It's by what they proclaimed was scripture. And like that, that may, there is a difference and it's, and I get, it's a fine line for people because they don't, they don't always see the difference. And so that I didn't mean to jump ahead of you there, but, but it's, it's a fine line for people because they don't, they don't it's, it is important because there is a, there's a difference between quoting something, showing familiarity with something, or even endorsing something like Paul says with Epimenides, he says, in him, I live and move and have my being as your own poets has said, he's not fighting saying that, no, that's wrong. And that's, no, he's saying that there's this tinge of, of truth to what has been said in no way. Does that say that it's scripture though? You're making a completely different claim to say not everything that's true is scripture. If, you know, if you, I, I had a math textbook in college that had all kinds of truth in it. It doesn't mean it's scripture. You know, I could write a book tomorrow that is, you know, whatever, like a rundown of a summary of the book of Genesis. It doesn't make it scripture, even if it's true. So just because something is, is true and true in history, and just because something is familiar or demonstrated to be familiar or quoted, that is, you're making a unnecessary leap. And so it makes it, it almost makes it harder on Bible students when they're, they're devoted to this idea of like, once I see it quoted, that makes it Bible that the church never thought that way. And so you've got to first dispense with that.
Speaker 2Sure. And with Enoch, it is absolutely certain that Enoch from Genesis did not write Enoch that we call. And there's no, and I don't know anybody that claims that. There's hopefully, well, maybe not people that claim it, but I think in the popular internet world, there are people that think it. Yes. And so that's, that's kind of the danger because you have, um, first of all, no paper trail, you have nothing, you know, uh, that, that really takes you much further back than maybe a hundred or 200 years before Jesus with Enoch. And, and the other fact is that Enoch, or even if you're just looking at first Enoch, that book as a whole took hundreds of years from my understanding, or maybe at least a couple hundred years to be completed. It kept getting added to. And when you actually look at the, so if you have the English, if you look at underneath the English, the, the reference from Jude, it differs from what we see in first Enoch. hawk and so um and and And those differences substantially change the impact of what Jude is saying versus what Enoch is saying. So it's not even a full quotation or a direct quotation. We're talking about quotations.
Speaker 1So also the story of the wrestling for the body of the contending for the body of Moses. We don't know exactly what Jude, where Jude was drawing from. There is a story like that in the book of the Assumption of Moses. He never mentions that book. But suffice it to say, there's no reason in that particular case, like the contending for the body of Moses. It's very possible he's just simply drawing on a familiar analogy or familiar story or a familiar image.
Speaker 2Which could be correct, as you were pointing out.
Speaker 1Which his readers would have been familiar with. But again, that is completely different from saying.
Speaker 2So maybe to bring this down to just a simplified idea is that just because you have a quotation, it is not a blanket endorsement. Correct. And what I mean by that is to even if, OK, I don't think Enoch is being fully referenced there in Jude. But even if Jude was, that doesn't mean that he is endorsing the whole book. Correct. Correct. Similar to the way that you are articulating where Paul is using these Greek philosophers to show his point that there's truth here, but not everything that they said is being endorsed.
Speaker 1And that's the way that Jude uses those stories is that they are. They are. I'm going to generalize here, but they are. He's painting to teach a larger principle, you know, and it is it is very important to people. Now, it would be different if you were reading it and it said, as the scripture has said, fill in the blank. You got a stronger argument to be made there is that, OK, he called it scripture. But that's not what happens. Yeah. The irony is that it does happen in so many other places in the New Testament where they go out of their way to say, as scripture has said, or as it is written, et cetera. You don't see that. And so that it is. It is. Jude.
Speaker 2The wording is something along the lines of, I think, articulating probably could look it up, but articulating Enoch as a prophet. But then that's why I emphasize Enoch from Genesis is not the Enoch from first Enoch. Right. So that's just another another layer there. Yes. So to get back to your original comment or just what you were even just saying just now is the New Testament is full of places it is written as the as prophet. So that's just another another layer there is the New Testament is full of places it is written as the as prophet. So that's just another another another layer there is the New Testament is full of places it is written as the as prophet. You see these indicators that there's something I'm not just saying this, but let's let's go back. Let's look at what what was said before. And so really highlighting this came from the Lord.
