2024 08 11 Apologetics RCC 1 pt 2

Sola Scriptura and the Authority of Scripture

Okay, so thank you all for your participation and interactions here and also some online. It has been quite popular of a series. And I did tell all the online people that I will address some of their comments online.

They have questions or comments, their arguments. The first one I do want to address is regarding sola scriptura, the Latin word for only scripture, scripture alone. But before I do that, I'll pray for us and then I'll read briefly what I wrote regarding sola scriptura.

The accusation is that sola scriptura is a man-made doctrine, but I believe it is solidly found in scripture. So I'll pray for us and we'll start. Father, we're grateful for the work that you're doing in us.

And we're grateful that we have the opportunity to share the truth of your word and share Christ with so many people. Father, we pray that your spirit would work through us and that you would use us to clearly speak the gospel of your son, Jesus Christ, who died for our sin, suffering the wrath, and who rose from the dead and reigns from above.

Help us to trust him alone in Jesus' name. Amen. So, briefly regarding the doctrine of sola scriptura, scripture alone. The doctrine of sola scriptura is the theological view that scripture alone is the highest authority and the highest standard for truth.

This does not do away with the importance of church history, historical creeds, and all these creeds that helped us to know clearly the Trinitarian doctrine. We don't reinvent the wheels multiple times.

We do stand on the shoulders of the giants. And faithful works by Christians. There are Christian books that we read even at this church together. And we grow from that. And faithful teaching and preaching.

However, scripture is higher than any of those and all of those combined. And they all must necessarily be scripture. And that's because God's word cannot be treated equal to any other words. God's word is higher than human words.

In Mark 7, 6 through 9, Jesus rebukes the religious establishment for holding the traditions of the elders higher than the commandments of God. The Pharisees were notorious for doing that. This specifically shows there is an order of significance.

God's commandments are higher than traditions. 2 Peter 1, 19 tells us that and we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed to which you will do well to pay attention as a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

What this tells us is that our experience or traditions do not trump the written prophecies and scriptures which are more fully confirmed. Paul exhorts Timothy also as he is nearing death, 2 Timothy, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching.

Don't stray from scripture because people will itch for something more. But Timothy must stay faithful to the word. Lastly, the danger of placing traditions at the same level of scripture is the act of adding to scripture.

Deuteronomy 4, 2 and Revelation 22, 18 -19 warn against that. Scripture treats itself higher than any other form of authority. God's word commands us to treat it more importantly than other words. Sola Scriptura, although coined during the Reformation time, is in fact a theological view that is richly found in scripture itself.

The Apocrypha, the Septuagint, and the Hebrew Canon

Apocrypha and Vulgate Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical books are the 14 -15 books that are added by the Roman Catholic Church to the Bible. Mainly the Old Testament. If you deny it, you are committing a mortal sin.

If you die in your mortal sin, your soul is at risk. The meaning of the Apocrypha is that these are the hidden things. These books were called Apocrypha before the Council of Trent in response to the Protestant Reformation.

I'm not going to read over all the books that are contained in the Apocrypha. Most of them you probably haven't read. Some of them sound similar to the books we have, but they're actually totally different books.

For example, Wisdom of Solomon is not Proverbs. If you open to that book, it's not the same book. Ecclesiasticus is not Ecclesiastes. These are actually completely different books. Most of you haven't read them.

I've only read parts of them, mainly to get the historical background. Again, I'm not saying they're all horrible and they need to be burned. All I'm saying is they're not scripture. They must not be treated the same way as God's word.

1 -2 Estrus and Prayer of Azariah are not accepted by the Council of Trent. What's shocking is all these books, when you add them all together, they're about two-thirds of the size of the New Testament.

That's big, right? The Old Testament canon, what we have in the Old Testament, what the Protestant Church has in the Old Testament, overwhelmingly, historians agree that the apocryphal books were not included in Jewish worship.

We will go over the evidence of that. The question is, why does this matter? Why do we have to be so strict about whether apocrypha is in the Bible or not? Why not just put them in there if you want them and put them out if you don't want them?

What's at stake here? The truth, right? What is it, David? What God wants us to know. Regarding truth, if there are things that go against what the Bible teaches that are found in apocrypha, yes, the truth is at stake.

