Published: August 22, 2024 | Speaker: Chuck Hartman | Series: Biblical Theology 1 - The Arc of Revelation - Part 3 | Scripture: 2 Peter 1:16-21, 3:15-16
Transcript
View Full Transcript →
0:02
get started hopefully some others will join us as we get started father again we do thank you for this time together and time to study how to study your word we we ask that your spirit would be with
0:14
us as well as in us and help us to understand the nature of your Revelation your revelation of yourself and of your purpose we ask that you would guide our
0:26
thoughts and our conversation and that our time together would be edifying but also pleasing in your sight for we ask in Jesus name amen so I
0:38
have something up on the board and um I I have noticed over the years this is kind of a dangerous thing that my students remember what I taught better than I did I do so we taught and we
0:50
talked about the Canon of scripture back in uh Systematic Theology um Theology um and I I know I've held the opinion that
1:01
I have for a long time but I don't know if I held it back when I taught that so if if you remember me teaching something otherwise then um bring that up
1:11
privately and I I'll do my mayaula and say yeah I've changed my mind um but actually these three these three criteria are the conventional wisdom
1:23
among conservative Scholars biblical Scholars reformed theologians as to how canonicity is determined how is it
1:34
determined that a book of the Bible will belong in the cannon of
1:49
so and that was what is what was taught to us in seminary that's what you find in most of the conservative uh books is that a a letter a book needed to have um for of
2:02
course for the New Testament apostolicity um as it pertains to the Old Testament of course um prophetic okay so that's kind of the corresponding
2:13
Old Testament prophets New Testament Apostles okay so that was one thing that you look for the other one was Orthodoxy it had to had to hold fast to the faith
2:23
that's somewhat circular because the Orthodoxy is established by the word okay so um but it had hold fast to the teaching of scripture of which it was a part and then catholicity meaning that
2:36
it had to be universally accepted as Canon as scripture the problem is historically this don't work okay um there are books of the
2:47
Bible that were not of the Old Testament that were not written by prophets there are books of the New Testament that were not written by Apostles okay uh Orthodoxy is kind of hard to determine
2:57
for the Song of Solomon most people don't know what it's teaching okay the Book of Esther doesn't mention the name of God Ecclesiastes is very
3:10
pessimistic seems almost anti-god and humanistic in a way I'm actually mentioning books that did not
3:22
experience catholicity the Book of Revelation for many are just was just weird okay I don't know Ezekiel the same way Ezekiel did not did not receive Universal support among the Jews
3:33
even the second temple rabbis as to its place in the Old Testament okay the book of Hebrews was assigned to St Paul
3:44
primarily because of the requirement of apostolicity Hebrews is a great book we couldn't not have it so we need to say Paul wrote it but it he didn't write it there there's one thing that he that
3:56
said in that book that Paul would have never said and that is he received it from someone else he says that I think in Chapter 2 that those who had gone before us we receiv received the God no no no Paul would never ever say that in
4:07
fact he he very vehemently said otherwise elsewhere that he received his commission and the gospel directly from the Lord that was the mark of his that was the pedigree of his apostleship so
4:19
the book of Hebrews I personally think it was probably written by Apollos and actually think it was a printed sermon um but that's my opinion no one really knows but
4:31
knows but subsequent scholarship has pretty much rejected Pauline rejected Pauline authorship James and Jude were not Apostles nor was Luke but okay we can
4:41
say okay Luke traveled with Paul so that's good enough and Mark traveled with Peter so that's good enough you had an Apostolic an Apostolic Association um but you know the the the point is these three
4:54
criteria don't fit all the books that we have in our Bible and some of them like um Ezra is kind of like the Old Testament Paul in that he wrote well
5:07
actually should say Luke I think by Letters by words Luke wrote the most of the new between the Gospel of Luke and acts I think that's the biggest chunk by a single author in the New Testament
5:18
same thing is true except for maybe the pentat took of course but 1 and 2 Chronicles Ezra nemiah and some people think even just the organization of some of the other books is associated with
5:31
Ezra who was a scribe he was a priest he was not a prophet um so you know it it it it's very um Illuminating to
5:46
me as to why we feel the need to have a a technical mechanical explanation for the Canon of scripture and so that's what we're going to talk about because we we do
5:57
especially in the western world and espe especially among conservatives because frankly what has liberalism done but attacked the veracity authenticity and inspiration of scripture we know that
6:10
and so I'm going to submit that our response has been largely dictated by our enemy not by our reading of the Bible or even of History we have
6:22
developed a doctrine of scripture that answers our opponents but on their terms how much of this is just a confusion of prescriptive versus
6:35
prescriptive versus descriptive these descriptive these things how much of our understanding is is just misinterpreting this as the explanation for how rather than the
6:45
description of actually one author points that out that that that these can be more they're not prescriptive there was no you know look at this this is written by an apostle it's Orthodox and
6:55
everybody accepts it it's in that's prescriptive um really this is more retrospective uh but even then it falls apart that's what I I you know it's like okay I look at this letter and I realize
7:06