Speaker 1Yeah. And and so that when somebody is trying to sort out like like with the New Testament writers, especially what if you are trying to come to the OK, what did they consider scripture like what what was scripture? And there's a really good book called Right Doctrine from the Wrong Text that one of the introductory essays kind of deals with this a little bit. And I actually think that he undersells his argument a little bit. But there's an essay in there by a man named Roger Nichol or Roger Nichol. I don't know how he pronounces it, who he. He talks about the not just the overwhelming amount of quotation from the Old Testament, but specifically the way that the books that we call the Old Testament, the way that they are referred to as scripture, that they are quoted as scripture or that they are given this this position, you know, that we and he is the number that he's trying to generate a number in that in that book of quotations or allusions. Now, I think his number is very conservative. He mentions that in his estimation, he gets almost to all 66 of the Old Testament, what we call the Old Testament. He gets to almost all 66 that are referred to or alluded to in this like authoritative way. I tend to go to the other side of it and say you can make a strong case that all 66 make make their place known. There's some debate about Esther, but I debate with the debate. The interesting thing about like, for example, and I'll give you an example, like it's not it's not like a malicious way at all. But like. He would say you don't get the like the judges. Well, I think you do. Is it true that you don't get the accompanying it is written maybe, but then go to the book of Hebrews. Right. And you see the constant references of like the of Sam. How does he word it? Time would fail to tell of Jephthah and Samson. It's like, OK, well, those are all characters from judges. So the writer is definitely drawing all that in that case, at least draws familiarity that the writer is using. These in this particular case, not as an analogy, but he is actually teaching their faith. He is actually saying, you know, as they were, so be ye basically. But he doesn't use those examples because he doesn't get the actual it is written. But even if you were to table that, you get the large, large, large, large percentage of the Old Testament in that it is written as it has been said or as it was or whatever. And so a simple place to start when asking the question of what what should be considered scripture? And the Old Testament is what did the New Testament church think was scripture? What what did they say was scripture? What did they use as scripture? And we get that. All you have to do is read the New Testament. Close read the New Testament. But if you read the New Testament, you're going to come to the conclusion. One thing I like that he points out in that book is that we can find references in some way to all 66 books that we call the Old Testament in the new. Ironically, the all seven apocryphal books not mentioned now. And before we move on from that, I will just qualify for a reader or listener. Sorry, our listeners. Enoch is not an apocryphal book. When we say apocrypha, we're referring to a specific corpus of seven books. And I'm only seven. I think it's. Well, what's what's 66 plus 73 minus 66? I don't know. I went to Bible college. Not it's seven. It was seven. Yeah, it's the books.
Speaker 2I just I thought I thought there was a.
Speaker 1Google right now. Yeah, I guess we're talking about, though, that when we say apocryphal, we're talking about specifically the books of the Old Testament. That are included in the Catholic Bible that are not in the I'll say Protestant Bible. But we just mean Bible. These books, Judith Tobit. I'm going to forget some of them now that I'm trying to listen. I'll look at it. But these the books of the Maccabees are part of that. Baruch is a part of that. The apocryphal books are the ones that we spend the most time and attention in our instruction on when we're trying to sort out canonicity, if I can say it that way. Because these are the seven that were taken the most seriously in these debates. Like when we look at the first century, they what we find is far from the common misperception that, well, you know, they only knew about these 66. But what about like Baruch and Maccabees? What people need to understand is that they were familiar with them. They were familiar with Maccabees. They were familiar with Baruch and Enoch and Judas. We see that in Eusebius. Demonstrates familiarity with them. A lot of writers, Jerome, who gave us the Vulgate, they knew they knew about these books and they read them and their attitude toward them. And it's so interesting to me that Jerome, of all people who gave us the Vulgate, Jerome was one of the earliest writers to say, yes, these books exist and they are maybe valuable to be read, but they are not scripture. Jerome said they not say it's ironic that those books later ended up in the Catholic Bible because it's. You know, well, excuse me.
Speaker 2Eusebius also Augustine, I think, was one that was a little bit more lean. I could be shooting in the dark there a little bit, but we'll get to more of the historical analysis in the next segment next episode. But there's a there's a lot of talk about the different books, whether they're the apocryphal, which I just looked up in this was a little bit. I was trying to remember was that I think it kind of depends on. What group you belong to, on which apocryphal books you seem as authoritative. So there could be as many as 54. Oh, well, and the Catholic Church would hold to 12, I think. OK, so or at least at least some some.
Speaker 1Now, when we say 12, are we talking about like his first and second Maccabees, two books? Yeah, that's OK. So that could be part of the
Speaker 2reason that, you know, for sure is off. But anyways, I think the point is that you have so many different works, so many different books that would fall into. Different categories. And so. Your point here being that these side books, so to speak, are not used in the New Testament with that idea, so and so said this, or thus saith the Lord, and then referencing those books.
Speaker 1Yeah, exactly. Are you what are
Speaker 2you looking at for your list? I didn't pull up like a direct list, but I just in my head there was more than seven, but I guess. Maybe I'm being.
Speaker 1Well, because I'm also looking there's there are, of course, lists and what constitutes apocrypha is also debatable because there are some people who would look at certain pseudo epigraphal books and call it apocrypha and we wouldn't. But I just I keep finding seven. I've got Tobit, Judith, first and second Maccabees, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus and Baruch are the seven that that keep coming up for me. So I don't know what I what I can tell you with with a large amount of confidence is these seven books that people. Constantly bring up and constantly question. There's some things you need to know. First of all, yes, the early church was familiar with them. Early Catholics were familiar with them and early Catholics also dismiss them and understood these are not scripture. We don't they don't appear in the New Testament. They're not cited. They're not even in this particular case, not even cited, let alone referred to a scripture. The funny thing, too, is like with the Maccabees, as I brought this up earlier, is the Catholic Church reads first and second Maccabees, not third and fourth Maccabees, but first and second Maccabees of scripture. And the Jews don't. It's not in the Hebrew Bible. The irony is that the Jews acknowledge that the events of the books of the Maccabees are historically accurate, and the Catholic Church is the one that seems to be ever dismissive of certain events that we would describe to Jewish history. In the New Testament, you get a whiff of this when it says that Jesus was in Jerusalem for the Feast of Dedication, which is Hanukkah. Feast of Dedication is a reference to a holiday that was celebrated because of the events described in the books of the Maccabees. So you get this whiff of, this was already in their tradition, and yet still not scripture. And this is like what people need to, this is why I keep emphasizing the something can be true and not be scripture. In some cases, though, we go beyond what is possibly true. And like some of these apocryphal books we're talking about that Eusebius and Jerome and others said, yeah, they're valuable to be read, but they're not scripture. It wasn't because. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They would not have given that same, they would not have had that same attitude toward like the Gospel of Thomas, which you brought up. The Gospel of Thomas is not an apocryphal book. This isn't a lost gospel that, oh, nobody knew about it. People knew about it. It's a forgery, and they acknowledge that it's a forgery, and it's never, you know.
