Apologetics: Catholicism 2

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Okay, so thank you all for your participation and interactions here and also some online.
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It has been quite popular of a series.
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And I did tell all the online people that I will address some of their comments online.
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They have questions or comments, their arguments. The first one I do want to address is regarding Sola Scriptura, the
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Latin word for only scripture, scripture alone. But before I do that,
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I'll pray for us and then I'll read briefly what I wrote regarding Sola Scriptura.
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The accusation is that Sola Scriptura is a man -made doctrine, but I believe it is solidly found in scripture.
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So I'll pray for us and we'll start. Father, we're grateful for the work that you're doing in us.
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And we're grateful that we have the opportunity to share the truth of your word and share
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Christ with so many people. Father, we pray that your spirit would work through us and that you would use us to clearly speak the gospel of your son,
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Jesus Christ, who died for our sin, suffering the wrath, and who rose from the dead and reigns from above.
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Help us to trust him alone. In Jesus' name, Amen. Alright, so briefly regarding the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, scripture alone.
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The doctrine of Sola Scriptura is the theological view that scripture alone is the highest authority and the highest standard for truth.
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This does not do away with the importance of church history, historical creeds, and all these creeds that helped us to know clearly the
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Trinitarian doctrine. We don't disregard that. We don't reinvent the wheels multiple times.
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We do stand on the shoulders of the giants. And faithful works by Christians.
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There are Christian books that we read even at this church together. We grow from that.
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And faithful teaching and preaching. However, scripture is higher than any of those and all of those combined.
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And they all must necessarily be under scripture. And that's because God's word cannot be treated equal to any other words.
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God's higher than human words. In Mark 7, 6 -9,
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Jesus rebukes the religious establishment for holding the traditions of the elders higher than the commandments of God.
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The Pharisees were notorious for doing that. This specifically shows there is an order of significance.
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God's commandments are higher than traditions. 2
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Peter 1 -19 tells us that, and we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention, as a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.
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What this tells us is that our experience or traditions do not trump the written prophecies and scriptures, which are more fully confirmed.
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Paul exhorts Timothy also as he is nearing death. In 2
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Timothy, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching.
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Don't stray from scripture because will itch for something more. But Timothy must stay faithful to the word.
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Lastly, the danger of placing traditions at the same level of scripture is the act of adding to scripture.
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Because if you put something else that's not found in scripture and it's at the same level as scripture, then that is adding to scripture.
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Deuteronomy 4 .2 and Revelation 22 .18 -19 warn against that.
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Scripture treats itself higher than any other form of authority.
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God's word commands us to treat it more importantly than other words.
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Sola Scriptura, although coined during the Reformation time, is, in fact, a theological view that is richly found in scripture itself.
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Apocrypha or Deutero -canonical books.
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Deutero means second, canon means the canon. So, even by calling it
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Deutero -canonical means that it's not the first canon. Apocrypha are the 14 -15 books that are added by the
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Roman Catholic Church to the Bible. And if you deny in your mortal sin, that's condemnation.
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The meaning of the
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Apocrypha is that these are the hidden things.
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These books were called Apocrypha before the Council of Trent in response to the
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Protestant Reformation. I'm not going to read over all the books that are contained in the
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Apocrypha. Most of them you probably haven't read.
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Some of them actually sound similar to the books that we have, but they're actually totally different books.
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Wisdom of Solomon is not Proverbs. Ecclesiasticus is not
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Ecclesiastes. Again, I'm not saying they're all horrible and they need to be burned.
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All I'm saying is they're Scripture. They must not be treated the same way as God's Word.
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First to Second Esdras and Prayer of Azariah are not accepted by the
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Council of Trent. What's shocking is all these books, when you add them all together, they're about two -thirds the size of the
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New Testament. That's big. Now, the
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Old Testament canon. Overwhelmingly, historians agree that the
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Apocryphal books were not included in Jewish worship. We will go over the evidence of that.
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Alright, next slide. The question is, why does this matter? Why do we have to be so strict about whether Apocrypha is in the
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Bible or not? Why not just put them in there if you want them and put them out if you don't want them? What's at stake here?
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The truth, right? What is it, David? What God wants us to know, right?
