Published: February 13, 2025 | Speaker: Chuck Hartman | Series: Leviticus - The Parable of Leviticus 2 - Part 1 | Scripture: Exodus 19
Transcript
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fight we again ask for your Holy Spirit who indwells us to guide us into truth and to keep us from error to open up your word to us help us to understand that in its context and then also in its
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application we know that that all that you have written is profitable though we may not know exactly how to profit by it so we ask for that wisdom that comes from above
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that wisdom that we know that when we ask for we ask according to your will guide us direct us teach us we pray in Jesus name
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Jesus name amen so we are resuming our study in Leviticus and we're um entering into a section that is um uh much more controversial than the
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section that we've already done on the sacrifices generally the first uh 10 chapters of Leviticus that deal with the the uh sacrificial system of the
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Tabernacle um that does not generate a whole lot of controversy uh within Christianity because we all just think that Jesus is the final sacrifice and therefore we don't have to pay attention
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to any of that right so why argue um it's all done now we enter into uh first the the what's known as the um Priestly
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Torah which is chapters 11 through 15 and it deals deals with the the laws of clean and clean and unclean the laws of defilement and
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purification starting in chapter 11 with perhaps the most controversial of them and that is the dietary laws so we'll be talking you know we're going into this uh then the second part that I hope to
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get to but able laughed to think that I could cover the rest of Leviticus in one session but the Holiness code um which which really does deal very much with
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the ethics of the community of Israel in the presence of God um and how they were to behave toward one another it's called the Holiness code because the phrase you
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shall be holy for I the Lord am Holy occurs very very frequently uh in in these sections but before we get into it we do have some introductory material
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actually three weeks worth so uh I know a shock but
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tonight we want to I want to talk about um a phrase that I heard or saw in the news about a certain species of rhinoceros in I know this has nothing to do with yeah
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Leviticus let me just cut to let me cut it's an unclean okay let me just cut to the chase rosai or whatever are unclean okay rhinoceroses um but there was a certain
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species of rhinoceros that is fun functionally extinct I thought well that's an interesting phrase I mean it's somewhat self-explanatory um but you know the
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word extinct kind of means it ain't there anymore so what does functionally extinct mean well it essentially means that the population of the speci has
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gotten down to the point where it is highly unlikely if not impossible for it to recover uh it' be a situation like this the last right the last rhinoceri are all that's the problem okay it's
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functionally even in our day and age I don't care what they identify as that it's a problem all right so um we actually had a conversation in
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earth science about what do hurricanes do when hurricane Fred identifies as Freda I mean what this is so crazy but functionally
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extinct again it's it's somewhat self-explanatory it's a situation where the the population of the species really has one place to go and and that is
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extinction okay and when I was thinking about it though I was in the midst of the study and gathering information for this study and and the thought occurred to me that that there is another species
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not of animal but of human that is also functionally extinct and that
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is the Evangelical Old Testament scholar okay scholar okay and this is a perfect
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phrase it's a perfect phrase to describe the current situation in the 21st century of Old Testament scholarship because they're not entirely extinct they're all men they're all men
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that's what I was going to say no I was going there but you beat me to the punch it it has been proven that Old Testament Scholars do
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not reproduce the way rhinoceros do um I don't know where this class is going already um but if you think about
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it when when you uh when you read Old Testament commentaries every now and then you you'll pick up someone who is who is evangelical in the sense that
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they do believe in the inherency of scripture they also believe in the most authorship of the pentet took and that Isaiah wrote the entire book of Isaiah and in other words they they're not tainted by higher criticism which is
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what we're going to talk about tonight but there's so few of them left that there's probably too few to reproduce now the way Scholars reproduce
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is through is through Academia okay there's something that goes on in the water I guess but this is how Scholars reproduce and so what we're dealing with here is that there there's there's literally not enough Evangelical
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Old Testament Scholars to raise up Old Testament Evangelical Old Testament Scholars after them there's so few and far between and there's so much going
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against them in terms of Academia and Publishing and what is accepted that they even if they are Evangelical they're going to have a a a copian
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struggle to try to reproduce them VES in their students because their students are now dealing with so many other professors at the Seminary or Bible College who are not Evangelical at all
