Synoptics Matthew 23

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We will be using the synopsis if someone wants to grab that.
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There's a pile of them there. We need to finish this study before they all fall apart.
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Fade into nothingness, yes. We will get there eventually.
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Okay, well, so what did you all do while I was gone, anyways?
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Wandered through Acts. Okay, alright. Did you get rid of Brother George, or what?
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I mean, I'm feeling a little off -balance whenever he's not there. It's a little bit strange, but playing with one wing, yes, that's quite true.
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It is good to be back. I think it was quite an interesting time in Australia.
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Oddly enough, it seems like it was a long time ago already, because I then went down to New Orleans and Laurel, Mississippi.
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I've never been to Laurel, Mississippi before. That's a southern town, let me tell you something.
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But when you have to drive 35 minutes to get to a target or something like that, you know you're in the south somewhere.
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There was Walmart nearby, however. That's always a requirement, I think.
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But good opportunities, and maybe if I get good video from the first debate we did with Abdullah Kunda at the
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University of New South Wales in Sydney, that would be a good one to bring in,
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I think. We haven't watched a debate in a long, long time. I think that would be worthwhile.
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The second debate would only be worthwhile if you want to study how many logical fallacies and complete faux pas you can make in one debate, not on my part, but on my opponent's part.
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It was quite interesting. But anyway, we are still in Matthew chapter 23, right at the end of the chapter.
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And the last time that we were together, we looked at the text.
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Jesus is concluding the woes.
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And after all these woes comes the words in verse 33,
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Now, I pondered, but did not decide to do so. I still could,
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I suppose, print it all out and do all that kind of stuff. But there is an extensive, and I do mean extensive, study of this particular text and its relevance to the canon of the
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Old Testament. In an excellent book, we have it available through our book ministry at Alpha Omega, called
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The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church by Dr. Roger Beckwith.
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That is not Frank Beckwith, that is Roger Beckwith. There is a difference between the
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Beckwiths. And Roger Beckwith has written some fascinating stuff, really, really has.
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In another book, he has a chapter,
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I've just never seen the likes of which anywhere else, on the records of the
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Aaronic priests who ministered in the temple in regards to Zechariah, and the timing of Christ's birth, and all the rest of this stuff, which is really, really, really interesting stuff.
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I've just never seen anything like it anywhere else. The book on the
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Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church is very thick, and I don't mean that size -wise, it is about yea big, but it's not easy reading.
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It's not something you sit down with while watching TV and sipping a latte. Okay, okay, it's at the desk with all the sounds off and the reading glasses on type stuff.
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And he has an extensive section on this particular verse, for the reason that it is probably, and certainly in his conclusion, is one of the more important texts in the
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New Testament, reflecting upon the extent of the Old Testament Canon, Matthew 23, 35, specifically.
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Because you'll notice the phraseology, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.
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Now, of course, this is a part of, this really is, in essence, the summary of what has come before, in that the woes placed upon the
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Pharisees, if you follow them through, you've had the transition where, well, you say that, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophet, but thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.
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So there is a connection in Jesus' mind between the rebellious leadership, always focused in Jerusalem, that was constantly rebelling against the message of the prophets, whether major or minor, from Isaiah to Obadiah, and the men who were standing in his presence, who had refused to answer his question about the identity of the
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Messiah in chapter 22. And I really do think, the more I look at this, that that question in Matthew 22 is what prompts the outflowing of Matthew chapter 23.
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And so, Jesus basically says, how can you escape being sentenced to hell?
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How can you escape the sentence of hell? Speaking to the most religious people in Israel at the time.
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And then, he speaks of him sending prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, predicting the persecution that would come upon believers, seen in, for example, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus.
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He is, you know, some people wanted to speculate that maybe
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Saul was here that day, or maybe he heard these things. I think somewhere there would have been a statement on Paul's part.