Speaker 2Well, maybe just for listeners now, in case they're like, well, we want to know more, we will hit this in the next episode. But very briefly, you have specifically a writer named Irenaeus, who actually we found out, wrote this book. And he wrote very accurately about this group called the Gnostics. And this Gospel of Thomas is attached to these Gnostics. And for hundreds and hundreds of years, we did not know what the Gnostics were saying in their own words until less than 100 years ago, we started finding their Gospels. Found out Irenaeus was very accurate. He cites and talks about Gospel of Thomas amongst other works. And these were Gospels that were rejected by the early Christians. Right. And why were they rejected?
Speaker 1Like, we got to talk about that, that part of it, because it's, it's, it's, in some cases, it's a book was talked about heavily. Like, we could talk about the, like the ones I have in front of me, like Ecclesiasticus or Wisdom. They, they were, the conversation surrounding them was, there is a respected tradition behind them, but they're not scripture. And this is how we can know. In this case, though, we're not even there. So this, I think, and you correct me if I'm wrong. I think the Gospel of Thomas is in the Pseudo. Epigraphal category of like, is it, is it, it's like the true technicality, like the true, like forgery, like it's, or I say forgery. The, it obviously was not written by Thomas. Yes. Obviously not written by Thomas and has severe doctrinal contradiction with what we know is scripture. And that's, that's the other thing is what do you do when these books that are becoming increasingly popular for people to read? What do you do when you come in contact with a passage that appears contradictory?
Speaker 2Like when, when. Jesus specifically says the salvation of women is that they resemble males. That's show me the lie. That's what we started with. Yeah. Call your wife up here. No. But, but I think what you're, what you're pointing to will segue us into a really nice into this next section, because much of this issue surrounding the canon, or again, what we were just calling scripture is connected to who were the authors. Yeah. And, and we're, we, we brought up some old Testament issues, but we're primarily focused on the new Testament here today, but much of this issue of what is the Bible hinges on who was Paul, who, who was Peter. And so you have to look at these claims that John makes, right? Uh, John says in, in, um, in his gospel near the end that. You know, we, uh, I guess I'm, I'm Eve at the very beginning. We beheld his glory. Then at the end of his book, at the end of the gospel, he says, uh, we kept very careful records. We've, we've seen this Jesus. I've written this so that, uh, you can be in relationship with him and have everlasting life. Right. So, uh, and even in first John, I just see your, your first and second John open there that, you know, we we've handled him. We've, we are witnesses of him. So you have. You have Paul saying, you know, I, I saw him on the road to Damascus. So these eyewitness accounts by these authors that are directly connected to Jesus, are they being truthful? Is there evidence in these texts that what they're saying is true, right? So if that is the case, this is where we would say we have these apostles. And again, I keep saying, we're looking forward to the next episode with the historical analysis. But were these books written by apostles or do they have an apostolic connection? We would say yes. And the evidence indicates that.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah. And it's something else with, you know, the, the funny thing about it is that, um, the, uh, especially in the Catholic tradition, they have this, uh, we talked about this today in class, this canonical approach to, uh, the Bible that when I say canonical in this regard, what I mean. Is they actually don't have this view that we have or could ever have the original autographs and that the version of the text that we have is faithful to the original autograph. They actually don't embrace that and they don't need to because the canonical hermeneutic to which they subscribe is, um, that the authority that's vested in the text tradition, uh, comes from the church that the, if I could say it like this, the Bible is faithful. For the church or the, the Bible is the church's book. Um, the church is not shaped by the Bible. The Bible is shaped by the church. And then they would say that that is, uh, it is fine that that's so in your case. So we're, we're taking a step further in our, our belief in inerrancy to the, to the extent that we would say, not only are the witnesses that we have true and accurate, but demonstrably so, and that the text precedes the church, that the text is the authority over the church, that, um, it is the church that is informed by the text, not the other way around.
Speaker 2Yeah. Cause when we say apostolic authority or apostolic connection, we're not talking about apostle, like the Pope, we're talking about apostle, like, like Peter was an apostle. Paul was an apostle, John, et cetera.