okay it was written by Paul it's very Orthodox and everybody accepts it but what about this one then that's the problem I can definitely apply this rubric to many of the books but not all
7:18
of them in fact there are many that I can't apply and neither has others in the church over the centuries including the rabbis of Judaism M who looked at
7:30
individual books and said I don't think so again it's very telling to look at the table of contents in Luther's Bible where he has four books he has 27
7:42
books which is what we have in our new testament one through 23 are numbered then James and Jude in Hebrews and and Revelation are listed at the
7:52
bottom unnumbered because unnumbered because frankly he he separated them there's a space between and then there are four books without 24 25 26 27 okay he and
8:05
this is Luther this is the Reformation but he frankly didn't see them obviously they're in his Bible but he makes a
8:15
distinction um the first person to actually give us a that we know of to give us a list of our 27 books of the New Testament is athanasius and he doesn't make a distinction but he doesn't put him in
8:26
the order we have that's another thing our bibles are not in the same order that others have been in the history including the Old Testament many of you know that you know the Jewish Bible ends
8:39
with 2 Chronicles but that's also wrong because 2 Chronicles clearly leads directly into directly into Ezra the last verses of of 2 Chronicles
8:50
lead directly into the first verses of Ezra and in other lists they're actually conjoined they one book first 2 Chronicles and Ezra are all one book book so the history of it is if you
9:04
really want something rigid and and I am by degree an engineer so obviously I like things to be in order although I'm a chemical engineer which allows me to go Quantum and you know just go by
9:16
photons and and not follow any you know particular rationale but if you like things to be in order what you're going to read in the notes what I'm going to teach tonight will probably disturb you
9:27
it might even unnerve you as to the um authority of scripture but I'm going to say up front it shouldn't
9:38
in fact what shouldn't annoy you or unnerve you more is the thought that a scripture is dependent upon man to determine which books are in fact
9:51
scripture okay that that would disturb me more than what I've actually come to believe regarding the scripture and that is I really don't want a group of rabbis
10:04
in ad90 telling me what are the Old Testament books and frankly I don't want an ecumenical council in Lysa in the 4th Century to tell me which books of the
10:16
New Testament are canonical I I really don't want man doing that because what what ises that do that's really the same thing as what Protestants rail against
10:28
concerning Roman Catholic tradition right the ultimate Authority and determining factor is the church fact um uh I have a I have I I think I
10:40
try to find that I think I have it marked here where do I have that um FF Bruce in his book the Canon of scripture um
10:53
scripture um and all right page 41 and 42 let me read something um something um Abigail will will amen this um the book
11:04
is one of the most boring ever written dest um but it does have good information but he says in this um he
11:14
gives a definition and I call it the classic modern view of the term canon in a Christian context we might def I don't know why it says might we might Define
11:26
the word Canon as quote the list of writings acknowledged by the church as documents of divine revelation
11:40
now what's amazing I thought okay that's FF Bruce he was probably Anglican no he was a was a Baptist he wasn't Anglican he wasn't High church he he wasn't he wasn't
11:51
ecclesiological like that and and I'm kind of surprised that he he just he just accepted the idea that our Bible is that which was accepted by the church
12:02
that our acceptance of the Bible is because of the church that's a dangerous place to be because the church is fallible and if you're going to accept
12:15
that the church and this is the path the Roman Church took if you're going to accept that the church has the authority to confirm divine revelation then where do you draw the
12:27
line concerning the the consilia the papal and the traditional pronouncements of that same
12:40
church now the error stems from a truth that the recognition of the cannon of scripture has always been a community
12:54
activity and one of the things that we're going to be talking about in the next few weeks is that the whole concept of biblical theology which as I said I'm going to start shifting to using the phrase canonical theology is not an
13:06
individual task it is a community task the community of Believers um and if it ever and it has when it becomes an individual task especially within the
13:18
realm of Academia that's usually where it starts to go astray and there's no check on it there's no um there's no uh
13:29
accountability so the the idea that the church somehow officially got together and pronounced the canonical books of the Old Testament and then of the New
13:40
Testament is a dangerous thought but more importantly because there are a lot of dangerous thoughts that are in fact true so it's it's not false because it's dangerous but it's
13:51
also false to history there is no historical evidence and there's quite a bit of evidence with regard to the books that were viewed as
14:03
Divine but that evidence points in a completely different direction it points in the direction that with both the Old Testament and the New Testament and the Old Testament by the New Testament
14:14
writers including Jesus of course who didn't write anything but the Old Testament New Testament and then the two relating New Testament and Old Testament were already viewed as
14:27
canonical before before anyone actually wrote down that they were canonical and I'm going to show an example with Josephus that these have been accepted without any mention of a
14:40
senate or a council or a high priest or a king or an emperor ever saying thus shall it be it's simply these have been
14:50