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Oh, I did see Jesus, but there isn't. So, I really doubt it. But certainly,
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Paul would have been personally familiar with men who had heard these words. I don't think there would be any question about that, given the intimacy he had with the leadership in Jerusalem studying under Gamaliel, etc.,
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etc. But he was not a native there. He was from Tarsus. So, the idea that he would necessarily be here at this point, he would have probably been too young at this point.
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But be it as it may, here you have this coming persecution.
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And the reason for the persecution, that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of Innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.
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Now, again, remember, our chapter and verse divisions are modern innovations.
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There were no chapter divisions until the medieval period. The form that we have today does not appear until 1551 in the
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New Testament with the chapter and verse divisions that we have. So, it's so easy for us to cut things based upon chapters, and yet it's so obvious that this is a crescendo building into the transition material where the disciples, after hearing all of this, are pointing out to him the buildings of the temple in chapter 24, but he answered them,
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You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.
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Which then leads to the question asked of Jesus as he sits upon the
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Mount of Olives, where you could see all these things. Tell us, when will this be? What will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?
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And so, this is all of one cloth here, and you have this theme developed by all of the
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Gospels of this building up of guilt upon the
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Jewish leadership in Jerusalem. Now, with that said, then you have this amazing statement,
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All the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, all this will come upon you, upon this generation.
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Now, if that's not an oracle of judgment, I don't know what one would look like, to be perfectly honest with you.
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But obviously, the real question, the reason I mention
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Beckwith's work, is because you have a time frame, you have some sort of a beginning -end indicator in verse 35.
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Now, we know where the blood of innocent Abel was shed. We know the story at the very beginning of the book of Genesis.
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The question is, to whom is Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you move between the sanctuary and the altar, referring?
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Well, this is where, if you really want to dive into all the reasons why
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Berechiah is used here, is this a situation where you have someone else's name being used?
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One of the things that Beckwith gets into, that we'd really have to spend an entire session just looking at the background information to enter into this argument.
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Let me just try to summarize it for you. There are two ways of looking at this.
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Either this is one of those situations where son of refers to a more remote ancestor, which is very common in genealogies.
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And Matthew has used this himself. The genealogies of Jesus, Matthew specifically breaks them down into sections based on numbers.
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And he skips over names. And we just think of son of as immediate progenitor rather than descendant of.
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And as a result, go on, I wouldn't want to say that such and such is the son of somebody.
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That's not really accurate. Well, accurate by whose standard? Matthew is making a point in the genealogy, and therefore very clearly decides to skip generations to make things fit together, to make a particular point.
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Same thing here. Either Zechariah, there's an earlier
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Berechiah in his genealogy who evidently was the one that Matthew was connected with.
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And similar to that is Beckwith's argument that it's not so much someone earlier in his genealogy, as it is that the
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Jews at this time period would argue in such a way that they would actually identify people.
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And this is where, like I said, even if I printed all this out for you, it would be a pretty healthy investment in paper because of the fact that he gives so many examples, which is what makes it interesting because most of us don't spend much time reading intertestamental
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Jewish literature, though it is an interesting thing to do. The Jews of the time, there's many examples of where they would identify someone or connect someone with someone who historically they were not connected with, but morally or ethically or standing amongst the people of Israel, they are connected with that person.
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So, for example, if you've got someone in the modern time period who is standing against the degradation of God's law, they would be said to be the son of someone who in the past had done the exact same thing.
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So they're making a moral or ethical connection. And he explores that in regards to the possibility that since Jesus is speaking to these people and pronouncing judgment upon them, that he's using their way of arguing and thinking to communicate best with them.
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It's a very interesting, but like I said, very in -depth discussion that you can go into.
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Both of those lines of reasoning, however, lead to the same conclusion. And that is that this is the story found in Second Chronicles.
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Second Chronicles. Now, if you're familiar with your Second Chronicles 24, if you're looking for it, 24 -21,
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I believe. If you are familiar with your
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Old Testament canon, you go, well, how is that helpful? Most people would be going, well, if he made reference to the book of Malachi or something, then this would be very significant, because then you'd have
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Genesis to Malachi. And then you'd be saying the whole Old Testament. And that would be significant in giving us an insight into Jesus' canon of the
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Old Testament. Because, again, how many former Roman Catholics do we have here?
