New Testament Canon and Chronology

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He says he won't call you out of his life, so you've got some new sweet money coming your way.
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Well, good evening, everyone.
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This is the introduction, I'm sorry, the survey of the New Testament.
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That is the beginning of the eight-week course.
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And tonight we are going to be looking at New Testament canon and chronology.
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That's going to be the subject of tonight's lesson.
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But before we get there, wanna begin with a few thoughts.
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In our survey of the Old Testament, for those of you who took that class, I think many of you did.
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In our survey of the Old Testament, I asked a series of questions when I began the course.
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And I wanna ask those same questions now again about the New Testament.
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The first question, and you can answer these in your mind, you don't have to answer these out loud.
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How many of you believe that you could give a synopsis of every book in the New Testament from memory? That's the first question.
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And most people would probably say no, but that's the first question.
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The second question is how many of you know for sure you know all the books in the New Testament? Because certainly you couldn't give a synopsis if you didn't know all the books.
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And hopefully there are many of you who do know the answer to that.
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And finally, how many of you know for certain how many books there are? And the reason why I asked these three questions, I asked that about the Old Testament, I asked that about the New Testament.
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And the reason why is because when I asked that question in the Old Testament class, there's very little confidence, even on the number.
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Like people are, well, maybe 39, maybe, there are 39 books.
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But when I get to the New Testament, I tend to find people have more confidence in their New Testament knowledge than their Old Testament knowledge, because most people, if they grew up in church, probably spent more time hearing sermons from the New Testament than they did from the Old Testament.
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So people tend to have a more confident view of their knowledge of the New Testament.
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And confidence is great.
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And I hope, in fact, that you are all confident.
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However, I do wanna warn you that familiarity can cause complacency, because we think we know it, therefore, we don't think we have to study to learn any more.
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Just because you're more familiar with the New Testament than you are with the Old Testament does not mean that you get to work any less hard.
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In fact, sometimes we have to work harder to eliminate prejudices and biases and misunderstandings that we carry over from all this supposed knowledge that we have.
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For instance, I'll give you an example.
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In fact, I'm gonna give you a pop quiz.
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Take out a piece of paper.
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Oh yeah, week one pop quiz.
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I'm gonna give you 10 statements or 10 things and I want you to write yes or no.
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Yes, this is in the Bible or no, it is not.
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10 things, yes, it's in the Bible or no, it's not.
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Number one, in all your writings, yes or no, yes or no.
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Number one, do not answer out loud, write it down.
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The immaculate conception, yes, it is in the Bible, no, it isn't, yes or no.
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The immaculate conception.
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Number two, this is a quote.
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Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, love endures all things.
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Yes, that's in the Bible or no, it's not.
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And it might be translated a little different, but if you recognize that as a quote from the Bible, yes or no.
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Number three, at Jesus's birth, there were three wise men who visited, and I just say visited the baby Jesus.
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At his birth, there were three wise men who visited the baby Jesus, yes or no.
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Number four, another quote, from each according to his ability to each according to his need.
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From each according to his ability to each according to his need.
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Is that in the Bible or not? Yes or no.
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Number five, the doctrine of the Trinity.
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Is that in the Bible or not? Yes or no.
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Number six, you are Peter, and upon this rock, I will build my church.
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Is that in the Bible or is it not? Yes or no.
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Number seven, Peter founded the church in Rome.
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Is that in the Bible or is it not? Number eight, after his death, Jesus appeared to his disciples in Jerusalem.
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Number nine, after his death, Jesus appeared to his disciples in Galilee.
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Is that in the Bible or is it not? Finally, number 10, Peter was martyred by being crucified upside down.
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That's in the Bible or is it not? Yes or no.
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Now I want you to know this, I didn't write this quiz.
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This quiz was written by Dale Martin.
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He is a professor at Yale University, and he writes this quiz to show that many people who grow up with the Bible don't know the Bible.
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In the very first New Testament class he teaches, he gives this quiz to prove that people who grow up with the Bible don't always know what it says.
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So let's go through it.
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Number one, is the Immaculate Conception in the Bible? Yes or no.
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The answer is no.
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The Immaculate Conception is a doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church that Mary was born without sin.
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It is not about the virgin birth of Jesus.
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The Immaculate Conception is not in the Bible.
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The virgin birth of Jesus is in the Bible, but that's not the same.
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Number two, love bears all things, believes all things.
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Is that in the Bible? Yes, 1 Corinthians 13.
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Number three, at Jesus's birth, there were three wise men who visited baby Jesus.
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Bible doesn't tell us how many wise men there were.
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All that we know is there are more than one because it refers to them in the plural.
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And we don't know when they came.
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We think probably around two years after he was born.
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Yes.
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That's what I said, probably around two years old.
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Yeah, it doesn't, it calls him a child.
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Yeah.
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Number four, from each according to his ability.
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Where is that from? Is that from the Bible? No, that's actually from the Communist Manifesto.
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That is, that's Karl Marx.
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Number five, the doctrine of the Trinity.
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People debate this one.
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The doctrine of the Trinity is in the Bible, but it is not stated as such.
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So we could, you could go either way on that one.
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I would say either way you answered it, depending on how you answered it.
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I would say the answer is the doctrine of the Trinity is in the Bible, but the word Trinity is not in the Bible.
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So however you answer that, it's right, depending on what you meant.
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It's sort of a tree.
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That's why I said, I didn't write the quiz.
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He, Dale Martin, his point is to say the doctrine of the Trinity is not in the Bible.
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That's not true.
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The doctrine is there, but it's not stated as, it doesn't say like on Roman chapter two, the doctrine of the Trinity is this.
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It's stated as throughout the Bible in affirmative texts that tell us God is one God.
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There are three persons who are called God.
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All of these three persons are called God in power and authority and might and all those things.
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So we, that's the doctrine of the Trinity.
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All right, number six, you're Peter and upon this rock, I build my church.
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Yes, Matthew 16.
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Yep.
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All right, Peter founded the church in Rome.
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That's not in the Bible.
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That's right.
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Where do we find that in teaching? Roman Catholic theology, Roman Catholic dogma teaches that Peter was the seat, Peter's seat exists in Rome and it's called the Cathedra Petri.
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And that is the seat that is sat upon by the Pope.
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The Pope sits on the seat of Peter and that's why he has the authority that he has because he has sits upon the Cathedra Petri.
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And when he speaks, he speaks ex cathedra, meaning from the chair.
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That's where he divines his authority according to Roman Catholic doctrine.
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Number eight, after his death, Jesus appeared to his disciples in Jerusalem.
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Yep.
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Number nine, after his death, he appeared to his disciples in Galilee.
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Yep, also true.
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Yeah, no, he did both.
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And that's see what he's trying to do in that question is he's trying to prove that the accounts are contradictory.
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It's not contradictory.
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Jesus appeared over 40 days in multiple locations.
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So it's not a contradiction.
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There are one place that says he was in Jerusalem, another place that says he was in Galilee.
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Well, in 40 days, you can go to a lot of places, especially when you're not bound by space or time.
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Jesus appeared behind locked doors.
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He can go wherever he wants.
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So yeah, both of those are true.
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Last one, Peter was martyred by being crucified upside down.
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That's not in the Bible.
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That's church history.
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I tend to believe it's accurate, but that doesn't mean it's biblical.
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That was the difference is it doesn't say so in the Bible.
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And what's that? Yeah, but it doesn't give us the account.
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That's his conversation with Jesus in John 20 or 21.
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But it doesn't say when it happened or how it happened or anything like that.