accepted then there's the argument and and especially among the Liberals as to when were these accepted were the writings of a prophet accepted as prophetic when they were
15:01
written well we do know that the writings of Paul were accepted as Apostolic by Peter right and we know from writings for example from Clement of Rome latter part of the first century
15:14
that Paul's letters were already accepted and quoted as divinely authoritative so I think the answer the internal answer is yes the people of
15:25
Israel knew that what Moses brought down from the mount was God word and it was not determined to be God's word by the deuteronomist after the Exile okay
15:35
there's just a whole bunch of imaginative poop that is done to try to minimize the reality of divine revelation and to find some type of
15:47
mechanical and mechanical and ecclesiastical mechanism by which the Bible has been put together and that's what we're taught and somehow we' found comfort in that what I'm saying is we
15:59
should never have found comfort in that in the first place we really should never find comfort in anything that rests upon the authority of the church because the authority of the
16:10
church is itself to be uh critically judged against the scripture there's that circular argument again and the church is supposed to be guided at all
16:21
times by the Holy Spirit not by its own criteria its own litness test but early Church Believers followed somebody
16:33
I mean they didn't just organically I guess I mean they listen to somebody else some people were saying oh yeah but how they said it was
16:44
important okay I say this is more of a modern oh this right here yes although not really because the shepherd of Hermos was actually rejected by the
16:56
meruan fragment we'll talk about that in a moment on the basis that we knew this guy he was actually a good friend of the bishop of Rome at that time and therefore it could not be he's not an
17:06
apostle so that that sto that book which is actually a very good reading it's it's Orthodox and it was read widely in the ancient world The Shepherd of Hermos
17:16
but it was rejected in the meruan fragment because it was not clearly Apostolic so yeah these ideas are actually kind of early uh marcion in the
17:27
second century second century uh most of the of the of the discussions about the Canon were not in fact there are actually none of them that arose from a simple desire to organize
17:41
things they were they arose because someone started saying something that everybody else knew was wrong so marcion comes along in the middle of the 2
17:51
century and he starts saying that the god of the Old Testament is not the God and Father of Jesus Christ the books of the Old Testament have nothing nothing to do with the church in fact out of the new testament which was the the the
18:03
gospel writers corrupted Jesus's teaching and the only one who got it right was Paul maybe some of Luke okay Martian comes along now he's no idiot I
18:15
mean he's he's a a well-educated Churchman and he starts saying these things and then all of a sudden the rest of the church gets up in arms and says
18:27
no the old test was always recognized within the church as divinely given and so you start having that process of
18:37
saying and and that's where the meritan fragment comes along you start having these lists show up but as these lists are given they're given in such a way that says this has
18:49
always been the case so even aanus does not say on his own authority as the bishop of Alexandria
18:59
of Alexandria he does not say here's your Bible here's here's your Old Testament here's your new testament he says these have always been these have always been so the way
19:10
they got to be always been is shrouded in mystery the the documentation the evidence for some
19:21
somebody some group even the apostles getting together and saying okay out in in out you know as far as the different letters that were written um Paul's
19:31
first letter to the Corinthians out his second letter that becomes First Corinthians okay you see what I'm saying letter to the Lans you know circulate around Ephesus and colossia you know
19:41
circulate around read it but don't put it in the Bible that never happened okay so we we know that of course apostolicity has its
19:51
problem because there were letters written and referred to by the apostles that aren't in our Bible and we have to assume that what Paul wrote to the Lans was no le less Orthodox than what he
20:02
wrote to the Ephesians and the Colossians right he wasn't left out of the Bible because there was something wrong with it so the the point I'm going to make is we really can't nail it
20:15
down which it just is and it it was pretty much contemporaneously with the writings
20:26
themselves not later on does does that make sense and what that means is there's something else going on there's something else going on with
20:37
regard to the Canon of scripture and that something else always suffers whenever we try to systematize and make mechanical the
20:48
process of process of canonization because we we say okay it's a apostolistic we are say it's it's Orthodox we say it was universally believed and then immediately someone says well well that wasn't written by an
20:59
apostle okay and that one's questionable like James you know what's his view of Faith salvation works you know it's it's a little it's caused problems its
21:11
Orthodoxy has been challenged by men like Martin Luther and again Luther was not a slackard in terms of his academic prowess and he wasn't just a um an anti-
21:24
James type of person it really bothered him that James seemed to be teaching a Salvation of works and then we say it was Catholic well Ezekiel wasn't
21:34
Ecclesiastes wasn't Revelations certainly wasn't even Hebrews wasn't so um I want to talk
21:45
about what has been claimed by conservative Scholars and then basically then basically say um that never happened the the the
21:55
data that we have and is quite extensive does not point to the conclusions that have been drawn okay and and that means that I I know this again this can be
22:06