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and then they're reading books that are not Evangelical that have fully emed such things as the documentary hypothesis and and other products of the 19th century higher criticism so what
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we're dealing with here with this word Old Testament scholarship
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is it's very much analogous as it is also influenced by Evolution and when I mean analogous I think we've all recognized that the evolutionary Camp simply States
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their Theory as fact there's there's no attempt to defend it anymore no attempt to argue it just is and so no matter what you're reading you're going to read things about you know 4.5 billion years
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or 4 50 million years ago um you're going to read everything from an evolutionary perspective because that has won the field okay in modern Academia from the top all the way down
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into grade school that is the Paradigm well that's what's happened with Old Testament scholarship not so much New Testament scholarship that they're still they can
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still reproduce there there are still a species of old of New Testament Evangelical Scholars that are passing on the torch to but that's also starting to wne um and and to get a little bit
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thin but this group right here I'm trying to find a good black pet this group right here is up against um several almost insurmountable
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obstacles if you are a an Evangelical Old Testament Old Testament scholar and one that I I I recommend although he doesn't really deal with
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this particular topic that we're going to looking at is Christopher Wright who is who is a a British actually Irish forgive me he's not British um if he hears me I'm sorry uh
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he's Irish but he's an he's an Irish Old Testament scholar who is definitely Evangelical um so that's one but reproducing this here are the
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things that are first of all the literature is overwhelmingly
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liberal you see in Old Testament scholarship we're not dealing with the the the fundamentals of Christianity the Virgin birth the the death and resurrection of Christ okay we're not that's not really uh fundamental to an
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Old Testament scholar studying the scriptures of Israel the Hebrew Bible and and so the definition of liberal is kind of different in the Old Testament
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scholarship than it is in New Testament scholarship an Old Testament scholar can be liberal and still be a Christian I don't quite know
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how but John MacArthur is reformed and he's a dispensationalist and I don't know how he does that either so things do happen um that are that are odd um seem to have any really good black pens
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up here up here anymore so the the literature that is out there you you really have to call through it and you also have to accept
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the the the Paradigm or the perspective that you're going to be hearing and that is through higher criticism and you kind of have to just let it go in one ear and out the other or at least listen to it
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so that you can kind of formulate a rebuttal okay because if if you listen to them long enough they will actually argue around against themselves and and
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we'll talk a little bit about that tonight but nonetheless it all P it all kind of comes from the same perspective also not only is literature overwhelmingly liberal um editorial
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standards or editorial
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Publishers left uh Presbyterian formed Banner of Truth um even inner Varsity is getting zandan
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has gone um you know it's just there are some names that you see in in commentaries that you might have at home or books on Christian discipleship or whatever you may have in your bookshelf you can open up the thank you very much
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yeah you can open up the book and see the publisher um you know 98% of them are going to be from Grand Rapids Michigan and the other two are from
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Edinburgh um but so or Carlile if they were published in the USA from Banner um but there really aren't many left and they're kind of falling because the editorial requirements that an academic
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needs to meet and and this is true in all publishing all academic publishing Now isn't it I mean you you've got certain minimum requirements in terms of
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of wokeness now or or whatever the prevailing Paradigm is in the in the society the editors will require you to to tow that line um and
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and so if you are an Evangelical Old Testament scholar you are you are functionally extinct everything is pretty much stacked against you now the difference
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between um oh you know this idea of functionally extinct there there have been a number of cases of of species that were thought to be extinct but have
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been found not to be extinct and some of which that have been brought back through conservation to a non-extinct but perhaps endangered status it is perhaps possible that by the grace of
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God we will bring Old Testament scholarship back to just an endangered status and not the the place the position it's in now but that phrase it just really um resonated with me in
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terms of of what I've been reading the Articles the books um and you're going to see that in the notes so going to be quotations and I guess what I'm trying to say is this does not necessarily mean
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that we should throw out the sum total of their scholarship often the scholarship is excellent they're dealing with the archaeology of the of the ancient um
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near East and the different um uh religious P practices of of Israel and its neighbors they're dealing with the Hebrew and what the Hebrew words mean mean in other words we can still gain
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information from other people even if they don't hold the Evangelical perspective of the text that they're reading is is that acceptable I mean does anybody have an objection to