Speaker 1Yes. And that there are claims made in their writings that make the Catholic approach. These are mutually exclusive views of scripture. One, there is one that says. Uh, you brought it up earlier. It is possible to twist and to rest the scriptures and that you shouldn't do that. It is also possible for the church to be wrong, which you see this, of course, in revelation. Five of the seven churches are told to repent. Um, Peter himself in Galatians. Um, it is possible like men are fallible and make mistakes. Therefore the text has to be the unalterable thing. The text of the Bible has to be the foundational thing, not the men, not, not the people. And this, this creates an important crossroads for people, because if you start your argument with what did the Catholic church say was the Bible or what did the early church say was the Bible, you're going to have a problem. The other thing is historically, it just doesn't line up. Like, uh, I remember I had talked to you about this a while ago with like, uh, thinkers that were very, very wise thinkers that unfortunately just, I think, missed it in some areas like Theodore Litas, um, his attitude toward, uh, you know, in having this very conversation. What is the Bible? What constitutes the Bible? His claim would be that the received text, the Bible that we have today, that it survived because of the Catholic church, that it's the, you know, the Catholic church. How do we know it's the Bible? Because the Catholic church says it's the Bible, but that's not the witness of history. What, what we actually find in history is not that the, the Bible survived because of the Catholic church. What we actually find is that the Bible survived in spite of it. And what I mean by that is we can go back to as early as the second century and see lauded church leaders. Christian thinkers and writers who the Catholic church acknowledges as their church fathers and are, they're admired in history. And I'm not trying to be disparaging, but, but you can look at the writings of these men and see them drawing on versions of the gospels and books that are not in the Bible, like extra biblical books, drawing on these themes in their own writing to support their theology. Um, we see this with Justin Martyr. We see this with Eusebius, with Tertullian, with Clement of Alexandria. Who not only are they writing and quoting versions of the text that we would say are heretical Gnostic in some cases, but also books that we would say, that's not the Bible. Like that's not scripture. And these are the Catholic church leaders. These are their, these are their, uh, uh, you know, antecedents. These are their, uh, you know, they, they would look at these men and say, Hey, these are, you know, this is our authority figure. And yet as time went on, their arguments, their books that they use, their versions of the text that they use, they didn't survive. What did survive in spite of them, in spite of the Catholic church leaders and in spite of these arguments and these debates and people trying, there were people trying to add to, there were people trying to take away. And it always failed. And what survived, what we have in front of us today, not only do we have the books, but we have the story of the books. We have the story of how they were received, how they were handed down and copied. We have the story of how people tried to add to and take away and how it, you know, and what was done about it. And the Catholic Church does not prevail in these early centuries. And when we say Catholic, there's some debate over what that even means in the first three centuries. But what I mean when I talk about this older Catholic age, what I'm talking about is the history to which the Catholic Church subscribes. It does not testify to the notion that the Bible survived because of the church. And what we have is the Bible today is decided by the church. It is most evidently not decided by the church because in spite of the church's manipulation, and when I say church, I don't, you know, I'm speaking generically about those who call themselves Christians. In spite of the attempted manipulation, the books that we have have survived. And still today, the same books in today, if you open a Catholic Bible, it's got 73 books in it. Still today, the books that were disputed over almost 2,000 years ago are still not considered scripture today by so many believers. They're still disputed in the Catholic Church. They're still going all, again, I mentioned already, Jerome. It's their history that says, Augustine, you brought up, it's their history that says this is not scripture.
Speaker 2To reemphasize, when we're talking about the canon, we're not talking about. Cafeteria style. That's just the illustration I keep using because I think it makes sense. Right. We're talking about God giving his word and humanity receiving it and acknowledging this came from the Lord. So to reiterate again, what we talked about in a previous episode that, you know, Peter says that it was by inspiration of the Holy Ghost. The holy men wrote as they were or spake as they were moved on by the Holy Ghost. Paul said that all scripture is given by inspiration of. God. So. The next thing. Here's a question for you. Did the authors of the New Testament, because this is an issue. This is a question that comes up in regard to. Did people even in the New Testament age understand what was scripture? What was not scripture? So did the authors did John did Paul? Did they know that they were actually writing scripture? And I'll give one example. This is from first Corinthians seven, where Paul says something like, I don't, this is not from the Lord. This is just for me. And then he gives a command regarding, regarding marriage. So did the New Testament authors know that they were writing scripture? The reason why this is how your answer would bring this significance into this is. Did somebody just decided that it was scripture later or did they actually know what was scripture in this New Testament? Era. So what are your thoughts on that? Did the authors know they were writing scripture or not?
Speaker 1Yeah. So the first thing I would say, let me, let me preface my answer by saying first, answering the question before, did they know they were writing scripture is did the first century church to the New Testament believers receive what was written in the New Testament as scripture? Let me start there and say something that comes up in, this is in second Peter three. I'll read 17 and 18. Second Peter three, 17 and 18 says, ye therefore beloved seeing, you know, these things before beware lest you also being led away with the air of the wicked fall from your own steadfastness, but grow in grace. And in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus, uh, of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ can be glory forever. Amen. I apologize. I, I skipped one verse. 16 is what I wanted to read. Um, um, I'll read back. I'm going to read 14, sorry, 14 through 17. My, my apologies. Second Peter three and 14. That's what I get for trying to look up a passage on my phone. You have a Bible. I know, but yeah. Second Peter three and 14 says, wherefore beloved seeing that you look for such things, be diligent that you may be found of him in peace without spot and blameless verse 15 says an account that the long suffering of our lord is salvation even as our beloved brother paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you as also in all his epistles speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to be understood which they that are unlearned and unstable rest as they do also the other scriptures unto their own destruction yeah the key word there if you missed it is other in in this in this passage peter is admonishing believers to don't be led away and don't be deceived like like a previous uh generation talking about israel talking about uh heretical christians things like that he says specifically of the writings of paul he said everything i'm writing to you he said account that the long-suffering of our lord is salvation even as paul has written OK, and he says, and Paul and all of his epistles, he spoke to you these things and some of them are hard to be understood. All his epistles. Right. Oh, yes.
Speaker 2It's not just one. I was going to there's a corpus. Sorry. No, no, no, no.