very unnerving because you think oh yeah I believe in the Bible because the church this was what Augustine said and then Augustine of course becomes almost a God Among the mid uh the Church of the
22:17
Middle Ages and then even among the reformers but no Augustine said a lot of things that that are wrong he also said a lot of things that seem to be running out of both sides of his mouth if you read Augustine you you you kind of get
22:29
run around in circles he's he's not always terribly clear but you know we say well Augustine said and that was a big one with the reformers and the Puritans if you could point it back to
22:39
Augustine you know that was it that settled the argument well who's Augustine or or you can point it back to Calvin well actually Calvin's kind of got this right and his successors have
22:51
departed from him um Calvin doesn't always get it right but this time he he did he got it he got it dead on and he's been abandoned by most Calvinists since
23:03
at least the 17th century because when the enlightenment Enlightenment came in and rationalism became the the mark of of true intellectual Integrity the
23:15
church was not unaffected by that and and that's another important point we we can point at the Liberals and we can see what they did and how they went astray but in doing that we fail to
23:27
realize how that same um digression that same perversion has actually seeped into
23:38
Orthodoxy conservatism and many of our uh seminaries many of our Scholars now do the same thing and and again as I said earlier maybe we don't follow them but
23:49
then our response is dictated by their attack rather than by the guidance of both history and scripture I think that's called reaction it is yeah we we
24:02
do uh we we react against it um and then the the the reactionary is really what happens afterwards and that is we we circle the wagons and we defend our
24:12
Orthodoxy to the death you know and and even just questioning these three principles would be considered heretical in in many conservative circles and and I'm not saying that they don't exist certainly a
24:25
book of the Bible should be Orthodox but we also have to realize that sometimes we don't readily see the Orthodoxy of some of the books we read right because frankly some of the books we read we
24:35
don't know what they're saying so we can't really say they're Orthodox we we can say okay they don't say anything wrong although Luther said James was saying something that was wrong that salvation was by works so he would have
24:48
questioned the Orthodoxy of James apparently in his situation he didn't feel leave to actually take it out and leave it out but it is remarkable
24:59
given the modern view of scripture how scripture how fluid its treatment actually was both by
25:09
Jews and by Christians L Luther's conscience was not bothered by the fact that he distrusted four of the 27 books that by the 1500s
25:21
were accepted as canonical he he his conscience wasn't bothered by that somehow he felt leave to say I don't know I don't know about these four and
25:33
I'm going to put them down at a lower level and just to indicate that I'm not sure plus he wasn't taken to task for that by anyone else he wasn't um
25:43
chastised he wasn't excommunicated for that he was excommunicated for other things um but there was a much looser and and I don't mean fast and loose I just mean there wasn't the rigid um
25:56
solidified View of scripture either by the Jews or by the Christians for the first 1900 years of the church the
26:07
rigidity came in in response to late 19th century 19th century liberalism which led to you all know about the fundamentals and then fundamentalists it led to a response and
26:21
much of the response is is accurate but the the the the entrenchment of thought and of opinion and of written documents became such
26:32
that you you you're not even allowed to question anymore now I'm not suggesting that that you or I should question any of the books of the Bible nor that there's any hierarchy among them but I
26:45
guess I'm just trying to to be real in the sense that we've all read books in our Bible and finishing it what just
26:55
happened what did I just read okay what what does that mean and that probably then made you feel bad okay like somehow you're you don't have the Holy Spirit or you don't have enough
27:06
Faith like no I just don't understand what that means now maybe with greater study and the input of some other teachers I get a little bit better understanding and that's part of biblical theology is try to give a more
27:20
uh comprehensive view of the tapestry of scripture so that we can better understand the individual pictures that are woven in it yeah I'm I still haven't made it with
27:32
Song of Solomon okay there's so many different opinions of that um you know one going to the point where you you you couldn't read it until you were at least 30 years old uh because it was considered somewhat you know
27:44
risque okay risque okay um Revelation is is actually seeming to make a little bit more sense which could mean that I'm totally off base or just getting scile or what I don't know um
27:57
ezekiel's still a tough one yeah but there are some parts of it that that are making a whole lot more sense especially his visions of the temple and of the glory of the Lord you know that that's
28:07
that's pretty clear what he's doing there and also the New Covenant you know so there are parts of that that are that are really quite clear also the you know even you just doing some recreational reading for example on
28:20
the wheel within a wheel well that's actually a chariot Throne which was something that was quite well known in the ancient world world because it symbolized the warrior
28:30
prowess of the reigning King okay but this is God's Chariot Throne so when you know you get a little bit more help from archaeology from ancient NE Eastern
28:41
studies and the these people might not even believe be Believers but they okay this is the world in which this was written and then in the biblical theology scheme you be you begin to see
28:53
that what you're talking about is the the the potentate of the universe Israel's God okay so it does start to come together but I think first we have