We will go over some of the things that do go against the biblical truths in the Bible. Second, David's right. What God wants us to know. Think about this. Paul says in 2 Timothy 3 .16, all scriptures breathe out by God, and it's for the equipping of the saints.

Well, imagine if the two-thirds of God's missing for some of us. We're not getting equipped if they are indeed God's word. So, in reality, we do want to know whether apocrypha actually belong into the Bible or not.

Imagine if the two-thirds of the New Testament had been missing. That's just crazy. Imagine all the Pauline epistles are gone. That's shocking. That's what's at stake here. Let's talk about the Hebrew Old Testament.

Hebrew Old Testament was completed around 400 years before Christ was born, as in the Son of God, God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, whose the eternal existing word of God became flesh. When he was born, it's not when he's existed.

It's actually when he became flesh, when he became man. But he's always existed. We have to go over that. And the Catholics would say amen. They believe that too, the eternality of the Son of God. The Hebrew Old Testament does not contain any of the apocryphal books.

The Hebrew Old Testament does not contain any of the apocryphal books. That's important. Let's go over the next slide, the Septuagint. Why do I want to go over the Septuagint? It's also written as LXX.

That's the Roman numeral for 70. The reason why it's called 70 is because in the second century BC, so around 100 years before Christ's birth incarnation, about 70 Jewish scholars gathered in Egypt to translate the Old Testament into Greek so that it is more accessible.

The Septuagint contains 12 apocryphal books. Notice that it's not even fully all that the Catholic Church has. And in fact, not all copies of the Septuagint that we have contain the same books of the apocrypha.

So they differ copy per copy. So if I pick up a Septuagint scroll from one place and another, they might not agree on what belongs in it. Which means there is no general consensus as to what belongs in the Bible.

Although it was popular during Christ's time, the Jews living in Israel that promised land never accepted the apocryphal traditions nor editions. I will tell you that the New Testament authors do quote from the Septuagint.

They do. Often. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they translate the Old Testament themselves. The Apostle John is a great example. He does that when he says, fullness of grace and truth when talking about Jesus.

That's his translation. That's not from the Septuagint. And it goes back to Exodus 34 when God reveals himself abounding in steadfast love and truth. But a good example is like Matthew 1 when Matthew actually quotes from Isaiah, the virgin shall give birth.

That's from the Septuagint. The word virgin is specifically in the Septuagint while it's young woman in the Hebrew text. So I'm not bashing the Septuagint. All I'm saying is the Septuagint was not accepted as books of worship by the Jews in the synagogues or the temple in the first century.

And that's going to be crucial. And I would say the reason why the New Testament authors sometimes quote from the Septuagint would be the ease of access. Because what language was the New Testament written in?

Greek. Why do the work twice? Right? Just use the translation that's existing. I speak Korean. Not that I'm so good that I would translate into Korean. But if I were to speak to someone of the gospel that's who only speaks Korean, I probably won't be opening the Greek text to translate it into Korean.

Although that's possible, and it would be a lot of work. I probably would just grab a Korean Bible and flip to the page that I need to quote from. Right? Now let's talk about the Old Testament that the Protestants have.

So the next page. So we follow scripture. There are 39 books of the Old Testament. And the reason why I say we follow the scripture is because Romans 3 2 said so. I will read it. Much in every way to begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.

What are the oracles of God? Scripture. What do the Jews hold as scripture? That's what we need to be asking. What do the Jews hold as authoritative, inspired word of God? And if you buy one of the Jewish Bibles, Torah, Nevi 'im, Ketuvim, which is the law, the prophets, and the writings.

It's a thick book, right? You'll see all 39 books of the Old Testament that we have. In a slightly different order when you get to the prophets, but still, they're all there. So what does that mean? We're actually going with what the Jews were entrusted with.

Because what? Why do we do that? Because scripture said so. And scripture is our highest authority. It would be actually troubling to go against what God's word says to include something that's not in God's word.

So we're actually following the Bible when we have the 39 books, not more than 39 or less. Now, here are the arguments against the apocrypha. Next slide. Scriptural. Here's the scriptural argument. I think whenever possible, the scriptural argument takes the highest authority, right?

