All right, everybody, let's get started.
Welcome.
We're talking about the reliability of the New Testament
in this kind of sub-series of our larger series about Scripture.
And we're in class two.
Last week, we talked about the preservation of the New Testament.
We spoke about how the New Testament has been extraordinarily preserved
throughout the centuries,
and thus ensuring that we have access to the original words of the apostles.
And then this week, today, we're going to be talking about the canonicity of the New Testament.
And with this, I'll answer questions like,
who decided what books were in the New Testament?
And how was the New Testament put together?
And what about all those false gospels we hear about sometimes?
Why aren't those in the Bible?
And then a couple weeks from now,
we're going to look at the accuracy of the New Testament,
and we'll talk about how the New Testament is historically reliable,
how it's true, and how it's trustworthy.
So that's what we're going to cover today.
Let's open in prayer together.
Father in heaven, we thank you for this opportunity to not just study your word,
but to learn about your word and how you saw fit to assemble it for us.
Father, we ask you to send your Holy Spirit into this time right now,
that you'd put him in our hearts to guide us into truth,
to encourage us,
and to move us closer to you,
and to help us to grow in your truth,
in knowledge of your word,
in love for you,
love for one another,
to grow in humility and gentleness of heart.
And we pray this in the mighty name of Jesus.
Amen.
All right.
So if you're like me,
you might have a lot of questions.
You might even have some concerns about how the Bible was put together.
You might sometimes wonder how things got in there.
What if someone messed up?
What if someone put things in the Bible that shouldn't be there,
or maybe took some things out that should be there?
And so today,
I want us to consider these questions
and look at the answers that we have for them.
And my hope is that after today,
you'll see a glimpse of how God has worked by his Holy Spirit
to not just inspire and preserve the New Testament,
but also to assemble it and to put it together.
And so before we talk about that,
before we talk about how the New Testament was assembled and formed and put together,
I first just need to give a brief word about what the New Testament is made up of.
The New Testament is a collection of 27 books and letters
that were written under the authority of Jesus's apostles.
These apostles, these disciples of Jesus were commissioned by him.
He gave authority to them to teach and to preach his gospel
and to explain Christian doctrine.
Now, there's a lot of misconceptions
or even false theories about how these apostolic documents
were assembled into the New Testament.
And you've likely heard some of these misconceptions or theories.
You might even believe some of these things.
And so I think it'd be good to start our time off
by going through some of these misconceptions
or false theories about how the Bible got put together.
And so we're going to do that first.
We're going to start by just going through some of these that you hear about,
and I'll address each one in turn.
So perhaps the one that I'll talk about first,
I call this one the Bible drop down from heaven theory.
And most people, they don't often put it in so many words,
even if this is kind of what they believe.
But basically, this theory assumes that the Bible was created outside of time,
outside of history, without human hands,
and just presented to us on earth in a nice, neat little package.
And this is actually, substantively,
the theory for other holy books of other religions.
So for instance, the Quran, the holy text in Islam,
Muslims traditionally believe that it was written on tablets in heaven
and then brought down to earth,
where Muhammad, their prophet, memorized it and then presented it.
Mormons believe this about the Book of Mormon,
that Joseph Smith found some gold tablets that were written,
and he transcribed them and presented this Book of Mormon.
But this is, of course, not how the Bible was written.
And the Bible is very clear on this.
If you just glance at it, you'll see that the Bible was written by humans
and in human history.
It's made up of dozens of different books,
written by many different authors living in hundreds,
if not thousands, of miles apart,
and hundreds, if not thousands, of years apart as well.
And God saw fit to inspire prophets over the ages to write his word.
And because God is a God of love who delights in humans,
who delights in his children,
he welcomed them to become part of this process of writing scripture
and inspired some of these prophets.
And that's where our Bible comes from today.
So this whole theory of the Bible kind of drop down from heaven theory,
it's not really an accurate way to understand how the Bible was put together.
A second common false view is, I call this the conspiracy view.
This view maintains that sometime in the early 4th century,
maybe 300 years after Jesus,
the Roman Emperor Constantine or an early Pope,
they plotted or they colluded to manufacture the New Testament.
Constantine, of course, is known as the first Christian emperor of Rome.
He came to power in the early 300s.
And the running assumption behind this theory,
you'll find this in popular culture sometimes,
is that Constantine and this early Pope were pretty bad guys,
and they're sitting in some smoke-filled room colluding,
and they put stuff in the Bible that shouldn't be there,
and they took stuff out that should have been in there,
probably while committing all sorts of other horrible crimes.
And if any of you are familiar with the Da Vinci Code,
it was popular some years ago,
the author Dan Brown posits this very theory.
But, of course, neither Constantine nor an early Pope
decided what was in the Bible.
This is, in fact, so false,
it's hard to believe it has much currency today.
There's simply no evidence that Constantine or an early Pope
ever decided what was in the New Testament,
and there's a whole lot of evidence against it.
In fact, even if Constantine or some early Pope
did try and decide what was in the New Testament,
their power only extended to Roman territory.
And by the 4th century,
Christianity was so far widespread
beyond the Roman Empire,
which you can see there in red or pink,
that even if they had decided this,
they had no power over the Sassanian Empire
in the East or Ethiopia in the South.
There was no phone lines.
They couldn't pick up a phone
and tell people what was in their Bible.
And even if they did, they would have been ignored
because these folks are in other power centers
far removed from Rome.
And in fact, we do have some later examples
in the 4th and 5th century
of Christians in these areas
specifically ignoring what Roman Christians were doing.
And so this theory of an early Pope
or Bishop of Rome
or an early Roman Emperor colluding to manufacture,
it's just not true.
They didn't decide what was in the New Testament.
So that's another misconception,
another false theory about how the Bible got put together.
But let's keep moving.
Let's talk about a third theory.
This one I call the Ecumenical Church Council Theory.
So this theory maintains
that there was some ecumenical church council,
by ecumenical, I mean universal or worldwide.
And this council happened sometime way back in antiquity.
And this council had representatives
from all the churches of the world.
And this council codified the contents of the New Testament.
Well, many Christians will be surprised to learn
that this is not true.
There was no ecumenical worldwide church council
that ratified the contents of the New Testament
or decided what books were in it.
There were, of course,
various smaller local regional councils
that sometimes issued New Testament lists
way back in antiquity.
But these had limited influence
just to their general area.
And so there was no worldwide council
that had some kind of binding power
that decided what was in the New Testament.
The closest we can come to is something like this,
the Council of Trulow in Constantinople in 692.
This was a large council.
It did issue some edicts about the contents
of the New Testament.
But the problem with the Council of Trulow,
it was only a Roman council.
Only the Roman Empire really accepted this.
And as I've already shown,
Christianity was far, far more widespread
than the Roman Empire.
We could say the same thing
about the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 CE.
They did the same thing.
But again, just a Roman council.
If we go earlier, like the Council of Hippo in 393,
Hippo is kind of a funny name, I know.
That's where Augustine was bishop back in 393.
They did issue a list of New Testament books as well.
And they're, of course, much earlier.
But again, this was a regional council.
It was even smaller than the Roman Empire.
It was just Northwest Africa.
So this theory, the ecumenical church council theory,
it's an attractive theory.
But it's also not true.
Now, this next theory has probably the most truth to it
of the ones that we've looked at.
This theory states that the apostles
collected the New Testament.
So according to this theory,
the apostles of Jesus,
they not only supervised the writing of the New Testament,
they also helped collect the New Testament documents
and assemble them together in a single book.
Sometimes you hear, for example,
that John, the apostle John, the son of Zebedee,
the last surviving disciple of Jesus
and author of the book of Revelation,
sometimes you hear that he was responsible
for sealing the New Testament.
And some people find evidence for this
with John's last words
in the last verses of the New Testament,
where he says in the book of Revelation,
if anyone adds to these things,
God will add to him the plagues
that are written in this book.