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that with an orthodox is an Evangelical with an incense sensor
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right you set that one up um there really isn't a difference except that the word orthodox is considered very archaic and it's also associated with a particular branch of
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professing Christianity the Greek and Russian and cultic branch the Greek Branch okay so we don't really you I mean if you want to use the word orthodox it means you're
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you're a straight shooter it's what it
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yeah right not as a religion yeah if you if you want to use it that way which means basically that you're following biblical Doctrine then an Evangelical is orthodox okay um and and in fact but
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even even within Protestant ISM there's there's a branch associated with Carl Bart and and um early mid 20th century
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Neo Orthodoxy okay so that word has been used but it's been used in such a way that most people don't want to use it most evangelicals don't want to use it at all an Evangelical is someone who
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believes in the gospel as it is laid out in scripture the Evangel the gospel the good news so that's the fundamental meaning of an Evangelical um if you are an
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Evangelical and you're not Orthodox then you're not an Evangelical even if you claim to be you're not because an Evangelical is someone that holds to the Biblical
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teaching and that teaching of the thing about that though is that the what what what I've been trying to teach in both Leviticus and the biblical theology study is that the gospel
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doesn't begin in the New Testament even Paul says in Galatians 3 that God foreseeing the inclusion of the Gentiles preached the gospel to
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Abraham okay so that that Evangelical means the whole Council of God that Paul did not hold back from the church at Ephesus okay the whole Council which of
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course at that time meant the Hebrew Bible because the New Testament hadn't even begun to be written yet by then so um and Evangelical is by definition
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Orthodox right but we don't use that term and I would imagine in another generation we won't be using the term Evangelical either prior to the use of
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Evangelical the word was today well well if he's Islamic he's going to blow you up if he's you know if
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he's if he's Christian he's intolerant and unloving right and condemning you see these words get get uh they get colloquial meanings or they get assigned meetings
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that you really can't avoid I remember years ago having the discussion with Jenny about words that no longer mean what they mean and you want to try to bring them back but you really
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can't um they're gone we've lost that word that word doesn't mean like the word gay what does the word gay mean gay
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what happy all the day just right always happy no that's not what it means anymore right so how many people say you know how you feeling oh I'm feeling gay okay oh so you see words just they they
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they're functionally extinct um and Orthodox is one of those words because it has been used in in ways that that we don't really want to you
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know incorporate if you were to tell you know if I were to say to somebody who never knew me I'm flying on a plane and sitting sitting next to someone and I you know I tell them I'm a Christian and and I say I'm Orthodox what are they
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going to going to think um Greek or Russian or right cultic or if they know anything that's what they're going to think okay or any
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other comments you know the the the idea of of using or taking taking advantage of and benefiting from Scholars that are not Evangelical that's kind of the principle here
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right and and we don't and that I'm glad you brought that up because Christianity Evangelical Christianity conservative Evangelical Christianity doesn't mind in fact they love
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archaeology they have nothing to fear from it because it generally proves the Biblical history and the biblical social structures and and the biblical environment of Nations that it just generally always proves them correct so
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we really have nothing to fear from archaeology but because it's archaeology it's it's somewhat um it's it's it's it's unoffensive inoffensive it doesn't threat hold any threat but when you're
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an Old Testament scholar in other words when when the focus of your academics scholarship is the Bible then you're expected to be
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Evangelical and what I what I'm saying is when you study the Old Testament you're going to be hardpressed to find any you're just going to be it's just not that many out there and you have to
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read with care but you should always read with care doesn't matter who you're reading you should read critically okay unless it's the Bible you don't have to be you know be
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critical as you read the Bible but nonetheless you should still read with care okay you should read wisely and carefully and in a sense critically but when you're reading non-biblical
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texts I I don't care if it's John Calvin or John MacArthur it doesn't matter you should read should read critically when you go into Old Testament commentaries you're just going to have to be even more critical they're
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going to they're going to go from Two basic extremes one of them is going to be very very liberal and the other is going to be very allegorical okay that where Christian writers or the
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Old Testament commentaries tend and we've talked about allegory before they tend to just make symbols out of everything that happened in the Old Testament and of course the Fulfillment of all those symbols is Jesus okay