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A lot more than I expected. Then you are familiar with what are called the
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Deutero -canonical books, or the Apocrypha. And I think at some time in the distant past,
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I may have played for you one of the couple debates that I've done with Roman Catholic apologists on the subject of the
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Apocrypha. The first one I did was at Boston College, a bunch of monks sitting there, which is quite interesting.
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I don't know, even to this day, I still sort of chuckle, because they had the tonsure cut. And I'm like, who needs a tonsure cut?
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I do that naturally. But anyway, and I'll still just, you know, monks' robes that have special pockets for cell phones.
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I don't know, it's something that's sort of odd about it. Excuse me, I've got to answer my Blackberry. I don't know, it's just monkeying around in the modern world.
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But anyhow, I shouldn't have said that, I'm sorry. Anyhow, I've done a number of debates with Catholic apologists on the
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Apocrypha, all of which, interestingly enough, have turned out to be anything but boring. I mean, the first one
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I did, I really was worried that my opponent and I would not be able to be heard over the choruses of snores from the audience.
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But it turned out just to be the exact opposite. We actually did two debates within a couple days, one on justification, pretty strong subject, and one on the
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Apocrypha. And we sort of figured, wow, the Apocrypha one's going to put people to sleep. It did, it actually ended up being the more interesting of the two, as far as how strenuously we argued our cases.
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But if you're not familiar with the Apocrypha, the Roman Catholic canon of the
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Old Testament is larger than the Protestant and Jewish canons of the
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Old Testament. We have the Jewish canon of the Old Testament. We have the canon that not only the
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Palestinian Jews, but also the Alexandrian Jews. I was taught in seminary many, many years ago that there were two canons of the
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Old Testament, the one in Palestine that the Palestinian Jews have, and then a broader
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Old Testament canon down in Alexandria, Egypt, where people like Philo and others were very influential
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Jewish writers. Beckwith's book, again, blows numerous holes below the waterline of that particular theory and demonstrates the
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Jews only had one canon of the Old Testament and that the books that we have in our
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Old Testament had been laid up in the temple in Jerusalem at least 150 years before Christ in a special way that set them apart from anything else.
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And hence the importance of looking at this text and asking the question, is
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Jesus giving us an indication of the canon in these words? Now, like I said, for most of us, we would go, well, yeah, if he told us a story from Genesis and a story from Malachi, that would pretty much cinch it.
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You know, that would be pretty clear. Well, he did. See, the problem is
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Malachi was not the last book of the Hebrew Old Testament canon. What you need to remember is the
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Hebrew Old Testament canon was not ordered by the Jews in the way that we order our
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Old Testament canon. In fact, when you read about the
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Jewish canon, you read the Jews talking about either the 22 or the 24 books.
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And you go, that sounds a whole lot less than ours. It's not.
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Both are the same as ours. And you're going, ah, come on now. How can you have 22 and 24 being the same as 39?
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You're hanging upside down down there in Australia. The blood went into your brain, and it's caused you a problem.
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I mean, have you ever thought about how do you hang off into space in Australia? It's very odd. Because they're upside down down there.
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It would explain the accent, anyways. And the fact that I have to admit,
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I did ask one of my audiences once. I said, has your government, because the government is a little bit intrusive down there, really leaning toward the socialist side of things.
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Has your government limited the number of syllables that you can pronounce each day? And they all started laughing and looking at me like, what?
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Because they shrink everything. We say breakfast.
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They say brekkie. We say sunglasses. They say sunnies.
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I mean, if there's a way to squish it, they squish it. To the point where sometimes
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I'm just like, can I have a translator, please? What?
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Really, they have to explain. And they start to chuckle because they have to explain so many things to you because they have shrunk everything down.
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I was sort of used to that. Most of the time in our language it's different than other English speakers.
