Lesson 13: Septuagint, Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and Other Big Words Part 1

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Lesson 13: Septuagint, Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and Other Big Words Part 2

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All right, let's begin with a word of prayer. Father, we want to give our time and attention here today to the subject matter of how

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You have preserved Your Word for us. We thank You for what we have learned so far, and we thank You for how You have worked in history.

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And it boggles our mind, it makes us to marvel and to rejoice in Your goodness in providing such a rich treasure for us in Your Word.

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And we pray that You would help us today to see how that is true and how that was done. And as we talk about the

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Apocrypha and other things related to Your Word, we pray that You would help us to think through these issues clearly and to learn much today.

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We give You this time, and we pray that You would help us to give You our attention as well for the glory of Christ our

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Lord, in whose name we pray. Amen. All right, so we have looked at canonicity and certain criteria or certain marks or qualities of canonical books, those books which are included in the canon.

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And so today we're going to begin to talk about things that are related to canonicity. And we're kind of in the closing, the closing lessons on this series of God Wrote a

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Book. Today we're in lesson 13, titled The Subtugent, Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and other big words.

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We're going to learn about those, lesson 13. So without asking you to respond to this,

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I'm just going to ask for a show of hands. So I'm not asking anybody to say anything. I'm not going to put anybody on the spot. But I do want to just sort of take an informal poll here of those who are with us this morning.

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How many of you have heard the word, subtugent? How many of you think you would be confident enough in what that means to explain to me what the subtugent is?

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One, two, three, maybe four. Okay. I appreciate the honesty. And I'm not going to ask those four who raised their hand.

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How many of you have heard the word, apocrypha? Apart from when I just prayed it in the prayer at the beginning of this, or mentioned the title of the thing.

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Before this morning, how many of you have heard the word, apocrypha? Okay. How many of you could tell me what the word means, what the word refers to?

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Okay. Quite a few more. And how many of you heard the word, before this morning, pseudepigrapha? Last week?

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Last week. Okay. Before you heard me within the last month say the word, pseudepigrapha, how many of you have heard that word?

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A few. A few. How many of you know what that means? Okay. A couple. All right. Very good.

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Those are the three things that we're going to look at starting today. We're going to, I think, cover, probably get through the subtugent and the apocrypha today.

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We're going to describe what those are and the significance of those. And today we're going to be looking at whether or not the apocrypha is canonical, and who views it as canonical, and why it is viewed by some as canonical.

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So let's begin with the subtugent. That's number one there, the subtugent. And that often goes by the abbreviation

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LXX, which is the Roman numeral for 70, right? Super Bowl 50 is

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Super Bowl L, or large. Super Bowl LX is large extra. And Super Bowl LXX is large extra extra, instead of extra extra large.

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So LXX means 70, and you'll see why that is significant here in a moment. Let me talk for a moment about the origins of the subtugent.

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To do that we have to go back almost four centuries BC to talk about the origins of the subtugent.

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Almost four centuries BC. Alexander the Great had conquered all of the then known world, so we're almost at 400

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BC right now, we're talking about that. Alexander the Great had conquered all of the then known world, and he established centers of learning throughout the empire.

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And Greek had become the established language, and the people had abandoned the use of other languages including Hebrew and Aramaic.

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Now the Old Testament is written in Hebrew and Aramaic. Almost all of it is Hebrew, there are about 12 chapters of Aramaic in the

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Old Testament. And so those were Semitic languages, or what you would call,

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Semitic is not the word, Aramaic is almost like a Semitic language. So those languages were popular in the area around the land of Israel, of course the

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Jews spoke Hebrew. But by 400 BC, Greek had become sort of the language of the realm, or the common language that everybody spoke.

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It was quickly becoming the commercial language, and as Alexander the Great had conquered all of that region, including

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Israel and Northern Africa, and up into parts of Europe and Eastern Europe, as his empire had grown, the language that the

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Greeks had spoken became the language that almost everybody spoke. Alexander died in 323

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BC, and the empire was divided up into several dynasties by his generals. And the Ptolemies had gained control over the

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Egypt, and the Ptolemies is spelled P -T -O -L -E -M -I -E -S. The Ptolemies had gained control over the northern part of Africa, and over the land of Egypt, and the

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Jews had received a certain, under the rule of the Ptolemies, the Jews had received certain religious and political privileges.

