Do we have the right books in the Bible? Caleb Harrelson

Good evening and thank you for joining us. Creation Fellowship, Santee, has been meeting for 10 years in person and presently online.

We are a group of people who come together to learn more about the six day creation account that happened some 6000 years ago.

We also welcome any other topic that is closely aligned with the Bible, or shows the Bible to be the accurate and reliable book that it is.

You can find Creation Fellowship, Santee, on the internet at our social media outlets by using the link tinyurl .com

forward slash CF Santee. And that's

C like creation, F like fellowship, and the word Santee. S -A -N -T -E -E.

And tonight we have Caleb Harrelson. He is with Engage Apologetics. It is a ministry that was formed in 2018.

He and his wife, Kendra, lead this ministry. This is Caleb's first time with Creation Fellowship, Santee, and I already feel like I know him.

Thank you for joining us tonight, Caleb. Go ahead and take it away. Hey, well, thank you so much.

It's so good to be here with all of you. I'm going to go ahead and share my slides here to just jump right in to the presentation.

And if you guys have any problems, just let me know seeing them. Can you guys see everything okay? Yes, looks good.

Perfect. Now, again, thank you for the introduction. It's such a joy to be with y 'all tonight.

This is the topic that we're going to cover tonight. Do we have the right books in the Bible? But real briefly, before we dive into this topic,

I wanted to just give you guys a little more info about our ministry and our online presence as well and what we do.

Now, this picture you see here in the background, this is El Paso, Texas, just on the edge of Texas.

And I love this area. The food is great. The people are friendly. And we have a lot of exciting flood geology around here.

And a lot of stuff we're continuing to read about. And we even have dinosaur tracks on here. Hopefully I can show you one of our pictures related to that.

Our ministry, we slightly modified it when we went to this year. We modified the ministry as a nonprofit so we can build a team to further expand our outreach.

And we're really built off of three C's. And I'm just going to briefly hit on these of being our core apologetics, where we do apologetic seminars frequently, a worldview academy.

And then we did our first summer camp where kids were able to do ropes course, learn about the reliability of the

Gospels, do team building activities. And we had a dinosaur soft tissue lab, which was really fun for a lot of the students working in partnership with Dr.

Armitage. He wasn't present at camp, but he helped us train one of our students to run the lab.

And we train people in cult evangelism to Mormons and JWs. And that is part of our vision as well to reach more to understand the true biblical

Jesus and creation science. So that involves a biblical creation guided hikes.

We did a Grand Canyon trip. Lord willing, we plan to do another one. And this fall, we're planning to bring in Dr.

Jason Lyle for our space in the Bible conference. So our goal is to have creation guides all over the

Southwest. Right now, we just do El Paso Zoo and our dinosaur tracks. Just I can see the area like right outside my back door of my house.

And here's me at the El Paso Zoo giving a tour. And we have a tour coming up real soon.

Some of our other guides are going to lead. And this is when we had Dr. John Whitmore at the El Paso dinosaur tracks.

You can see maybe if you look closely, you can see the little theropod tracks on the sidewall when they were uplifted later.

Part of the flood and post -flood. This is one of our students giving a tour. And this is from our

Grand Canyon trip last year. And some of our dinosaur soft tissue labs that we've done and a little flyer from our academy.

And that's my daughter holding Dr. Armitage, his triceratops bone.

You may have seen the video from his genesis history. So he came down and that really springboarded us to move forward with a lot of the creation science ministry we're doing here in El Paso.

Real exciting. We're going to have another soft tissue lab by Jonas. He's going to lead that in this

November. So lots of exciting things that we're doing in our ministry. And we're so overwhelmed with joy and gratefulness of what the

Lord's been doing in our ministry and through our worldview academy. And now this is a subject that is very important to me for many reasons.

First, I can start with a story to illustrate why this issue is so important. Do we have the right books of the

Bible? Because I remember very vividly sitting in a college dorm room and one of my peers, he came up to the dorm room and he said,

Hey, did you know that we didn't even have a Bible until like the 4th century, several hundred years later?