Speaker 1Because Paul Paul alludes to that, too. But we see this with with Peter when he says Paul and all of his epistles, he says he is taught that he's taught these things. He said some of them are hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable twist. He said, as they do also the other scriptures. In order for there to be other scriptures, there must be scriptures. And in this particular case, what he's referring to as scriptures is Paul's letters. He said, they twist Paul's words just like they do all the other scriptures. Why other? He could have just said, as they do the scriptures. He said, as they do the other scriptures. That's a super important qualifier because that puts an authority on Paul's words. And you're right. He says all his epistles. There's an argument that's sometimes made about Paul's epistles that Paul did not expect that his words would be read. Paul didn't expect that his words would be read by all congregations, that when he wrote a letter to one congregation, it was just to that congregation in their context. We get the sense from, I think it's the end of Colossians, that Paul gives this specific instruction to share. Let me see Colossians 4, Laodicea, and they'll share their epistle with you. Yeah, Colossians 4 and 16, Paul says, and when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans, and that ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea. So a couple of things to note there. Number one, Paul did expect his epistles to be shared. And if they're to be shared, they have this ubiquitous nature, this ubiquitous, I won't say appeal, it's purpose. They have a larger purpose than just being read by one congregation. Somebody asked me one time about, well, does that mean there's a lost epistle to the Laodiceans? Well, read carefully. He didn't say that. We don't know what the epistle that the Laodiceans had was necessarily. It could very well have been an epistle we already have. And so there's something to keep in mind there.
Speaker 2But it relates to, it seems that Paul wrote four letters to the Corinthians. We have two, but that doesn't mean that if we found, quote unquote, third Corinthians, the same thing of what I referred to earlier, what Luke was referring to, maybe he's only referring to Matthew and Mark. But even if there were other things that were truly written, and I say true as in they're accurate, whether it was about Jesus or third Corinthians or whatever. doesn't mean it's scripture. God did not inspire those to be preserved. And again, it's just the same issue that comes up. If we leave open the door that there are quote unquote lost books that should be in scripture, we are essentially saying that God is not powerful enough to keep his word. Right.
Speaker 1And that, that is exactly the implication. And you don't, and also the other thing is we don't know what we don't know. You know, when you read, think about like first and second john how much of second john not all of it but a lot of second john is in first john like if you if you read those epistles there's a lot of shared theme a lot of shared message we don't know anything about what this uh this you know missing writing to the corinthians was it could have been you know it could have been 120 words or it could have been a full-blown letter but also So I have some – I think people – if you have a high view of Scripture and an inspiration and inerrancy and if you believe that in the preservation of the text, you can come to some rational conclusions about like, well, why wasn't it preserved? Well, you don't know what you don't know, and the bottom line is if it was Scripture, it would have been. But also take some confidence in understanding that it's entirely possible that whatever was in there we do have. We don't know. Like it's, you know, that this is something that people, you know, kind of even people have the same question about like authorship sometimes. They're like, well, like Chronicles, like we don't know exactly who, who, who penned it, like who wrote Chronicles. So is it trustworthy? It's like, well, for one, like, what do you mean by trustworthy? Because all the events that it describes, we can attest to the veracity of historically. If it's just about who penned it, there's all kinds of books in the Old Testament that we don't know exactly whose hand was holding the pen, but that doesn't negate its value as scripture or how it was used or understood by the church or the veracity of its claims or anything like that. All of that stuff is provable in many other ways. And so you want to try and Like you're trying to historically critically approach the text. Like you're trying to. And it's like, well, no, I I already believe it. But for somebody who maybe is struggling for an answer or looking for something, these are these are reasonable conclusions that you can come to, even if you haven't yet taken that final step into understanding, hey, this is God's inspired word and he has preserved it.
Speaker 2And yes, and I love that because we're starting we keep saying we're starting theologically, but that doesn't mean that we're we are shifting away from evidence, because what we're trying to do is show here's the here's the presupposition because everybody has a presupposition. So if you have a presupposition that God's word is not preserved, well, then, of course, you're going to try to find a way to tear down certain books so that other books maybe could be inserted or removed or whatever, because then you don't have to obey. This right. But if your presupposition is that God's word is forever settled and when you look at the evidence, those things connect. And so what we've been doing is looking at here's the theology and then we see the evidence of of these connecting points, if I can say it like that. So I'll share a connection to what you just said with Second Peter in First Corinthians seven. That was where I started to say. Or with the question of did the authors know they were writing scripture or not? And I think the the phrase or the wording that Paul uses to say this is not from from the Lord, this is not from Jesus, this is from me. How Paul is using wording like that is because if you read the passage or really the whole book, I just taught First Corinthians just recently in a course, and he is. Consistently looking back at the Old Testament and then even multiple times looking back to ideas that Jesus even shared. And what Paul is doing there is not just saying this is uninspired or this is just something for me. What he's saying is I don't have a direct quotation from Jesus, but this is a command from me.
Speaker 1Now, does that say about the other claims like that? That is something to think about is when. Sorry, I mean, they're up. But yeah, he does. He does. When he gives that pause, you should take that into consideration. But hold on like that. There's something about the nature of his writing then that we're maybe skipping over. Anyway, go ahead.
Speaker 2Sorry. But the the issue here, I think, is significant because people would may look at that verse and say, well, this is just Paul's opinion. But when you get to the end of the same chapter, the very last verse of First Corinthians seven, he ends it by saying, well, this is just Paul's opinion. And I think also that I have the spirit of God. And this is a way of not saying, well, I think I do. He's it's that's not the wording. It's there's a confidence there that the spirit has inspired him to write this.