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Orissonoa, a Ptolemaic ruler, started an educational program at Alexandria, which included not only the founding of a museum, but also the translation of great works of art, and great works of literature into Greek, in order to store them in the museum.

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He wanted Alexandria to become sort of a fountainhead of learning and education there, and so part of that was establishing these centers of learning around Alexandria, as well as establishing a museum there.

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And he wanted, he asked and requested that there be a Greek translation of the Hebrew, the

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Jewish Old Testament. So as the Greek language became more and more the common tongue, and with the

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Jews spread all over the world, including all the way throughout the entire kingdom, or dynasty, of Alexander the

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Great, and what was once the Greek dynasty, there was a need to have the Hebrew Scriptures in the common language, which was

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Greek. So during the reign of King Ptolemy Philadelphus, and he reigned from 285 to 246

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BC, that king asked for the Jewish Scriptures to be sent to Alexandria, accompanied by scholars who would translate those

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Scriptures into Greek, so that they could be added to the museum. So he wanted a Greek translation of the Old Testament Scriptures to be added to that museum, so everybody would have access to it, and they could read the

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Hebrew Old Testament in their mother tongue, the Greek language. So the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem complied with his request and sent a copy of the

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Old Testament with 72 learned men to do the translation. Now there were supposedly, according to tradition or legend, six from each of the twelve tribes of Israel.

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Supposedly the copy that they sent was written in gold letters, that's tradition and legend. Now some of this has obviously been gilded up a little bit to make it sound good.

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The Jews, they like legends, ancient people like legends. So supposedly there were six from each of the twelve tribes, and supposedly the copy they sent was written in gold letters.

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The meaning of Septuagint means, the word means, according to the seventy. And it's just shorthand for reference to those 72 men who were sent to Alexandria to translate the

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Old Testament. Supposedly these 72 men translated that Old Testament in 72 days.

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Now you recognize that that's quite a feat, isn't it? Now if anything of what I've just said, other than the golden letters, if anything that I've just said sounds like legend, that sounds like legend.

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But according to tradition, legend, the 72 men did it in 72 days, which would be perfect because it would be six from each of the twelve tribes, and 72 would be divisible by twelve by the twelve tribes, and so it's just kind of that number stuff that some people are fascinated with and love.

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So when was it finished? Well it started as a Greek translation of the

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Pentateuch, and later it became the rest of the Old Testament as it was completed. The word Septuagint came to be used of the entire

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Greek translation of the Old Testament. So the Septuagint is, according to the seventy, the

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Greek translation of the entire Old Testament. That's how it came to be used.

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We know that it was started during the reign of Ptolemy of Philadelphus, and again, 285 to 246 BC. We don't really know for certain when it was completed, but we do know that it was finished by 150

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BC, 150 years before Jesus. We know that it was finished by 150 BC since it was discussed in a letter from Aristeas to Philocrates in 130 to 100

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BC. So they had discussed what was, at that time, they referred to as the Septuagint. So the latest that it was finished was 150

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BC. Started somewhere around 250 BC. Supposedly translated in 72 days, that's what they say.

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All right, any questions on that before we move on? That's sort of the background, the historical nature of how the

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Septuagint came to be. Yeah, Rick? So the question is,

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Alexander, as he conquered different regions, different nations and cities, the people in those cities would have learned

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Greek. Why wouldn't they? They just stuck with their own language. Well, if all of the people who are responsible for entertainment and culture and politics and the economy, if they all speak one language, it's in your best interest to learn that language, at least become fluent in it.

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And so that's how, if that's the official language of the nation, then that's what that empire is going to speak, and everybody around you would be speaking it, the troops, the military, and everybody else.

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So there would be an incentive for people in those various regions to be able to speak Greek. What happens over the course of...when

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you go to a region where you have to learn another language or something happens where suddenly you have to learn a second language, it doesn't take but one or two generations for your mother tongue that you spoke to be lost entirely to your descendants.

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So my wife's parents, for instance, speak fluent Low German, High German? Both. So they're fluent in both

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Germans. I didn't know there was more than one German, but no, there's not. No, Angelica says, no, that's fake news.

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So they speak both High and Low German. They're fluent in both of those, which I understand is a dialect, it's a part of German.

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Deidre can hear and understand a little bit of German because she heard her parents speaking it and her grandparents spoke it.

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But my kids don't understand anything of German because we just haven't passed that on to them.