So really we shouldn't view the Bible as that authoritative. We could just view it as some kind of inspired book, somewhat inspirational.

But really it was foisted on that authority view came way later.

And so I remember just almost shell shocked with this news. And he was a little more advanced in some of his studies at the time.

And so I'm like, I'm not sure what to make of this. And then I encountered guys, scholars like Dr. Bart Ehrman, who would say things kind of similar to this.

Here's his book from Misquoting Jesus. He says when it comes to the canon, which we're going to define more as it relates to, do we have the right books of the

Bible? But he says here very early in his book, Misquoting Jesus, he says we're able to pinpoint that any

Christian record listed the 27 books of our New Testament as the books of the New Testament, neither more nor fewer.

Surprising as it may seem, this Christian writing was in the second half of the 4th century, nearly 300 years after the books of the 4th century, nearly 300 years after the books of the

New Testament had themselves been written. The author was a powerful bishop of Alexandria named

Athanasius in the year 367 AD. Athanasius wrote his annual pastoral letter to the

Egyptian churches under his jurisdiction, and in it he included advice concerning which books should be read as scripture and in the churches.

So he lists, and Bart Ehrman talking about Athanasius, he said he lists our 27 books, excluding all others, the

New Testament 27 books. This is the first surviving instance of anyone affirming our set of books as the

New Testament, according to Ehrman. And even Athanasius did not settle the matter. Debates continued for decades, even centuries.

Now, what he's trying to get at here is to get us thinking, really, maybe it's not as clear as we thought when it comes to the canon.

However, I think he's misguided on a few accounts here, and I actually wrote a whole paper responding to this in one of my master's classes at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

I'm studying currently for MDiv in Apologetics and Philosophy, and I had to respond to something from his book, and I chose this.

Because I can't tell you how many times I've received messages like this from communication with friends, or read posts online of people saying, really, can we talk about having a

Bible at all? Was this related to some list that came way later? And so it matters how we talk about the books of the

Bible and how we talk about Scripture itself. Because maybe if we're looking at something that wasn't authoritative inherently from when it was written, meaning if it's from God, then when it's written itself, it's going to have the authority because it's from God.

And because God is not a man that He can err, but if we're rejecting that, then we have to view the

Bible differently. And I tell you, this is very important because a lot of my friends, in that similar vein, when one of my peers had approached me in the college dorm, they've had the same view of the

Bible. And almost all of them have deconstructed from their faith. Now, a lot of us as biblical creationists in this group and caring about adjacent issues of the reliability and authority of Scripture, we want to think about these issues.

We want to think about them carefully. Because how we think about Scripture will influence how we think about every other issue when it comes to God, when it comes to sin, when it comes to origins, when it comes to everything.

How we think about Scripture, how we view Scripture will influence how we view God, how we view Genesis, how we view the

Gospel, and how we view and think about all issues of morality. And this is really important.

And so I've been diving into this issue, and a lot of these books here are my books related to the canon.

And so hopefully what I'm sharing with you tonight will both challenge you to think carefully and equip you on why

I do believe we can speak of Scripture being the divine deposit from God that is inerrant, without errors, and is authoritative.

And we can receive it as such. Now, we have to kind of work through a few terms as we talk through this issue here.

We really have to define Scripture. And this is so important in our day and age because we can't just assume everyone's on the same page.

It's basic defining our terms that we always have to keep going back to over and over.

And I really like, if you want a good short, a briefer on this issue, is How We Got the

Bible by Greg Lanier. I've often referred to this or Scribes in Scripture by Dr. Peter Gurry and Dr.

John Mead. Very good breakdown on the canon and the textual issues of Scripture.

Now, I like how Greg Lanier defines what Scripture is. He says, Scripture is the inspired deposit of writings received as divinely authoritative for the covenant community.

Now, I think this is a very important and precise definition for many reasons.

First of all, 2 Peter 121 talks about how men moved by the Spirit were carried along, saying

God is the ultimate author. We're not talking about a dictation. God said write each of these words.