That's where we need to go first. The New Testament has about 260 direct quotations. What that means is direct quotations, word for word of the Old Testament. And many times it will say, scripture said, or so that the scripture may be fulfilled.

You'll see a lot of that, especially in the gospel according to Matthew and also the book of Hebrews. And that's because those two books were mainly written for Jewish Christians, right? Allusions are, it alludes to it.

It refers to it. It takes a concept. Instead of quoting a word for word, it takes a concept and alludes to it. Great example would be anytime you see Jesus saying, like, I'm the shepherd, the good shepherd that alludes to the Old Testament in Ezekiel, right?

Ezekiel, the Lord is the good shepherd. The Lord will gather his people back along with the Davidic King, right? That's an illusion. Or the sacrificial lamb or the Passover lamb. That's an allusion to the Passover lamb, right?

Not a single of them is from the Apocrypha. That's important. This is important, right? Isn't that striking? A book, I mean, or a collection of books the size of the two-thirds of the New Testament, not single one of them is quoted by the New Testament authors.

And remember, the New Testament authors are majority Jews. Maybe Luke was, and I'm not sure, but then he could have been Hellenistic Jew, right? He could have been like Greek Jew, right? It's hard to know.

I don't have his DNA. But most of them are Jewish. So the New Testament authors had no problem quoting from, in fact, a lot of the Old Testament books. Yet they don't quote from the Apocrypha. And Christ himself says the scriptures cannot be broken in John 10 .35.

And the scriptures he's thinking of is what? The Old Testament. So you can't break that. Now the New Testament authors do quote from the Septuagint, but not the Apocrypha. That's important. And again, just because they quote from the Septuagint doesn't mean they're accepting every part that the Septuagint may hold.

We don't even know what their copies of Septuagint held because they're all different in terms of how many books of the Apocrypha are actually there. So we can't even actually say that, yes, all 14 through 15 Apocrypha books were there.

You can't say that. All right. Catholic rebuttal. So, I mean, I posted that like online and people, you know, instead of writing out their arguments, they give me links, you know, and that's troublesome.

But I clicked on the link to like read it. Right. I do want to know what they say. There are a whole bunch of New Testament verses that they claim that are quoting the Apocrypha. So I looked at some and I just picked some that are just like, what is that?

You're not even reading the Apocrypha correctly if you're saying that's from the Apocrypha. So one claim is that Matthew 2, 16, when King Herod slayed the babies of Bethlehem. Right. They're saying it was prophesied in Wisdom 7, 11, Wisdom of Solomon, which is not Proverbs.

Right. So I go to Wisdom 7, 11 and you read that. And in the context of Wisdom 7, 11 is actually the exodus from Egypt. That's another king who slayed the infants, not the it's not a future prophecy. Right.

It actually has the words wilderness. Bethlehem was not a wilderness. It's a town. So it's it's. It actually is disingenuous, even to the Apocrypha, to say that it's prophesying something when it's not actually claiming to prophesy.

And it's also, of course, disingenuous to the scripture, because Matthew 2, 16. In fact, if you go to it, the scripture that's prophesied is from actually the Old Testament. Right. Rachel crying out. That's not from wisdom.

That's actually from, I think, Jeremiah. I might be wrong. I got to look it up. But it's actually from the Old Testament prophets. And how it's fulfilled is typological. Matthew says the fulfillment is that just as God's people were exiled and cause a cataclysmic grief.

And then when the Messiah is here, it repeats. But it's so much more intense. The infants are being killed. And as you know from Matthew's theology, the Messiah who came to die for God's people will live perfectly on behalf of God's people.

That's why Jesus, right, all has to fast for 40 days in the wilderness, just as God's people fasted. I mean, not fasted. They were tempted 40 years in the wilderness and failed. But Jesus, who fasted for 40 days in the wilderness, didn't fail.

Right. And he does that over and over again until he dies the death that his people deserve. Right. That's Matthew's theology. Next, Luke 20, 29 confirms Tobit as scripture. And I thought this was fitting because I think I preached this recently, probably last, I think last week.

This one is about the Sadducees challenge against Jesus with one wife and seven husbands because they kept dying. So one. So you turn to Tobit 3a, which I know most of us don't have that in our scripture.