29:04
to let go of some things we have to let go of some uh some chains with which we have been bound in our thinking with regard to the nature of the Canon of
29:17
scripture okay now I I don't think that I will I have not in in the decades I have not had any
29:31
particular bent toward doubting the canonicity of any book that is currently in our Bible even James we just went through James last year and I think James is
29:42
completely Orthodox I think Luther totally misunderstood the message of James um but I think that's because of his predisposition to try to find his version of justification in just about
29:53
everything he wrote and everything he read um but I have no no reason at all to dismiss James as stra or to not number it you know and to put it lower in the table of contents same with
30:05
Revelation you know I I think that the Canon is what it is it's solidly what it is but my basis for that has nothing to
30:15
do with any sinate or Council or pronouncement by athanasius or yanan Ben zakai or anyone else but rather because
30:27
it is God's word there's something else going on that has been going on since God first began to reveal himself and his will through Moses and it's been
30:40
going on ever since okay it it just amazes me that so few modern conservative Scholars are willing to
30:50
accept the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit and that's where Calvin got it right okay but um very very intelligent and
31:03
well-respected Scholar um leard Harris who wrote a book the um the inspiration and authority of scriptures describes Calvin's position quoting from
31:15
Calvin's Institute and then rejects it like wow okay um not that not that his rejection of Calvin was all that
31:26
shocking Calvin should be rejected in in some things um he should not be accepted in all things by any means but that you would reject Calvin's and I'm going to quote Calvin a little bit later that you
31:36
would reject his very clear understanding of how it is that scripture has always been known to be scripture by God's people without any human being authoritatively telling them
31:49
so okay now that doesn't mean human beings didn't argue and say no no no this is scripture or people like marcion saying no no no it isn't those things did happen but the answer was never uh
32:02
official and even after the semi official there was still not disag there was not agreement okay and we'll we going to talk about that in a minute because this all kind of begins in the
32:12
in the modern scholarly treatment of the Canon of scripture this begins in a little town near the coast of Israel called jab or jamnia okay and it's an
32:25
interesting story I I recommend it
32:47
oops the story of Jamia begins sort of with a well-known Rabbi yanan Ben zakai who was a very significant Pharisee in Jerusalem at the time of the first Jewish Revolt he was was in Jerusalem during
32:59
the siege of the city first by Vespasian and then when Vespasian ran off to become emperor um in 69 by his son
33:09
Titus Zaki or yanan apparently recognized that the the desperate position of Jerusalem and so and this kind of got him into trouble with some people later on um he arranged for the
33:22
announcement of his own demise and he was allowed uh because of his position Titus allowed his disciples to carry his body out of the city in a
33:35
coffin in which case he took off the lid and said hi Titus he did not maintain Resurrection he just then he he talked to Titus now the Romans you know you think of the
33:46
Romans and they were crushing everybody but no they actually they they they love them a good Ally okay so as soon as general Josephus Chang his side he
33:58
becomes Court historian for Vespasian okay they love to have among all their conquered people they love turn coats and they treated them well because that
34:08
was the way to pacify the people that they weren't actually going to kill they didn't kill everybody because that kind of hurt the economy um taxes went down when you killed
34:20
everybody besides yanan was already dead um so he goes to Titus and he says Titus um would you let me move the Rabin school to jamnia this Village not a city
34:34
not walled not defensible Titus is like yeah it's a good idea let's do that and maybe you can draw some of these rabbis and these priests out of Jerusalem making our job a whole lot easier and
34:46
this is what the Romans did they did it all over the place if they could find any high ranking person a king a priest whoever it might be that would switch his Allegiance they take up and they
34:58
would help okay uh and so he goes to this town of Jamia and he and he sets up a school so we start with
35:11
Rabbi yanan Ben zakai and he moves to Jamia and he sets up a school a teaching school which is
35:22
called a called a bait house of H midash midashim are basically
35:35
commentaries on scripture primarily the Pento and tah um but also of the of the prophets and occasionally they would they would get into some of the wisdom
35:45
more as debate than actually writing commentaries the commentary was on Torah and so that's what these rabbis did that was there so it's like this is pretty innocent it's just a Rabbi school but
35:56
more significantly he also set up another house a bit din a house of judgment we know it better as the
36:09
Sanhedrin he set up a rival Sanhedrin while the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem still existed so this is pretty radical he's he's breaking with his compatriots he's
36:23
doing what Josephus did and as you read Josephus you realize Josephus was trying to convince the Jews to give in that that actually Vespasian was prophesied
36:35
by God that he was a he was an agent of the Lord as Cyrus was and this is what Josephus is trying to tell the Jews in Jerusalem who of course respond by saying you're a turn coat you're a
36:45
traitor we hate you if we get your hands our hands on you you're dead Okay same thing with thing with withan but not everybody a lot of rabbis
36:56
realized that what was going on Jerusalem was not glorifying God and it was actually glorifying several high-ranking families who were trying to
37:06