He used the personalities of each of the authors. And we think about Scripture itself. Over 1 ,400 -year time span, 40 different authors, different personalities, yet it's consistent in its message.

And there's fulfilled prophecy and consistency through all of what it's communicating. Now, some would say, well, did they know they were writing

Scripture? Well, I think clearly we can make the briefcase that that is true when we look at the

Old Testament because we see the inspired formula, if you will, where they say, thus saith the

Lord, many times in the Old Testament. Now, others will say, what about the New Testament writers? Did they even know they were writing, what they were writing was

Scripture itself? Well, I think, one, we can say Jesus himself authorized them to be his witnesses.

He said this many times in the Gospels. We look at Matthew 10, Luke 24, 48, John 20,

Acts 15. We have this idea that it's the message that they're giving is presented from the

Spirit. Paul gives commands of the Lord, 1 Corinthians 14, 37, and he proclaims not the word of men but God, 1

Thessalonians 2 .13 and 2 Thessalonians 2 .15. Paul's letters are always to a broader audience, and we see that in many of his epistles.

And other Scriptures affirm the intention and both self -awareness of the writing of Scripture itself.

And we see that over and over, them referring to each other, and we'll look at those here in a little bit.

And I think this is interesting. Sometimes you see in the New Testament, they quote both an Old Testament and a

New Testament Scripture together, holding them equally authoritative. Now when we think of the deposit of writings,

I think this is important because if this is something that is given to us from God, it's something that is received and recognized.

And the early Jews referred to Scripture as the Book of the Covenants. And we actually even see this, and we'll talk about it as related to and defined as the

Apocrypha. They themselves referred to other books as the Book of the Covenants in Sirach 24, 23, and 1

Maccabees 156 -67. They referred to those other writings as something unique and different.

And I think we also see the early Christians spoke about the New Testament and the

Old Testament as both covenants. Melito of Sardis, an early Christian leader, and Irenaeus and Tertullian, they talked about the incovenanted books.

And we think of testament, and that's a Latin term referring to covenant. And this is important because that means

Scripture is the written form of the covenant. It's the covenant for the covenant community.

So that means there was an expectation of it to be written down in the New Testament. And we even have this idea in the early

Christian church is the rule of faith, not merely a tradition that was something separate from Scripture.

When they would say trust in the tradition was passed on, they're not talking about a separate stream of authority.

They're talking about something referring back to the written text, the written covenant community text.

And I think that's very important we think through this. Greg Lanier says all of God's covenantal dealings are conceptualized as written.

We see that 2 Timothy 3 .16, all Scripture is God -breathed. And we'll look some more at that later, but we're first going to look at the

Old Testament. And giving a broad view here as we're defining Scripture and how we're to think through this.

Now the early church spoke of Scripture as handed down. The definitions matter and the terminology matters.

We see Clement of Alexandria talking about this, saying and affirming this. We see the

Galatian decree talked about it as received. Now yes, some of that Galatian decree included some apocryphal books, which

I would not affirm as inspired books. But we do see them using this term received, and we see the delivered unto our fathers and confirmed as divine.

We see that from Athanasius and 3 .67. But we see many people before Athanasius, and we'll get to that and explain an answer to Bart Ehrman later.

But I don't think there's a talk of just picking where someone says we established the canon of Scripture.

No, it was always received and recognized. This is the deposit that we are receiving, and it is from God.

And so we see it's a covenant content. You can scan all through the

Old Covenant, for example, Genesis 3, Genesis 6 -9, Genesis 12, 2

Samuel 7, Jeremiah 31. We see it's covenantal in its content.

The content of what it's speaking on, the blessings and curse of the covenant agreement, the curses of disobedience.

We see it's covenantal in its form. They talk about the historical basis of the relationship between two parties.

It's both drawn out. We see that in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. We see that written out, talking about the obligations and blessings for obedience and signs for enacting the covenant.

And mandated permanent written documentation, Greg Lanier discusses. And we see the New Testament, the

New Covenant. It has authorized witnesses, as we mentioned. They talk about how it's based off of Jesus' own words,

Matthew 26 and Luke 22 -20, that they've entered into a new stage in God's covenant relationship.