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somehow everything comes back to Jesus and sometimes the the way back is very torturous but that's what we're we believe we have to do um and I don't think that's what we have to do I think
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the overall thrust of the revelation of God is indeed consummated in Jesus Christ but everything that happens in the Old Testament including such things
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as the dietary laws do not need to be brought back immediately to him his person his work his death his resurrection there are other aspects of
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God's Redemptive plan and his plan for all of creation that are often being highlighted by the statutes and rituals
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that we're going to be studying there's a reason for studying these
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and again these are the texts that Paul was referring to in 2 Timothy 3:16 that all scripture is God breathed well that includes the Priestly Torah of
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Leviticus 11 through1 15 which includes the dietary laws and the laws of uncleanness of leprosy of childbirth of
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menstruation you know of all these different things that cause that cause uncleanness within the people of Israel so that's what we're going to be talking about in this session but I do think it is um it's a good
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opportunity to kind of highlight this
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phenomenon known as higher criticism that is a general term there are a number of sub sub categories and the men who are typically associated
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with the particular schools are somewhat analogous to Darwin and evolution there are very few modern
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evolutionists that follow Darwin Darwin kind of got it all started popularly and and yet his views are no longer really held in AC ademia in the
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same way Julius vhalen who is the progenitor of the documentary hypothesis which is what we're going to be talking about a little bit this bit this evening he's no longer really followed
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anymore but his teaching what his his system is okay so the idea of higher criticism in a nutshell and very very uh
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basic is that we we look at the ancient text of the scripture and we divide it up by
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particular characteristics and particular word groups and style of writing with the conclusion that each style of writing
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has its own author so that we can now discern different contributors to the text of the Hebrew
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the Hebrew Bible now where this this started was with uh Julius wellhausen I mean where it started was really in the enlightenment where all of Academia kind
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of emed the rationalist drink and and subjected everything to to rational CR critical analysis throwing out the concept of
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divine and direct Revelation okay so the first thing I should put that up here because the the the um the essential attribute of higher
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criticism and much of modern Old Testament scholarship is that there is
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communication what we are looking at at the Hebrew Bible is entirely a human production the more Evangelical of these Scholars will acknowledge that the writers of
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scripture thought that what they were writing was divine revelation but they will not go so far as to say this is what God actually said to Moses and Aaron when we read in
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Leviticus 11 verse1 and the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron well higher criticism knows better and they know that the Lord doesn't speak because rationalism tells
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them that so that's kind of the background that then then is now mediated through the theological schools primarily in Germany in the 19th
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century and the the name Julius
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velous always comes up even though again it's like the name Charles Darwin everybody you know you think Evolution you think Darwin um even though very few people
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actually follow and that's correct isn't it I mean very few people actually follow Darwin's particular brand of evolution but he got it started and and he got the ball rolling and everybody
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took it off from there and that's the same thing with valhen so valhen is credited which was known as the documentary hypothesis
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now I I find it ironic that it is still called this it is long since ceased to be a be a hypothesis in fact it's not even a theory it's an accepted law within Old
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Testament scholarship and the fundamental principle of this law is that Moses didn't write the Pento that the pentat took was
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took was compiled primarily by the Priestly class many many many centuries after the events were alleged to have happened in
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fact they were primarily written during and after the Exile so the 7eventh sixth fifth centuries before Christ which is
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about 700 years after Moses okay so that's kind of the fundamental principle here in all Hier chrism criticism is that Moses whoops did not
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pentad now the way vhen came up with this was that he analyzed the Hebrew text and he analyzed the English text because it's not or the German I should say um because it's fairly well translated and he noticed that the name
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of God is in different forms they different names of God and there are two names of God God okay so this is how it divides up how do we do this all right so we're
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going to we're going to dissect the text well the first division so here we have the have the pentat the five
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books all right well first of all we notice that some verses use the name of God Elohim
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use oops Yahweh or Jehovah bous thinks well this is proof I can I am amazed this guy was