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Yeah, regarding truth, if there are things that go against what the
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Bible teaches that are found in Apocrypha, yes, the truth is at stake. And we will go over some of the things that do go against the biblical truths in the
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Bible, right? Second, David's right. What God wants us to know.
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Think about this. Paul says in 2 Timothy 3 .16, all scriptures breathe out by God, and it's for the equipping of the saints.
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Well, imagine if the two -thirds of God's word is just missing for some of us.
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We're not getting equipped if they are indeed God's word, right? So, in reality, we do want to know whether Apocrypha actually belong into the
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Bible or not, right? Imagine if the two -thirds of the
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New Testament had been missing. That's just crazy, right? Imagine all the
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Pauline epistles are gone. That's shocking, right?
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That's what's at stake here. All right, let's talk about the Old Testament.
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Next slide. Hebrew Old Testament was completed around 400 years before Christ was born.
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As in, the Son of God, God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, who's the eternal existing word of God, became flesh, right?
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When he was born, it's not when he's existed. It's actually when he became flesh, when he became man.
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But he's always existed, right? We have to go over that. And the Catholics would say, Amen, right? They believe that too, the eternality of the
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Son of God. The Hebrew Old Testament does not contain any of the
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Apocryphal books, right? The Hebrew Old Testament does not contain any of the
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Apocryphal books. That's important. Yeah.
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All right, let's go over the next slide, the Septuagint. Why do I want to go over the
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Septuagint? It's also written as LXX. That's the Roman numeral for 70.
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The reason why it's called 70 is because in the second century BC, so around 100 years before Christ's birth, incarnation, about 70
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Jewish scholars gathered in Egypt to translate the Old Testament into Greek so that it is more accessible.
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The Septuagint contains 12 Apocryphal books. Notice that it's not even fully all that the
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Catholic Church has. And in fact, not all copies of the
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Septuagint that we have contain the same books of the
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Apocrypha. So, they differ copy per copy.
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So, if I pick up a Septuagint scroll from one place and the another, they might not agree on what belongs in it.
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Which means there are no general consensus as to what belongs in the
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Bible, if we look at the Septuagint alone. Although it was popular during Christ's time, the
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Jews living in Israel never accepted the
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Apocryphal traditions nor additions. I will tell you that the
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New Testament authors do quote from the Septuagint. They do.
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Often. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they translate the Old Testament themselves.
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The Apostle John is a great example. He does that when he says, fullness of grace and truth when talking about Jesus.
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That's his translation. That's not from the Septuagint. And it goes back to Exodus 34 when
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God reveals himself abounding in steadfast love and truth. But a good example is
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Matthew 1 when Matthew quotes from Isaiah, the virgin shall give birth.
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That's from the Septuagint. The word virgin is specifically in the Septuagint while it's young woman in the
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Hebrew text. So, I'm not bashing the Septuagint. All I'm saying is the
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Septuagint was not accepted as books of worship by the Jews in the synagogues or the temple in the first century.
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And that's going to be crucial. And I would say the reason why the New Testament authors sometimes quote from the
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Septuagint would be the ease of access. Because what language was the New Testament written in?
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Greek. Why do the work twice? Right? Just use the translation that's existing.
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I speak Korean. Not that I'm so good that I would translate it into Korean. But if I were to speak to someone of the gospel who only speaks
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Korean, I probably won't be opening the Greek text to translate it into Korean.
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Although that's possible, and it would be a lot of work, I probably would just grab a
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Korean Bible and flip to the page that I need to quote from. Now, let's talk about the
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Old Testament that the Protestants have. So, we follow scripture.
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There are 39 books of the Old Testament. And the reason why
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I say we follow the scripture is because Romans 3 .2 said so. I will read it.
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Much and every way to begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.
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What are the oracles of God? Scripture. What do the Jews hold as scripture?
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That's what we need to be asking. What do the Jews hold as authoritative, inspired word of God?
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And if you buy one of the Jewish Bibles, Tanakh, Torah, Nevi 'im,
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Ketuvim, which is the law, the prophets, and the writings, it's a thick book, right?
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You'll see all 39 books of the Old Testament that we have. In a slightly different order when you get to the prophets, but still, they're all there.
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So, what does that mean? We're actually going with what the Jews were entrusted with. Because, what?
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Why do we do that? Because scripture said so.
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And scripture is our highest authority. It would be actually troubling to go against what
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God's word says to include something that's not in God's word.