Speaker 1Yeah. And also, I remember talking to my church about this when we were going. I don't know what we were talking about from Corinthians about this particular issue. But when Paul says, yet not I, but the Lord or not the Lord, but I whatever, in no way disrupts the authority of what he's what he's saying. Exactly. The whole purpose of what he is saying is to he is demonstrating the authority with which he's been vested. But also, if he is introducing a novelty that they would not have been familiar with, like, you know, if you were to say, hey, the Lord say it this way, he's probably drawing on the Old Testament in that case. Like he said, hey.
Speaker 2Like the Lord said this is he's consistently referencing the law and even things that Jesus would say. And so now he's saying the spirit is on me. Yeah. This is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1And when you say not the Lord, but I, there's something that it would be a contradiction to say, OK, so Paul is departing from what the Lord has said to give us his opinion. No, what he is he's talking about. He's speaking now from the authority that he's been given that. And I. I. I. I think this is how I worded it to the church was when when Paul talks about I, I'm going to butcher it now, but basically the way I presented it to our church was by what authority did Paul say what he said? It could not have just been Paul's opinion about a particular issue because of what you just what you just said. The whole the whole nature of the epistle is instructional. So the whole the whole point being is that Paul was invested with authority by the Holy Ghost to write and to speak these things. And when you if you if you take the opposite approach and say, well, no, that's, you know, in this particular case, he's just monologuing about his opinion. But then he's going to return to the letter that it doesn't it doesn't just disrupt that particular passage. It disrupts the whole rest of the letter because you're not allowing for the possibility that there is novelty to what Paul is saying. That's not in the Old Testament, or at least not. How do I say not? It's not explicitly self-evident from from reading something like that in the Old Testament. Does it make sense? Like there's he's saying a lot. He was he was he was. And I want to find a passage now. But when Paul is talking about the authority that has been conferred upon him, he's like that, that that is what gets skipped over when people make that argument is that Paul says what authority he is speaking from. So the last quotation
Speaker 2or reference that I will emphasize here is Paul in 1st. Timothy 5. So Paul in 1st Timothy 518 is speaking of honor that is due to ministers and. He combines two references here. Actually, I'm just I'm going to pull this.
Speaker 1Oh, here it is. I'm sorry. I don't mean to interrupt you, but I found what I was thinking. The word I was looking for. Interrupt away. 1st Corinthians 7 and 6. Paul, but I speak this by permission and not of commandment. I speak this by permission. Who's permission? This is like what I what people like when they look, look, see, that's that's not commandment. You completely missed the first part of that. He said this. I speak by permission. Who's permission? Where did he get permission? Like what? By what authority is he vested to speak? It's the Holy Ghost. Am I am I crazy in approaching it that way? Is that because I have to. 1st Corinthians 7 and 6 when Paul says, but I speak this by permission. And not of a not of commandment.
Speaker 2Yeah, because and I'm trying to pull up the wording, but I think he says something similar later in the chapter where he says of the Lord. Right. So I think not of the Lord. I think what he's doing there is saying this is not part of the Ten Commandments, so to speak, or the law. I don't have a direct quotation from Jesus on this, but that doesn't mean he's just departing from any God given direction. He ends and puts his stamp on the whole chapter with the very last verse. The spirit of the Lord is upon me. And again, when it says, I speak this by permission. I think he's not saying it in a question mark. He's it's it's a statement of of confidence. Like, I know. Right. So it's the spirit of the Lord has been on me to write this. Right. Right. So I know I know.
Speaker 1And that connects that does connect to what you were just getting ready to say about the apostles. Go ahead. So about spiritual
Speaker 2authority in 1st Timothy 5, verse 18, Paul wrote for the scripture saith again to emphasize what you were talking about with second Peter, the scripture saith thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. Now, on a side note, he's without using the word he's talking about tithing, right? But, but he says for the scripture saith thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out corn. That's a reference from Deuteronomy 25. Right. So he's pulling the Old Testament for scripture saith thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn and the laborer is worthy of the ox. He's worthy of his reward. Right. So he says the scripture says, and then he says Deuteronomy passage and, and then what does he do? It looks like he's referencing Luke chapter 10, which is a great, a great thing here because of course it shows how early Luke could have been written, but it's, it's showing here that Paul knew about Luke's writing and he's calling it scripture. So what I love about the passage that you read from second Peter and this passage from first Timothy is that in the first century, in this early church age, if I can say it like that, in this early time of Christianity, they were looking at other people that were still alive and saying what they wrote is scripture. Right. Yeah. And that's a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1And again, to, to, to emphasize, to drive home Roger, uh, Nicole's essay about that very issue is, and also keep in mind what they didn't. Quote, what they didn't cite, what they didn't draw on. And, and I don't know, like I, for, for listeners, I understand people's fascination with history and I'm the same way and like wanting to like read things and look at things, but understand that the, the, the way that we came to our understanding of what is genuinely scripture was not haphazard is that there is a careful examination of not just the books themselves, but the way the books were used and the way that they were written. And, and, and, and, and there's a reason why these books have stood the test of time and the others that were known about that. Again, I can't emphasize that enough. We are not living in an age where we know about more writings than they did. We were just not, they knew about them. They are not scripture for a reason.
Speaker 2And that's a great way, I think, to maybe end this and this. segment is to reemphasize what we just said with the first Timothy and the second Peter passage is that in their lifetime, people were looking at what was written as scripture. We have at least evidence here of that. What some people might say is that, well, first Timothy was not written by Paul. It was a forgery or a John Barton pseudonymous. Is that how you say pseudonymous
Speaker 1work? I say the only book that they say Paul wrote now is Philippians, I think. It's gotten reduced. Pretty soon that one will disappear too. Reduced even more. Yeah. There used to be.