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And Deidre's parents really didn't pass that on to her kids very much at all. Sorry, yeah, Deidre's parents didn't pass that on to her kids.

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So it only took two generations for that language to be lost in that family. And it would happen the same way with Alexander the Great and Conquer the

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City. It wouldn't take long before, well, everybody's speaking this, so why pass this on to our kids? Our kids are going to need to speak this.

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And so they learn the new language and then before long, everybody just speaks it. That's how that would happen. All right, any other questions about that, the historical origins of the

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Septuagint? So when we talk about the Septuagint, what we're talking about is the Greek translation of the Old Testament completed at least 150 years before the time of Jesus and the apostles, as a result of Alexander the

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Great conquering the then known world. Now there's a benefit to that happening, by the way. You can see how God had worked in Providence.

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Alexander the Great had conquered the then known world and brought all these people under one language. But what does that do for the knowledge of God under the

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Old Testament? Do you think more people spoke Greek or more people spoke Hebrew? More people would speak

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Greek. So the motivation to translate the Old Testament into the Greek language, of course, makes the light of the

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Old Testament and the Scriptures then available to more people, to more easily read and people began to learn that.

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So that is a huge benefit of what happened there with Alexander the Great. All right, let us see the

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Septuagint's significance. There are a number of things here. First, it was the Bible of Jesus and the apostles.

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It was used in all the synagogues of the first century. So Jesus would have spoken Greek, Jesus would have spoken

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Hebrew and probably Aramaic. Most people in Palestine would have spoken Hebrew if they were able to read the

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Old Testament Scriptures. But the language or the Bible that they would have used would have been the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the

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Septuagint. So what Bible did Jesus and the apostles read? It wasn't the King James translation, right?

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We can't say if it was good enough for Jesus and the apostles, good enough for me. It wasn't the King James translation that Jesus and the apostles read of the

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Old Testament. It was the Septuagint. That was the Bible that was in the…that was the

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Scriptures that was in the common language of the day, which was the Koine Greek or the common Greek of the time. So they would have been reading from the

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Septuagint. And you see the apostles in the New Testament quoting sometimes…quoting from the

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Septuagint in their writings and speeches. And sometimes we notice that the quotation is different. So we've seen this in the book of Hebrews, we're going through Hebrews.

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We see here is the author of Hebrews, he quotes this passage from the Old Testament and yet you go and compare that passage that he is quoting as we read it in Hebrews with the passage that he is quoting from, and you will notice slight wording changes, differences, slight word order differences.

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Sometimes the passage moved around a little bit. What accounts for that? What accounts for that is that two things, sometimes the authors of the

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New Testament are quoting loosely from that Old Testament. Like when I sometimes quote from Scripture, I will kind of give the sense of it and it might not be the exact phrasing that the

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Scriptures would use in any given translation. And since I grew up reading the King James and now I preach out of the

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King James and then the New King James and now I preach out of the NASB and I really like the ESB and I'm looking forward to the

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Legacy Standard Bible, it's like five translations that are all kind of getting ready to roll around in my head. So then I get ready to quote a verse and guess what happens?

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Yeah, there's language from the King James, there's language from the New King James and the NASB that works itself in there, as well as if I've checked a translation during the week, sometimes that language works its way in there.

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Well, the apostles did the same thing when quoting from the Septuagint. Sometimes it was a little bit of a loose paraphrase of the

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Septuagint or sometimes they quoted it or referenced it and referred to it in such a way as to emphasize a certain part of what it was that they were quoting.

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Sometimes they would leave a phrase out of their quotation from the Septuagint. So that accounts for the differences. Now when we read our

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Old Testament, what we're reading is an English translation of the Masoretic text. So we're reading an

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English translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, not the

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Old Testament text that the Septuagint was translated from, but the Masoretic text, the Hebrew Old Testament.

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So we have an English translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. When we read our New Testament, we have an English translation of a

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Greek text. That Greek text quotes the Septuagint, which is a Greek translation of the

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Old Testament. So when the New Testament authors are quoting from the Septuagint or quoting from the

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Old Testament, they're quoting a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. And when we read it, we're reading an

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English translation of the Greek translation of the Old Testament. Does that make sense? So sometimes there is a little bit of variation there.

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So we need to make, when we read the New Testament, we're reading a quotation from the Old Testament. We just need to keep in mind, yeah, there are some language differences there.