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So, we're actually following the Bible when we have the 39 books, not more than 39 or less.
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Now, here are the arguments against the Apocrypha. Next slide. Scriptural.
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Here's the scriptural argument. I think whenever possible, the scriptural argument takes the highest authority.
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That's where we need to go first. The New Testament has about 260 direct quotations.
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What that means is direct quotations word for word of the Old Testament. And many times it will say, scripture said, or so that the scripture may be fulfilled.
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You'll see a lot of that, especially in the gospel according to Matthew and also the book of Hebrews.
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And that's because those two books were mainly written for Jewish Christians, right?
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Allusions are, it alludes to it. It refers to it. It takes a concept instead of quoting a word for word, it takes a concept and alludes to it.
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A great example would be anytime you see Jesus saying like, I'm the shepherd, the good shepherd, that alludes to the
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Old Testament in Ezekiel, right? Uh, Ezekiel, the Lord is the good shepherd.
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The Lord will gather his people back, uh, along with the David King, right?
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That's an illusion or the sacrificial lamb or the
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Passover lamb. That's an allusion to the Passover lamb, right? Um, not a single of them is from the
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Apocrypha. That's, that's important. This is important, right? Isn't that striking a book?
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I mean, or a collection of books, the size of the two thirds of the New Testament, not single one of them is quoted by the
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New Testament authors. And remember the New Testament authors are majority Jews. Maybe Luke wasn't,
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I'm not sure, but then he could have been Hellenistic Jew, right? It could have been, uh, like Greek Jew, right?
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I, it's hard to know. I don't have his DNA. Uh, but, but most of them are
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Jewish. So the, the New Testament authors had no problem quoting from, in fact, uh, a lot of the
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Old Testament books yet they don't quote from the Apocrypha. Uh, and, and Christ himself says the scriptures cannot be broken in John 1035.
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And the scriptures he's thinking of is what the Old Testament. So you can't break that.
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Now the New Testament authors do quote from the Septuagint, but not the Apocrypha.
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That's important. And again, just because they quote from the Septuagint doesn't mean they're accepting every part that the
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Septuagint may hold. We don't even know what their copies of Septuagint held because they're all different in terms of how many books of the
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Apocrypha are actually there. So we can't even actually say that yes, all 14 through 15
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Apocrypha books were there. You can't say that. All right. Catholic rebuttal.
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Uh, so, uh, I mean, I, I posted that like online and people, you know, instead of writing out their arguments, they give me links, you know, and that's troublesome, but I, I clicked on the link to like read it.
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Right. I do want to know what they say. There were a whole bunch of New Testament verses that they claim that are quoting the
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Apocrypha. So I looked at some, and I just picked some that are just like, what is the, you're not even reading the
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Apocrypha correctly. If you're saying that's from the Apocrypha. So one claim is that Matthew 2, 16, when
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King Herod slayed all the babies of Bethlehem, right. They're saying it was prophesied in wisdom 711, the wisdom of Solomon, which is not
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Proverbs. Right. So I go to wisdom 711 and you read that.
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And in the context of wisdom, 711 is actually the Exodus from Egypt. That's another
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King who slayed the infants, not the, it's not a future prophecy, right.
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It actually has the words wilderness. Bethlehem was not a wilderness.
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It's a town. So it's, it, it, it's, it actually is disingenuous even to the
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Apocrypha to say that it's prophesying something when it's not actually claiming to prophesy.
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And it's also, of course, disingenuous to the scripture because Matthew 2, 16.
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In fact, if you go to it, the scripture that's prophesied is, uh, from actually the old
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Testament, right. Uh, Rachel crying out.
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That's not from wisdom. That's actually from, I think Jeremiah, I, I might be wrong.
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I got to look it up, but it's actually from the old Testament prophets and the, the, the, how it's fulfilled is typological.
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Matthew says the fulfillment is that just as, uh, God's people were exiled, uh, and cause a cataclysmic grief.
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And then when the Messiah is here, it repeats, but it's so much more intense.
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The infants are keeping killed. And, and as you know, from Matthew's theology, the
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Messiah who came to die for God's people will live perfectly on behalf of God's people.
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That's why Jesus, right. All has to fast for 40 days in the wilderness, just as God's people fasted.