Speaker 2Nothing was written by Paul, basically. That's what they claim. Second Peter was disputed. So you have these assertions, these claims that if there was a forgery written, the early Christians would not have known that. They just accepted whatever. That's just simply not true. So I don't know. It's just, I feel like people are going to be annoyed. You keep saying we're going to do this next week, but the history shows that you have Pauline Corpus, this Pauline Corpus of the collection of Paul's writings that traveled around. There are Christian historians that talk about that. There's manuscript evidence of that, different things, pieces of evidence like that. With forgeries, we have several examples of Christian leaders identifying forgeries. And then telling their congregations, do not read this. Apocalypse of Peter is one of them at that time. And I think that's the story I'm thinking of, of a church leader named Serapion. And Serapion was a bishop, if I remember correctly. I don't have that written down here, but Serapion was a leader that at first seemed to be at least open to the idea of this particular gospel. But then he said, I read it. And then he said, I read it. And he sent a letter to all the churches that he basically was connected to and said, do not read this book. We know that Paul or Peter did not write this book. This is a forgery. Do not read this. It does not connect to, you were talking a little bit ago about how the Bible, there's this continuity between the books that you're not going to find a random doctrine, like making women resemble females. You're not going to find that in what we call scripture, the canon. In these other lost books, right? In these other kinds of books, you do see different doctrines spring up because they were written not by the apostles, but by who knows, you know? So of course, you know, my name is Andrew. If I wanted to write a book in this early era and I wrote it, Andrew from Indianapolis, I'm probably not going to sell that many books. But if I write, I'm Andrew the apostle, I'm probably going to get a lot more people reading my book. So there were, there are even cases of, uh, what they called Asia back then would be called Turkey today. There was an elder that he said for the love of Paul, I wrote a book with Paul's name attached to it. I, again, the specifics, I apologize if it was third Corinthians or just, um, a book that was tied to Paul's name, but he said for, for the love and admiration of Paul, I wrote this and then he sent it out, but it was a deception. And it was something that once the leaders in that area realized he was actually the one that wrote it, he lost his church. Yeah. That's what
Speaker 1doesn't get appreciated with, with modern scholarship is that how many of these, uh, these people in antiquity that they were aware of forgeries. They were not, they weren't dopes. They, they were aware that these things were going on. They were aware of small, of small, minute changes to manuscripts that were copied. Like you and I, there's so
Speaker 2yes. Origin. They, they, they said even down to books, Jerome, one of the essays I wrote for our book, uh, he highlights in first John, we know of numerous cases where scribes and different preachers are changing. Um, first John, you know, um, origin is so frustrated because he's reading these different, these different books and these different authors and they're changing the scriptures as well as writing their own, their own material and claiming that it's the Bible. So this is not something where you just have these few books. And, and Christians are just being taken in, so to speak, right? That, Oh, this says Paul wrote it. He must have written it. No, they're, we're trying to emphasize that they were very studious. They knew. Okay. I mentioned Irenaeus earlier. Irenaeus knew people that had been taught by John. There are these links in the chain that, that tie back, I'll say history and tradition that tie back so they knew who wrote these books. They've been circulating and maybe you have a few books on the edges. You know, maybe there were some questions on James or maybe there were some questions on third John, but overall you have knowledge. Yeah. And accurate knowledge of, of who wrote these books.
Speaker 1And even in those books that you were talking about, like these that have been kind of approached as though they might've been fringe, something else that people need to consider too is, you know, I, I mentioned last episode about, um, the fallacy of, of inevitable progress. I, I would say that it would do, uh, everybody who studies history well to maybe take a dose of humility and see how much we've regressed in our understanding of certain things. Like for example, uh, authorship of Hebrews. So Hebrews is one of those books that, um, you can see is like hotly contested, debated, whatever among people. And yet it just, you know, it's there. And, and, and the funny thing is like, if you look, it's, it's, it's actually a pretty recent development. I, and really, I think that my suspicion isn't with Protestant, uh, people generally, it starts with Luther, this idea that Paul did not write Hebrews. And if you buy any book today, any modern book by any, any academic, that's a biblical studies focus of any kind, they are not going to say that Paul wrote Hebrews. They won't like, it's, it's just not, there are a few, but it's rare. I'm generalizing primary for the most part, modern writers know that they won't be taken seriously. If they say Paul wrote Hebrews, I had my students last semester, we went through an exercise and I not from any tech. I, this was not from a textbook. This was not from, we just together went through and identified the verbatim strings between Hebrews and Paul's epistles stuff that it's not just that Paul said it. It's that only Paul said it. For example, the comparison between, uh, those who are immature in Christ. And milk and meat. Paul does that in Corinthians and it appears in Hebrews. That's it. Um, the phrase things pertaining to God only appears in Paul's epistles. Um, uh, I said milk and not me. That's one for sure. Um, other, other verbatim strings that appear in Hebrews that only appear in Paul's writing. Um, I, but what was the one beloved, uh, speaking of the beloved brethren only appears, uh, in, in Paul's epistles. When you look at the epistles, like specifically, uh, the epistles, the amount, the sheer volume of the book of Hebrews that only has comparison with Paul only has comparison with his letters is, is overwhelming. It's, it's not five or six. It's like 20 or 30.