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So it's not, the account itself is not given.
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Neither his death nor Paul's death is accounted.
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We believe he was crucified.
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We believe Paul was beheaded.
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But neither one is, like the story of Acts ends with Paul in prison.
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By that time, Peter may have already been killed.
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I don't think he was by that time because it was not written about.
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I think if he had been killed by the end of Acts, it would have been included.
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But again, that's my opinion.
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I have no reason to, if somebody proved me wrong, I wouldn't argue about it.
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Sorry, I'm holding my back, guys.
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I really am starting to feel a little sore here.
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So anyhow, all that, again, I wasn't trying to prove anybody smart or foolish.
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I was saying, if you go to a New Testament class at Yale, that's the first test they make you take.
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And the whole point is to say, yeah, I don't really know the Bible.
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It's not true.
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But there are things that we think we know that we don't know.
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There are things that we become tradition, that we just sort of like the three wise men thing.
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A lot of people, that's just tradition, right? I've seen, in fact, some, you know, the Roman Catholic Church named the three wise men.
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Like they had like Malachi and Balthazar, Malachi, they're like three names, right? So tradition becomes a doctrine, and doctrine becomes dogma, right? But it's not biblical.
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So we want our teaching to be biblical.
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Another thing, what I find when I talk to people about New Testament studies, is when we talk about the certain books with which we're familiar, the familiarity will cause them to say, yeah, I know that.
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But then there's other things that they don't know.
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An example, 1 Corinthians.
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1 Corinthians has one of the greatest expressions of love in the whole Bible.
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Love is patient and kind, it does not envy or boast, does not keep a record of wrongs, right? Best expression of love in the whole Bible is 1 Corinthians 13.
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However, 1 Corinthians also contains one of the only references to divorce.
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There's only three New Testament books that specifically address the subject of divorce.
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Matthew, well, the Gospels, I would say, Jesus' references to divorce, Matthew 19, Matthew 6, and a few other places.
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But 1 Corinthians, Paul's whole chapter seven is about marriage and divorce and getting married.
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People don't think about that, but that's one of the only other places that we have any reference to marriage and divorce.
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And so when I say, what's 1 Corinthians about? Oh, it's the love chapter and the love this.
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Yeah, it's also the only book that addresses outside of the Gospels is the subject of divorce.
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So it's interesting that we often forget there's these other things.
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Like how many books of the Bible mention speaking in tongues? Actually three.
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Three books of the Bible mention speaking in tongues.
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Acts references the speaking in tongues that happened in the early church.
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1 Corinthians mentions speaking.
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I appreciate it, brother.
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I might eventually take you up on it.
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Thank you, I'll set it right here.
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So we have Acts and then we have 1 Corinthians and Mark.
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But the Mark passage is kind of debatable because it's at the end portion and I'm not sure that that's what Jesus is referring to.
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He talks about speaking in tongues, but I'm not sure he's referencing specifically what happened in the book of Acts.
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I'm just saying the Mark passage is debatable as to whether or not that's what Jesus is talking about.
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But so again, there's only two books that talk.
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Well, there's only one book outside of the Gospels that talks about divorce, 1 Corinthians.
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And there's only three books that talk about speaking in tongues.
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It's funny how we think we know, you know, oh, it's all over.
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No, there's only these like isolated passages.
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And understanding that just simply helps us understand that each of the New Testament books is being written to a specific people about a specific circumstance.
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1 Corinthians is all about answering the questions that Paul was given by a church that's experiencing problems.
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That's why he keeps saying over and over in 1 Corinthians, about which you wrote, I say this, because he's received a letter that we don't have.
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We don't have the letter written to Paul we have the response.
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So we have to assume what the questions were based upon the response.
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And so all of that is part and parcel of how we come up with our interpretation of what the book is saying.
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So by the end of this course, my hope is that you'll have a better understanding of the structure, the history, and the theology of the books that make up the New Testament.
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Now, I did walk in without my handouts.
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So I hate to ask.
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On the desktop corner, there's two handouts.
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One of them is the syllabus and the other one is the, you'll see it.
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It's a two-sided handout.
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Thank you, Mike.
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Did anybody here not get a copy of the syllabus before tonight? Did you guys get a copy? You didn't get a copy.
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Ms.
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Penny didn't get a copy.
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Okay.
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I'm gonna give you a copy tonight.
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We're gonna go over it very quickly just so you understand what's expected throughout the next eight weeks.
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Okay, if you would, Brother Mike.
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Actually, if you don't mind, hand a book out and everybody will get a copy of each.
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Yeah, grab one, pass it on.
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And...
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You got the syllabus? Is that what you got? Can I have one? Okay.
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So on the syllabus, we don't have to read the whole first cover.
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Please read that on your own time, but turn it over to the back.
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Under course schedule, you'll notice there's eight classes.
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Each class, there's gonna be the content that we cover, but then under the assignment due.
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Now, I apologize that some of you did not get the syllabus before tonight.
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So please disregard that.
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I do try to get people to read before this class the introduction to the New Testament, but since you didn't get the syllabus, obviously you don't know that.
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But if you have read it, great.
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If you have not read it, please add that to next week's reading.
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So you'll read the introduction to the New Testament and the introduction to the Gospels.
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Both of them are in the Believer's Bible Commentary, which you should all have a copy of.
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And so that is your homework.
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Now, at the end of the course, we will go over your final paper, which I got a paper I need to give.
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Corey, I've got yours graded, and I'll give it to you at the end of class, your certificate for the last course, okay? All right, so that is the syllabus.
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Does anybody have any, I know you just got a copy, but does anybody have any questions about it? Okay.
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You can see how it goes.
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What we're gonna do this week is on Canon and Chronology.
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Next week, we're gonna look at the Synoptic Gospels.
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Week three, we look at the Autopic Gospel, which is John.
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We do a whole class on John.
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Then we look at the History Book of the New Testament.
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That's Acts.
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We do a whole class on Acts.
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Then we do two weeks on Paul's Epistles.
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We look at Romans through Colossians, and then we look at 1 Thessalonians through Philemon.
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And then we do a week on the General Epistles.
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And then we do one week on the Revelation, the Apocalypse.
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So that's the outline of the course.
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So let's go tonight to the subject at hand, the New Testament, Canon and Chronology.
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When we talk about the word Canon, what is this referring to? What do we mean when we say Canon? Come on, Daisy, you wanna say it? Okay.
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Well, the word Canon comes from the word that means a measuring rod, or like a measuring stick, something that makes a standard.
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So it's the word Canon refers to the standard.
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And when we refer to the Canon, we are primarily referring to the books of the New Testament those which are in the Canon.
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I'll give you a quick quote from F.F.
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Bruce.
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F.F.
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Bruce was a scholar.
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And I know that's hard for you to read, so I'll read it to you, because it's kind of distance away.
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It says, when we speak of the Canon of Scripture, the word Canon has a simple meaning.
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It means the list of books contained in Scripture.
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The list of books recognized as worthy to be included in the sacred writings of a worshiping community.
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In a Christian context, we might define the word as the list of the writings acknowledged by the church as documents of divine revelation.
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The first application of this term to the Scriptures is attributed to Athanasius in AD 367.
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So that was the first time the term Canon was used to refer to the Scriptures.
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Now, very quickly, I wanna take a step back and talk for a moment about the categories of the New Testament, because we talked about chronology and dating.
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The New Testament books are ordered in a way that is not chronological.
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So here's the way the New Testament books are ordered.
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The first, we have the history books.