bring about their own takeover of the Jewish State and they had taken the entire country into a cataclysm of Destruction and it wasn't hard by the
37:16
mid 60s by' 6667 to realize there was no way that the Jews were going to win that they were going to be utterly destroyed so this is actually a another
37:29
Sanhedrin a place of judgment and this is where people now reading back into it start to see oh this is where things kind of you know after the temple fell
37:40
oops and after um the Jews were dispersed the rabbis got together and they determined what the scripture would be for all the Jews in the world and
37:51
this is where it happened in Jamia there's a a Jewish historian uh a German Jewish historian by the name of gretz um who said
38:02
who said jab by this means took the place of Jerusalem and became the religious National center of the dispersed Community now that's not something that
38:12
we read about in general histories about Israel of that time you know we say okay the Romans came in they tore down the temple they tore down the walls of Jerusalem and and they dispersed the
38:23
people and that was the end of the story at least until ad 132 when the Jews did it all over again well when they did it all over
38:33
again they actually did it from Jamia because yanan's because yanan's disciples became very very influential
38:45
in the post ad70 Jewish World some of the names you'll recognize um you'll recognize the name
38:56
Galeo this is not the Galeo who taught Paul he would have been a really old man by that time this is his grandson who was known as Galeo
39:06
II uh some of you might recognize the name of akba perhaps one of the most influential rabbis of the latter part of the first century early part of the second century
39:17
Rabbi akah was a disciple of of yanan in Jamia and it was Rabbi akaba who declared that declared that Simon Ben kah the leader of the second
39:30
Jewish Revolt was the son of the star prophesied in numbers by balum he was a messiah and he was called then
39:41
baruka son of the star and it's the baroka Revolt that Hadrian's forces came in crushed leveled Jerusalem sewed the
39:54
ground with salt renamed the city a cesaria and forbad any Jew from getting close enough to even see Mount Zion so the Romans at that point came in and
40:04
they said this is enough believe rened the land he yes he renamed it Palestine yeah so that's where the that's where the name Palestine came from was no longer Judea
40:16
it's now Palestine um and AA was captured and he was tortured to death the story is that he died reciting the
40:28
Shima that to his last apparently again according to his disciples his last word was hereo Israel the Lord Our God the Lord is one and then he finally died so
40:41
I mean he was a a a a noble character obviously misguided um obviously kind of misguided as to Simon Ben kba but very
40:52
very important so the point being that this's a really interesting little story here around this city of Jamia or this Village of jamnia it's like a second Jerusalem and after ad70 for about 50
41:04
years 60 years it was really the center of rinic life for all of the diaspora but we really don't read about it other than in Jewish histories so we don't know much about it but here we come in
41:17
the the latter part of the of the well really the 19th century the latter part of the Enlightenment where we're all looking for a mechanical means by which scripture came to be recognize the
41:28
scripture and we we stumble upon this place in this new Sanhedrin and then we realize when we re oh wow these are the guys these are the rabbis who said this
41:39
is the Bible this is the what we call the Old Testament no such thing ever happened it is congenitally impossible that any Rabbi should have a
41:50
senate that any decision of aate of rabbis should in any way be authoritative on any other rabbis and even the rabbis say that so I'm not making that up so there's there's no
42:03
indication that this Sanhedrin ever passed any official judgment as to the Canon of scripture what actually happened according to the actual documents we had is that there was
42:13
indeed a debate regarding the Song of Solomon and Solomon and Ecclesiastes two books and there was never a decision that they were in or
42:25
out okay and there was never any discussion of any books that were out being brought in it was rather books that were in whether they should really be in just as it's going to be in the
42:37
Christian history very few books were actually there is the um the um Shepherd of Hermes as I mentioned earlier and also um Barnabas you know there are some
42:49
other books that have been included at least in some lists and we're going to talk about that in a moment but for the most part most part by uh ad90 ad 100 when all this
43:01
supposedly comes about so what we get to here is uh oops that's purple uh around 8090 there's this alleged Cate okay well
43:13
it is unlikely that it was any more than a debate within the bit hamidrash in other words it was a baate among rabbis as to particular books of the
43:25
Bible now rabbis debating is not that significant a historical phenomenon that we should say oh look at this um you've be looking all over the
43:36
place it is very unlikely from the timing that it was a Sanhedrin meeting and also from the written records that we do have this was not something that Sanhedrin would have addressed this was
43:48
something that would have been addressed in the B MIM which is not it would have been in the Rabin school but what is interesting about how all this comes about is that the rabbis did now by this
43:59
time yanan is dead he he has passed away really okay he's really dead um all right so by
44:09
this time but yanan is dead but his
44:25
and when he was in Jerusalem he got into a debate with some um Sadducees because he was a Pharisee and his view of the scripture was very much in line with the view of the um of the
44:39
Pharisees so he gets into this um page 38 okay so he gets into this argument with the Sadducees in terms of a particular book of the Bible
44:50
I think it may have been Ecclesiastes but let me find the text
45:02