Speaker 2To my knowledge, most of these early Christian preachers say that Paul wrote Hebrews and, and what always I say always, cause it pretty much is our oldest
Speaker 1collection of Paul's epistles. Papyrus 46 has Hebrews. Um, the phrase firstborn talking about the firstborn. Firstborn from the dead, firstborn of every, only appears in Paul's letters.
Speaker 2But origin is the one that people, people quote, well, only God will know who wrote, who wrote Hebrews. The problem with that is that Paul, or excuse me, origin, if I remember right, the number is about 200 times attributes Hebrews to Paul. When he's talking about, we'll only know who wrote Hebrews. He's talking about who's holding the pen, right? Like Tertius wrote Romans. It's that type of idea.
Speaker 1So yeah, and that's something that, and even today, like the irony of it all is if you go to like, I have an Allen Bible right now, if I flip to the book of Hebrews, the first, the very first page of the book of Hebrews in this Allen Bible says the epistle of Paul, the apostle to the Hebrews, all, and I only bring this up. I'm not saying that the Allen Bible is perfection. I'm saying that, that even the collectors of, of, and those who publish this understand the deep tradition that's behind Pauline authorship of Hebrews. And why that is. And, um, that's, that's one example of where people today will say it's used as a, as a club to say, uh, damage the veracity of the new Testament that, well, we don't, we don't know, you know, who is a forger. We don't know who it could be.
Speaker 2Or even the titles. I'd be interested to see how many opening manuscript chat. So chapter one of Hebrews in, in the manuscript tradition, how many of them begin specifically saying Hebrews written by Paul, because in, uh, if any, I don't know, I'm asking, I would like to know. I'd like to know that because there's an attack against the gospels. And I think why I bring this up is because it does relate to what you're talking about here in the sense of authorship is tied to this issue of Canon. If it actually was written by Luke, then, you know, that, that helps us see that it was connected to an apostle, but the, the gospels, their, their opening pages say the gospel or according to Luke, the gospel, according to Mark, I just found out somewhat recently that there's this idea that the gospels were anonymous, the, the manuscript evidence that we have tells us the names. of those books and so um that's it that's an interesting the the funny thing too and i would
Speaker 1caution people when they read uh books um biblical studies books modern textbooks and stuff that they try to say like john barton does this in his um history of the bible is based on a based on a grammatical analysis of a particular book we can determine if the author is shared between this and another volume by by you know basically canvassing it in a digital and barring for a second the fact that that that kind of data can be so easily manipulated and is so open to conjecture over the use of certain definite articles and pronouns and things like that it's so open to conjecture it does not take in also to account it doesn't take into account the purpose of a particular epistle was it meant to be read or was it meant to be spoken um was it to a group or an individual is it um is it a personal address is it a public address like they never take any of that into account but also just on the bare lie like because on a on a um uh what will the word that i that i just used uh barton's claim about you know if you do a if you do an analysis of the uh of the of the way that certain words are used um we can come to a different conclusion hebrews is a perfect example of if you do a lexical syntactical analysis of hebrews if you do a an argument primarily in a way that's used in a way that's used in a way that's more specifically from grammar again the evidence for pauline authorship gets it gets so overwhelming to the absurd there's even um one that that a student brought up uh last year that i thought was awesome the phrase that you see in hebrews when he says be not carried about by every wind of doctrine only appears in one of paul's epistles that that that string of that string of phrase together only in paul's epistles be not blown away or blown about or carried about by wind winds of doctrine etc and it and it appears in hebrews we did this over and over and over and over and over just because i wanted the students to see like you don't have to have a phd to see the the simplicity of why this is always why why have so many people for thousands of years been compelled by these things and as it turns out that the evidence is actually pretty overwhelming and uh and that certainly is the case in canonization is that um knowing full well that these other books and these forgeries of books that have been written knowing full well they existed and the arguments for them uh christian leaders were not persuaded by them and have never been persuaded by them and in cases where any time throughout history they've tried to rear their ugly head and come back these these books and letters and things they always get tossed by the wayside again because um it doesn't stand up to uh higher scrutiny and i would just say to our apostolic listeners of pentecostal or really anybody who has a high view of scripture there that you can take solace in the fact too that when these when these books that maybe you're discovering them for the first time or you're coming into contact when you read it and you can notice the obvious contradiction with books that we know are scripture take comfort in the fact that people for thousands of years have noticed the same thing and you don't have to wonder to yourself like oh you know maybe this was supposed to be there's a reason why there's a harmony to this text like when you look at these 66 books together there's a harmony to what is said and what is taught and that they're conscious of one another's writings and that there's an awareness and that they're conscious of one another's writings and this text that when you look at like the gospel of thomas you know this this you know fake gospel it's it's it's out there to the point of absurdity but the reason why we know it's absurd is our familiarity with what we already agree is scripture like everybody knows this is scripture and so when we when we read this and we come in and it's like oh that that doesn't sound right there's no witness of that in here and if i can't find the shared witness in here why would i worry about whether or not you know is it scripture is it not scripture there's it doesn't it doesn't testify to what we and we've beat up
Speaker 2thomas pretty heavy today but i think it was justified so theological this this was the canon part one primarily looking at it as a theological issue before a historical issue this this would be something if i was talking to a christian this is how i would start the the next episode we'll delve into some historical facts some historical analysis and i'm excited for that episode absolutely all right well
Speaker 1thank you so much to all of our listeners thanks for hanging with us through this episode to watch the next episode of the our sponsor and as well to truth book co for producing this as always we appreciate it and if you haven't already subscribed please subscribe to the channel like the episode share it and we'll see you back here for our next episode on the app style classroom
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