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The first set of history books are the Synoptic Gospels.
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That is Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
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The next history book we have is the Autopic Gospel, and that is the book of John.
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And later in the course, I'll explain Synoptic versus Autopic and why we use that term.
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And then finally, we have the book of Acts, and that rounds out the history.
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So just a quick distinguishing mark.
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How long of the history does the Old Testament cover? Well, if you think it starts with creation and goes all the way to the time of Christ, if we think the earth is somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000 years old, if we take a young earth approach, then the Old Testament covers a 4,000 to 6,000 year period of time.
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However, it wasn't written during that time, it covers that time.
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It's actually written from the time of Moses to the time of Malachi, which would have covered about an 1,100 year period.
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All right, so the time of writing would be from Moses to Malachi, that would have been about 1,100 years.
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Now let's compare that to the New Testament, and it's not even really, it's kind of funny, it's not even really to be compared.
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What was the writing of the New Testament? Anyone want to take a stab at it? What'd you say? Not even, not even 70 years.
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If the first books of the New Testament were written in 49, let's say even 48, it goes as early as 48.
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If the first books of the New Testament are written around 48, and depending on your particular historical slash theological bent, some people believe that the books of the New Testament were written all the way into the 80s.
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I believe they stopped writing before AD 70, but let's just say at the longest, 85, some people will put 2nd and 3rd John in Revelation toward that long end.
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Let's just say, giving it, let's give it the longest benefit of the doubt.
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So let's say 85.
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That puts, you know, I'm bad at math, but I think that's less than 40 years, right? It's 37? Is that right? 37, am I right? Okay, I'm asking you, I'm literally not pronouncing, that was, there was a question mark on the end of that sentence.
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It's 85 minus 48, 37? Okay, thank you.
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All right, so at the longest, it's 37 years, but if we took that down to 70, which is the dating I believe to AD 70, 48 to 70 puts it in at 22 years.
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So it could be as low as 22 years.
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I just find that fascinating, that the Old Testament covers a span of writing of 1,100 years, but the New Testament covers a span of writing of just a couple of decades, at the most, four decades.
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And if you look at the sheet that you received, which is this sheet, you'll see the order of the New Testament books.
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Now, this is not the order they're in in the Bible.
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This is the order that we believe that they were written in.
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Now, I will grant you that there's some debate about this.
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Therefore, if you disagree with me, you have every right to be wrong.
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Now, this is actually taken from Doug Mu.
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By the way, one of the books that I recommend for this course outside of your textbook is Introduction to the New Testament by Carson and Mu.
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It's a small book, and it gives you an introduction to each of the New Testament books.
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It's very well written, and it's very easy to read.
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Well, in that textbook, they give this basic outline of the New Testament writings.
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And what's the first book? James.
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Now, let's talk about why that makes sense.
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Where is James in the history of the New Testament? No, not in the line of the New Testament.
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Where's James the man? He's in, huh? He's a half-brother of the Lord, but where's he stationed? Where's he functioning out of? He's Jerusalem, right? He's a pastor of the church in Jerusalem.
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He's present during the Acts 15 council where they come together to discuss circumcision and that.
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So he's active in the early church.
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And he is, while he was not an apostle in the sense of one of the 11, one of the men who walked with Christ, one of the 12, if you count Judas, but he was the Lord's half-brother, and he was very important functioning in the early church.
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It makes sense that his writing would come early.
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And honestly, what does the book of James teach us from a practical perspective? What does James teach us? New Testament proverbs.
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That's right.
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It teaches us about how to walk the Christian walk.
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It's very much about the wisdom for our walk for a New Testament believer.
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And doesn't that make sense that that would be one of the things that an early church would need? A manual for how to live, how to function, how to do the things that are commensurate with walking the Christian walk, right? Now, the next book on your list is what book? Galatians.
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What's Galatians about? Galatians is about a group of churches which were in the Southern region, which we call now Turkey, which is Asian minor.
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That Southern region, there were churches, Lystra, Iconium, Derby, those churches we read about in Acts 13.
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Those churches had been infiltrated by men who were teaching a false gospel.
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And Paul writes Galatians to attack, what was you gonna say, Mike? Who was Galatians to? That's right, who has bewitched you? Jesus plus God.
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That's right.
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And we would sometimes refer to those people as the Judaizers because they were trying to apply Jewish ceremonial law to Christian living, circumcision and the like.
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And Paul writes to them and says, this is another gospel.
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And not that there is another gospel, but they've perverted the gospel, they've changed the gospel.
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So it makes sense that that one would come early.
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In fact, I believe that that tells us something about when the book was written.
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Because if that book would have been written after Acts 15 happened, it would have been unnecessary.
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That's Acts 15 solves the problem of the question of whether or not they have to be circumcised.
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So this puts Galatians as the earliest book of Paul's writings.
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So we have James and we have Paul that are the earliest New Testament writings.
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Then we get into the 50s and we start getting 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Romans, mid to late 50s, Philippians, when's the first gospel? Well, I take a little bit of an issue.
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I don't have to agree with Douglas Moo or D.A.
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Carson because I love both of them, but they're not always right, neither am I.
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But I tend to think Matthew came first, even though scholars pretty much universally disagree with me, but that's okay.
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Most New Testament scholars today argue for Markan primacy.
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That simply means Mark came first.
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Mark was first to be written.
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However, tradition, tradition, tradition, you know, like Spindler on the Roof, tradition does lean in favor of Matthew being the first.
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But you'll notice in this list that we have, Mark is listed as coming in late 50s, early 60s, and Matthew is listed as mid 60s.
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Well, remember, these are approximations.
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Nobody, nobody has a copy of the gospel of Matthew that says signed by Matthew, dated, you know, August 1st, year 60, you know, nobody has that.
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So all of these are approximations.
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Could Matthew have come before Mark? Yes.
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What are the reasons for Markan primacy? What's the reason for those arguments? Primarily, there is obvious relationship between Mark and Matthew.
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There's obvious relationship between Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
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That's why we call them synoptic.
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Synoptic means coming from the same viewpoint.
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They're synoptic, the optic, the eye.
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Syn means being together, like synergy.
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So it means a together view, a singular view, right? Or a joined view.
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They're all coming from the same viewpoint.
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But what's interesting is Luke has so much more material.
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There's more in the gospel of Luke than any of the other gospels.
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Luke has so many things like the Good Samaritan, all those parables.
30:51
They're not in any of the other gospels.
30:53
They're only in the gospel of Luke.
30:54
So Luke, I do believe Luke is the third because I believe he comes and he's expanding the narrative.
31:01
And he says in the beginning of Luke that he had taken the opportunity to research and to find out these things.
31:10
And it's possible that he knew about Matthew and Mark's writings.
31:14
So the question is not whether Luke came first.
31:16
I don't think Luke came first.
31:18
But the question is whether Matthew or Mark did.
31:21
Again, I'll let you decide where you wanna stand on that.
31:24
I don't think it matters at the end of the day.
31:26
Only to say this, there are some people who believe in another gospel, not another gospel like Galatians, another gospel, but they believe that there was another writing called Q.
31:41
And that Q, the reason why it's called Q is because it's an unnamed, so they just give it a letter.
31:46
And they say Q was the source of Matthew and Mark.
31:50
They both drew from Q.
31:52
I don't agree with that because there's no evidence that there was a Q source.
32:00
But I do believe this.
32:02
I believe that there was verbal tradition that was drawn from.
32:13
Because think about it.
32:15
When did Christ die? Somewhere around 30, right? Ish, somewhere around 30.