And if anyone takes away from the words
of the book of this prophecy,
God shall take away his part from the book of life
and from the holy city
and from the things which are written in this book.
Now, there is good reason to believe
that John and other apostles
did help assemble at least part of the New Testament.
For example, the ancient Christian writer Eusebius,
he's writing around the year 311.
He's famous for kind of being the father of history.
He was a fantastic historian.
He writes that the apostle John
accepted the other three gospels
by Matthew, Mark, and Luke,
and that he bore witness to their truthfulness.
And then he wrote his fourth gospel,
the gospel of John,
as a supplement to the other three.
And certainly it seems probable
that the apostles did play a role
in gathering the New Testament together.
Not just John, but for instance,
the second letter of Peter,
he talks about Paul's letters.
He mentions them as scripture.
Peter seems to be affirming these letters
as something that Christians should obey
and consider as the inspired word of God.
Peter also mentions Mark
as being a very faithful Christian.
Mark, of course, wrote the gospel of Mark.
And in fact, an early Christian writer named Papias,
writing around the year 115 AD,
he tells us that Mark recorded Peter's preaching
and that Peter approved of it
and that that's what the gospel of Mark is.
So Peter and John seem to have played some kind of role.
Paul, the apostle,
he also seems to have played a role
in the collection of his own letters
or at least some of his followers,
maybe Timothy or Silas did.
Paul also in 1 Timothy,
I believe it's 1 Timothy 5, 17 through 18,
he seems to call the gospel of Luke scripture.
He seems to be affirming the gospel of Luke
as part of scripture.
So this theory that the apostles played a significant role
in collecting and assembling the documents
of the New Testament,
this is a very reasonable theory.
They clearly played a large role in that.
But we don't have any explicit evidence
that one or some of the apostles
collected all 27 books of the New Testament.
And it would seem likely
that early Christian writings
would mention this fact if it had happened,
but they don't insofar as I'm aware.
And there's also a problem
in that it seems like probably the last book
to be written was the book of Revelation by John.
But John wrote this when he was in exile on an island
and there were other apostles
scattered around the whole world.
It almost seems like they wouldn't have had an opportunity
to collect all these things before they passed away,
at least the final documents that were written.
So definitely it seems like the apostles
played a significant role,
but that's not the whole story.
So if this is the case,
who decided what was in the New Testament?
How did it come to include the 27 books
that we have today?
At some point,
or at this point, I should say,
some people start scratching their heads
and begin wondering what other options
are even available
if these four theories aren't the whole truth.
Well, the answer is, I think,
a wonderful testimony to God's guiding spirit
throughout the history of the church.
And here's the answer.
The answer of how the New Testament was assembled
is that it was not assembled
in one place or time by one person or group.
Rather, the New Testament was assembled
by various churches throughout history,
relatively independently of one another,
and it was done so many times.
Many times, and this all began
in the very early church of the second century.
Back then, when these churches were gathering
the contents of the New Testament,
they all had one overriding factor.
They wanted to identify documents
that were published by the apostles
or were published with their supervision.
And from the very beginning,
there was broad agreement
over what these documents included,
and any disagreements were met
with careful consideration,
with prayer, and with research.
And the remarkable, perhaps even this stunning result,
is that every ancient Christian community
eventually came to use
the very same 27-book New Testament
that we have today.
In other words, the same New Testament
remarkably emerged in multiple churches
relatively independently of one another,
just like how God used multiple people
over many countries and many languages
to write his Bible,
he also used many people over many countries
to put it together.
Now, you might be a little skeptical about this,
so I think it might be helpful
if I showed you what this process
of putting the New Testament together looks like.
So that's what we'll do right now.
To do this,
I want us to travel back in time,
just about 2,000 years
to the very beginning of the Christian church,
to those first few decades
after the resurrection of Jesus,
when the apostles are traveling around the world
and preaching the gospel of salvation.
And if we go to, say, 45 AD,
let's say to ancient Corinth,
and if we peek in on a church service
at this time in the church of Corinth,
we'll notice something about their Bible.
We'll notice that in 45 AD,
they didn't have a New Testament,
and that's because the New Testament didn't exist yet.
It hadn't been written yet.
These very first Christians,
like those in Corinth,
they did not have the New Testament
because, like I said,
the apostles hadn't started writing it yet.
The scriptures that they held to
were the Old Testament.
The earliest New Testament scriptures
were written within a few years of 50 AD or so,
and so in 45 AD,
none of them had been written yet.
It's only 15 years or so,
maybe even less after the resurrection of Jesus,
and so this church is using the Old Testament.
But if we stick around in Corinth long enough
and keep going to their church services
faithfully every Sunday,
there will eventually come a day
when the Corinthians get a letter
from a guy named the Apostle Paul.
And we now call this letter 1 Corinthians,
and it's in our New Testament today.
And because in 45 AD,
Paul was an apostle of Jesus,
commissioned by Jesus to have great authority
to preach and to teach,
the Corinthians get this letter
and they start reading Paul's letter aloud
in their church services
alongside the Old Testament.
And this is actually something
Paul instructed them to do.
In some of his letters,
he says,
make sure you read this out loud
in your church service.
And the Corinthians then start sending this letter
around to their neighboring churches
in Greece,
in Philippi,
in Thessalonica,
which is, again,
something Paul told his churches to do.
And those churches in Thessalonica
and Philippi
begin sending the Corinthians
their letters from apostles,
which we now call
1 and 2 Thessalonians
and Philippians.
And all of a sudden,
perhaps without them even realizing it,
the New Testament is being born.
And over the next 30 or 40 years,
various apostles wrote or supervised
the composition of New Testament documents.
And over these decades and afterwards,
Christians began exchanging
and verifying these documents
to make sure they actually came
from the apostles.
And sometimes churches would find
that a document they had accepted
as being apostolic really wasn't.
And they would reject it.
We actually have witnesses of this
in the New Testament,
in 2 Thessalonians,
when Paul says,
don't be troubled by a letter
as if from me
saying that the day of the Lord has come.
Don't believe it.
And so he's giving them instructions
on like,
you got to test these documents, people.
Now, this process of gathering
and evaluating and verifying
the documents,
documents is apostolic.
This took some time.
This is in part because
the Christian church expanded so rapidly
over many thousands of miles
that it was often difficult
to communicate with one another.
It's easy when you're all hanging out
in Greece and Macedonia,
like these three churches
you see on the screen.
But by 200 AD,
the Christian church
had spread to Spain,
to Northwest Africa,
to Great Britain,
to France,
to Germany,
to Asia Minor,
and Greece,
and to Egypt,
to what we start calling
Mesopotamia,
the Middle East,
to Persia,
even into Central Asia,
Nubia,
Ethiopia,
all the way to Western China,
and even Northwest India
by 200 AD.
And so,
it took quite some time
for these apostolic documents
to be distributed
and translated
into all these various languages.
Remember,
there was no email,
no printing press,
no typewriter,
things like that.
So,
things did take a bit of time.
But,
what we can say
is that the early churches
had broad agreement
on the contents
of the New Testament,
and though it took some time
for things
to settle down,
they eventually did arrive
on complete agreement
about what the New Testament
would look like.
And if you're curious,
we can observe
this agreement
emerging for ourselves.
if we can go back
and canvas
early Christian writings
in the 2nd through 3rd centuries
and see these discussions
over the New Testament
taking place
and watch this general agreement
arise for ourselves.
So,
just like how we went back
to 45 AD
to check out
the Church of Corinth,
we can go to 175 AD
and start canvassing
Christian documents
to see what their New Testament
was like
and see what their New Testament
included.
So,
for instance,
in 175 AD,
there's a document
called the Muratorian Fragment.
It's from Rome
and it contains
a discussion
of the New Testament,
of what their New Testament is.
Now,
unfortunately,
this document
is very old
and we're missing
the beginning of it
and probably the end of it.
So,
it's not a complete
discussion
of the New Testament.
In fact,
it begins
with this half-broken sentence
and then says,
the third gospel
is Luke.