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I mean, not fasted. They were tempted 40 years in the wilderness and failed, but Jesus who fasted for 40 days in the wilderness didn't fail.
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Right. And he does that over and over again until he dies the death that his people deserve.
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Right. That's Matthew's theology. Next, uh,
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Luke 20, 29 confirms Tobit as scripture. And I thought this was fitting because I think
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I preached this recently, probably last, I think last week. Uh, this one is about the
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Sadducees, uh, challenge against Jesus with, uh, one wife and seven husbands because they kept dying.
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So one, uh, so you turn to Tobit 3a, which I know most of us don't have that in our scripture.
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That's fine. You, uh, one common thread is that in Tobit 3a, there is a woman who has seven husbands.
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The main difference is this woman lost, uh, her husband, her husbands, uh, because of an evil spirit named
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Asmodeus, uh, who killed them. The problem with this is, uh, nowhere in the
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Sadducees storyline, uh, is a demon involved. In fact, I would argue that the
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Sadducees would not hold to the demons involved. If you know the Sadducees theology, which is they reject the existence of angels, which means they would reject the existence of the fallen angels.
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Not only that, what books do the Sadducees hold as scripture? The first five only they don't even go as far as we do.
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So to think that they would be quoting from Apocrypha is rather absurd.
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And to even give the status of scripture would be obnoxious.
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It's ridiculous that the Sadducees who reject actually 34 other books in the
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Old Testament that the normal Jews would have held the Pharisees and scribes to say that they ventured off and wanted to quote, quote unquote, scripture
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Apocrypha. That's crazy. Uh, uh, the, the only argument
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I would say is they're making seven husbands to make an absurd point, right?
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Their view is the resurrection can't be real because can you imagine a woman with seven husbands in heaven, right?
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In a new earth and you haven't, you're right. That's their point. It's not to quote the
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Apocrypha. Again, no New Testament author gives any authority nor mentions
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Apocrypha as scripture. Whenever the New Testament author says, thus the scripture is fulfilled.
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It's never an Apocryphal books. And there are some other, uh, claims they make like, oh, uh, the
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Lord of heaven and earth is from this Apocryphal book. You could find that in other Old Testament books that are accepted by the
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Jews too. It's, it's not like that's a new idea in the Apocrypha, the Lord of heaven and earth is found pretty much really anywhere in the
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Old Testament. Right? So it's, it's disingenuous to make a claim like that.
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Take like a three word phrase that are rather commonly used, but also happened to be used in the
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Apocrypha and say that they're actually quoting Apocrypha, right? Or, or something like God is shepherd or Jesus, when
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Jesus says he's the shepherd in John 10, well, that's kind of used in the
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Old Testament already. In fact, it was written before the Apocrypha, right? Ezekiel. So it's like, it's, it's disingenuous to say that's actually quoting from the
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Apocrypha, right? Uh, the Mormons do the same too. They, they say like John 10, it's, it's found in the book of Mormon.
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It's like, do you really think that it's more likely that it's a book of Mormon or it's actually the
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Old Testament that the Jews all read? Right? Like, let's, let's use a
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Occam's razor here. The simplest is the most correct here, right? All right, next let's, we're going to go over the arguments against the
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Apocrypha. Uh, historically first century Jews never accepted any of them.
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So I'm actually going off of historical arguments, uh, other than the scriptural, which we just did, we're going to go over this, uh, historical view.
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Israelites of the first century spoke both Greek and Aramaic. Aramaic is the language of Assyria and Babylon.
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Uh, in fact, certain tribes in Iran still do speak to this day. Uh, yet they still rejected the
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Septuagint for worship. Uh, you will have the Catholics argue that Septuagint was accepted as Jewish scripture.
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They respected it. They used it, but not for worship.
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In fact, uh, Josephus AD 90, so that's the first century
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Jew and he's not a Christian. Okay. He's not a Protestant. He's a
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Jew. He's a Jewish historian. And he gives a list of the old Testament canon as in the, the standard in terms of what books belong in the old
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Testament does not have the Apocryphal books, right?
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That's shocking because the, uh, what the Catholics will do is that you Protestants you're going by the medieval
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Masoretic texts. Masoretes were medieval Jews. Who all copied down the
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Hebrew text. And that's the complete codex of the old Testament. We mainly go by the
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Masoretic text. So if you buy, purchase an old Testament text, that's only
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Hebrew. Uh, it's because of the Masoretes, you have them. They're the ones who put the vowel pointings because Hebrew texts don't normally have vowels.