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There might even be some word order differences or a different word that is used there because we're dealing with, really, two different translations of the

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Old Testament. The meaning does not change. The meaning has not changed. They're not adding things and subtracting things. It's not like things are lost in translation.

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It just accounts for the word differences, the translation differences, okay? There's another significance for the

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Septuagint, and it is this, that we can use it to give us a good understanding of certain Hebrew words or phrases. This is one of the benefits of the

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Septuagint. We are able to take the, we are able to look at the

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Septuagint because we know Greek, okay? Hebrew is a further removed, ancient Hebrew is a further removed language from us than is ancient

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Greek. We're able sometimes to read the Septuagint, I shouldn't say we, scholars are able to read the Septuagint and they are able to see how it is that somebody in 150

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BC would have understood the meaning of a Hebrew word in the Old Testament.

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So there are places in the Old Testament where our understanding of that language, that phrasing, that meaning is a little bit shrouded because of history to us, the distance.

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And we are able to go back and look at how did somebody who lived 2 ,200 years ago translate that passage from the

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Old Testament? And that gives us an understanding of how Hebrew -speaking people would have viewed the meaning of that passage from the

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Old Testament 2 ,200 years ago. There's a scholarly benefit to the

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Septuagint because it helps us to go back in time and see how did they understand that passage back then and therefore how did they translate it into Greek?

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And there's a benefit to that. Alright, any questions on that? The Septuagint? Anybody understand what it is?

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Number two, the Apocrypha. What is the Apocrypha? The word means hidden or concealed or secretive.

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As Protestants, we use that word, the word Apocrypha, as the normal designation for those extra books that are held to be canonical by the

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Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and there's another branch of the Orthodox Church that also embraces the

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Apocrypha as well. So it's not just Roman Catholics that embrace the Apocrypha as canonical. Roman Catholics would use two different terms when describing the canon of Scripture.

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They would use the term proto -canonical, which means first or original canon, and then they would use the term deuterocanonical, which means a secondary canon.

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So they even recognize in their description of the canon of Scripture that you have a primary canon, that which came first, the

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Old Testament and the New Testament texts, and then you have a deuterocanonical books, which are what they embrace as canonical in the

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Apocrypha. They are made up of 14 or 15 books, depending on how we number them, and I'm going to explain that here in just a moment.

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These books were written between the book of Malachi and Matthew, between the end of our Old Testament and the beginning of our

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New Testament. There was about 400 years' time period there. You had a lot going on, the conquering of the land by Alexander the

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Great. You had the Maccabean Revolt. You had a lot of history happening there during those 400 years, but we have no prophets in the

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Old Testament. Nobody spoke from God. We refer to those as the 400 silent years, when God was silent, was giving no new revelation.

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And the book of Malachi ends our Old Testament. The era that ends the Old Testament, during which

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Malachi would have prophesied, is the book of Ezra, the book of Nehemiah, and what's the other one

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I'm thinking of? You get to the end of 2 Chronicles, and you almost get to the end of your

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Old Testament time span, and then you have prophets. All the prophets who spoke during that period of time spoke all the way up to the end of the book of 2

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Chronicles. So, we can take all of our major and minor prophets, and we can put them back into the historical books.

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There are a few of them that spoke after the time period of the post -exilic prophets spoke after the time period of 2

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Chronicles. But the Old Testament timeline ends with basically 2 Chronicles, Nehemiah, and Ezra.

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Those are the books that sort of polish up the beginning of that 400 -year time.

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Those are the books that stand there as the end of Old Testament revelation. And then you have, living during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, are

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Malachi and Haggai. Those are prophets who prophesied during the…not during the lifetime, but right around the lifetime of Ezra and Nehemiah.

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I think Nehemiah and Malachi were both contemporaries. They both ministered in Jerusalem at the same time, and Malachi was probably the prophet who prophesied during Nehemiah's work there on the wall.

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So, between the end of the book of Malachi, that last book of the Old Testament, or the end of 2 Chronicles, the time period of the

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Old Testament, and the coming of Jesus, the arrival of John the Baptist, and the book of Matthew, we have about 400 years there.

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These are the books of the Apocrypha. Did I have a list of these in your notes? Is there a list of them there?