Well,
if you,
so we know they had,
we know they had
two other ones.
Then they have Luke
and then they talk about John.
So,
we know there were four gospels.
There was Luke,
there was John
and then the little
half sentence
really implies its mark.
It doesn't have the name mark
in it,
but what it's talking about
really implies mark.
So,
anyway,
if we go through this document,
we can chart out
what their New Testament
looked like
and I have this
on the screen here.
I know this is small font,
but I wanted to get
the whole New Testament
on here.
On the left-hand side,
you see a list
of New Testament books
in canonical order
from Matthew down to Revelation
and then in the second column,
it's a chart
of the Muratorian fragment
and what documents
this fragment includes
as part of its New Testament
and if it has the letter C
in one of its rows,
that means there's a direct
citation of this document
and you'll notice some things.
First of all,
they have a large chunk
of our New Testament.
Now,
like I said,
it's missing the beginning,
but it's reasonable to think
that they had Matthew and Mark.
We can't be 100% sure,
but they certainly had Luke,
John,
Acts,
and the letters of Paul.
They had 1st and 2nd John.
They have Jude and Revelation.
You'll notice that
I've got some question marks here
on 1st and 2nd Peter
and we don't have anything
for Hebrews and James.
This is because
these documents
are not mentioned,
but remember,
we're missing
the whole document.
So we don't have
the whole list.
We have part of the list
and the document
doesn't talk about
the New Testament books
in the same order
that we have them today.
For instance,
it talks about 1st John
with the Gospel of John.
So there's a chance
and I think a fairly
reasonable one
that it talked about
1st Peter,
maybe 2nd Peter
when it was speaking
about Mark
because Mark
was the interpreter
of Peter
and recorded Peter's statements.
Same with Hebrews and James.
Matthew is the Gospel
that's often written.
It's thought of
as a Jewish Gospel.
It's written for the Jews
and Hebrews and James
are the two letters
that are written
to Jews specifically.
So it's possible
that when it spoke
about Matthew,
it was also speaking
about Hebrews and James.
We're not sure.
I have a question mark
by 3rd John.
That's because
there's some ambiguity.
It mentions multiple letters
of John
but it doesn't say
how many.
So is it 2?
Is it 3?
We don't really know.
But what you can see
is that this New Testament,
the core of the New Testament
of this community
is exactly the same
as ours
and if we had
the whole list,
it might have been
exactly the same.
We don't know.
There may be
some extraneous
minor differences
but we're not sure.
So we just peeked in
one church
around 175 in Rome
but we can keep doing this.
We can do this
for 185
with a theologian
named Irenaeus.
He wrote this wonderful
book of theology.
It's actually
the first
comprehensive theology,
a book of theology
that we have
from a Christian
and he's writing
in France
in 185
and we can go through
this book of theology
and just see
what does he cite
from the New Testament
and try and come up
with what his New Testament
looked like.
So we have this list
from the Muratorian fragment
and we can add this one
from Irenaeus
and we'll see that
he's got Matthew, Mark, Luke,
John, Acts, Romans,
all the letters of Paul
except he doesn't mention
Philemon.
He also has 1 and 2 John,
1 Peter, Revelation.
You'll notice though,
like I said,
he doesn't mention Philemon,
he doesn't mention 3 John,
he doesn't mention Jude
but remember that Irenaeus
is not giving us
a list of New Testament books.
He's just writing
a work of theology,
citing the New Testament
whenever it's relevant
and you'll notice something
about Philemon
and 3 John and Jude
is they're really,
really tiny.
They're only a paragraph
or two long
and you've got to write
a lot of theology
before you have
an opportunity
to mention these books.
So it's not that
we think these were
out of his New Testament,
they very well could have been
in his New Testament,
we just don't know.
He didn't happen
to cite them in this book.
I've got a question mark
with Hebrews.
He definitely knows Hebrews
but we're not sure
if he included it
in his New Testament
or not
but we know he's aware of it.
I have a question mark
with James and 2 Peter
and that's because
he seems to quote them
but it's not certain.
You know,
sometimes people will just
take a lot of language
from a New Testament book
but not say,
oh, this is from James
and that seems to be
like he's doing
what he's doing
but we're not totally sure.
Nevertheless,
his New Testament
looks an awful lot
like ours.
Maybe if we could have
had him make a list
it would have been
exactly like ours.
We just don't know.
Also,
Irenaeus is very clear.
He says elsewhere
that there are only
four Gospels.
He also says
that New Testament documents
need to come
from the Apostles
and be written
under their supervision.
So he gives us
kind of this broad outline
of what the New Testament
should contain.
But let's keep going.
We can do this same project
with a theologian
named Tertullian
in 200 A.D.
in Northwest Africa
writing in Latin.
So we're on another continent now
and his New Testament
is very similar.
Now remember,
Tertullian,
he's not giving us a list.
He's just writing
some theology
but he's got
most of
what our New Testament
has today.
He has 1 Peter,
he has 1 John,
he has Jude,
he does mention Jude,
he mentions Revelation.
He is missing
some things
like James
and 2 Peter,
2 and 3 John
but again,
we don't know
if those were omitted
or if he just
never had reason
to quote from them.
We can't be sure.
Let's keep going.
We'll go to
same time frame,
200 A.D.
in Egypt,
a guy named Clement
of Alexandria,
another theologian.
So this is thousands
of miles away
from Tertullian
writing in a different language.
What does he have?
Well,
if we add him,
we see that he quotes
from all 27 books
of the New Testament
and we see this again
around 200,
230 A.D.
This is when
the old Latin translation
of the Bible
was commissioned.
We're not entirely sure
of the date.
I said 230
to be conservative.
It could easily
be earlier than that.
It could easily be 200
or 180 or something.
But this was,
as far as we know,
the first full-scale
translation
of the New Testament
into another language.
There certainly
were smaller
translations beforehand.
You know,
someone takes
a quick letter
and makes a translation
of it.
This seems to be
the first full-scale
one that we're aware of.
And scholars
have to do a lot of work
to try and piece together
what was included
in this full-scale
translation.
And it seems
like the Old Latin
included all 27 books
of the New Testament
around 230 A.D.
We've got one more guy
we're going to check out.
This is further east
in Caesarea Palestine,
a theologian named
Origen in 245.
Origen gives us
the first complete list
of New Testament books.
Remember,
we did have a list
in the Muratorian fragment
in 175,
but it wasn't complete.
We're missing part of it.
Origen gives us
the first list.
And if you look
at his list,
his list includes
all 27 books
that we have
in our New Testament.
Now,
some scholars debate
if this list
has been properly preserved,
but what we can say
for certain
is that
if we go manually
through Origen's writings,
he does mention
all 27 books
of the New Testament.
So even if his list
has been
not preserved properly,
we do know
he was aware
of all 27 books
in the New Testament.
So,
all of those
were in Latin
or Greek.
So,
Irenaeus
is writing in France,
he's writing in Greek,
Tertullian
is writing in Latin,
Clement is Greek,
the Old Latin Bible
is Latin,
Origen is Greek,
and the Muratorian fragment,
it's in Latin.
Some people think
it was originally Greek
and it was translated,
but we only have it
in Latin today.
Were there any
additional books
that they mentioned?
Oh,
great.
Yes,
I'm going to be getting
to that in a little bit.
Yes,
yes,
there were.
And we'll talk about that
in just a moment.
Amos.
I have a question.
Are there,
like,
comparable lists
from outside
the Roman Empire?
Not yet.
Not yet at this point.
Outside the Roman Empire.
Now,
remember,
Christianity is still,
at this point,
a persecuted group.
And so,
there is no political authority
to control the Bible.
So,
this is well before
Christianity came to power
in the Roman Empire.
So,
these are all happening
somewhat independently
of one another.
And in fact,
Tertullian,
he ended up separating
from the Roman Church
over a matter
of doctrine.
Not a core
theological doctrine,
but he separated.