the the argument was about whether or not the Book of Ecclesiastes belonged in the cannon of of the Hebrew scriptures and he says and I'm going to read the whole quote because it's typical Rabbi uh writing the Sadducees say quote
45:15
we cry out against you oh ye Pharisees for ye say the holy scriptures render the hands unclean and the writings of hamam who apparently was
45:27
Homer the Greek philosoph that's kind of a a blanket statement for the writings of the Greek philosophers starting with Homer do not render the hands
45:37
unclean raban yanan B zakai saide have we not against the Pharisees save this but Lo they say and this is
45:48
where the rabbis shine they say to him well excuse me they say the bones of an ass are clean and the bones of yanan the high priest
46:00
are unclean they said to him there's a typo there excuse me as is our love for them so is their uncleanness that no man make spoons of
46:10
the bones of his father or mother that's nice he said to them even so the holy scriptures as is our love to them so is their uncleanness whereas the writings
46:23
of the hamam which are held in no account do not not render the hands unclean now if that makes sense to any of you you are actually you don't know it but you're actually Jewish uh or
46:35
maybe because we are in a synagogue typical Rabbi it's like why don't make bones out of or spoons out of the bones of my parents you're right what does that to do with anything the
46:48
point is the phrase rendering the hands unclean or unclean or defiled that's really the key to this is the concept for Rabbi hhan and his
47:02
disciples was that a true book of Holy Scripture renders the hands of the reader unclean now you think well that that
47:12
doesn't make doesn't make sense does sense does it until you realize again from the Old Testament from the Torah that touching something holy
47:24
renders you unclean you you cannot just go about your daily business after you have handled something wholly you are you are the one
47:35
unclean you are unworthy to hold that scroll and so the the idea of something that was so holy that it rendered the
47:45
reader the Handler obviously temporarily but defiled and in need of ritual cleansing it wasn't just something that you know you took off your shelf like we do our Bibles you know and you know toss
47:58
it on the the seat of the car or whatever no um the scriptures rendered the man the man unclean what do you think of that
48:11
concept I mean it's not scriptural there's nothing in the Bible that says that the Bible itself renders a man a man unclean but it's very indicative of an attitude toward attitude toward scripture that that undergirded the
48:24
concept of canonicity none of those things or even prophetic instead of apostolic they don't come up but what
48:35
comes up is whether or not the book and he says okay the books of Homer do not render the man that man's hands unclean you can read Homer all day long and it
48:46
will not render your hands unclean you can't read can't read Ecclesiastes without then having to wash I was thinking about the incident
49:00
where of their
49:13
toac struck yeah usza yeah when he tried to balance the The Ark on its cart and he was struck down um the the idea that that this is this is a holy article this is a the and and that is something what
49:25
we learn as we study for example Leviticus that you know the what these men were doing required them for example the Gathering up the ashes you know the
49:36
priest had to wear a certain garment to gather up the ashes he had to wear his holy garment to gather up the ashes but he could not carry the ashes out of this out of the Temple of the Tabernacle
49:47
wearing that same garment he had to put his everyday cloth on because now he is rendered unclean he can't just carry that out or the whole congre ation would be rendered unclean so the idea here is
49:59
not that the word is unclean but it is so holy that Anyone who reads it is thereby made unclean I think that's a um that's just a fascinating concept and it
50:11
has a parallel with regard to the New Testament coming from the the pen of athanasius so we really kind of have two men here yanan and and athanasius that
50:23
give us some insight as to how the community viewed the cannon and and again that that to me that historical reality in their writings shows me that the way
50:35
we've treated it in the past 150 to 200 years is kind of off track I was just
50:52
saying do that you don't throw the book down you don't put another book on top on top of it the very top of all right the book The Bible has to be at the top of all the books you don't put anything you don't
51:02
throw it down you don't treat it with any if it tears you you need to get a new one um it was actually ways to dispose of your Bible that were considered to and this is within Protestant Christianity not rinic
51:14
Judaism okay so there there is a sense I remember um I remember one preacher uh I think very astutely saying that to many people the Bible is the fourth person of
51:25
the Trinity okay that we actually worship the Bible and that there is a danger that that that ends up being the case that we worship the Bible um but we don't actually study it we don't really
51:36
know it but we we treat it with religious devotion uh as if there's something sacred about that book I don't think johanan believed that I mean but
51:47
they did have a way to treat the the Scrolls they did not they did not um when they destroyed them they had to make sure they were utterly destroyed because any type of corruption in the
51:57
text could then seep into any copies that were made so they did have a uh by the by the second temple they they did have a process by which the decayed or
52:07
the corrupted versions of the Scrolls were disposed of and they they got to the point in the copying that they counted every letter and in the Hebrew
52:18
Bible there are little markings that you can see in the Hebrew that that showed the middle letter of a passage or of a sentence of a you know of a verse and the first letter and the last letter and
52:29