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Ours is the more complicated. It's really weird. You would think that ours would be, we'd sort of, but no.
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You go to the U .K. and we get in line. They queue up.
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We say, for rent, they say tillet. It's normally shorter and more convenient on their side.
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We're the ones that have the, where are we going for breakfast?
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Let's have brekkie. It's much faster, much more efficient. I imagine they text quicker than we do, too.
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Breakfast. Anyhow, just a little cultural thing. What was
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I talking about? Oh, yeah. 22, 24, and 39. I'm obviously pulling your leg.
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No, I'm not. The reason they use 22 and 24 had to do with sometimes with the number of letters in Hebrew, alphabets, they wanted to try to make it easy for people to remember, stuff like that.
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But you've got to remember, we have divided some books out into separate standing books that were not considered to be separate standing books by the
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Jews. So, for example, all the Minor Prophets were one book. So you roll them all into one.
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And Lamentations, guess what Lamentations was a part of? Jeremiah. You put them all together, and the 22 and 24 is the 39 that we have, including
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Escher. Again, if you just read a few general introduction books, you'll read about some disputes about Escher.
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And you'll read about the, again, anachronistically named Council of Jamnia at the end of the first century, so this is after Christ, where there was discussion on the part of the now dispersed
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Jewish people, since Jerusalem had been destroyed about 30 years earlier, I think it was about 98, it was about 28 years earlier, concerning the canonical status of Escher and some others, but primarily
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Escher, mainly because the name of God does not appear in the book. Now, this was not a place where Escher's brought in and put in a dock and a vote's taken or something like that.
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It was just a place where there was a discussion. Clearly, Escher had had a canonical status. The question that was being raised was, should it maintain that, and nobody at the council really pretended to have the authority, actually, to make a decision on that matter.
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So there wasn't, you know, you hear people say, well, even the Old Testament canon wasn't completed until the
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Council of Jamnia. No, that's just not true. That's a very shallow view, but you'll read it in books, but you read a lot of things in books that you have to be careful about.
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Anyway, the reality is that if you take a
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Hebrew class today somewhere here in the Valley and you buy the
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Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, the standard Hebrew text that is used today that represents the
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Masoretic Hebrew text, that's what
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I learned from and that's what people have learned from a very, very long time now. It really doesn't go through many permutations, alterations, changes, or editing.
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Even when you look at the text that was used to underlie the King James, the 1525
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Bomberg text, there are really only eight substantive differences, at least according to the editor of the
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New King James Old Testament. Only eight substantive differences that really affect translation in that text and the modern
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Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. So given how large the Old Testament actually is, that's a very small number of differences between those texts.
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If you were to purchase that text, or even like the
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Greek Septuagint or something like that, and you start looking for references in the Old Testament, it does not take the beginning
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Hebrew student very long to get lost. If you just start thumbing through the book, looking for the
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Psalter where you'd normally find the Psalter, the Minor Prophets where you'd normally find the Minor Prophets, the order of books is all different.
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And many Hebrew students find themselves... I noticed that the guys especially loathe doing this because we don't like instructions, but going to the table of contents to try to find the book, and because the canonical order is so different.
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I had to memorize it many, many years ago so I could find things, but I don't know that I could whip through it in order today, to be perfectly honest with you.
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Obviously, the importance of all this is that the last book of the
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Hebrew canon, the Hebrew order of the canon, is in fact 2
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Chronicles. And 2 Chronicles 24 is right toward the end of the book. And so it does seem that what you have here, and you have this mentioned likewise in Luke chapter 11, in a different context.
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The blood of all the prophets shed from the foundation of the world may require this generation from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who perished in the altar in the sanctuary.
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And notice that Luke does not say Zechariah son of Berechiah, but he does give the same location, which probably enhances
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Beckwith's argument that Matthew is doing this for a specific reason, a polemic reason with the
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Jews, using their form of argumentation. And Luke, writing to a different audience, realizes that won't translate for his audience, and so he doesn't include that, what would be for his audience, extraneous information.