32:22
When was the first book written? 48, but that wasn't a gospel.
32:28
So when's the first gospel written according to this? Somewhere in the late 50s.
32:31
So we're looking at a 25-year period.
32:37
Don't we think that the words of Christ were already within the Christian community being spread through oral tradition? Absolutely.
32:44
So oral tradition is not a bad thing.
32:47
It was very common in the ancient world that that's how things would spread.
32:52
And so are there things in Matthew and Mark that came as a result of oral tradition? If we say that's possible, what we have to then immediately say is yes, but the writers are still writing inspired scripture.
33:07
So even if this is through oral tradition, and that's why they're so close to one another, we're still knowing that the Holy Spirit is affirming and ensuring that these are the correct sayings, that Matthew or Mark is not writing something that was just oral tradition that didn't really come from the mouth of Christ.
33:24
Does that make sense? So we're still affirming the truthfulness.
33:27
We're just saying, why are these things so similar? Because they're coming from a place of, they're coming from a body of belief.
33:38
There was a body of belief that was within the church even before the Bible, the New Testament was written.
33:44
For that 20-year period, they already believed.
33:47
In fact, I'll give you a good example.
33:48
In Philippians chapter two, Paul says, "'Have this mind among yourselves.
33:53
"'It was yours in Christ Jesus, "'who though he was in the form of God "'did not account a quality with God, "'a thing to be grasped, "'but instead he took upon the form of a bond servant, "'came in the form of man, "'and humbled himself to death, even death on a cross.'" I don't know, I'm messing that up a little bit.
34:06
Remember that portion? That is actually considered to be, it's called the Carmen Christi, which means the song of Christ.
34:13
And that particular portion of Philippians two, many people, and I am one of them, believes that that portion was actually a verbal tradition that had been used among the Christians as a song, that they had made this song of Christ about his humbling himself and becoming a man.
34:33
And because there's a lyrical nature to it, especially in the Greek language, that gives itself to that.
34:39
And so the idea is this is something that Paul is quoting as part of tradition that the church would have understood as true of Christ, because he's comparing us.
34:49
He's saying, have this mind in you, as is in Christ Jesus, or though he was in the form of God and not account of quality with God, a thing to be grasped, but instead took the form of a bond servant.
34:58
So the idea that oral tradition existed in the early church should not bother us.
35:03
What we need to make sure, though, we don't allow that to make us think that the Bible is somehow corrupted by oral tradition.
35:11
It's not.
35:12
God uses all kinds of things and can ensure the accuracy of those things by the power of his spirit.
35:18
So hope that was not too confusing.
35:22
All right, so moving along, we have the rest of Paul's writings all the way down to Luke is in mid 60s.
35:34
And then we have down through the later books, Hebrews, Jude, Revelation are all in the late 60s.
35:40
And again, this says John and the epistles of John even go into the 90s.
35:45
I disagree with that.
35:46
And I put that note at the bottom.
35:48
I said, some argue that all the New Testament was written prior to 80, 70.
35:51
That's my argument.
35:52
I do believe that.
35:55
One evidence for earlier dating is that none mentioned the cataclysmic events surrounding the fall of Jerusalem.
35:59
The fact that none of the New Testament books mentioned the fall of Jerusalem is one of my best arguments, at least one that convinces me that the New Testament was finished before that happened.
36:10
All right, so this is the New Testament categories.
36:15
This is the New Testament chronology.
36:18
And the categories are history, epistolary and apocalyptic.
36:25
All right, so let's move, please.
36:32
Are you basically saying that? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
36:44
I don't, no, no, I think that first John, second John, third John are written in that order.
36:51
I just think all of them are written before 87.
36:54
Second and third John, I preached on this recently, second and third John show a relationship to one another.
37:01
It's possible they were written before first John, but I think not.
37:04
I think it was first John, second John, third John.
37:06
I think.
37:10
Oh, I don't know.
37:12
I just think they were written before 80, 70.
37:14
I think Revelation's the last thing John wrote, particularly because I believe there's an intentional closing of the canon at the end of his writing.
37:21
At the end of John's revelation, or the revelation given to John, he says that no man has to add anything to this book or take anything away.
37:29
Now, in strict context, that's just talking about Revelation.
37:33
But if that is the last book of the canon that is given by God's revelation, it's also the closing of the Bible, meaning there's no more Revelation coming, there's no more books coming.
37:45
So people who say, well, God's giving Revelation today, I take issue with that.
37:50
I say, no, I think God clearly closed the canon because what is the book of Revelation about? It's about the end.
37:56
And so there's nothing more that we need.
37:59
We've got the revelation of Jesus Christ, we've got the epistles of Paul and the other apostles, and we have the final book, which tells us what's gonna happen when it's all over.
38:07
There's no more needed.
38:09
And he closes it with don't add anything to this book.
38:11
And I think that would tell me Revelation came after his other writings.
38:17
Okay.
38:20
Now, I wanna move on because we've talked about chronology, we've talked about dating.
38:28
Any questions about that, any of the dating or chronology there? Okay.
38:34
Well, now I wanna move to the subject of canon.
38:38
And I know we already looked at the quote from F.F.
38:42
Bruce, but I wanna talk a little bit more about why this subject is important.
38:49
Because there are those who argue that we have missing books.
39:03
How many of you have ever heard that? There's missing books in the Bible, right? And it's almost always some random apostles book.
39:13
Like what is the most popular book that people argue should be in the Bible? I can't hear you, Corey.
39:22
I didn't hear what you said.
39:23
It's the book of Enoch.
39:24
Not the book of Enoch.
39:26
However, people make the argument from Jude that the book of Enoch should be there, but that's not the one that people typically argue in the New Testament.
39:36
The New Testament book that is often argued to be the one that should be there that isn't is the gospel of Thomas.
39:50
So I'm assuming that everyone in this class affirms the 27 books of the New Testament, amen? I'm assuming that none of you came in to argue for the canonicity of the gospel of Thomas.
40:03
However, there are those who believe that there are missing books.
40:08
And if you ask them, well, which ones are missing? Primarily the first one they'll say is the gospel of Thomas.
40:13
Now you might also hear them talk about the gospel of Mary Magdalene or the gospel of Judas, or you may hear them talk about other books like the epistle of Barnabas and things like that.
40:25
And you have to be able to answer the question, why this and not that? Why these books and not those books? And that's the question of canon.
40:35
And I wanna say this as nicely as I can.
40:38
Most Christians have no idea why the books that are there are there and why the books that ain't there ain't there.
40:44
And if you ask them, they typically give a substandard answer.
40:50
It just is what it is, man.
40:51
It's where we're at.
40:52
Because most people don't even think to ask that question until somebody challenges them.
40:59
And then when somebody challenges them, they become like the fish, you know, well, blah, blah, blah, blah.
41:04
I don't know.
41:07
So understanding canon and canonicity is very important.
41:13
But what we need to understand, what most people say is they say, well, the reason why we take the books that we take is because they were written by apostles.
41:24
That ain't true.
41:26
How many books were written by apostles? Well, Paul was an apostle.
41:32
So we can say his writings.
41:34
But what do we do with Hebrews? We don't know if Paul wrote Hebrews or not.
41:36
Some people believe he did.
41:37
Some people believe he didn't.
41:38
Is that what I'm saying? If you think Paul wrote Hebrews, that kind of eliminates that issue.
41:43
James wasn't an apostle though.
41:44
He was a little a apostle, but he wasn't one of the 12, right? Luke was an apostle.