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considered a scholar honestly but he honestly believed that this means you're you're dealing with two different contributor or bodies of
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documents or transcriptions of oral tradition one of which named God
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Elohim the other named God Yahweh or Jehovah so here are two contributing sources of documentation or documentary
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sources that would later be brought together sewn together edited and redacted and modified into what we now know is the pentat took okay so we have
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the E Source and the J source that make sense just the different names used
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there are different I mean yes the the the uh the uh elohist would be a a more General Elohim is the more General name of God um it's
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the plural it's the plural of of L and L is the name of God I think it's that in the Arabic or Al um Yahweh of course is the memorial name
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of God right so yes there is a distinction between these sources and yes there is a difference in nuance and perspective this one source knows God as
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Elohim but this other source knows God as Yahweh so one of them knows God is the creator God the almighty God okay El Shai the other knows God as the Covenant
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God the god of Abraham Isaac and Jacob that's Yahweh okay so yeah there's there it's not so much a difference in meaning of the words as it is what those words
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contain okay so um we might look at that as as just the revelation of God in his many different varied aspects but velh Housen is
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smarter than us and he says is now it can't be one author cannot have more than one approach to the topic you can't have more than one thought now velh Housen fit that mold okay but but other
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people I think can have more than one thought and even authors can often do that okay so um but here we go we're starting to critique the text okay and
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the idea of higher criticism is that we are I don't know exactly where the phrase came from but the the general sense that I get is that we are above the text okay the text is not above us we
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are above the text we are taking the text apart and we are literally dissecting it now there is a lot in the pentat took that seems to come from a a
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distinctly priest oriented perspective especially like Leviticus 1-10 with the with the Tabernacle and those chapters in in Exodus with the with the
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Tabernacle being built and all of the accoutrements being described the priesthood being set up in their garments that's that's the priesthood now we all know the priests are only
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there for there for power okay so there's really no other reason to have priests except there's a group of people who have control and want to keep it now I'm being fous but that is actually fundamentally the
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modern view of the ancient priesthood and and it's true that priesthood do tend to become tyrannical don't they so I mean there's some historical basis for
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saying that you know what the only reason for all these particular rules and regulations was to control the people okay and you could just look at the history of the Roman Catholic church
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and often you could look at many Protestant churches and you can see that actually happening okay so it's it's it's it's really tempting and this is where a lot of especially young
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believers when they go off to to uh College this is where they can easily be led astray because we can provide countless examples of of even the Old
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Testament priests being oppressive and tyrannical and power hungry can't we we just need to read the prophets don't we read Isaiah read Ezekiel read Jeremiah
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who were the problem the priests okay so we can say okay well the priests came up with all of this and here are what the priests are like so obviously this was nothing more than an attempt to control
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and oppress the people but there is this evidence in the pentet took of documents and and writings and sections that seem to center around the cult of the Israelite
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religion which was centered in the Tabernacle and later in the temple well those are the Priestly
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writings okay that gives us the P documents Leviticus is predominantly a Priestly document although it's not one single Priestly document can't have that okay the first 10 chapters are one
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section the next five or six 11- 15 five um and then the last section these These are different are different compilations that are oriented around
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the Priestly the Priestly class who were primarily motivated after the Exile in holding together the The
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Remnant Israelite nation that had come back into the land and started rebuilding the Temple and so the higher critic says well this is where all this stuff came from all this dietary laws
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and all of these restrictions and Hol or cleanliness and unclean and all the purification rituals these were away for the Priestly Elite and again in the ancient world the priests were the
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elite this is how they held This Is How They glued Israelite postexilic Israelite Society together it's a purely political motive and that's one of the
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hermeneutical paradigms by which the dietary laws have been
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okay separate totally separate yeah and so these are separate okay that's what we're doing we're dissecting we're dissecting the penet took and we're taking out sections and we're say oh this is Priestly material but the
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Priestly Mater oh they're allowed to use both because they're later yeah and okay yeah they yeah yeah yeah you didn't want to get down into you didn't want to get down to Priestly elohist and Priestly
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yavis okay gets a little confusing or or alistic priests