That's fine. One common thread is that in Tobit 3a, there is a woman who has seven husbands. The main difference is this woman lost her husband or husbands because of an evil spirit named as asthma, asthma, Diaz, uh, who killed them.

The problem with this is, uh, nowhere in the Sadducees storyline, uh, is a demon involved. In fact, I would argue that the Sadducees would not hold to the demons involved. If you know the Sadducees theology, which is they reject the existence of angels, which means they would reject the existence of the fallen angels.

Not only that, what books do the Sadducees hold as scripture? The first five only, they don't even go as far as we do. So to think that they would be quoting from Apocrypha is rather absurd. And to even give the status of scripture would be obnoxious.

It's ridiculous that the Sadducees who reject actually 34 other books in the Old Testament that the normal Jews would have held the Pharisees and scribes to say that they ventured off and wanted to quote quote unquote scripture Apocrypha.

That's crazy. Uh, uh, the the only argument I would say is they're making seven husbands to make an absurd point, right? Their view is the resurrection can't be real because can you imagine a woman with seven husbands in heaven right in a new earth and you haven't, you're right.

That's their point. It's not to quote the Apocrypha again. No New Testament author gives any authority nor mentions Apocrypha as scripture. Whenever the New Testament author says thus the scripture is fulfilled, it's never an Apocrypha books.

And there are some other, uh, claims they make like, oh, uh, the Lord of heaven and earth is from this Apocrypha book. You could find that in other Old Testament books that are accepted by the Jews too.

It's, it's not like that's a new idea in the Apocrypha. The Lord of heaven and earth is found pretty much really anywhere in the Old Testament, right? So it's, it's disingenuous to make a claim like that.

Take like a three word phrase that are rather commonly used, but also happened to be used in the Apocrypha and say they're actually quoting Apocrypha, right? Or, or something like God is shepherd or Jesus.

When Jesus says he's the shepherd and John 10, well, that's kind of used in the Old Testament already. In fact, it was written before the Apocrypha, right? Ezekiel. So it's like, it's, it's disingenuous to say that's actually quoting from the Apocrypha, right?

Uh, the Mormons do the same too. They, they say like John 10, it's, it's fun in the book of Mormon. It's like, do you really think that it's more likely that it's a book of Mormon or it's actually the Old Testament that the Jews all read, right?

It's like, let's, let's use a Occam's razor here. The simplest is the most correct here, right? All right, next let's, we're going to go over the arguments against the Apocrypha. Historically, first century Jews never accepted any of them.

So I'm actually going off of historical arguments, uh, other than the scriptural, which we just did, we're going to go over this, uh, historical view. Israelites of the first century spoke both Greek and Aramaic.

Aramaic is the language of Assyria and Babylon. Uh, in fact, certain tribes in Iran still do speak to this day. Uh, yet they still rejected the Septuagint for worship. Uh, you will have the Catholics argue that Septuagint was accepted as Jewish scripture.

They respected it. They used it, but not for worship. In fact, uh, Josephus AD 90. So that's the first century Jew. And he's not a Christian. Okay. He's not a Protestant. He's a Jew. He's a Jewish historian.

And he gives a list of the Old Testament canon as in the standard in terms of what books belong in the Old Testament does not have the apocryphal books, right? That's shocking because the, uh, what the Catholics will do is that you Protestants you're going by the medieval Masoretic text.

Masoretes were medieval Jews who, uh, copied down the Hebrew text. And that's the complete codex of the Old Testament. We mainly go by the Masoretic text. So if you buy, purchase an Old Testament text, that's only Hebrew.

Uh, it's because of the Masoretes, you have them. They're the ones who put the vowel pointings because Hebrew texts don't normally have vowels, right? And so they would say, you guys go back even like 800, 900 years after, right?

Uh, the canon was closed. And that's why you're going with actually Josephus in the first century had, he did not think the apocryphal books, right? We're part of scripture and he's a Jew, rather a famous Jew, right?

Uh, he's the reason why we know anything about really AD 70. He, he's the historian who recorded that, uh, the apocryphal are rejected by origin. We talked about origin last week, uh, famous, uh, church father who believed in some shaky stuff.