So,
some of these,
some of these people
are not even part
of necessarily
the same Christian community,
even though
they all have
the same statement of faith.
I mean,
we would,
if we read his confession
of faith with these others,
we would agree with them all.
Does that help?
So,
at this point,
we don't have a list
outside of the Roman Empire
yet.
So,
we could keep doing this
over decades and centuries.
And like I said,
we would eventually see
all the ancient churches
clustering
around 27 documents
that we have today
in our New Testament.
And,
like I said,
there's two remarkable
things about this.
One is that
there was very early
agreement
within the contents
of the New Testament,
as you can see
on the screen.
Secondly,
is like I said,
eventually all the churches
with ancient roots
came to agree
on this 27-book New Testament.
It did take
a long time
in some places,
particularly the places
that were farther flung
from where the original
locations of these documents
were written.
But,
eventually,
they all ended up agreeing.
So,
to sum up,
the
assembly of the New Testament,
this New Testament
did not fall out of heaven.
There was no conspiracy theory.
There was no single
ecumenical council.
There really was actually
no single uniting factor
other than the Holy Spirit.
And,
the Holy Spirit
guided the apostles
to write the New Testament
and to begin assembling it.
And then,
their later churches
they left behind,
independently of one another,
somewhat,
investigated and tested
which documents
were apostolic.
And,
eventually,
everyone arrived
at the same 27-book New Testament,
even if it took
a long time
in some places.
So,
some of you might still
have some questions.
Like,
what New Testament books
were controversial?
Was there any books
in the New Testament today
that the ancient church
maybe was a little
uncomfortable about?
Well,
we could make a list of these
and I've done that for you.
And,
these are the books
that when you go back
and you read
the early debates,
these are the books
that are in our New Testament today
that sometimes you'll find
an ancient Christian
disagreed with.
And,
I'm going to address
each of these in turn.
So,
Hebrews.
Hebrews was suspicious
in the Latin church
for a little bit.
It was not suspicious
in the Greek church.
But,
in the Latin church it was
and it was because
it was anonymous.
They wanted to make sure
that this was written
under apostolic authority
and so,
some of them
were a little suspicious
of it.
Interestingly,
Hebrews actually has
some of the earliest
attestation
of any
New Testament document.
There's a Christian
writing in 96 A.D.
who is aware
of the letter
of Hebrews.
So,
it has very early
attestation.
I'm actually encouraged
that the early church
took authorship
so seriously
that they didn't just
want to throw everything
in just because
they liked it.
James also
took some time.
Now,
there's a good reason
for this.
If you read
James,
it's addressed
to the 12 tribes
of Israel,
to the Jews.
And the evidence
we have from
the early church
is almost entirely
from Gentile churches.
The Romans,
the Greeks,
the Egyptians,
the Northwest Africans.
And so,
in other words,
this letter
wasn't actually
written to them
initially.
And it makes sense
that it would just
take some time
to percolate
and for them
to come
to accept it.
The next letters,
2 Peter,
2 John,
3 John,
Jude,
they all share
the characteristic
of being pretty short.
They're very short.
And so,
some of,
like that guy
I mentioned,
Eusebius,
who's writing
around the year 300,
he's investigating
these things
and he reports,
he's like,
you know,
2 Peter,
2 John,
3 John,
Jude,
they're not mentioned
a whole lot
in the super ancient
Christian writings
and we saw that
in our chart.
And the reason why
may simply have just been
that they were just
so short.
You've got to listen
to a lot of sermons,
you've got to read
a lot of theology
before you find citations
of 3 John
and 2 John
and Jude.
And we actually
can test this
if we look at
Augustine's writings,
Augustine,
St. Augustine,
he's writing around
the year 400.
We know what his
New Testament contained
because he tells us,
he gives us a list.
He also attended
a council that he headed
that also issued a list.
He has a 27 book
New Testament.
Augustine wrote
5 million words.
He wrote an enormous amount.
It's the equivalent
of writing a 300 page book
every year for 40 years.
And if you go through
his 5 million writings,
you find that he only quotes
from 2 and 3 John
like once or twice,
which means he's only
quoting from them,
you know,
once every one or 2 million
words that he writes.
That's a lot of words.
And in the early church,
we don't even have
5 million words
from the early church
when you combine it
all together.
So there's good reasons
why these smaller documents
may not have come up
as much.
The last one,
Revelation,
the last one
was actually
not controversial
in the early church.
The early church
universally accepted this.
It is quoted constantly
in Latin and in Greek
from the very beginning
of the 2nd century
and all throughout
the 3rd century.
The problem with Revelation
is that in the 4th
and 5th century,
some Christians,
it kind of fell out of favor
to be honest.
And some Christians
started removing it
from their New Testament.
So it wasn't controversial
in the early church.
In the later church,
it was controversial
in certain churches,
but then eventually
came back in.
So those were the books
that are in our New Testament
today that met
with some controversy
at some points.
But what about books
that almost made it
into the Bible
but didn't?
What about those?
I'm interested in those.
Well, I guess in a way,
I would say there's actually
no book that almost made it in
but didn't.
There were some books, though,
that some people thought
should be in at some point,
but many people didn't.
And so in other words,
there are some texts
that some early Christian churches
included,
but I would not say
most of them did.
It was not like they almost
made it in but didn't.
It's just that maybe
there'd be some churches
that were reading this,
but most weren't.
And here they are.
These are books like this,
The Epistle of Barnabas.
I'm going to talk about
each one of these in turn.
First Clement.
It's a letter
by a guy named Clement.
A book called
The Shepherd of Hermas.
A document called
The Gospel of the Hebrews.
And another document
called The Dietessaron.
Now you're looking
at the Epistle of Barnabas
and you're like,
I've heard that guy before.
And that's because
Barnabas is in the Bible.
He's one of the early
followers of the apostles.
He's called an apostle
sometimes.
And this letter,
it's a long letter.
It's an early Christian letter.
It probably comes
from the year 100 or 120.
But it's not by Barnabas.
It doesn't claim
to be by Barnabas either.
But later Christians,
some of them said
he wrote it
and some Christians,
a minority,
included it
within their New Testament.
But scholars are united today
that Barnabas did not write this.
It's not.
It's post-70 AD,
probably 100, 120 AD.
And it's not from Barnabas.
First Clement is another one.
This is a letter of Clement.
I mentioned it earlier
where Clement mentions Hebrews
and Clement wrote
around 95 AD.
And Clement was a disciple
of the apostles.
He was a priest in Rome.
He writes a letter
to the Corinthians.
It's like a kind of a sequel
to 1st and 2nd Corinthians.
He writes a letter to them.
And some Christians
had his letter
in their New Testament.
They're like,
you know,
he was a disciple
of the apostles.
Mark and Luke
were disciples of the apostles.
It's a pretty good letter too.
I like it.
It's a good thing though
that it's not
in the New Testament.
And that's because
it was not written
with apostolic oversight.
It was written
after the apostles
had passed away.
And by the way,
Clement is not writing this
as claiming it's scripture.
He's just writing
a letter to the Corinthians.
And the Corinthians
really liked it.
They, for instance,
seemed to have read it
in their church services
publicly for decades afterwards.
But there were
a few other communities
that included it
in their New Testament,
but most didn't.
Shepherd of Hermas.
This is a weird one, guys.
It's a weird one.
There's a scholar
who talks about,
there's a few churches
who would read this publicly
and there's a scholar
who said that he pitied them,
that they had to listen to this.
This is probably
from the year like 150 AD.
We still have it.
You can read it.
It's probably written
around the year 150.
For some reason,
it really caught on
in some churches.
And for instance,
Irenaeus,
whom,
let's see,
do I have a church?
Yeah.
Irenaeus,
he liked it.
He quotes from it.
He might have even included it
in his Bible.
However,
the Muratorian fragment
and Tertullian
both mention it
and they both say,
no, no, no, no, no.
No, this is not part
of the New Testament.