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The book of the two…the first book of Esther is also known as 3rd Esther, the second book of Esther is…okay? Tobit, Juth, the additions to the book of Esther, the wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, the wisdom of Jesus, the son of Sirach, Baruch, the letter of Jeremiah, this letter is sometimes incorporated as the last chapter of Baruch, so that's why…when that is done, the number of books is 14 instead of 15 because sometimes the letter of Jeremiah and Baruch are combined together.

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The prayer of Azariah and the song of the three young men, Susannah, Don't You Cry for Me, no, that was something different,

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Bell and the Dragon, the prayer of Manasseh, the first book of Maccabees, and the second book of Maccabees. Those are the books of the

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Apocrypha. Now, to be fair, I've read some of these sections from these books, but I've never read all of these books or…and certainly not any of these books all the way through.

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Let me give you the history of the Apocrypha. It has always been surrounded by controversy, these books.

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They've always been surrounded by controversy. Some Christians acknowledged the benefit early on even, some Christians acknowledged the benefit of reading from them, others used them but didn't consider them as equal with the

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Old Testament text. This even predates, this even goes back into the early years of Christianity that these books were surrounded by controversy.

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In 405 A .D., Pope Innocent I endorsed the Apocrypha, though at that time it was still widely rejected by Christians.

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In 600 A .D., another pope excluded it. So here's the popes speaking authoritatively, right?

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This is Scripture, no it's not, back and forth we go. Finally, at the Council of Trent in 1546, the

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Roman Catholic Church made up its mind and placed a curse upon all who would reject these books as canonical.

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And the action of the Catholic Church was in some sense polemical, it was a reaction to Luther and the

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Reformation. In their book, From God to Us, Geisler and Nix write this, quote, in debates with Luther, the

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Roman Catholic Church had quoted the Maccabees in support of prayer for the dead. Luther and the

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Protestants following him challenged the canonicity of that book, citing the New Testament, the early church fathers and the

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Jewish teachers for support. The Council of Trent responded to Luther by canonizing the Apocrypha, close quote.

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So in the discussion of should we be offering prayers for the dead in the debates with Luther, the

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Catholics would cite the books of Maccabees and say, see these teach that we should be praying for the dead. And Luther would say, those are not canonical books, those should be rejected, those are not

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Scripture, the authority is Scripture. And so he would point to Scripture and the Roman Catholic Church responded by saying, well, we will declare them to be canonical, therefore they are

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Scripture and therefore we win the debate, right? That's how they would think that that worked. But what did we talk about several weeks ago?

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The church does not confer canonicity upon books, do they? We discover which books are canonical, we don't determine which books are canonical.

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So the fact that Roman Catholic could say that those books are canonical, does that make them canonical? Does that make them authoritative?

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Not at all. The early church fathers, among the early church fathers there were some few who accepted the

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Apocrypha as canonical, some of them rejected it like Origen, Athanasius and Melito and some quoted from it but they never do view it as Scripture.

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And so the question we should ask then is why do we reject these books as canonical? Why do we not include them in the canon?

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And I'm going to give you 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 kind of arguments as to why we do not regard the

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Apocrypha as canonical. First, neither Jesus nor any New Testament writer ever quoted from the

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Apocrypha. Are these eight listed in your thing? Okay. Neither Jesus nor any

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New Testament writer ever quoted from the Apocrypha, though they constantly quoted from the Old Testament, don't they? Yeah, Rick.

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No, the Apocrypha would not be part of the Old Testament. Yeah, that's right.

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According to the Catholic, they would lump that in with the Old Testament books and would consider that as part of that Old Testament.

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All right, so neither Jesus nor any New Testament writer ever quoted from the Apocrypha, though they constantly quoted from the Old Testament, and this is significant.

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Jesus quoted from even obscure passages from the Old Testament. They quoted from minor prophets.

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The New Testament writers referenced almost every book of the Old Testament, and they constantly quoted from the

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Old Testament, and both Jesus and the apostles had access to the Apocryphal books. Jesus and the apostles had access.

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They knew they existed. So the fact that they did not quote it is significant because it's not as if those books were not known to exist at the time, but it is significant that neither

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Jesus nor any of His apostles ever quoted from those books as if they were authoritative. And there are a number of expressions in the

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New Testament which are also found in the Apocrypha, but just sharing a similarity of language or having similar expressions is not the same thing as quoting from the

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Apocrypha. For instance, the phrase, I gathered you together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, that is also found in the

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Apocrypha or language similar to that. The phrase that we find in Hebrews 12 too, the innumerable multitude of angels, the phrase we find in Revelation 1, 15, there was a voice that spoke and the sound was like the sound of many waters.