But the Catholics count him as a church father and remember their, their vow, the unanimity of the church fathers, right? That's what the priest vowed to. Well, origin didn't think so. Tertullian, another church father, third century.

He's the guy who quote, uh, coined the term Trinity. He's, he's a famous guy. Uh, by the way, Tertullian was not a Pato Baptist, uh, for any Catholics listening. Uh, he did not have, uh, he actually rejected the apocrypha too.

Athanasius, uh, the main guy who, uh, who got exiled so many times cause he stood up for the truth of Jesus being divine. Uh, he, he fought against the Aryans. Aryans said that Jesus was one time created and Athanasius says no.

And that's where we get, uh, the phrase Athanasius against the world. Cause really the world was going against him, but it's actually, thanks to Athanasius that we have, uh, old and new Testament canon.

The Protestant Bible goes with what Athanasius said are scripture. Jerome. Oh, this is interesting. Jerome, the guy who translated the whole Bible into Latin, uh, the main version of the Catholic scripture.

He also did not believe the apocrypha, uh, were part of scripture. The only reason why he translated Tobit and Judith in his book Volga is because his friends liked them so much. So they asked him to translate, but he did not consider, uh, the apocrypha as scripture.

That is shocking. Next there is even internal disagreement regarding or had been right. Not anymore. They're all dead, but there had been internal disagreements regarding, uh, the inspired status of the apocrypha within the Roman Catholic church.

Cardinal Kajetan. I don't know if, if it's, if he's Spanish, it's Kajetan, but if it's not, it's Kajetan. I don't know. C-A-J-E-T-A-N for anyone who wants to look it up. He was actually the opponent.

He was a, one of the main opponents of Martin Luther. Yet he approved the Hebrew canon, which is what the Protestant old Testament has. So even the opponent, even a Cardinal Cardinals, it's, it's one of the highest ranks, right?

Uh, it's, it's mainly the Cardinals who become Popes when they're elected by the college of Cardinals, right? It's where we get the electoral college from Cardinals choosing their leader. He himself held just as Luther did.

The apocrypha are not canon. Uh, if you want to check that out, uh, his book is called commit commentary on all the authentic historical books of the old Testament. Couldn't be clearer, right? Uh, several members of the council of Trent, it's the council itself opposed the apocrypha.

Apparently they probably weren't the majority, but again, this was not a uniform belief that the apocrypha would be, uh, considered scripture. Next I'm going to quote a Pope. I mean, not a quote, but referred to a Pope.

Next slide is about Pope Gregory, the great, and you can tell from the title. He was a, they consider him to be a great Pope, right? Pope Gregory, the great, he declared first Maccabees to be not canonical.

It's kind of shaky here, right? Wait a second. The Pope, one of your great posts, uh, early on early, this is before the medieval ages. Uh, he believed that first Maccabees, which all Catholics now believe to be part of scripture.

Well, one of your Pope's didn't, right? That's troubling. Who's right? Which, what are you going to sacrifice? Papal infallibility or apocrypha? At this case, you can't, like you can't have both, right?

Cardinal Zomenes excluded the apocrypha in his polyglot Bible, which was approved by Pope Leo the 10th. So not only a cardinal, but it's papal approved and he didn't put the apocrypha. Now the question is, were these two posts correct or not?

Right? That's, that's what the Catholics have to face, right? All right. Next. Why? Why does it matter? We kind of talked about this. Well, what's in the apocrypha, right? First, they support unbiblical traditions as in things that are not found in the Old Testament and the New Testament that we have.

That's frankly from God. For example, purgatory in second Maccabees 1240 through 45, Judas Maccabeus sends money to Jerusalem for the dead idolatrous soldiers. And that's where they get the term purgatory.

It's like the money was used on their behalf in hopes that they would be, you know, saved even after they're dead. Right? Uh, here's a problem with that. Idolatry is a mortal sin. And if you die with a mortal sin, according to the Roman Catholic church, you go to straight, you go to hell, you don't go to purgatory, purgatory, you can't go to purgatory with mortal sin.

Right? So there's an inconsistency there. Even if you want to use the apocrypha to uh, establish the doctrine of purgatory, well, then you're not going to get the doctrine that you have anyway. Right?