And it eventually,
it fell out.
Gospel of Hebrews.
Yes,
Gospel of Hebrews
was included
by some Christians.
Don't let that alarm you.
The Gospel of Hebrews
seems to be just
a Hebrew version
of the Gospel of Matthew.
Remember I said
that Matthew was written
for the Jews
and it seems to be
a Hebrew version of Matthew
that for whatever reason
had some changes
here and there.
So like the man
with the withered hand,
the story of Jesus healing
the man with the withered hand,
it gives his name,
for instance,
or at least tells his trade.
I can't remember
if it's both.
But little changes
like that.
So sometimes,
so it seems to have been
some version of Matthew,
not all that different.
The last one
was the Diatessalon.
This was a huge account
of Jesus' life.
Some of the Eastern churches
had this in their New Testament.
But the Diatessalon,
it means through four.
And what that was,
was just the four Gospels,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
knit together
into a single narrative.
So instead of the four
separated Gospels,
they had this one Gospel
where a man named Tation
took the four Gospels
and put them all together.
So in a way,
it's different
from what we have today.
But in another way,
it's like really similar.
It's not this far off,
outlandish kind of thing
that gives a completely
different picture of Jesus.
Does that make sense?
Okay, so those were
the books that,
you know,
some Christians considered
as authoritative,
others didn't.
Here's another question.
How long until the 27 Book New Testament
was universally accepted?
How long did it take
for the 27 Book New Testament
to become universally accepted?
Well, as I've showed,
we do start having churches
embracing a 27 Book New Testament
very early on.
And even in the earlier stages,
it may have happened.
Remember,
we can't be sure
that this is the complete
New Testament
of these earlier churches
represented by the
Muratorian Fragment
or Irenaeus or Tertullian.
We know that in 245,
there were churches
that seemed to have
a 27 Book New Testament.
There were many.
But how long did this take
to become universally accepted?
Well, the answer to this
is complicated.
And it depends on what area
of the world,
the Christian world
you're talking about.
So for instance,
in Rome,
the 27 Book New Testament
seems to have been embraced
very early on in the 200s.
Same with Western Europe,
same with Northwest Africa,
same with Egypt.
We don't know a lot
about Cyprus,
but we do have a list
of New Testament books
from the mid to late 300s.
It's 27 books.
But then things are
a little different
in other parts of the world.
In Asia Minor
and in Palestine,
we do have some evidence
of 27 books,
but we also have evidence
that there were churches
that were uncomfortable
with the book of Revelation.
This is where we first
start seeing that discomfort.
And what's ironic
is that earlier
in the history
of these churches,
in the 100s and 200s,
they did accept Revelation.
But then it kind of
fell under suspicion.
So those churches
seem to have,
I guess,
what we'd call
like a 26 book
or 27 book New Testament.
It depended
what time you're talking about.
Sometimes they had Revelation
and sometimes they didn't.
Things get more diverse
as we go farther east,
especially when we start
getting to the area
of the Roman Empire
that's overlapping
with the Syriac church.
Syriac is a language
that was anciently spoken
around here
in what is today
Iraq and Syria.
They had what I guess
I would call
a smaller New Testament
in that those books
that I put up on the screen
that said they were controversial
like 2 John,
3 John,
Jude,
they excluded those
from their New Testament
originally.
And they did that
for hundreds of years.
In around 500 AD,
they commissioned
a new translation
of the scriptures
into Syriac
that did have
all 27 books.
And then in 600 AD,
another translation
into Syriac
that also had
all 27 books.
But those translations
didn't totally catch on
for quite some time.
It took a very long time
for all the Syriac churches
to eventually embrace
this 27 book New Testament.
We could go to Armenia
and Georgia.
They follow kind of
a similar pattern,
although they're more quick
to get to the kind of
26 slash 27 book New Testament.
Revelation took the longest here
in Armenia and Georgia.
We go farther
into Ethiopia,
into the Persian
and Parthian Empire.
And things start
taking longer.
And for instance,
this church here
took hundreds
and hundreds
and hundreds of years
to finally adopt
a 27 book New Testament.
Interestingly,
they were a great
missionary church
and they had
a large mission
in China.
and we have
an inscription
from this mission
in the 700s.
And they do have
a 27 book New Testament,
it looks like.
But for some reason,
this area
took a very long time.
So long
that it took
until basically
the printing press
for them
to finally
catch on to that.
And that may be true,
that seems to be true
in Georgia also,
the country of Georgia
which is up here.
But eventually,
they all came
to agree on this.
Okay.
So,
I have another question.
What about those
heretics I hear about
all the time?
What about them?
Well,
that's a great question.
Some of you hear
about heretical
early Christians
that have a very different,
they have other
New Testament documents
like the Gospel of Mary
and the Gospel of Truth
and the Gospel of Judas
and the Gospel of Philip
and the Gospel of so-and-so.
What about them?
What if they're right?
What if we're wrong?
That's important
for us to figure out.
And so,
what I want to do
is I want to examine
early Christian
heretical sects
to see what
their New Testament
contained
and see if it had
big differences
and maybe
and if those differences
are important
and if they are,
are they right?
Are these other
heretical Christian groups
right and we're wrong?
This is important
to figure out.
So,
what we're going to do
is we're going to examine
some early Christian
heretical sects
to see what their
New Testament contained
and while we're doing that,
we're also going to figure out
on our own
which writings
we think
come from
an apostle
because
what if the early church
was wrong?
What if they made a mistake?
So,
we're going to try
and do this
for ourselves.
We're going to go
through some heretical
writings,
look at them
and then we're going
to come up
with the 27
or whatever number
it is,
books in a New Testament
that come from
an apostle.
So,
let's do this.
First thing to know
about some,
about early Christian heretics
is that
early Christian heretical sects,
they made up
a small minority
of Christians.
The majority of Christians
in the early centuries
followed
the mainstream church
and this church
spanned thousands of miles,
dozens of cultures,
many languages
and it was directly linked
to the apostles.
So,
there's good reasons
why we want to trust
those people
instead of the other folks.
But,
let's,
for sake of argument,
let's just look at
what the heretics
believed about
the New Testament
and see what
their New Testament
looked like.
So,
the most prevalent
heretical sects
in the ancient church
were as follows.
You have the Montanists
who were largely
in Asia Minor,
the Novationists
in Italy,
the Donatists
in northwest Africa
and then the Arians
who were all over
but they were largely
in Germany
and in Egypt.
And when you look
at these heretical groups,
we have writings
preserved
from all of these
and when you look
at them
and you try
and see
what their New Testament
looked like,
you'll discover
that they accepted
the very same
New Testament
that the mainstream
church did.
Their debates
with the mainstream
church had nothing
to do with
what scriptures
were accepted
and had everything
to do with
how to interpret
the scriptures.
And in fact,
several of these groups,
the Montanists,
the Novationists,
and the Donatists
actually had this
same confession
of faith.
Their split
from the church
wasn't really
even theological.
It was more
practical
or praxis related.
They didn't want
to be,
the Novationists
and the Donatists
didn't want
to be associated
with an official
church in Rome
and the Montanists
had a very high
regard for the
current inspiration
of the Holy Spirit.
They're like
modern Pentecostals
today,
a very extreme
form of Pentecostalism
and the mainstream
church thought
they went too far
but they're preaching
the same core doctrines
as the church.
Question?
Cathars,
when did they go?
Oh, the Cathars,
they're much later.
They're like 1100,
1200.
Yeah,
they're much later.
Unless,
unless they're,
some people argue
there could be
some kind of
ancient link
with the Donatists
and the Novationists
but they're much later.
So, okay,
but what about
those heretics
that had a different
New Testament?
Well,
the group that was
the largest
that had a different
New Testament
is called the Marcionites.
They were founded
by a man named Marcion
around the year 140.
Their Bible was
very different
from our Bible
and the reason why
their Bible
was very different
was because
they rejected
every biblical writing
that was Jewish
and,
if you think about it,
that's almost everything.