they counted them all up so that when a copy was made the numbers kind of like you know if you have a lot of kids and you get in after Sunday at church you know you count heads make sure at least
52:39
you have the right number they may not be yours but you know I came home with seven you know um but the words might be wrong the letters might have gotten wobbly and out of order but there was still the same number of them and they
52:51
were very particular about that and even into the Middle Ages the scribes were very particular about what was to happen now that got a little bit messed up with um Vellum where you could just scrape it
53:02
off and and then you know write something on top of it but there there was a point at which maybe yanan's view got a little bit out of hand defiled hands and we started worshiping the the
53:14
written part rather than honoring the word that it contained but what he was dealing with is the impact of the word because he's comparing it to Homer he's
53:26
not talking about the Papyrus on which it is written he's talking about what is written and the writings of Ecclesiastes which was the book in question are wholly different w o l l y and h o l y
53:40
both than the writings of any Greek philosopher and that's really what he's saying in this but I like that phrase that defile the hands because it it showed that the the community of of
53:55
believing Jews considered there to be something about the old the Hebrew Bible that marked it as Canon they didn't even use that word Canon that's a 2 Century word
54:05
at the earliest as far as we can tell but they they knew this to be divinely inspired the word of God and they did refer to it that way because only that
54:15
which is of god could defile because it's only thing ho enough um so there's that view and and so the point here in in summarizing the counil
54:27
of um of jamnia is that there is no evidence that it ever actually was a sinid and the reality was
54:38
that though the determination was made that Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon did defile the hands and they Ed that terminology from
54:51
yanan that didn't end the debate it wasn't like all Judaism afterwards fell in line with this pronouncement from Jamia and there was
55:03
never any more debate no there's there's record of debate going on through the centuries in the diaspora as to this or that book including Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon in other words within
55:15
the Jewish the Jewish communion the what we call the 39 books have never actually been Catholic universally recognized by all
55:26
Jew Jewish rabbis even of the Orthodox variety but perhaps even more telling um in in concern with this idea
55:38
of a sinid is that and and um Jack Lewis who was a a scholar of the previous Century he just died a few years ago um but he notes that U the words councel
55:49
and sinid while their acceptable English renderings of the relevant Hebrew terms used to describe the meanings of the school of Jia the Hebrew or Greek words
56:00
that were used to describe it the ecclesiastical meaning of these words is totally foreign to the nature of those
56:10
meetings when we think of a senate or a council we think of an authoritative meeting of a of a of a denomination right or of The ecumenical church and
56:22
we've been taught through church history to view the pronouncements of such senates or councils as being binding on the churches represented in that General
56:33
Assembly or senate or Council right there was no such thing in Jamia no history of anything among the rabbis of that town concerning their meetings
56:44
their meetings were typical Rabbi debates more debates more um more significant perhaps because it's not rinic is the right writings of
56:58
Josephus who spent a lot of ink defending the Jewish people it was his goal to try to convince the Romans that
57:08
the Jews as a whole were not bad people they were just being led by a few bad men Abraham Lincoln tried the same thing during the Civil War tried to convince
57:20
everybody that Southerners were not as a people bad but were led by a few bad men a bad you know Rebels slaveholders um but the rest you know there was actually
57:31
this belief that you know that when when Sherman came South the the South would open his their arms and welcome him that
57:44
happen Put Me In Mind of reconstruction but the similar thing was happening to the Jews during J's latter days that they were being dragged into court uh and one of the cies used against them was they were Bic
57:56
people in history that they had no Antiquity and again among many being said of them they were they were in dire trouble in many parts of the Empire he
58:07
says his to one of books and and what does he he titles his book Antiquities of the Jews you know he seeks to show that the Jews are a very ancient people
58:18
and that they are very unified people he says for for we have not an innumerable multitude of books Among Us dis disagreeing from and contradicting one
58:28
another as the Greeks have but only 22 books which contain the records of all the Past Times which are justly believed to be divine and of them he goes five
58:41
belong to Moses and he he begins to describe a three-fold division of the uh the pentet took the law uh the prophets and the writings now that three-fold
58:52
division is also very often now said oh that's how the Jews use their Bible it's called the tanak the Torah theim and the Kim the tan the the Torah the law the
59:06
Nim the prophecies and the Kim the writings and the writings would include Psalms and job and and those what but you know Daniel is actually not a
59:18
prophecy it's a writing and Joshua and judges are not histories they're prophets and so they're put in different places um and not all of the Jews have
59:30
them all in the same place and you may have noticed that Josephus had 22 books whereas we have 39 well he goes on to lists them and
59:41
they're the same as we have only for example the 12 Minor Prophets are one book Ezra is joined to Chronicles uh 1 and 2 Samuel is actually 1 2 third and
59:52
fourth Kings and it's all okay um Ruth is joined to J uh to Joshua or judges was it judges so combinations of