41:50
Possibly wasn't even Jewish, right? So I mean, he possibly was Gentile.
41:55
So we have the question.
41:58
Now, another argument is, well, they had the authority of the apostles.
42:02
Could you say, well, Luke was Paul's associate.
42:04
So it's Paul's apostolic authority.
42:08
And then you say, well, Mark wasn't an apostle, but he was Peter's associate.
42:12
So it has Peter's apostolic authority.
42:16
Now, I think that's a better argument, but it still doesn't solve the problem.
42:22
Because the epistle of Barnabas was written by Barnabas.
42:25
And who was Barnabas? He was Paul's associate.
42:27
So why don't we have that? Now, books like Thomas are a little easier because it is very clear that Thomas didn't write Thomas.
42:39
Well, he would have been dead by the time it was written, most likely, even though there are some people who do try to date it early, and I think they have biases for doing so.
42:46
But the issue with Thomas is not so much the dating of Thomas as it is the content of Thomas.
42:53
All you really need to do to discount the gospel of Thomas is read it.
42:59
First of all, it's not even a gospel.
43:01
To call it a gospel in comparison to Mark or Luke or Matthew is a joke.
43:06
It has nothing in common with the gospels.
43:09
It does not tell a consistent, compelling narrative.
43:14
And it does say things that are absolutely foreign to the gospel, such as one of the things that Jesus says in the gospel of Thomas is in talking to Peter, Peter says something about Mary Magdalene and says, can she be saved? And Jesus says, yes, a woman can be saved as long as she becomes a man.
43:33
That's quoted directly from the gospel of Thomas.
43:36
Yeah, so ladies, just, you know what you gotta do.
43:40
You gotta become a man.
43:42
It's ridiculous.
43:43
There's also a portion, I think it's in the gospel of Thomas, but I may be wrong on this one.
43:47
One of these extra gospels has Jesus coming out of the tomb.
43:52
Which we would all say, okay, he came out of the tomb, but also coming out of the tomb with him was the cross, which stood up on its own and walked out and talked.
44:02
And that's in this narrative as well.
44:04
So the point that I'm making is if all one really need do is read these gospels and you will find they do not have a quality that is on the same standard as the true, the four gospels.
44:19
So the idea that these gospels are to be included, most people who say that have not read them.
44:25
They just have heard of them.
44:27
And so that's one thing.
44:29
But something else, this is the more compelling.
44:34
I wanna ask this question, does God know what he wrote? Now the answer to that is easy, but it is also compelling because my argument about the canon has always been this.
45:03
The canon argument is not as much historical as it is theological.
45:11
And you say, what do you mean? If you believe that God inspired the Bible to be written, then you would also believe that God would ensure that his people know what it is.
45:23
That's a theological argument, not a historical one.
45:26
If you believe God inspired books to be written, then you must also in a sense believe that he would ensure his people know what he wrote.
45:36
So the question is, does God know what he wrote? Absolutely, and has there been a consistent understanding of what God has written within the Christian community since the early times? And the answer is yes, and I wanna show you this.
45:53
This is important.
45:56
This is called the Moratorium Canon.
45:59
This is the earliest, this is actually a picture of it.
46:02
This is the earliest list of New Testament books that we have in existence.
46:08
Now, there may be lists that go back further, but this is the earliest one we possess, because again, things like this buried in the sands of the desert don't last a long time.
46:17
It's amazing that we have anything at all from that time period, but we do.
46:21
This was written around AD 180, so that would have been about 100 years after the time of the apostles.
46:29
You know, the apostles, the last apostle lived into the 90s, that would have been John, so about 80 years after his life.
46:35
This moratorium fragment includes a list of the New Testament books, and guess how many gospels it includes? Four.
46:46
Guess what other books it includes? Acts.
46:50
Guess what other books it includes? Paul's writings.
46:55
In fact, it includes 22 of the 27 books that we now possess and call the New Testament.
47:01
You say, well, what about the other books? Well, there were some books that were not universally accepted within the early church and did take time.
47:09
One of those books was the book of Revelation, and it did take time before the church recognized this had in fact been written by John.
47:17
It had in fact was understood and recognized by the early church as coming from God, and there were others as well.
47:24
Hebrews, there was debate about who wrote it.
47:28
Even some of the smaller epistles, like 2 and 3 John, and Philemon.
47:31
Well, Philemon, not so much because it was within the writings of Paul.
47:34
Paul's writings were actually the very first set of books that were bound together and sent out.
47:41
According to historical studies, the very first grouping of books that was bound together and sent out was called the Pauline Corpus.
47:48
It was Paul's writings.
47:49
And then the gospels were bound together and sent out.
47:51
Eventually, they all came together.
47:54
But again, the idea of a Bible the way we have it, that is something that came about over time.
48:03
So the Moratorium Canon, though, what it provides to us is it provides to us probably the key piece of evidence, and that is this one, that only four gospels were recognized even in the early church.
48:16
Nobody was recognized in the Gospel of Thomas.
48:18
Nobody, and by the way, Mary Magdalene's gospel, probably in the 300s.
48:22
The Gospel of Judas, probably in the 200s, 300s.
48:24
The idea, they weren't even around at this time.
48:27
They were not even in existence.
48:29
So the idea that those should be included in the New Testament is not even up for discussion.
48:38
So when we talk about canon, we're talking about does God know what he wrote? And if God knows what he wrote, then we can be confident that he would want his people to know.
48:49
And so that is why we can feel confident that what we have is what he wrote.
48:54
Now, if you want to dive deeper into this, there are a couple books I would recommend.
49:01
Michael Kruger is the leading scholar on this subject in the world today.
49:06
He is alive, he is kicking, he is still out there.
49:10
He actually just taught at the last Ligonier Conference that they had in Orlando.
49:13
I wish I could have gone, because he is just a brilliant dude.
49:18
Michael Kruger wrote a couple of books.
49:21
He wrote Canon Revisited and, oh, goodness.
49:27
I have them on my shelf.
49:28
They're actually at my house, because I've been reading back through them.
49:32
Canon Revisited and something else, I forget the name.
49:36
But these are books on how the early church recognized what God had written and how the early church.
49:43
See, the church, here's where we have the problem.
49:45
The Catholic church thinks that the church gave the Bible its authority, but that's not how it works.
49:51
The church recognizes the authority of the Bible.
49:55
It doesn't grant authority to the Bible.
49:58
The authority comes from, where does the word, what's the root word of the word authority? Author.
50:04
So where does authority come from? The author.
50:08
Who is the author? God.
50:11
The word of God gets its authority from God.
50:15
It's recognized by the church, not given by the church.
50:19
See, the problem with the Roman Catholic thought on this is the Roman Catholic believes that the church has the authority.
50:26
The church doesn't have the authority.
50:28
The church recognizes the authority which comes from God.
50:32
So Canon is a big deal.
50:34
It's an important question, and it's important for us to consider.
50:40
I wanna read you a quote.
50:41
This is from Geisler, Norm Geisler.
50:43
He's not a Calvinist.
50:45
That don't mean he's always wrong.
50:47
But he wrote a book against Calvinism, so I gave him a hard time.
50:52
Geisler and Nix, this was their book on scripture.
50:57
Inspiration indicates how the Bible received its authority.
51:00
It comes from God, inspired by God.
51:04
Canonization tells how the Bible receives its acceptance.
51:08
The church accepts it.
51:09
It recognizes it.
51:11
Doesn't give it the authority.
51:12
Authority comes from God, but the church recognizes and accepts it.