So,
they rejected
the entire
Old Testament.
They rejected
almost the entire
New Testament
because these books
were written by Jews
and for Jews.
The only books
they accepted
was the Gospel of Luke
because Luke
was a Gentile
and they accepted
most of the letters
of Paul
because even though
Paul was Jewish,
he was the apostle
to the Gentiles.
But if you read Luke
and you read Paul's letters,
they're constantly quoting
from the Old Testament
in an approving way,
so they had to go through
and edit all those things out.
So,
these folks
don't seem
to be a particularly
reliable group
about what we should have
in our Bible.
If we know anything
about Jesus
and the apostles at all,
it was that
they were Jewish
and that they believed
in the Jewish Old Testament.
So,
why would we trust
a group that refuses
to acknowledge
one of the most
fundamental facts
of history
concerning Jesus
and the apostles?
But even worse than this
is that the Marcionites
also have an inherently
contradictory view.
They believed
that the God
of the Old Testament
in their words,
Yahweh,
was evil,
yet they worship Jesus
whose name means
Yahweh saves.
Yahweh is salvation.
So,
they're rejecting Yahweh
while worshiping someone
whose name confesses
that Yahweh is salvation.
So,
totally contradictory group.
So,
I think we can safely
dismiss the Marcionites
from having some kind of
more accurate Bible
than we have today.
There's another group
that had a different Bible.
These are the Ebionites.
This is a kind of
Jewish Christian group
and unlike the Marcionites,
they rejected writings
in the New Testament
that were too pro-Gentile.
So,
in other words,
they didn't like Luke,
they didn't,
especially Paul.
They did not like Paul
at all.
And so,
what we see here
with these two groups,
the Marcionites
and the Ebionites,
is that these actually
were kind of
race-based groups.
They had this kind of,
for lack of a better term,
this sort of racist
view of theology.
The Marcionites rejected
anything Jewish.
The Ebionites rejected
anything to do with Gentiles.
And if we know
the Old Testament,
right in Genesis chapter 12,
what does God say to Abraham?
That I will make your seed
a blessing
for all nations.
And that promised seed
is traced to the whole
Old Testament,
this promised seed
for all nations,
not just Jews.
And that promised seed
is Jesus.
Jesus is the Savior
of both Jews
and Gentiles.
So,
they don't really seem
to be a reliable
guide either.
But,
what about those Gnostics
we hear about?
That's the final group
I'm going to mention.
The Gnostics,
they had all sorts of
additional New Testament
documents.
They had things like
the Gospel of Thomas
and the Gospel of Peter
and the Gospel of Philip
and Mary and Judas
and Truth
and the Acts of John
and Paul and whoever.
And they had other documents
with crazy names
like Thunder,
the Perfect Mind,
which sounds kind of
like a video game title.
And they claimed
that these were written
by the apostles.
But,
what's interesting
is that the Gnostics
acknowledged
the New Testament
of the mainstream church.
They just added to it.
So,
they acknowledged
the mainstream New Testament
but then added
these other documents.
So,
what about
these Gnostic documents?
what if
they're accurate?
Like,
what if they really are
from the apostles?
Well,
we want to figure this out.
We want to figure out
if these other Gospels
by Thomas and Philip
and whoever
really do come
from the apostles
and if we should trust them.
Well,
we can do this
in a certain
ways.
One thing we can try
and do
is we can try
and verify
the historical contents
of these Gnostic Gospels
to see if they're accurate,
to see if they reflect
history as it happened.
And when we do this,
we see that
we cannot verify
the historical contents
of these
additional documents.
Not only that,
these documents
seem totally
disconnected
from Judaism.
They have a whole lot
more in common
with Greek philosophy
and Greek mythology
and Greek culture
and if there's anything
we know about Jesus
is that he was Jewish,
he lived in
first century Palestine,
he was a rabbi,
but these documents
have little to no knowledge
of that at all
and that is
in great contrast
to the four Gospels
which are embedded
in Jewish culture
and society
in first century Israel.
On top of that,
these Gnostic documents,
they contain all sorts
of ridiculous things.
Like,
one of them talks about
this giant walking cross
that comes out
of Jesus' tomb
and then starts
talking to people.
There's other documents
that talk about
the apostles
resurrecting fish
or taming bedbugs.
One of them
has Simon the Magician
flying around
in the air
mocking Peter
in some kind
of glorified wizard's duel
where people
are paying money
to watch
like it's a sporting event.
I'm not exaggerating.
It's crazy.
And,
in fact,
this stuff
totally lacks
verisimilitude,
historical veracity,
authenticity.
It strains credulity.
And all these factors
point to the idea
that these authors
were not embedded
in first century
Jewish life.
Instead,
they're being influenced
by later Greek philosophy
and Greek mythological
contours.
But this is not the case
with the 27 documents
of the New Testament.
These are anchored
in history.
They're steeped
in Jewish background.
And we can verify this
from many angles,
which we will do next
class, by the way.
But we have another reason
for rejecting
the Gnostic writings.
And this is because
none of them
can be reliably dated
to the first century.
Every single one of them
is most likely dated
to the second
or third centuries
or later.
None of them
can be placed
within a first century context.
Every once in a while,
you hear a scholar claim
the Gospel of Thomas
comes from the first century.
But if you look
at the evidence,
there's really no evidence
in favor of this.
There's a lot of evidence
against it.
But nevertheless,
all 27 documents
of the New Testament
can be dated
to the first century
with great certainty
or at least
a great amount
of plausibility.
And this gives us
our final reason
to reject
the Gnostic writings.
And it's that
none of these Gnostic writings
can be reliably attributed
to apostolic authorship
or apostolic oversight.
There is not
a single scholar
that I'm aware of
who actually believes
that the Gnostic writings
come from the apostles.
No one believes
Thomas actually wrote Thomas
or Judas actually wrote Judas
or Mary actually wrote
the Gospel of Mary.
And like I said,
it's not just
the early church
that gives us
evidence from this.
Even the ancient heretics
agree with this.
Those heretical groups
I showed you,
the Donatists,
the Novatians,
they all rejected
the Gnostic documents.
And if that's not enough
for you,
even ancient
non-Christian writers
agree with this.
There's an ancient
philosopher,
Porphyry.
He's not a Christian.
He actually hated Christians.
And he explicitly
accuses the Gnostics
of forging documents.
But when he turns
his attention
to attack
the mainstream church,
he seems to acknowledge
that their documents
did come from
the disciples of Jesus.
Now,
Porphyry doesn't believe
that the apostles
are being truthful.
He still rejects them,
but he's totally fine,
seemingly,
accepting that they actually
come from the disciples
of Jesus.
But for the Gnostics,
he mentions how
they were forging stuff
and things like that.
So we have multiple avenues
to verify this
about these Gnostic documents
that they do not
actually come from
the apostles.
So let me summarize.
None of the documents
that come from
the Gnostics
can be historically verified.
None of them
are connected
with Judaism.
None of them
can be reliably dated
to the first century.
Many of them
have ridiculous content.
None of them
can be reliably attributed
to apostolic authorship
or oversight.
And even ancient heretics
and non-Christian writers
agreed on this matter.
But the 27 books
of the New Testament,
they can be historically verified,
which we'll see in two weeks
when I'm with you again.
They can be reliably dated
to the first century.
They can be indexed back
to an apostle.
And they're the only documents
in existence
that can be linked
to an apostle.
And the ancient
mainstream church,
heretics,
and even non-Christians
agreed with this.
And these 27 books,
it also matches
the earliest complete
New Testament list
that we have
from Origin of Alexandria
in 245.
It matches the earliest
full-scale New Testament
translation,
the Old Latin,
that was made sometime
in the third century,
maybe as early as 200.
And like I said,
every church eventually
chose to put these
in their New Testaments.
Most of them did so
at a very early date.
Some of them did so
at a very late date.