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Right. And so they would say, you guys go back even like 800, 900 years after, right?
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Uh, the Canon was closed. And that's why you're going with actually
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Josephus in the first century had, he did not think the
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Apocryphal books, right? We're part of scripture. And he's a Jew, rather a famous Jew, right?
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Uh, he's the reason why we know anything about really AD 70. He, he's the historian who recorded that, uh, the
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Apocrypha are rejected by origin. Uh, we talked about origin last week, uh, famous, uh, church father who believed in some shaky stuff.
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Uh, but the Catholics count him as a church father and remember their, their vow, the unanimity of the fathers, right?
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That's what the priest bowed to. Well, uh, origin didn't think so. Tertullian, another church father, third century.
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He's the guy who quote, uh, coined the term Trinity. He's, he's a famous guy.
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Uh, by the way, Tertullian was not a Pato Baptist, uh, for any
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Catholics listening. Uh, he did not have, uh, he actually rejected the
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Apocrypha too. Athanasius, uh, the main guy who, uh, who got exiled so many times because he stood up for the truth of Jesus being divine.
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Uh, he, he fought against the Aryans. Aryans said that Jesus was one time created and Athanasius says no.
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And that's where we get, uh, the phrase Athanasius against the world because really the world was going against him.
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But it's actually thanks to Athanasius that we have, uh, old and new Testament canon.
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The Protestant Bible goes with what Athanasius said, our scripture. Jerome.
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Oh, this is interesting. Jerome, the guy who translated the whole Bible into Latin, uh, the main version of the
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Catholic scripture. He also did not believe the Apocrypha, uh, were part of scripture.
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The only reason why he translated Tobit and Judith in his book,
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Vulgate is because his friends liked them so much. So they asked him to translate, but he did not consider, uh, the
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Apocrypha as scripture. That is shocking. Next, there is even internal disagreement regarding or had been right.
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Not anymore. They're all dead, but there had been internal disagreements regarding, uh, the inspired status of the
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Apocrypha within the Roman Catholic church. Cardinal Kajetan.
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I don't know if, if it's, if he's Spanish, it's Kajetan, but if it's not, it's
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Kajetan. I don't know. C -A -J -E -T -A -N for anyone who wants to look it up.
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He was actually the opponent. He was one of the main opponents of Martin Luther. Yet he approved the
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Hebrew Canon, which is what the Protestant Old Testament has. So even the opponent, even a
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Cardinal Cardinals, it's one of the highest ranks, right? Uh, it's, it's mainly the
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Cardinals who become Popes when they're elected by the college of Cardinals, right? It's where we get the electoral college from Cardinals choosing their leader.
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He himself held just as Luther did, the Apocrypha are not canon.
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Uh, if you want to check that out, uh, his book is called commit commentary on all the authentic historical books of the
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Old Testament. Couldn't be clearer, right? Uh, several members of the council of Trent that's council itself opposed the
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Apocrypha. Uh, apparently they probably weren't the majority, but again, this was not a uniform belief that the
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Apocrypha would be, uh, considered scripture. Next I'm going to quote a
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Pope. I mean, not a quote, but referred to a Pope. Next slide is about Pope Gregory, the great, and you can tell from the title he was, they consider him to be a great cup
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Pope, right? Pope Gregory, the great, he declared first Maccabees to be not canonical.
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It's kind of shaky here, right? Wait a second. The Pope, one of your great Popes, uh, early on early, this is before the medieval ages.
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Uh, he believed that first Maccabees, which all Catholics now believe to be part of scripture.
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Well, one of your Popes didn't, right? That's troubling. Who's right?
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Which, what are you going to sacrifice? Papal infallibility or Apocrypha?
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At this case, you can't, you can't have both. Cardinal Zomenes excluded the
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Apocrypha in his polyglot Bible, which was approved by Pope Leo the 10th.
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So not only a Cardinal, but it's papal approved and he didn't put the
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Apocrypha. Now the question is, were these two
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Popes correct or not? Right. That's, that's what the
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Catholics have to face. Right. All right. Next.