51:16
And it is one thing for God to give the scriptures their authority and quite another for men to recognize that authority.
51:20
And that's the disconnect, right? There's actually, if you wanna talk about scripture, there's a fourfold process that has to be understood.
51:30
Here's the fourfold process.
51:32
Number one is inspiration.
51:37
Two is canonization.
51:43
Three is transmission.
51:50
And four is translation.
51:54
And I do a course on how we got the New Testament.
51:57
That is not this course, but that's for, this is a portion of what I would teach in that course.
52:02
And this is basically the class.
52:05
We do a class on inspiration.
52:07
We do a class on canonization, which is similar to what we're talking about tonight.
52:11
We do a class on transmission.
52:13
What is transmission? That's what gets my car going.
52:15
No, what's transmission? How Moses to me.
52:21
As I was always, what I would say, how it got from Moses to me, right? Because it went, it was inspired by God, and then it was canonized by the church, recognized, if you wanna use that word, recognized as canon.
52:35
And then it got to me somehow.
52:37
It got transmitted down through the ages.
52:40
This is where a lot of people come in, they say, well, the Bible's been changed.
52:43
The phone game, you've heard the telephone game.
52:46
People say the Bible's been changed because this one said to this one and that one said to that one, and it's been changed over.
52:51
That's, this is where that argument comes in, is that somewhere in the transmission, there was corruption, corruption in the transmission.
53:01
And that's not true.
53:03
We have manuscripts that date all the way back to the second century.
53:08
Now they're portions of manuscripts, but they testify to the validity of what we possess today.
53:14
There are more manuscript copies, handwritten manuscript copies of the New Testament than any other work of antiquity, anything close to what we have in the New Testament.
53:26
Not even to be, I mean, it's laughable what we have in regard to like Homer's Iliad and things like that.
53:33
All of those books, there are handfuls of handwritten manuscript copies.
53:38
We have over 5,000 handwritten Greek copies of the New Testament going all the way back into the second century.
53:46
Now, many of the early manuscripts are portions, as I said, they're papyrus, they're pieces.
53:53
The earliest, earliest full manuscripts are Codex Vaticanus, Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Sinaiticus are three of them.
54:05
And they're named after either where they were found or where they are.
54:09
Vaticanus is obviously the Vatican.
54:12
But these are codices that are written on vellum, because vellum lasts longer than papyrus.
54:18
And these are full manuscripts of the Bible.
54:21
But down to the ages, I mean, we have so many that there's actually families of manuscripts.
54:26
There's the Alexandrian family, there's the Byzantine family, which produces different collections of what's called textual variations.
54:35
But the transmission of the text is an important study in how it comes to us.
54:40
But then we have the last step is translation.
54:45
That's when it goes from the original language to the language that you can speak, because I don't think any of us knows Greek or Hebrew.
54:53
So we have to be able to translate it into our language.
54:57
So all of this is simply to say, this is the process by which the Bible goes from Moses to me, or from Paul to me.
55:05
This is the steps that it has to go through.
55:09
All right, now, I wanna say one last thing about the canon.
55:15
Then we'll move on.
55:20
And this is kind of an odd thing, but I have it in my notes.
55:22
I wanna make sure I say it the way I have it in my notes.
55:26
The canon is not an object of revelation.
55:36
The canon is an artifact of revelation.
55:45
Canon is not an object of revelation, it's an artifact.
55:49
So what's the difference? There are no golden plates that were sent down from heaven that says, here's the list of the New Testament books.
56:00
There is no object of revelation that we can look to and say, here are the list.
56:05
Here's the list from Jesus.
56:06
Here's God's unbreakable list, right? But I asked the question earlier, does God know what he wrote? Does God want his people to know what he wrote? If that's the case, then the canon becomes an object, or I'm sorry, an artifact, because God wants his people to know what he wrote, and therefore, we have what he wrote, and we have the artifact or the reliable result.
56:36
Here's the best way I can give this example.
56:38
This is actually Dr.
56:38
James White's example.
56:39
I think it's very helpful.
56:41
I have written three books.
56:46
I wrote God in Three Persons.
56:49
I wrote Biblically Functioning Church, and I wrote a small book on speaking in tongues, which is no longer acceptable for print.
56:59
It wasn't that good when I wrote it, but it's worse now, because some of my positions have shifted some, so I don't offer that up for use anymore, but I did write it.
57:10
It's part of the canon of Keith.
57:12
That was the point I'm making, is as soon as I put the last period on my first book, which is God in Three Persons, as soon as I typed the last period, that book was part of the canon that I wrote.
57:26
I didn't have to make a list that says canon of Keith.
57:30
It was part of the canon of my writings because I wrote it.
57:34
When God wrote the New Testament through Paul, through Peter, through the apostles, when God had his New Testament inspired, that by nature produced a canon, because when God writes his books or has them written, a canon is produced by virtue of the fact that he wrote them.
57:53
And that's why we say the canon is an artifact, not an object.
57:58
God didn't send us a list, but he gave us the books, and the books comprise the list, so the list becomes an artifact.
58:05
Does that make sense? Hopefully that brings everything into clarity.
58:11
All right.
58:12
Now, I do wanna very quickly, before we get to this part, on your handout that I gave you, on the back of it, you will see the New Testament antilogomena, I always have a hard time with this word, antilogomena, apocrypha, and pseudepigrapha.
58:31
Now, what those are is these are books that are, these are the books that were up for debate regarding the early church.
58:42
So homologomena are books that were accepted by all, antilogomena are books that were disputed by some, pseudepigrapha are books that were rejected by all, and apocrypha are books that were accepted by some.
58:54
So let's just very quickly, the homologomena, ha, I think I'm saying that, homologomena, the homologomena consists of 20 of the 27 books.
59:07
There were never questions about them.
59:09
The antilogomena are books where there were questions about, and those were Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 John, Jude, and Revelation.
59:18
The pseudepigrapha are books that do not have the right name.
59:22
I already mentioned the Gospel of Thomas.
59:25
The Gospel of Thomas, early 2nd century, was not written by Thomas, and it includes some very absurd things.
59:34
The Gospel of the Ebionites, which was 2nd century, was a Jewish sect of Christians who stressed the law of Moses, most likely a Judaistic source, or a Judaizing source.
59:46
And then the Gospel of Peter, again, was not written by Peter.
59:51
It was a discetic work, which denied the humanity of Christ.
59:55
And then there were apocryphal books.
59:57
Now, what I mean by apocryphal, well, those are books that some people thought were scripture, but were never universally accepted, sort of like the Old Testament apocrypha.
01:00:07
There are books that some did.
01:00:09
Like the Epistle of Barnabas, this is quoted as scripture by Origen and Clement.
01:00:19
It parallels Hebrews, but it is allegorical and mystical in nature, and most don't believe it was scripture, and obviously it wasn't, because it wasn't included.
01:00:29
The Shepherd of Hermas, probably the most popular of the non-canonical books, an allegory of Jesus as a shepherd.
01:00:38
The Didache, how many of you ever read the Didache? All right, here's your homework.
01:00:45
Go home and read the Didache.
01:00:46
The Didache is my favorite extra biblical New Testament writing, because what it was was a handbook for early church practice.
01:00:57
And one of my favorite parts is when it talks about baptism, because this is what it says about baptism.
01:01:04
This helps me with my Presbyterian brethren, because it says that when a person was baptized, they were to be baptized after having fasted and prayed, which you don't do with an infant, so you see where I'm going with the whole Presbyterian thing, but also that they were to be baptized in running water if it were available, which means immersed in a spring or a river that's flowing, not poured.