So if we were going
to go and make
our own New Testament
that only had
apostolic documents,
we would choose
the same 27
that we find
in the New Testament
today.
All right.
But if you're like me,
you might be wanting
a bit more.
You might be wanting
more assurances,
more guarantees.
In fact,
why stop
with the apostles
and their writings?
I'll tell you
what I really wish
that we had
in our New Testament.
I would like to have
a letter directly
from Jesus himself
delivered by the apostles.
That's what I would
like to have
in my New Testament
and I'd like to know
why we don't have
it in there.
Well,
if you're wondering
about this,
then I invite you
to read the New Testament
for yourself
and you'll find
your answer.
Paul writes
to the Corinthians.
He says,
you are a letter
from Christ
delivered by us,
written not with ink,
but with the spirit
of the living God,
not on tablets of stone,
but on tablets
of the human heart.
So if you are looking
for a letter by Jesus,
we do have one.
It's a letter
from Jesus
delivered by the apostles,
but it's written
on something better
than paper
and with something better
than pen and ink.
It's written
on your heart
and it's written
by the spirit.
What a wonderful privilege
and gift
that this is.
A few verses later,
Paul explains something
truly profound
about this letter
and the nature
of this letter
and the nature
of the New Testament.
He writes this.
He says,
God has made us sufficient
to be ministers
of a new covenant,
not of the letter,
but of the spirit.
That phrase,
new covenant,
in Greek,
it's kine diatheke.
That can be translated
as New Testament,
synonymous terms.
God has made us sufficient
to be ministers
of a new testament,
not of the letter,
but of the spirit.
Paul here
is making a statement
about the very nature
of the New Testament.
He's saying
that it's not
limited
only
to what
is written
in pen and ink.
It also includes
what's written
by the spirit.
And all this points
to the fact
that the New Testament
is more than just pen and ink
and a bunch of words
on paper.
It's spiritual
and of the spirit.
And what this means
is that for you
to have a complete
New Testament,
you need more
than just the pen and ink
apostolic documents
and letters.
You also need
that spiritual letter
of Jesus Christ
written on the tablet
of your heart.
And if you're missing
that letter,
then you don't really
have the whole
New Testament.
But when you put
that spiritual letter
from Jesus
together with the
writings of the apostles,
then you do
have a complete
New Testament.
And these components
are like
self-authenticating
witnesses
that declare
the truthfulness
of one another.
I remember
when I was 18 years old
and I was tangled up
in my sins
and Jesus caught me up
and he cleaned me up
and he wrote me up
this living letter
on my heart
that just said,
forgiven.
And then the remarkable
thing for me
was that for the first
time in my life,
the scriptures
came alive for me.
I'd been going to church
every week for 18 years
but once Jesus
wrote that letter,
then every word
of scripture
had this new
and profound meaning
for me.
And you know,
this is similar
to the way
that the apostolic
documents in our
New Testament
were independently
gathered in various
churches throughout history.
People filled
with the Spirit of God
carrying that letter
of Jesus in their hearts.
They met with
these apostolic documents
and those documents
fit together
with that letter
of Jesus
and each witness
to one another.
And the remarkable
thing about this
is that long ago
Jeremiah the prophet
foretold this
in 600 BC.
He writes in
Jeremiah 31,
the days are coming
declares the Lord
when I will make
a new covenant.
We could also
translate that
New Testament
with the house of Israel
and the house of Judah
not like the testament
that I made
with their fathers
on the day
when I took them
by the hand
to bring them
out of the land
of Egypt.
My testament
that they broke
though I was
their husband
declares the Lord.
For this is the testament
that I will make
with the house of Israel
after those days.
I will put my law
within them
and I will write it
on their hearts
and I will be their God
and they shall be
my people.
So Christians,
this is how we are
to read our New Testament.
We're supposed to bring
that letter that Jesus
has written on our hearts
and bring it together
with those apostolic documents
and let them minister
to us
and through us
to other people.
Let's pause there.
I'm going to pray
real quick
and then we'll have time
for some Q&A.
Father in heaven,
we thank you
that you saw fit
to assemble
your New Testament
for us.
We thank you
for your faithful apostles
who wrote that
and all the Christians
who have preserved it
and those
who have taught it,
some of whom we know.
And Lord,
we ask that you
would illuminate us
as we read your word.
You would guide us
in your truth.
You would help us
to submit to it,
to understand it,
to preach it
and teach it
and to follow it,
to be filled with joy,
with love,
with humility,
with peace
and gracefulness
and thankfulness.
Lord,
above all,
we thank you
for the forgiveness
of sins
that was wrought
on the cross
by your son Jesus.
And we pray this
in his mighty name.
Amen.
Okay,
I went a little bit over
but we do have time
for Q&A.
If you do have to go,
feel free.
Otherwise,
raise hands,
ask questions.
I'm happy to stick around.
Yes,
Ralph.
You use the phrase
apostolic authorship
or oversight.
Yeah.
Why do you have
oversight?
Great question.
The question is,
I mentioned apostolic documents
or documents
that have apostolic oversight
and that's because
there are documents
in the New Testament
that were not written
by the immediate
disciples of Jesus.
They were written
by their contemporary disciples,
the disciples of the disciples,
so to speak.
So documents like
the Gospel of Mark,
Gospel of Luke,
Acts,
because Luke wrote Acts.
And so,
but those were not
just written,
you know,
far after the fact,
apart from the apostles.
They seem to have
apostolic supervision.
So,
for instance,
there's good early
historical evidence
that when Mark wrote Mark,
he was transcribing
Peter's teachings,
he was putting it down
that Peter approved
of this.
Same with Luke,
is that there's evidence
that Paul affirmed
and approved
Luke's ministry
and the Gospel of Luke.
So,
that's why I said
apostolic oversight.
We do have some
early Christian documents
outside of the New Testament
that were written
by disciples
of the apostles,
but those were written
much later.
They were not written
under apostolic oversight.
So,
those are things like
Clement of Rome
writing in 95 AD,
Ignatius of Antioch,
he wrote seven letters
around 105,
107,
Polycarp of Smyrna,
he wrote a letter
at the same time.
Those were disciples
of the disciples.
They wrote letters,
but they weren't written
under apostolic oversight.
I would say timing,
but also,
I think,
they need to be
associates of the apostles.
I mean,
if we did find
an early Christian document
that came from like
45 AD,
but it's just
a person in the church,
that wouldn't
necessarily qualify.
Okay.
In Bauckham's book,
it talks about,
the Pius talks about,
what you were just talking about,
this oral tradition
and oral history.
Can you
elaborate on the difference?
The difference between
oral tradition,
oral history.
So,
oral tradition.
when Pope Pius was writing,
he was getting it
from the last two
living people,
but that before him
it was oral history
being handed down,
like you said,
from Mark.
Yes,
so,
Raul's bringing up
another early Christian writer
named Papias,
who,
we don't have his books,
they've been lost,
except we do have
some large quotations
from his books
that are found
in other early Christian writers,
and he seems to have known
some of the disciples of Jesus
and he records some things
that he learned.
He talks about
how Mark wrote Mark,
for instance.
He mentions Matthew,
writing Matthew.
This idea of oral tradition
and oral history,
there was,
I mean,
when you read the New Testament,
Paul says to the churches,
he says,
be faithful to the traditions
we handed down to you.
And by that,
what he means is
he's giving them
the gospel message
that Jesus gave to him.
Jesus entrusted this to Paul.
Paul is now entrusting it
to others.
And in the early church,
it wasn't always written down.
Today,
I believe,
when we talk about
apostolic tradition,
what we're now talking about
is the 27 book New Testament.
But in the ancient church,
before all these documents
were written down,
you know,
you would have someone
who knew the apostles
tell you what's going on
about the gospel,
things like that.
And so,
that's probably what
they're getting at.
This is not like
a game of telephone.
Sometimes you see
a characterization of this
where, you know,
someone whispers something
in someone's ear
who whispers another ear
and it just gets
horribly distorted.