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There's similar language in Apocryphal books. But even though the apostles, and this is significant, use language that was similar to books that they would have been familiar with, they'd never use that language as if quoting from the

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Old Testament. When Jesus and the apostles quote from the Old Testament, there was a phrase that they would often use. Is it not written?

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Have you not read? The word of the Lord said? Or Scripture says? Or God has spoken?

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That was the language that they would use. But even when using language similar to Apocryphal books, Jesus and the apostles never quoted it in an authoritative sense, though they might have shared similar language, they never quoted it in an authoritative sense and they never referred to it as Scripture.

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They never once hinted in those uses of those phrase, Jesus and the apostles never even once hinted at the

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Apocrypha being their source for that language. They never once attribute to the Apocrypha any of the thus sayeth the

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Lord or it is written kind of statements that they would use when quoting Old Testament books. And they would often name the source when quoting the

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Old Testament too. They would quote, for instance, the book of Moses. They would say Moses said, or Jeremiah said, or Isaiah said, or David wrote.

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And they would quote the source of those quotations. But when they used language that the Apocrypha also used, they never even referenced it as the source, indicating that what they were doing in their mind was not quoting an

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Old Testament text. They were not quoting an authoritative text because their way of even sharing language in those few very rare instances of language that we find in Apocryphal books, even their way of doing so indicated that they did not view it as Scripture.

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So that's the first argument, neither Jesus nor any Old, sorry, neither Jesus nor any New Testament writer ever quoted from the

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Apocrypha. Second, oh, I should point out before I go on to the second one, what book of the

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New Testament relies most heavily upon quotations from the Old Testament? Any idea which one it is?

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You'll be really disappointed if you don't get this. The Hebrews, yeah. Sorry, I had to give you that hint, right? It's the book of Hebrews, and yet the book of Hebrews does not quote the

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Apocrypha, indicating that the author of Hebrews did not view it as Scripture. So number two,

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Josephus and the Talmud are quite clear that the books of the Apocrypha form no part of the

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Old Testament. Josephus shows us that the Jews of Jesus' day did not consider the Apocrypha to be Scripture. They recognized the same 39 books of the

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Bible that we recognize. So you ask the Jews, the ones to whom Old Testament revelation was given, which books do they view as inspired and canonical, and they would give you the same list of 39 that we have today.

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They did not view the Apocrypha. The Jews of Jesus' day, they did not view the Apocrypha as Scripture. Number three, the community who copied the

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Dead Sea Scrolls never referred to the Apocryphal books with the phrases, it is written or God says, and therefore even those who lived after the time of Jesus and the apostles who were responsible for the

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Dead Sea Scrolls, they clearly did not accept the Apocrypha as part of the Old Testament Scriptures. Number four,

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Philo the Jewish philosopher, writing from Alexandria in 40 AD, he quotes from or refers to all but five of the

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Old Testament books, and he never once mentions the Apocrypha. So what we're seeing is a pattern that those who lived after the time of Jesus and the apostles and during the time of Jesus and apostles, they knew that the

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Apocrypha existed, they were familiar with its content, but they never once quoted it or treated it as Scripture, not viewing it at all as canonical.

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Number five, none of the books of the Apocrypha ever claims divine inspiration or to be of divine origin.

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The Jews did not recognize them as authoritative. First Maccabees 9 .27 says, there was not a prophet in Israel at that time.

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Now if you're writing what you consider to be an inspired book and in that inspired book you say, there was not a prophet in Israel at the time that I'm writing, what are you saying?

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It's contradictory, isn't it? Right, so even Maccabees, the author of the book of Maccabees says in his writing that while he was writing, no prophet existed in the land of Israel at that time, meaning that even the person who wrote that did not view his writing as authoritative or Scripture.

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And yet we see the opposite pattern with New Testament books, don't we? Claims to divine authorship, claims of divine origin, claims of divine inspiration, we've seen that over and over again.

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So, and also the writers of the Apocrypha seem to avoid any language that would cause their books to be regarded as Scripture.

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Number six, some parts of the Apocrypha contain historical errors and even contradict the teaching of the

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Old Testament. This is significant. Some parts of the Apocrypha contradict the Old Testament and they contain historical errors.