Well, you got to throw something out the mortal sin part too. Right? Next, when you read the apocrypha themselves, none of them actually claim divine inspiration. That's shocking. When you read the Old Testament and the New Testament, they all claim divine inspiration.

Right? Oh, they actually, you know, second, um, second Peter three, uh, gives divine inspiration status to Pauline epistles, Paul's letters. Paul gives divine inspiration. He confirms divine inspiration to the Old Testament.

Right? So, so on, uh, the Old Testament themselves, they're called the word of God. I mean, you read the prophets and they're like, and the word of God came to Jonah and the word of God came to Isaiah and the word of God came to you name it.

Right? That's how many of the books of the prophets start. They claim divine inspiration that they are from God. However, not only the apocrypha don't claim divine inspiration, so you're elevating things that they themselves don't.

Not only that, some actually disclaim divine inspiration. And here's the list. Prologue to Ecclesiasticus first Maccabees four 46, nine 27, second Maccabees two third 23, 1538. I'll quote first Maccabees four 46 for us and laid up the stones in the mountain of the temple in a convenient place until there should come a profit to show what should be done with them.

What can we imply here? Yeah, there's no profit. If there's no profit, uh, Victor said it, they don't have the word of the Lord. Then how can you claim divine inspiration status? Of course, they didn't have the apostles either.

Right? That's way before. So there's the problem there. Apocrypha themselves don't claim divine inspiration. In fact, disclaim divine inspiration. Yet the Catholic Church wants to like it's just like you're even going against its own tradition, right?

Apocryphal tradition. Next, some have numerous errors. And, uh, remember, the Catholics sort of believe in the inerrancy, right? Remember, in in in their doctrine with from the Council of Trent, and even before they do believe that God's word is without error.

But of course, the liberal Catholic theologians, they like shake it up, right? But presumably, the conservative Catholics still do hold to biblical inerrancy. However, there are errors in the Apocrypha.

Judith one, one through seven. They claim Nebuchadnezzar as the Assyrian king and reigned in Nineveh. Now, what? Where was he the king of Babylon, right? That's a different empire. It's kind of like saying, um, you know, let's see who's a Abraham Lincoln.

Yes, President of Great Britain, right? It's a different empire. It's a different country. That would be wrong. Baruch supposedly Jeremiah's secretary Baruch. His name is Baruch. Uh, that book quotes from Daniel.

And here's the problem. Jeremiah and his contemporary would have been long dead by the book Daniel's written. Daniel's written in the post exilic, like exilic time, right? And it even gets to the post exilic time because there's the declaration that King Cyrus has let the Jews go free.

So Baruch must be like at least 100 years old, if not more. And he's writing a book in which he quotes Daniel. So it's that that authorship is in question already, right? It's like so Baruch probably didn't write that.

So you want to hold to a text that claims that it's written by Baruch, but is not. It's kind of like if we would say, like First Corinthians, although it says, right, Paul wrote it and he says it and say, actually, Paul didn't write that, right?

That's that's crazy. But with Baruch, you can say that next, uh, some have actually theological errors. Tobit 12, 9, 4, 10, 14, 10 through 11, uh, says almsgiving can deliver from death and purge away sin.

Um, that sounds like buying your way to heaven. That's the indulgences, right? But even the Catholic Church, they don't sell it anymore. You have to earn it, right? So in fact, they would have to say, well, after the Council of Trent, it's not true.

You can't buy it. Well, your book said so. Wisdom of Solomon, again, not Proverbs 7, 17. The world was made out of pre-existent matter. Yikes. That's paganism, right? To say that God didn't create the world, uh, ex nihilo, which means out of nothing, as in, he spoke all things into existence.

That's, that's, that's a huge flaw in the doctrine. See rock three, three honoring father atones for sin, right? That's salvation by words. Yeah. Now let's talk about the Latin Vulgate. So next slide.

Latin Vulgate was, uh, translated by, um, a theologian named Jerome, uh, who lived from 83, 42, 4, 20. He was commissioned by Bishop Damascus. I know it's not Damascus, it's Damascus, uh, to translate the Bible into Latin.