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or she's very interesting to listen to She is because she's clearly not not I mean to me Evangelical um but she also has a very healthy tongue-and-cheek approach to all of this garbage okay which is refreshing uh it is and um
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there are some writers like that that can at least laugh at themselves they're right in the midst of it and they accept it she accepts the Leviticus is a Priestly document that was C together after the Exile she accepts that teaches
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that um clearly and and yet she can laugh at the at the at the ludicrous nature of of all this because you're right that what what name of God do the priests use well I'm sorry they use both
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you know they use that so what do you do there well then there are other sections of um the pentet took that are very legal they they are very law-based and
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again bringing in the political motive they are probably brought in by the court chroniclers who on behalf of either the king or the Governor want to establish a
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uniform law code in conjunction with the Priestly Elite okay so these laws are are perpetrated as Divine laws that God
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has given these laws nobody actually thinks that Moses went up the mountain and received the law from the Finger of God okay that's just simply a legendary now you know I'm being factious here
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just for the sake of nobody worrying um but that's this is what High criticism rejects is the idea of direct divine revelation the most they will say is
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that these men were inspired not by the Holy Spirit but in their the the height of their religious um uh ethic and and we're going to talk
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a little bit about that as well so there's another branch of this that we can pull can pull out that is dter deuteronomic
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is second so Deuteronomy is is literally the second law but it's not the second law it's the second reading of the law Exodus being the first reading of the law and then when they have finished
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their Wilderness trans you know um migration all the way around and they are about to enter the land Deuteronomy is Moses's swansong at least that's what we believe okay but now
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these people know better um Deuteronomy is actually an attempt again by the court Elite in conjunction with the Priestly Elite to to establish
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a societal a societal regimen both revolving around the cult of the Tabernacle at that time it would be the rebuilt Temple but also answerable to the king so this is the
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dter deuteronomic and that's the D so I don't have them in the right order because when they when they all put together this is what we get we get the j e p d that's that's essentially
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the the acronym uh that describes the documentary hypothesis all right so the point of all this is that according to most modern Old Testament
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scholarship this is where we're going to be okay we're dealing with with Priestly documents in
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documents in Leviticus and one of the things that we're going to be dealing with it's an introductory is the various theories as to why the priests came up with these
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particular rules and regulations and rituals and it's important to do that because incorrect interpretations of
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these things like the dietary laws persists in the Christian
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church it is yes it's very similar to what the to the rinic mishna U and the halaka which is the application U which I think it actually means the walk uh the how you apply Torah the difference
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is that the documentary hypothesis is the dissection of Torah itself whereas the rinic interpretation is the expansion and application of
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Torah now generally the rabbis accept Mosaic authorship of the pent and they they accept the Divine source of the Pento so
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in most cases when you read the mishna for example which which is uh several centuries after Christ around the fourth or fifth century for the mishna or the
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talmud which was another Rabin teaching which is earlier uh actually started before um I think before Christ these were commentaries essentially on the
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Hebrew Bible so I think it's better to think of the Rabin writings as we would think of commentaries that you might buy online from Christian book distributors
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okay you'd buy a commentary on Leviticus well that's kind of what um the um the rabah of Leviticus is it's a commentary
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they just did it differently than than we do it now and it's it's very circular and um uh esoteric in that
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it we we tend to look at things very clinically we look at the words what the words mean and we look at the grammar and we look at the syntax right and we look at the history they don't really do
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that to them they and and I don't want to denigrate the rabbi approach because when you read it even if you don't agree with what they're coming coming up with
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I think you might recognize that they do treat the Bible as a living document where we tend to treat it as a dead letter under a microscope seem like read
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was well they do that yes that but not much but they they do that's that's actually going to be more found in the Apocrypha and the pseudepigrapha or whatever something I can't pronounce the word the false writings and the
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apocalyptic writings um that are not actually the scriptural uh accepted as the Hebrew Bible and but yet they have been accepted and and incorporated into ritic writings and we can't really fault
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them there because both Peter and Jude incorporate into their letters quotations or Illusions to books that are not in the Old Testament