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But the point is that it would seem that the
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Jews, upon hearing this, would know exactly what Jesus was saying, that the blood of the martyrs of the righteous men had been sent by God.
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And the Old Testament records the death of many a righteous man at the hands of unrighteous rulers would be held accountable to this generation, that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth.
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Truly, I say to you, all this will come upon this generation. The dire nature of this prediction, and the coming destruction that comes with it, is one of the reasons why some scholars would date
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Matthew after the destruction of Jerusalem, because of the thoroughness of the
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Roman legions under Titus in their destruction of Jerusalem, and the large number of lives that were taken, and the amount of blood that was shed there in the holy city.
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They would say, well, clearly this is so dire. The naturalistic scholar can't believe that anything like that could be prophesied.
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They'll be honest with you. Even on just a, I sort of chuckle a little bit, even on just a naturalistic level, would it really be all that shocking of a thing to go, to look around at the zealots, and the history of the
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Jews, and the politics in Rome at that time, and how far removed from Rome this area was, and simply wasn't really central to Roman political powers and things like that.
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Would it really be that much of a stretch to go that sometime in the near future,
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I get a feeling there's going to be a rebellion, and if it gets big enough, the Romans are going to have to come in here, and they're going to squash you like bugs.
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I mean, would that really be all that? It would be like me going, something tells me there's going to be a lot of political ferments and turmoil between now and November of next year.
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Well, really, you think? Wow, you should get a cable show or something like that.
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No. Actually, I'd just like to turn all that off between now and November of next year, because I've already had enough,
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I don't know about the rest of you, but it's only going to get worse. So, actually, when it comes to the dating of the writing of these books, as I mentioned almost a decade ago now when we started this study,
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I personally think that there are so many, the form of the text would have looked substantially different if it was written after 87.
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And I know a large number of New Testament scholars put it way late, and when you really start pushing for their reasons, you discover it's all presuppositional as far as their view of Scripture is concerned.
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But it would seem to me that if this was written after the destruction of Jerusalem, that there are a lot of things that are said that would be said differently.
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I just don't think that Matthew is writing post -70. But anyway, the world wouldn't come to an end if he was.
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So, it does seem to me that we have here a canonical reference that confirms what the
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Jews had been doing. It makes perfect sense, and when you think about it, Jesus has held men accountable to the
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Old Testament Scriptures over and over again. Have you not read? Have you not read? And never do we find any canonical argumentation between Jesus and even the
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Sadducees, because sometimes you'll be taught, well, the Sadducees had a different canon than the Pharisees did. They only accept the five books of Moses.
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Well, I'm not sure that that's the case. Beckwith certainly argues with that. You just don't have canonical argumentation going on in the
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New Testament in the sense of Jesus saying, well, don't you know this and that? Oh, that was
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Scripture? I didn't know that. Really? We've never thought that. It's not going on.
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And why is that important? Well, because I would suggest to you that the paradigm, the example that is given to us about how
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God led his people over time to recognize the
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Old Testament canon. At the end of Malachi, we have nothing recorded for us where an angel comes down out of heaven with the golden index, you know, with a big 39 at the top, or 22, or 24, or whatever, and says, thump, there it is.
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Okay, you've got 400 years to chill out. We'll be back. And then that's it. You don't have that.
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That would make things nice and simple. Dr. Beckwith would not have had to have written his book, and I wouldn't have to debate the subject, because all the apocryphal books are written after that, and actually look back upon and reflect upon pre -existing
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Hebrew Scriptures. But that's how it happened. And you have 400 years, and over a period of time, the
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Jews start realizing, hey, you know what? God isn't speaking anymore. And there haven't been any prophets.
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The voice of God has fallen silent amongst us. And this actually heightened, and was a part of, the
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Messianic anticipation amongst the people of God.
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Because they're like, well, last prophet he sent us talked about the coming of the
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Messiah. And now he's not saying anything.