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Why, why does it matter? We kind of talked about this. Well, what's in the Apocrypha, right? First they support unbiblical traditions as in things that are not found in the old
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Testament and the new Testament that we have. That's frankly from God.
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For example, purgatory in second Maccabees 1240 through 45,
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Judas Maccabeus sends money to Jerusalem for the dead idolatrous soldiers.
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And that's where they get the term purgatory. It's like the money was used on their behalf in hopes that they would be, you know, saved even after they're dead.
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Right. Uh, here's the problem with that. Idolatry is a mortal sin.
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And if you die with a mortal sin, according to the Roman Catholic church, you go to straight, you go to hell, you don't go to purgatory, purgatory.
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You can't go to purgatory with mortal sin. Right. So there's an inconsistency there.
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Even if you want to use the Apocrypha to establish the doctrine of purgatory, well, then you're not going to get the doctrine that you have anyway.
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Right. Or you got to throw something out the mortal sin part too. Right. Next, when you read the
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Apocrypha themselves, none of them actually claim divine inspiration. That's shocking.
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When you read the old Testament and the new Testament, they all claim divine inspiration. Right. Oh, they actually, you know, second, um, second
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Peter three, uh, gives divine inspiration status to Pauline epistles,
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Paul's letters. Paul gives divine inspiration. He confirms divine inspiration to the old
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Testament. Right. So, so on, uh, the old Testament themselves, they're called the word of God.
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I mean, you read the prophets, they're like, and the word of God came to Jonah and the word of God came to Isaiah and the word of God came to you name it.
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Right. That's how many of the books of the prophets start. They claim divine inspiration that they are from God.
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However, not only the Apocrypha don't claim divine inspiration. So you're elevating things that they themselves don't.
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Not only that, some actually disclaim divine inspiration. And here's the list prologue to Ecclesiasticus first Maccabees four 46, nine 27, second
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Maccabees two 23, 1538. I'll quote first Maccabees four 46 for us and laid up the stones in the mountain of the temple in a convenient place until there should come a profit to show what should be done with them.
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What can we imply here? Yeah. There's no profit.
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If there's no profit, Victor said it, they don't have the word of the Lord. Then how can you claim divine inspiration status?
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Of course, they didn't have the apostles either. Right. That's way before. So there's a problem there.
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Apocrypha themselves don't claim divine inspiration. In fact, disclaim divine inspiration.
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Yet the Catholic church wants to. Hmm. Like it's just like you're even going against its own tradition.
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Right. Apocryphal tradition. Next, some have numerous errors.
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And remember, the Catholics sort of believe in the inerrancy, right? Remember in in in their doctrine with from the
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Council of Trent, and even before they do believe that God's word is without error.
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But of course, the liberal Catholic theologians, they like shake it up. Right. But presumably, the conservative
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Catholics still do hold to biblical inerrancy. However, there are errors in the
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Apocrypha. Judith one, one through seven. They claim
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Nebuchadnezzar as the Assyrian king and reigned in Nineveh. Now, what? Where was he the king of Babylon?
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Right. That's a different empire. It's kind of like saying, you know.
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Let's see who's Abraham Lincoln. Yes. President of Great Britain.
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Right. It's a different empire. It's a different country. That would be wrong.
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Baruch, supposedly Jeremiah's secretary Baruch. His name is Baruch. That book quotes from Daniel.
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And here's the problem. Jeremiah and his contemporary would have been long dead by the book
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Daniel's written. Right, Daniel's written in the post -exilic, like exilic time, right?
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And it even gets to the post -exilic time because there's the declaration that King Cyrus, right, has let the
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Jews go free. So Baruch must be hun, like at least 100 years old, if not more.
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And he's writing a book in which he quotes Daniel. So it's that that authorship is in question already.
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Right. It's like, so Baruch probably didn't write that. So you want to hold to a text that claims that it's written by Baruch, but is not.
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It's kind of like if we would say, like first Corinthians, although it says, right,
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Paul wrote it and he says it and say, actually, Paul didn't write that. Right. That's, that's crazy.
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But with Baruch, you can say that. Next. Some have actually theological errors.
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Tobit 12, 9, 4, 10, 14, 10 through 11 says almsgiving can deliver from death and purge away sin.