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they're actually in the Apocrypha okay so there was another body of writings that were not recogniz we talked about this we talked about Canon that there is a body of writings that
43:25
are not recognized by the the the Jews in general to be Canon and yet they're they are still incorporated into the rabbinic thought so when they're adding
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something they they're not necessarily adding something in and of themselves that they're coming up with often times they're incorporating some other writing
43:45
okay and and saying that you know and it may be something just very simple as as an embellishment of the conversation between God and Abraham before the
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destruction of Sodom and Mora okay or or or an embellishment as to the the meal that Abraham prepared for the for the angels that stopped you know at his tent
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it's not usually anything really new it's for example it's not nobody says Ismael was the promised son that's Muhammad that comes a lot later okay the
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rabbis didn't do that
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yes and yeah Peter Peter does the same thing and and for that reason uh primarily for that reason Luther um placed both Peter and Jude down didn't he do both Peter and Jude I know Jude was down there you know he had a he had
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his list of his contents you of his the German translation of the New Testament and and all of the books that he accepted were numbered and then he gets down he's a separation on the page and
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then there are four or five books at the bottom that aren't numbered how many four four books Hebrews is one of them Revelation is one of them um James and Jude so Peter's not in there but Jude is
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there because he he he quotes from uh pseudepigraphal books yeah so the Assumption of Moses and the and
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the yeah and Enoch uh are two that he quotes from so and when we read that we find out that it kind of some it might disturb you disturb you it might disturb you to think that but you know was like what do I do with this
45:31
okay um because you know we accept the Jude is a part of the cannon of the New Testament and yet Jude is quite apparently quoting from a non-canonical
45:42
book so is is it thereby is he thereby uh validating you have to deal with that when you're doing when you're exting Jude you have to kind of run through in
45:54
your mind what does this mean it doesn't really change the doctrine of Christianity any but it might change the your your understanding of the broader
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spectrum of data and and um intertextuality and and and just the the living community of God's people with his
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Revelation that they did interact with the Canon but they didn't do it in in a in a way that maybe modern fundamentalists will say no book but the
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Bible they they did it in a way where they were also interacting with other letters and books poems and sonets and Psalms that weren't in the Canon and then if they quote them does that mean that they
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are are validating especially if the person quoting them is writing a new testament book does that mean that that statement um what is it um Michael arguing with Satan over the body of
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Moses okay is that validating then that that narrative in the Assumption of Moses I mean these are the kind of questions that that that fact that it's
47:03
there raises in our minds and it's one of the reasons why I've tried to teach over the
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years that a that a rigid plinary verbal inspiration view of
47:27
tenable there are some aspects of scripture that we're going to encounter u i mean I going just give you an example a little Prelude to what we're dealing with rabbits are not
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ruminants they don't chew the cud right is that right they don't they have one stomach okay but they look like they're chewing the cud don't they right
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um but they are unclean even though they chew the cud yet they do not split the hoof because they have paws okay but they don't chew the cud and so we're
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going to deal with that and that really bothers some people it really does it it proves you see the Bible's not inherent you see that
48:19
Moses yeah you know it's looking like it looking like it's Che in the cud but it's not okay so we'll get to that but my point is a rigid literal Al plinary inspiration view of scripture can get you into trouble okay uh I hope
48:32
everybody understands that I have a very very very high view of the inspiration of scripture it's just a particular modern Orthodox theory that I don't fully agree
48:53
with so much of the Troubles of this kind of
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biology and for a liberal yeah so my understanding of R ruminant is is is now biological okay because and and so and yet and we think okay the Ancients couldn't have known that yes they did
49:31
what did they do when they killed a rabbit they gutted it right that's what you do to get the meat okay and I bet they could count how many stomachs they pulled out just one okay so I mean these
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weren't stupid people and yet this is what we think we were think oh These Are The Primitives they didn't know you know you're primitive I mean you just you don't have to be a a surgeon you
49:57
just have to be a butcher to know how many stomachs an animal has okay um so when we encounter this is what we encounter when we read modern uh Old
50:07
Testament scholarship is this disdain and this is where we're heading this this kind of um Universal disdain for the Ancients and that colors all that we all
50:19
that we read about what we're reading in scripture so much of the Old Testament is just dismissed as the the the musings and the ravings of a primitive people
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and We Know Better okay well then I don't understand why Paul tells us that it's profitable okay if we're going to just throw it out because Moses didn't know that rabbits don't chew the cud then
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what's the point of reading any of
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no no I I think that's a yeah that's a good point what what is this view that says that um that we have to to lock truth into a particular
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hermeneutical manifestation that's that's as old as human thought um the Greeks thought that they had locked in
51:50