Jerome, in fact, spent 34 years locked in a cave, really not locked in, but he went to a cave in Bethlehem, uh, as a hermit to translate the Bible into Latin. Needless to say, I'm not bashing the Vulgate as like a bad, bad book.

I think the Vulgate can be helpful, but it's a translation. It's not in errant. It's not infallible, right? The purpose actually was to make the Bible accessible to the common folks because Latin was the main language of which country?

Rome, right? The great empire. Well, if the whole empire speak Latin, wouldn't it make sense to, you know, translate it to a language that the whole empire would speak? That's the goal. And of course, what's the irony of this?

Yeah, they, uh, the Catholic church, a, they don't give it to them, right? Uh, and haven't in a while. Right now, they're like slowly loosing, loosing the grip. Uh, second, when is the last time you've seen a Catholic whose mother tongue is Latin, right?

The irony is Jerome translated into Latin so that more people could have access to God's word. But yet the irony is like the Latin Vulgate has been used for thousands of years to withhold God's word from the common folks, right?

And in fact, anyone who tried to translate the Bible into the vulgar tongue, vulgar tongue means just a common tongue, whether English or German, if you live in England or Germany, they were punished through death.

They were executed, right? Now let's talk about the Roman Catholic church's view of the Vulgate. So next slide. They believe the translation is infallible. Infallible means it is not possible to air. So it's in Aaron means there's no error.

You can say a sentence that is inerrant, right? It is not raining today in Sacramento is an inerrant sentence because there's no error. Infallible is beyond that. It means there's no potential to air, right?

The council of Trent says this, if anyone receive not as sacred, the canonical and said books entire with all their parts, as they are contained in the old Latin Vulgate edition, let him be anathema. Anathema.

What does that mean? Condemned. No, anathema is the Greek term for curse. Let him be accursed. Let him go to hell. That's anathema. That's a strong word. This, this is the same word when, uh, Paul says in Galatians one, if any of us, the apostles is the, or the angels preach a different gospel, let him be anathema.

Let him be cursed. Let him be cursed directly by God to be sent to hell, whether angels or the apostles. This is a strong sentence from the council of Trent. And then Vatican one, uh, in 1870 reaffirms this view.

If you, uh, believe, uh, anything else of the old Latin Vulgate, that's very hard. Let's talk about the problem with problems with the next slide. Sixtus V, he's the Pope, issued an edition in 1590 to be the final version of the Latin Vulgate.

And he said anyone producing a new version would be again, anathema, condemned. However, scholars unfortunately found numerous errors in his edition. Therefore Clement VIII, another Pope, he publishes a new version.

And this is still used today. Now the question is, are Pope's infallible and which Pope erred, right? Yeah, they all did right now. Now it's, it's like, well, according to Sixtus V, Clement VIII is anathema.

And then Sixtus V claimed that, uh, it was infallible. The final version is the final version. Well, they both aired. All right. Let's talk about the modern Catholic Bibles. All the modern Catholic Bibles are translated from the fallible Vulgate.

It's fallible. Even the Catholics had to correct it. Vulgate is 300, 400 years written after the new Testament and thousands after the old Testament, right? The Protestant translations go back to the original Greek and Hebrew scriptures.

In fact, that's what Martin Luther did when he was, uh, in hiding, right? I think it was called the castle of bird. It's, I think that's what it's called. And he was hiding under the auspice of Philip.

I, I, my church history is a bit rusty. Uh, I haven't been reading church history in a while, but what was he doing locked up while he wasn't wasting his time? He was translating the Greek new Testament and the Hebrew old Testament into what language German German.

Yeah. That's what, uh, Martin Luther did. Uh, and of course, many other Protestants did the same, right? The, uh, I mean, I would say all the Protestant translations that we have are, have been translated by the committees, right?

Whatever scholarly theologians who can speak or understand at least Greek, uh, Greek, uh, Aramaic and Hebrew Aramaic. Uh, there are only a couple of books written in Aramaic, like Daniel and parts of Daniel and, uh, Israel, and like a sentence from Jeremiah, they all gathered together and they're translating.

They don't only use Latin ballgate. Now then which one would be more accurate? Yeah. Greek and Hebrew, right? And the question is then which one actually goes back to the source, the tradition, the apostolic tradition, not the Catholic book.