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That sounds like buying your way to heaven. That's the indulgences, right? But even the
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Catholic Church, they don't sell it anymore. You have to earn it. Right. So in fact, they would have to say, well, after the
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Council of Trent, it's not true. You can't buy it. Well, your book said so. Wisdom of Solomon, again, not
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Proverbs 7, 17. The world was made out of pre -existent matter.
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Yikes. That's paganism, right? To say that God didn't create the world ex nihilo, which means out of nothing, as in he spoke all things into existence.
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That's, that's, that's a huge flaw in the doctrine. C rock three, three honoring father atones for sin.
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Right. That's salvation by words. Yeah. Now let's talk about the
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Latin Vulgate. So next slide. Latin Vulgate was, uh, translated by, um, a theologian named
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Jerome, uh, who lived from 83, 40 to four 20. He was commissioned by Bishop Damascus.
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I know it's not Damascus. It's Damascus, uh, to translate the
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Bible into Latin. Jerome, in fact, spent 34 years locked in a cave, really not locked in, but he went to a cave in Bethlehem, uh, as a hermit to translate the
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Bible into Latin. Needless to say, I'm not bashing the Vulgate as like a bad, bad book.
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I think the Vulgate can be helpful, but it's a translation. It's not in errant.
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It's not infallible, right? The purpose actually was to make the
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Bible accessible to the common folks because Latin was the main language of which country
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Rome, right? The great empire. Well, if the whole empire speak
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Latin, wouldn't it make sense to translate it to a language that the whole empire would speak?
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That's the goal. And of course, what's the irony of this? Yeah, they, uh, the
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Catholic Church, a they don't give it to him, right? Uh, and haven't in a while right now.
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They're like slowly loosing, loosing the grip. Uh, second, when's the last time you've seen a
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Catholic whose mother tongue is Latin, right?
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The irony is Jerome translated into Latin so that more people could have access to God's word.
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But yet the irony is like the Latin Vulgate has been used for thousands of years to withhold
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God's word from the common folks, right?
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And in fact, anyone who tried to translate the Bible into the vulgar tongue, vulgar tongue means just a common tongue, whether English or German.
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If you live in England or Germany, they were punished through death.
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They were executed, right? Now let's talk about the
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Roman Catholic Church's view of the Vulgate. So next slide. They believe the translation is infallible.
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Infallible means it is not possible to air. So it's in Aaron means there's no error.
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You can say a sentence that is inerrant, right? It is not raining today in Sacramento is an inerrant sentence because there's no error.
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Infallible is beyond that. It means there's no potential to air. The Council of Trent says this.
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If anyone receive not as sacred, the canonical and said books entire with all their parts as they are contained in the old
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Latin Vulgate edition, let him be anathema. Anathema. What does that mean?
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Condemned. No, anathema is the Greek term for curse.
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Let him be accursed. Let him go to hell. That's anathema. That's a strong word.
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This is the same word when Paul says in Galatians one, if any of us, the apostles or the angels preach a different gospel, let him be anathema.
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Let him be cursed. Let him be cursed directly by God to be sent to hell, whether angels or the apostles.
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This is a strong sentence from the Council of Trent. And then Vatican one in 1870 reaffirms this view.
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If you believe anything else of the old
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Latin Vulgate, that's very hard. Let's talk about the problem with problems with the
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Vulgate. Sixtus V, the pope, issued an edition in 1590 to be the final version of the
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Latin Vulgate. And he said anyone producing a new version would be, again, anathema, condemned.
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However, scholars unfortunately found numerous errors in his edition. Therefore, Clement VIII, another pope, he publishes a new version.
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And this is still used today. Now the question is, are popes infallible?
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And which pope erred? Well, according to Sixtus V, Clement VIII is anathema.
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And then Sixtus V claimed that it was infallible.
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The final version is the final version. Well, they both erred. All right, let's talk about the modern
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Catholic Bibles. All the modern Catholic Bibles are translated from the fallible
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Vulgate. It's fallible. Even the
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Catholics had to correct it. Vulgate is 300, 400 years written after the
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New Testament. And thousands after the Old Testament. The Protestant translations go back to the original
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Greek and Hebrew scriptures. In fact, that's what Martin Luther did when he was in hiding, right?
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I think it was called the Castle of Bird. I think that's what it's called.
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And he was hiding under the auspice of Philip. My church history is a bit rusty.
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I haven't been reading church history in a while. But what was he doing locked up?