01:01:37
It does, however, say pouring is acceptable if a suitable water source is not available, which means that even in the early church, if they had people who could not be put into the water, they would allow pouring for a secondary means, but it wasn't the primary means.
01:01:56
My point is the Didache supports the Baptists, and I'll be a Baptist, so I can...
01:02:04
But here's the thing, when you read some of those extra biblical...
01:02:09
The Didache goes back, the word Didache means the teaching of the 12, and it goes back to the early church, and it was a manual of church practice within the early church.
01:02:21
I think that's hugely valuable.
01:02:23
Now, I don't think it's the Bible, it wasn't intended to be part of the Bible, but I mean, honestly, you can learn a lot about our church by reading the Constitution.
01:02:32
Caleb, you took our new membership class today, right? You learn a lot about our church by reading the Constitution.
01:02:36
So I have a question about that.
01:02:38
Is there any way that that could have been like an early confession of sorts? It's less of a confession and more of a book of church order.
01:02:45
They do make some statements about doctrine, but it's much more about how to practice, practice what they believe.
01:02:51
Like they have sections in there on how to give money to traveling ministers.
01:02:56
There's all kinds of things in the Didache about how to do things, and like what to do and what not to do.
01:03:01
So it's much more like a church order book.
01:03:03
So it's like a resource book.
01:03:06
Yeah, I mean, but it was...
01:03:09
Yeah, if you think of like in the Anglican church, they have the book of church order, and we have our confession, but there's also like our Constitution.
01:03:19
It tells how the church is to function.
01:03:21
That's the way I look at the Didache.
01:03:22
But it's just so fascinating to be reading a document that's 2,000 years old and know that this was used within the early church as a practice.
01:03:31
Like I said, I still today, when I baptize someone, I ask that they fast with me.
01:03:37
I always do.
01:03:38
If I'm gonna baptize somebody on the week before we baptize, I ask them to fast.
01:03:43
And it's only the reason I do that is because that goes back to the Didache, the early church, and it was a part of the practice before they would baptize someone, they would fast and pray.
01:03:54
And so it's not a have to.
01:03:56
If somebody says, I don't want to, or I can't, it's I don't make a big deal out of it.
01:04:01
But I do it because I like that tie to that old tradition.
01:04:07
So anyway, there's some other ones there.
01:04:09
There's the Epistle of Polycarp.
01:04:10
There's the Gospel of the Hebrews.
01:04:13
Again, any one of these, feel free to look up and read, but you will definitely notice a distinction between them and the canonical Gospels.
01:04:21
All right.
01:04:23
So now we're gonna change our attention for a bit.
01:04:27
We're gonna look at the continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament.
01:04:34
And this will be our last subject for today.
01:04:39
Continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament.
01:04:42
When I say continuity, I mean, continuity and discontinuity.
01:04:48
How are they similar? How are they different? Looking at number one, let's look at the differences between the Old Testament and the New Testament.
01:04:58
Old Testament was written over 1500 years.
01:05:01
Now we said earlier 1100.
01:05:02
If you include the intertestamental period, it's 1500.
01:05:05
That's why that's that one.
01:05:07
So 1500 years, New Testament is written within 50 years or less, as we talked about.
01:05:12
The Old Testament makes up 77% of our Bible.
01:05:18
The New Testament only makes up 23%.
01:05:21
The Old Testament is written in Hebrew and some in Aramaic.
01:05:28
The New Testament is written in Greek.
01:05:31
Now, I do wanna make a mention about that.
01:05:35
There are those who argue that some of the New Testament books were originally written in Hebrew.
01:05:44
In fact, there is a man by the name of Dave Hunt.
01:05:50
Dave Hunt was a, he's passed on now, but he was sort of an anti-Calvinist guy.
01:05:59
Him and Dr.
01:06:00
James White wrote a book debating Calvinism and White took the pro position and Dave Hunt took the con position.
01:06:09
But in that book, he argues for a Hebrew original of Acts.
01:06:14
And there are those who believe there was a Hebrew original of Matthew and that Matthew's gospel is a translation into Greek from Hebrew.
01:06:22
There is no evidence of that anywhere, but it is an argument that some scholars make that I don't think holds any water at all.
01:06:30
Well, why'd you mention it? Because you may hear it one day.
01:06:34
If somebody says, well, because this is what you'll hear, you'll hear people say, you can't quote the New Testament in Greek because it was originally in Hebrew and they translated it into Greek.
01:06:42
There's no evidence of that whatsoever.
01:06:46
There has never been a manuscript of the New Testament that's been found that is in any other language other than Greek or a translation of the Greek, such as in Syriac or Coptic, which is Egyptian, that are translations of the Greek.
01:07:03
There's never been found a Hebrew original of any of the New Testament books.
01:07:08
The New Testament was written exclusively in Greek.
01:07:10
Why? That was the common language.
01:07:14
It was intended to go to as wide an audience as possible.
01:07:18
And even the Hebrew people, Jewish people, many of them understood Greek to be able to do commerce.
01:07:27
All right, the last one.
01:07:28
Old Testament focuses on physical Israel.
01:07:30
The New Testament focuses on spiritual Israel.
01:07:33
Y'all, we could argue that some because some people would say, well, how do you define spiritual Israel? The Old Testament also had spiritual Israel.
01:07:40
I'm just saying in general, the Old Testament is focused on the physical promises given to Abraham and his descendants, pointing forward to the final promise which comes through Christ.
01:07:49
The New Testament is those promises which come to us and through them, we become spiritual sons and daughters of Abraham, spiritual Israel.
01:07:59
All right, so that's some of the discontinuity.
01:08:01
Now let's look at the continuity.
01:08:04
Both Testaments present the same God.
01:08:07
Very important.
01:08:08
We say, well, of course, why would you say that? Because there have been historically those who argue that the God of the Old Testament is different than the God of the New Testament.
01:08:19
Probably the most famous to make that argument was a man by the name of Marcion.
01:08:27
Marcion was an early Christian heretic who believed that the God of the Old Testament was a demi-urge who was a spiteful, hateful, vindictive, false God.
01:08:41
And so when he, and he was in the Christian community trying to convince the Christian community to abandon the God of the Old Testament and rather to believe in what he considered to be the God of the New Testament, which was a different God, the God of Jesus.
01:08:58
And so he saw a disconnect between the Old Testament and the New Testament and the person of God.
01:09:04
Well, the Bible clearly teaches that the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament.
01:09:08
If you have a different God in the Old Testament than the New Testament, you have, you have, you drank the wrong Kool-Aid.
01:09:16
That's the wrong direction.
01:09:19
So both testaments present the same God.
01:09:22
That's the most important piece of continuity there is, that we don't have two different gods.
01:09:27
The same God who is abounding in love and mercy in the New Testament is the same God in the Old Testament who was abounding in steadfast love and full of mercy and grace.
01:09:35
The same God of wrath of the Old Testament is the God who is the God of wrath in the New Testament.
01:09:40
Same God.
01:09:42
Number two, or letter B, both testaments maintain the grand metanarrative of scripture.
01:09:48
The grand metanarrative of scripture is creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.
01:09:53
By the way, if you're ever just trying to figure out what the whole, what is the story of the Bible, that's the story.
01:10:00
Creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.
01:10:03
Everything else falls into one of those categories.
01:10:07
Now, we are looking forward to the restoration, but we have been redeemed, so we are right there.
01:10:17
Lastly, both testaments are ultimately about Jesus.