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For instance, the prayer of Manasseh includes this statement, quote, you therefore, O Lord, who is the

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God of the just, have not appointed repentance to the just, to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, which have not sinned against you, close quote.

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Okay, so does that make sense that that would be Scripture, a book which says Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had not sinned against God, that they are just and therefore they did not need to repent?

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That's a direct contradiction to other Old Testament texts. The opening verses of Judith states that Nebuchadnezzar was the king in Nineveh instead of Babylon.

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Nebuchadnezzar was not the king of Nineveh, Nebuchadnezzar was the king of Babylon. Second Maccabees 12 claims the right and value of praying for the dead.

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This is what the Roman Catholics would cite, where it uses the phrase that they might be delivered from sin, they pray for the dead so that they might be delivered from sin.

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That is a thought that is contrary to the Old Testament text and to Scripture. The Roman Catholic Church needed to justify the practice of praying for the dead, so of course it was just easier to canonize those books than it was to defeat

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Luther on the terms of his argument from Scripture. And some of the books have historical value, but they also include stories that are fables with little historical value.

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Okay, so that's all under number six, that some parts of the Apocrypha contain historical errors and even contradict the teaching of the Old Testament.

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Number seven, nothing in the Apocrypha adds anything to our knowledge of Messianic truth.

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Nothing in the Apocrypha adds anything to our knowledge of Messianic truth. There is no Messianic value to the

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Apocryphal books. And this is something that is quite different than all of the other Old Testament texts, isn't it?

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The Minor Prophets, the Major Prophets, the Historical Section, the Lineage of David, all of that all looks forward to the

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Messiah, but the Apocrypha, it is devoid of any kind of Messianic truth, making it something of an entirely different nature than all the rest of the

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Old Testament books. I should say all of the Old Testament books, not all of the rest of the Old Testament books.

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It makes it something of an entirely different nature from all of the Old Testament books. Number eight, in AD 170,

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Melito, who is the leader of the church at Sardis, traveled to Jerusalem to assure himself of the exact limits of the

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Jewish Scriptures. So he went to Jerusalem to find out which books do the Jews regard as Scripture, and this is in AD 170.

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He came back to Sardis with all the books with the exception of Esther, and most people believe that Esther was omitted by accident, not by intention.

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So, in summary, the Jews have never regarded the Apocrypha as inspired. Jesus never regarded the

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Apocrypha as inspired. The Apostles did not regard the Apocrypha as inspired. It is never called

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Scripture. It is never quoted as Scripture. It does not read like Scripture. It adds nothing to the spiritual value of the

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Old Testament, and there is nothing or little value in it that is found in the Apocrypha that is not exceeded by the

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Old Testament text itself. And the church as a whole has never embraced the

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Apocrypha as canonical. Now you may say, but the entire Catholic Church has, so that's however hundred million of people…however hundred millions of people that do embrace it as canonical, but why do they embrace it as canonical, and when did they embrace it as canonical?

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The Catholic Church didn't embrace that as canonical until 15 centuries into the game. Well, that's a little late to change horses at that point in the stream, isn't it?

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And so the early church, Jesus and the Apostles, and the bulk of Christianity, has never embraced the

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Apocrypha as canonical. All right, any questions on any of those arguments or what we're talking about? Mike? What do we know about the authors of these books?

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I can't answer that myself because I have never studied any of them in any…I've read parts of them, but I don't even know what the claim to authorship is regarding those books.

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Were they originally written in Hebrew? Probably written in Hebrew. Sorry, yes, originally written in Hebrew.

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The Septuagint contained…later versions of the Septuagint contained Greek translations of the Apocrypha.

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Yes. Yeah. Yep.

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For those of you who didn't hear, she was just commenting on the courage that it would have taken for Luther to stand against the Pope in the spirit of his age.

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Yes, Ken. That's a good question.

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The writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls don't comment on it. Does that mean there's some elements of it in the

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Dead Sea Scrolls? I can't answer that specifically. I would…if you remember back from the lesson on the Dead Sea Scrolls, the

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Dead Sea Scrolls contained copies of not just the Old Testament Scriptures but also other books that were popular at the time.