truth and everyone else didn't have it and they were very disdainful of of other peoples uh the Romans were the same way but so were the
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Egyptians and so are and were the Chinese so I don't really think that it's um and that is not an Enlightenment thing Enlightenment just simply gives us a new manifestation of
52:13
Truth which actually so atomizes and individualizes Truth as to destroy truth entirely which we get postmodernism okay
52:23
so that's a good point but I don't think we can trace that one back back just to the 18th century I think that's pretty much we might Trace that back to the Tower of Tower of Babel okay because the the um the means
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by which we convey the truth as we understand it is what language right so when when God confused the languages he wasn't just giving people different
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people different verbalization he was he was confusing the manner of their thought because that was that's what language is it's the conveying of your thought and we we
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don't we not only don't speak the same languages in in some sense we don't speak the same languages because we don't think the same way and so what you're talking about
53:09
with regard to what is truth really goes all the way back I think to to Babel um if not before but that's a good question a good concept to think about all right
53:20
so we we're dealing with now with this idea that the Priestly Torah and the Holiness code so um let's see here let's
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look at the what we're dealing with here Leviticus 11-
53:51
the deuteronomist this is the law according to the priesthood and this is essentially the uh the rigid
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social structure that is erected around the diet not just the sacrificial animals that's one thing what you can bring for sacrifice now we're talking about what
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you're allowed to eat in your tent and you're not allowed to eat most of the food or most of the animals that you encounter every day or when you go
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out on the hunt you or when you go fishing you can't have them okay so this is a way of control again this is a theory but this is a way of bringing order and stability and uniformity to
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The Returned keep in mind the vast majority of Jews did not return from Babylon so they were going back into the land much diminished from when they
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first entered it I I don't think we could say that there were 6 and a half million Jews who returned from Babylon okay men women and children they they
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were not a mighty host that Joshua led into the land they were a rag tag bunch of former Exiles going back to a land that hadn't seen proper cultivation for
55:13
70 years okay um and I I like to draw this analogy this analogy um back in 1989 1990 1991 when the
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Soviet Union fell and all of the countries in Eastern Europe declared their independence from Moscow and they often embraced
55:36
often embraced democracy the reality was that they had spent the better part of 70 years better part of two generations under generations under communism and just to switch a you know
55:47
turn a switch and become Western capitalistic democracies that's not that easy okay and in the same sense we have to we have
55:58
to realize that these Jews that were coming back from Babylon these were second generation these these were mostly those that were born in Babylon and maybe even
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children born to them in Babylon very few of them now in Hagi we get the impression that there were some there who remembered
56:20
seeing the temple as it was before it was destroyed because Hai or the Lord asked them do you see this Temple is it not nothing in your sight compared to what you saw before well they were
56:30
probably children then and now they're old but the vast majority of the generation that returned had been a couple Generations couple Generations removed from the Judaism and from the
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the Israelite life and even that had been diminished by the Assyrian Exile of the 10 tribes 200 or 150 years earlier so everything's different and they're
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coming back and so you can kind of see the plausibility of this group of priests who had held together okay and this group of priests saying okay this we're going to we're going to we're going to lay out a
57:04
law so that Society knows how to live before Yahweh so that we do not suffer his condemnation and judgment again their motives might have been perfectly pure and and some of the writers will
57:16
say that some of the the liberal writers will say you know that they didn't want it to happen again and so they wanted to please their God and so they came up with all these rituals and dietary
57:27
restrictions and and and then they anathematized or I shouldn't use that word what's the word uh they stigmatized things like childbirth and
57:38
menstration and bodily secretions and leprosy okay which actually the word doesn't necessarily mean leprosy okay it might be even U it could even be
57:52
translated acne which would bring it right into the modern High School okay stigma in I mean it's a skin it's a skin ailment is what it is and and so what's up with all this
58:03
why why are they do they have just some you know a bee in their Bonnet that that they really have a problem with women in childbirth and so they're going to make it unclean and so we're going to get
58:14
into that okay why why all this stuff what's the point of all this so you have the Priestly Torah which is chapters 11- chapters 11- 15 and then um okay and the reason for
59:00
this is one of yeah this is pretty much the view the general view of most higher critics in terms of the Priestly documents that it's a late document these are then now the more they get
59:10
into it the more they also say that you know these late editors were probably using earlier documents some of which may have even gone back to the time of
59:24
Moses okay yeah you read this like do you listen to yourself or just kind of fade in and out when you're talking um so yeah that this is this is what the higher critics say and again there's a
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certain plausibility when you look at it from a sociopolitical perspective these were a very vulnerable people the book of Nehemiah shows us that right the opposition that they were getting from
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the other peoples of the land oh if a fox jumps on that wall it will fall down and we're going to write a letter to the to the emperor saying that you're rebelling you know they were up against
59:57
it and then even within themselves in