This is a very public,
open proclamation
that is checked
all the time.
If you look at
the ancient church,
you know,
Paul writes,
is it to the Colossians
or the Ephesians
and he writes to them
and he says,
you know,
make sure you read my letter
from the church of Laodicea.
Make sure you read that
and make sure you read
this letter publicly
in your church.
He's telling them,
you need to read this publicly.
You need to distribute it
and circulate it.
And so,
there was a lot of
checks and balances going on.
It wasn't like
a free for all,
so to speak.
Yeah.
Yes?
What about the
Douay version?
Don't they have that
like Apocrypha
or whatever it is?
Oh,
so,
the New Testament,
the 27 book New Testament
is the same
in every single
Christian church.
The Old Testament
is a little different.
So,
the Old Testament,
yes,
yes.
So,
they call the Apocrypha
or Catholic churches.
What happens is that
the Apocrypha
is additional books
of the Old Testament
that are usually
originally written
in Greek,
not Hebrew,
and,
or Aramaic.
And,
they were written,
our Old Testament
stops around 400 B.C.
and these Apocryphal documents
fill in that
intermediate period
between
the
end of the
Hebrew,
Aramaic,
Old Testament
and the beginning
of the New Testament.
The Malachi.
Malachi.
So,
yeah,
we have Malachi
and then
they have like
1st and 2nd Maccabees
and things like that.
And,
you know,
if you read
1st and 2nd Maccabees,
they're good reads
and I,
I think
God clearly was
working amongst
the Jewish people
in the story
of the Maccabees.
Remarkable,
miraculous things
are happening.
I don't think
Maccabees is
inspired scripture
but it doesn't mean
that it's not
talking about
God's
working in history,
so to speak.
So,
but,
but that apocryphal
section
that the Catholics
add,
the Orthodox,
the Eastern Orthodox,
they also have it
but it's a slightly
different version
and then you go
to other
ancient churches
like the Ethiopian
Orthodox Church
or the Coptic
Orthodox Church
and they also
have this apocryphal
but again,
they're all slightly
different between
themselves.
They don't agree
on which ones
are in there.
This debate
about whether
to include
these books,
the early church
had many debates
about this
and most
of the,
great scholars
of the ancient church
like Saint Jerome,
he was the one
who translated
the Bible
into Latin.
He was very clear,
he's like,
I think it really
should only be
the Hebrew books
that are included.
The earliest
Jewish lists
of their Bible,
the Old Testament,
seem to not
include the apocryphal books
so I think
the firmest ground
is
the,
an Old Testament canon
that is based
on the Hebrew
and Aramaic documents.
These also
seem to be,
that seems to
reflect the
Old Testament
of the apostles
and of Jesus
also.
But,
that's a whole
other,
whole other bit.
Matt?
Am I right
in thinking
that the
Protestant
Old Testament,
what we use,
is the same
group of scriptures
that Jews
use today
and we have used
throughout history?
It's certainly
the same one
that if you go back
to the very
earliest Jewish lists,
it seems to match up
with the very
earliest Jewish lists
and it's part
of the,
when you get
a Hebrew Bible
today,
it has the same
books that we have.
They have them
in a different order
but it's the same,
it's the same.
Other questions?
We have,
we have gone
well over time
so feel free to go.
Thank you so much.
Amos?
I've heard,
I've heard some people
say that they think
there might be
a total of four letters
to the Corinthians.
Yeah,
there might have been.
So what I'm wondering
is,
where are the,
That's a great question.
I don't know how
to phrase it but,
so we know,
there might have been
more than 27
and maybe God
just said,
okay,
yes,
so,
remember that
the apostles
clearly wrote more
than the 27 books
of the New Testament
because they're going
to be writing letters
to one another,
they're going to be
signing tax receipts,
I mean,
they're going to be
doing all sorts of stuff
and when you read,
and we know they did
because when you read
1 Corinthians,
Paul mentions
in 1 Corinthians
a previous letter
he'd written to them
and so we know
there was something
before 1 Corinthians.
He also seems to mention
another one
in 2 Corinthians maybe
and so there's some theories
that maybe there's actually
two lost letters.
He mentions an epistle
to the Laodiceans
in one of his letters
that we don't have.
There are theories
about that.
Some people think
that that letter
is actually the letter
to the Ephesians
because Ephesians
seems to be
a circular letter
that included Ephesus
but was a larger number
of cities
than just Ephesus
and that could have been
the letter
to the Laodiceans.
There is an ancient
letter to the Laodiceans
that you can go
and look up and read.
It's like a paragraph long.
Most people don't think
that's actually Paul's letter
to the Laodiceans
but as to like
what do we do with that?
Like what do we do
with the idea
that the apostles
wrote other stuff
and we don't have it?
Well, the Old Testament
is the same way.
I mean the Old Testament
will say go read this book
and we don't have it.
It'll say go read
the Wars of Yahweh
or something
or the Book of Jasher
or something like that
and those are lost to us
and so practically
there's really nothing
we can do at this point.
It'll become a live issue
if we find
one of these documents.
That will become
like a really live issue
of what do we do with this?
I think though
I don't think
we're going to find
a New Testament document
and the reason why
is because
in the early church
they didn't talk
about documents
that were from the apostles
that we think
actually were from the apostles
that we no longer have.
They didn't
there's nothing out there
that they're like
well that church
was reading
you know
3 Peter
and we don't have this.
That doesn't come up.
I would think
the closest
that we could get to it
is that Gospel
of the Hebrews
which seems to be
the Hebrew version
of Matthew
and there's a debate
we're missing
we have quotations
of this gospel
but we don't have
the whole thing
and from the quotations
it seems like
it was basically
the Gospel of Matthew
but it had some
additional information
in it
at certain points
and the debate is
is this from Matthew?
Did he write this
and then translate
his into Greek
or what happened?
And we know
when you read
the New Testament
we know that
the apostles
just like any author
just like any ancient
author as well
they did edit
their documents
they didn't just
sit down
do stream of consciousness
and just send it
I mean they went over it
and you see this
with Paul
in Romans
where his scribe
just inserts a line
from himself
he says
oh and I tertius
who wrote this letter
greet you
which it's not Paul
writing that
it's the scribe
or in the
Gospel of John
John is writing
but then there's
a couple points
where it switches
to third person
where it says
we know
the disciple
who wrote this
and we know
that what he says
is true
and what seems
to be happening
is that
and we have
early Christian
evidence of this
is that when
John was writing
he had some
companions
some of whom
may have also
been disciples
of Jesus
who he's writing
this down
and they
then add
this kind of
little epilogue
to it
John almost
certainly was there
for that
but this process
of writing
maybe something
happened with
the Gospel
of Matthew
like that
too
maybe Matthew
is writing
these things
and maybe
that's what
the Gospel
of Hebrews
is
that's the
closest I think
we could get
to something
that the
apostles
may have written
and published
that we somehow
don't have anymore
we might find it
and realize
actually all the
quotations we have
cover all the
different stuff
so we never
really lost it
we might find
this is just
some later
Hebrew translation
of the Greek
that it's just
a later
Christian translation
where someone
added something
in
I don't know
but that would
be the only
one
if there's some
amazing
archaeological
discovery
in Corinth
and they come
up with four
letters of the
Apostle Paul
I gotta say
I would love
that
I think it'd
be like the
greatest thing
ever
I don't think
we should be
threatened by
that
I'd be so
excited by
that
it'd be
great
the apostles
they were
sinners too
I mean
they clearly
commit sins
left and right
throughout the
New Testament
they're not
perfect
so would
these documents
be part of
the word of
God
we'd have to
see
I mean
clearly not
everything
you know
when Peter
is writing a
letter to his
wife about
something about
groceries
like we're
not gonna
expect that
that's inspired
by God
so you know
we just have to
see what
happens
I think it'd
be really
cool
all right
thank you
guys
thank you
so much
thanks
me
you