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So it's very possible that they did. I don't know that for certain, but what that does show, that point does show, is that that group out in the

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Qumran desert of Jewish people did not regard those books as Scripture since they did not refer to them as Scripture. So it's just further evidence that even years after the time of Jesus and the

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Apostles that the Jews at that time did not regard the Apocrypha as canonical because that was a

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Jewish sect that did regard Isaiah, Deuteronomy, and other books like that, the Psalms, as canonical and viewed them and quoted them as such but never with the

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Apocrypha. Okay. Any other questions? Yes. No.

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Okay. So the question is, Jesus, we read in the book of John that Jesus celebrated Hanukkah What we read is that at the time of Hanukkah, Jesus was in the temple.

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We don't necessarily know that He celebrated it, so that to be a bit more clear with that, that's in John 10, it's a passage in John 10.

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But we do not read of the Apostles ever celebrating Purim, and so the question is that since Purim is the holiday that was created or instituted to remember the events of the book of Esther, does that mean that they viewed

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Esther as non -canonical? Is that your question? Yes. No, it would not necessarily mean that they viewed

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Esther as non -canonical. The fact that something is not mentioned in the New Testament does not mean that the…how would

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I say it? The fact that there is no mention of that in the New Testament is not proof itself that Jesus and the

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Apostles never celebrated it because not everything Jesus did and said or everything the Apostles taught is recorded in the

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New Testament. All we can make from that is that there's no record in the New Testament that Jesus and the Apostles celebrated

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Purim, but we know that the Jews did. Being a cultural thing, I don't know why they would not have celebrated

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Purim. There's no evidence that Jesus and the Apostles did not view Esther as canonical since that was the

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Old Testament view even at the time of Jesus and the Apostles. Yeah, so I would be looking for a statement in the

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New Testament about a denial of Esther's canonicity and we don't find that for certain.

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Of course, I'm arguing from silence just as your devil's advocate position would be arguing from silence. Yep. Yes? Does Esther have any

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Messianic reference to the Messiah? Esther does not, that I can think of off the top of my head.

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I don't believe that it does. It does demonstrate God's preservation of His covenant people through Esther as part of the value of the book of Esther in showing the sovereignty of God over preserving

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His people and His redemptive plans so that it might not be wiped out. And of course, yeah, so in that would be its value, its

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Messianic value, Old Testament value. And Esther, again, is one of those books that some people have questioned because the name of God is not mentioned in the book of Esther.

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It's just a historical account of what happened. So some people say since the name of God is not mentioned in there, should we view it as canonical?

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Yeah. Cornel? Yeah. It's definitely a religious book, yeah, that does explain the institution of the

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Feast of Purim and the background behind that. It shows

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Esther as a woman of faith, yep. All right?

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Any other questions about the Apocrypha? Okay, so the Septuagint, we've got three minutes left to go through the

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Pseudepigrapha, and we're not going to do that. But just to review, the Septuagint is a Greek translation of the

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Old Testament, finished about 150, at least 150 years before Jesus and the Apostles. It was the book of the

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Old Testament of Jesus and the Apostles, widely quoted, widely used. The people of Jesus' day and the

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Apostles' day would have known of the Apocrypha, which is the second one, the Apocrypha, which means hidden or secret, and it is those books written between 400

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B .C. and the time of Jesus, during that 400 -year period of time, that's when it was written.

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Jesus and the Apostles knew that those books existed. They never quoted them as canonical, and none of the Jews ever viewed them as Scripture.

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Jesus and the Apostles did not view them as Scripture, and we do not view them as Scripture. There may be some historical value in reading the books.

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There's certainly no messianic or religious or divine value in terms of it being the voice of God or the written

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Word of God. Okay? So that's the Apocrypha and the Septuagint, and Cornel has a statement, yes?

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Okay, okay. To say that again, for those who are listening by recording, the three books mentioned in the

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Dead Sea Scrolls, did you say? In the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls were the Letter to Jeremiah, Tabith, Ecclesiasticus, those three books.

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So there was reference in, there is inclusion or reference to those books amongst the

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Dead Sea Scroll Qumran community, but they did not regard them as Scripture. They don't quote them as such. Okay.

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All right, let's pray, and we'll be done. Father, thank

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You for all that we are learning, and again, we thank You that You've given us the ability and the grace to look at these things and to think clearly about them.

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We thank You for Your grace in preserving for us again Your Word, and we love You for it, and we ask

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Your blessing upon our time of worship and fellowship that is to follow here. May You be glorified through all that we sing and say, and our service to one another.