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So the next thing to happen would be the coming of the Messiah. And so you have
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John showing up, and you can see why someone dressed as he was dressed, and eating his diet, and calling for repentance, and ripping on the political leadership, including
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Herod, would get a lot of people talking, and get a lot of excitement going, there in the area around Jerusalem.
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And so that time period, there are no councils that get together.
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There are no backroom deals where you've got the Jews sitting around. Not that I could really see
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Jewish Pharisees, and smoking cigars doesn't seem to go real well together.
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So I can't see it as a smoke -filled room, but maybe some incense or something like that. But you've got these long -robed guys with big old beards, and they're coming up and they're dropping their votes in a box.
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Okay, well, we can be certain today that Isaiah made it in, but Esther is still on the bubble.
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We're not sure. But that's how many people think it happened. Most of the people, you sit down with somebody on a bus, on an airplane.
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I've spent many hours on an airplane in the past month. 21 ,000 miles in 20 days.
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That's a few miles on an airplane. You talk to people, and they get this idea, and it's been promoted in television shows and stuff like that.
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It's normally more of the New Testament, a bunch of Catholic priests sitting around, arguing about whether we want
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Galatians or whether the Gospel of Thomas should be in the Bible and stuff like that. And people really think, well, that must have been how it was.
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There must have been some time everybody got together, and you had a big old council, and you voted on stuff, and everybody got one vote, and you turned in your canon list, and what they did is they tallied everything up.
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And if you've got enough votes, you're in. If you don't get enough votes, you're out. And that's all there was to it, and all these other books, you know, the lost books of Eden, and all these books you can go pick up at Barnes &
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Noble. Does Barnes & Noble still exist? I guess they do. Back when we used to have big bookstores and things like that, and people weren't just buying things on a
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Kindle. That's how it all happened. That's what they think. But it's not how it happened.
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And, of course, most Christians you raised in the church, well, the Bible's always looked like this.
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You mean Moses didn't have all of this? Didn't Moses have gold edges and thumb indexing? Nope.
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There was a process. And when we look at the process of the recognition of the
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Old Testament canon during that 400 -year period, it really looks a whole lot like what happened with the
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New Testament. In fact, pretty much over the exact same period of time. That's interesting.
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There aren't any councils. There aren't any angelic visitations. There aren't any supernatural signs in heaven where clouds go by,
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Genesis, and then the next. It didn't work that way. There was a process that took place with the people of God over time the same way as we have in the
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New Testament. And so I think it's important because Jesus is the center point and He is affirming the process that has taken place over time.
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He didn't come along and say, well, if you guys had just had the rest of the books you're supposed to have, you wouldn't be in the mess you are now.
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Well, what are the books of those? Well, they've already been lost. Don't worry about it. That's not what happens. Is that not where Zechariah is killed between the sanctuary and the altar?
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Right. That's what I was discussing at the beginning of the class where I went through why
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Matthew uses Barakiah. Luke does not record Barakiah. And I was talking about the rather complex argument that is offered by Beckwith in regards to why
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Barakiah appears here. The two possibilities. The one, the telescoping of genealogies that Matthew has used elsewhere.
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And the one that he develops, the use of another name based upon moral or ethical connections rather than anything else.
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That's what I was referring to. Yeah, that's where I said if you really want to get into an in -depth discussion of all that stuff then
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I can certainly direct you to like I said, we have the book. Logos has it available.
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If you have the Logos library system, you want to get it electronically. It's a number of pages. That's why
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I said I thought about printing it out, but like I said, it would be a major depletion of a local ponderosa pine forest to do that.
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So I chose not to do so. Okay, so with that, we've already looked at Matthew 23 -37.
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We will use that as the introduction to our study of Matthew 24 the next time we get together.
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Okay? Alright, let's close the word of prayer. Father, we thank you for your word and we thank you for the freedom that we have yet in this land to gather together in safety to study it.
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We do ask that as we go into worship now, you would be with us, that you would be honored in the proclamation of your truth, and that we would be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ in whose name we pray.