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Well, he wasn't wasting his time. He was translating the Greek New Testament and the
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Hebrew Old Testament into what language? German.
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German, yeah. That's what Martin Luther did. And of course, many other
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Protestants did the same, right? I mean, I would say all the
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Protestant translations that we have have been translated by the committees, right?
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Whatever scholarly theologians who can speak or understand at least Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew.
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Aramaic, there are only a couple books written in Aramaic, parts of Daniel and Israel, and like a sentence from Jeremiah.
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They all gather together and they're translating. They don't only use
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Latin Vulgate. Now, then which one would be more accurate?
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Yeah, Greek and Hebrew, right? And the question is then which one actually goes back to the source, the tradition, the apostolic tradition, not the
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Catholic book. Remember, the Catholic church, their main argument is we have the apostolic tradition backing our side, but we actually go back to the apostles.
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The Protestant churches, if they're faithful, right? I'm not saying all Protestant churches are faithful, but if they're faithful with God's word, they do go back to the apostles.
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And we go back to the apostles in the language it's written. We go back to the apostles even within agreement with the church fathers.
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All right, a brief last slide, the Masoretic text. I mentioned the Masoretic text.
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The complete codex, codex means a book, right? Instead of a scroll, right?
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And when you have a codex, you can put way more words in it instead of carrying a scroll this big, right?
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In fact, if you like go to like a Bible museum, they have scrolls that are like huge.
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It's crazy. And you can read them if you can read like Hebrew without the vowel pointings.
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What's crazy is the Leningrad Codex is what we mainly use, and it is the completed form of the
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Old Testament in Hebrew. And it was done in the medieval times by a
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Jewish family called the Masoretes. And the
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Catholics will argue, well, you guys go back to, you know, 800, 900, you know, years after the first century.
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And you know what? Theologians bashed it, really. They said, how can you trust that?
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They, you know, they put their own ideas. They, you know, they messed up here and there. Again, I don't know how you can say that it's messed up or they put their own ideas if you don't have the original copy yourself.
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But they did anyway. You But I, we, we, we, we got to be thankful here because they bashed it until the
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Dead Sea Scrolls found. And I believe the story goes like this, like a shepherd boy went into a cave, like as he's playing.
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And then he knocked over a pottery, like a pot.
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And it was clay. And inside it were scrolls. And as you know, the Dead Sea, it's salty and dry.
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That region is salty and dry, which means it preserves things really well. Right? So they look at the scrolls and the scrolls go back to third century
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BC, which is older than the Septuagint. And it spans until first century
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AD. So it kind of gets rid of this idea of that 800 years claim of the, of those who ate, who don't like the
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Masoretic text. Okay. We just went back 800, even more 800, more than 800 years.
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What do we see? 96 % accuracy as the modern Old Testament. That's astounding.
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The Masoretes kept it. The Jews kept it well, because they believe that the
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Old Testament was from God. In fact, the Masoretes are so careful. If there's a question, they don't actually scribble on the consonants themselves.
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They keep the consonants they think are wrong and they copy it down. Even if they think is wrong, as in it was an error and they write it on the margin, what they think it would be.
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And we've kind of went over that. They really care about, they really cared.
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I guess they're not living anymore. Right. They really cared about the preservation of the Old Testament.
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And the Dead Sea Scrolls, they're mostly Hebrew. There's some Aramaic, there's some Greek there, but it's mostly
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Hebrew. I've heard this case where they look at the
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Isaiah Scroll from the Dead Sea Scroll. And Isaiah is a huge book if you've read it. There's some copious errors that would make sense.
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There are four errors that could change the meaning compared to the Masorete text.
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But four in comparison to the whole book is less than 1%.
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The Masoretes kept it, preserved it really well.
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Compared to Latin Vulgate, I think the Hebrew text and translations that come from the
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Hebrew texts are much more reliable. So this will be the end of this section.
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Next, we will finalize the formal cause regarding scripture.
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And it's about interpretation and accessibility of scripture. Any questions so far?
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Comments? All right. Did you have a question?
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Okay. I'll pray for us. Father, we're grateful that we can learn the truth.
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Thank you that archeology and history confirm what we hold to be true.
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And thank you that ultimately it is scripture that is the highest authority of truth.
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Help us to have faith in what you have given us. Help us to trust you instead of traditions of man.