01:10:22
Even, and we talked about this in our study of the Old Testament.
01:10:24
The Old Testament is about Jesus, the New Testament is about Jesus.
01:10:32
I wanna read a quote, but I'll put it on the screen.
01:10:37
Dr.
01:10:37
R.C.
01:10:38
Sproul, a great man.
01:10:41
He said, the key to understanding the New Testament in its fullness is to see it, or excuse me, let me start over.
01:10:49
The key to understanding the New Testament in its fullest is to see in it the fulfillment of those things that were revealed in the background of the Old Testament.
01:10:58
The Old Testament points forward in time, preparing God's people for the work of Christ in the New Testament.
01:11:04
As St.
01:11:05
Augustine said, the old is in the new revealed, the new is in the old concealed.
01:11:13
So the continuity is that the whole Bible is pointing toward one final goal, and that is the complete redemption through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
01:11:24
So that creates the continuity between the two.
01:11:28
All right, we're gonna draw to a close.
01:11:31
I didn't have y'all take a break, so we're actually ending a few minutes early.
01:11:34
But is there any questions before we draw to a close about what we talked about tonight? I know I went a little fast.
01:11:43
Yes, sir.
01:11:43
That old and new Jerusalem, is it? And did I forget that? Or does it have one born to a slave girl? Yeah, Galatians, Paul uses Sarah and Hagar as an analogy of the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, how the Old Covenant brought us into bondage, slavery, but the New Covenant sets us free.
01:12:10
And we are not of the slave woman, but of the free woman.
01:12:14
And so what Paul is doing in that passage is he is creating somewhat of an allegorical way.
01:12:22
He's not saying that Hagar and Sarah were allegories, but he's using their story as an allegory to describe those who wanna go back underneath the Old Covenant.
01:12:31
He says, if you go back underneath the Old Covenant, you're going back to slavery, and Christ has set us free.
01:12:38
Why would you go back to the yoke of slavery when Christ has set you free? That's where that analogy comes in.
01:12:45
Yeah, like the Jews sliding back to sacrifice.
01:12:49
That's right, that's exactly right.
01:12:50
They are wanting to go back to a system that couldn't save to begin with.
01:12:55
That system always did one thing.
01:12:57
It heaped up condemnation.
01:12:59
It never brought salvation.
01:13:01
It pointed towards the only one who could save, which was Christ, but it never brought salvation.
01:13:05
Remember what Hebrews says, the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin.
01:13:09
And so, yes, yeah, they're trying to go backwards.
01:13:15
Paul says, no, go forward.
01:13:19
Anyone else? That was a good question.
01:13:20
Anyone else? Yes, sir.
01:13:22
I had a question that says, we were talking about the thing.
01:13:26
I think you're right that Mark was more of an oral tradition choice from Peter.
01:13:36
Well, again, as I said, I think some of the, some of what we have in the gospels can be attributed to oral tradition, which is why I think there's so much overlap.
01:13:47
But certainly, Mark is writing from Peter's perspective.
01:13:51
So, but I don't know if I would say they're, in that it's not oral tradition, it's eyewitness testimony.
01:14:00
So, both, it's a both and, not either or.
01:14:05
Yeah, yeah.
01:14:06
It's not, we'd be wrong, but it's Mark.
01:14:08
No, no, and again, I certainly believe Mark is writing from Paul's perspective.
01:14:12
When we talk about the Synoptic Gospels next week, I'm gonna talk about Mark, and I'm gonna talk about what are some of the reasons why we believe Mark is writing from Paul's perspective.
01:14:22
One of the most interesting things about Mark is the way he telescopes things and truncates things is interesting, but he has a narrative flow that you, that is maintained throughout, and just seeing it through the eyes of Peter, because there are certain portions that are really specific to Peter would have known.
01:14:49
And so, yeah, we're gonna talk a little bit about that next week.
01:14:53
You're not gonna be here next week? Oh, it's the String Festival.
01:14:55
How many am I losing, all of you? Well, you watch the video, I guess.
01:15:01
I guess, I gotta do the class, because we gotta end this class.
01:15:04
I gotta do all eight weeks, because my wife and I are gonna go out of town in June.
01:15:09
By that point, she'll be, well, she's already great with child, but she'll be greater with child, and we wanna go enjoy some time away before she's too great to enjoy it.
01:15:25
Yes? It might be kind of a silly question, but why does one of the accounts of Judas, one of them is hanged, and then one of them is fell on a rock and split his head? We're gonna talk about, again, you won't be here next week, but we're gonna talk about the importance of harmonization next week.
01:15:44
Harmonization is when you take multiple accounts of a single story, and you try to fit those accounts together.
01:15:51
Probably the most, one of the most important ones is the narrative of the resurrection, because the narrative of the resurrection has multiple things that seem to not fit, but when you look at it from a whole and you begin to put it together, you can put together a harmony where, okay, this did work this way, and this is how it happened.
01:16:13
The same thing with Judas.
01:16:14
I think Judas did hang himself, and I think when he hung himself, I think the limb broke and he fell and he spilled out, and I think both things are true, but both things are not told in both stories, and I use this example.
01:16:28
Since you won't be here, I'll go ahead and use it.
01:16:30
I say, I'm gonna tell you a story.
01:16:34
Yesterday, I, yesterday I decided that I wanted to move all the things from one of my sheds to the other, and so I took all of the things out of my shed and I put them in the back of my truck and I drove them over to my new shed and I put them in my new shed, and I did that all afternoon yesterday, which is part of the reason why my back is hurting.
01:17:01
Now, I wanna ask the question, is that story true? It is true, but it is also incomplete because I have two old sheds and I actually cleaned out both of them, but I didn't lie to you the first time.
01:17:19
I just didn't tell you everything.
01:17:22
That's how you begin a harmony when you see that this person's telling you a portion and this person's telling you a portion and you bring the portions together to see the whole story.
01:17:31
I didn't lie to you the first time, but I didn't tell you everything.
01:17:35
That's what we see in the gospels.
01:17:37
Oftentimes, one will tell you this part and another one will tell you this part, and the goal, that's why we have more than one, so we can put them together and see the whole.
01:17:46
Yeah, I've heard people say it like a car crash.
01:17:48
Yeah, you got four guys on four corners telling you.
01:17:51
Remember different details of that car, right? And somebody else.
01:17:53
Yeah.
01:17:54
That's why sometimes stuff's in there.
01:17:56
And you know what's interesting is if you remember the Old Testament, there was a law that said every proof had to be based on two or three witnesses.
01:18:09
And how many gospels do we have? We have four, but three of them are told from the same, they tell basically the same stories.
01:18:16
We have two or three witnesses of those stories.
01:18:19
And then, of course, John comes along later and he just gives us even more information.
01:18:24
It's amazing that God affirms his own testimony on not just one witness, not just one gospel.
01:18:30
Because if we only had one gospel, we wouldn't have any of these issues of harmonization.
01:18:35
But the fact that we have four, we come with the issues of harmonization, but then we also have so much more information.
01:18:42
And it's a blessing, but it takes a little work to understand how they fit together.
01:18:48
All right, let's pray.
01:18:50
Father, I thank you for your word, and I thank you for your truth, and I pray this has been fruitful and useful for your people.
01:18:56
Lord, lead us back as soon as you can, Lord, to continue to study together, in Christ's name.
01:19:01
Amen.
01:19:03
Thank you, God.
01:19:04
Amen.
01:19:06
Amen.
01:19:08
Amen.
01:19:09
Amen.
01:19:11
Amen.