And we see, for example, Gospel and Acts, new historical writings that root themselves as the fulfillment of the

Old Covenant. And the epistles, they shape the community with the covenantal obligations and their blessings and warnings that flow from the work of Christ.

And then we have, of course, James. It's kind of like the New Covenant version of wisdom literature. What it looks like to live and wisely in light of the

New Covenant. And we have prophetic writings, referring to Revelation and Matthew 24. Now, this is important because we think of, if Scripture is truly this inspired deposit, then we need to affirm what

Scripture says and not go beyond what Scripture says. Jesus commonly said, he said in John 10 -35,

Scripture cannot be broken. And he would talk about, you go beyond Scripture, and he would talk about the leaders,

Pharisees and other teachers of the law who would go beyond and make their tradition an extra stream of authority.

Jesus told the Pharisees they invalidated the word of God by their traditions. Mark 7 says that, and Jesus hits on that in two different times.

Jesus consistently says it is written. And he said that in response to Satan.

And he says many times, you don't know the power of God or the Scriptures. And you see

Jesus referring to that in Matthew as well. And Paul appeals to not be taken captive by the tradition of men.

And so holding firmly to the tradition, as we said, is not a separate stream of authority. It's referring back to this divinely authoritative inspired deposit that is ultimately written down.

And I think this is so important. So Scripture itself is imposing itself onto the people, and they receive and they recognize the voice of the shepherd as the

Gospel of John refers to. And this is, I think this is important. Sometimes we skip this issue of defining it really clear.

But if we understand this, we understand as the Protestant Reformation clarified, not an invention, but clarified as there are many people who would affirm

Scripture alone, Sola Scriptura, it is the ultimate and final authority that can bind the conscience of the

Christian believer. That we understand that because God has spoken clearly and authoritatively, and there is not something that we would appeal outside of God's own word himself.

And I had someone tell me the other day that his understanding of the church, that is actually more important, more authoritative than Scripture.

That's really scary. That's like saying it's more important than God's word itself. I think that's a dangerous place to be.

When we think of the canon, now let's define this some more, because this will help us really connect the dots more.

The canon, one simple definition we can give here, this is understood as a rule or measuring rod, not a canon that you shoot, you know, cannonballs with.

But it refers to the accepted standard or list of books of the Old and New Testament.

And that's a broad definition. I think we can actually give a little more.

Now, Dr. Bill Meltz, he says, canonization is the process by which the church recognized which books were authoritative and therefore belonged in the

New Testament. I kind of like that, but I also think there could be some more precision on this.

Because some would say, well, what's the standard we're using? Is there a standard outside of the self -attesting standard of God's word itself?

How should we think through this? Now, those who aren't as familiar with the Protestant Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox debate, real simply, we have the

Roman Catholic Church would affirm, and this is in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it affirms this concept that they establish the canon.

Now, the Protestant position would be they recognize the canon. Of course, you probably picked up that would be the position

I would be coming from. But the process of canonization is a process of the church, again, recognizing which books are canonical, which books bear the word of God that are inspired.

And there's a big difference between the two. Now let's unpack some canon definitions some more. And before I forget, besides my shout out to Greg Lanier, which is helping me prepare a lot for this presentation.

If you want to dive a lot more into the canon, I highly recommend you read The Question of Canon by Dr.

Michael Kruger. Excellent book. Anyone who's going to study the canon needs to read that book. Now, he kind of breaks it down some more.

And this is very important. It'll help us when we talk about these issues some more later. He has the exclusive view of the canon.

He has the functional view of the canon and the ontological view. And if you're like, what does that mean?

Don't worry, we're going to define this some more here. Now, the exclusive view is kind of the view that Bart Ehrman is talking about.

He's actually ignoring two and three here. Now, this is the authoritative collection of authoritative books and the understanding of the church.

But the exclusive view would also be talking about, well, when do we have a list? When do you have a church leader like Athanasius, bishop in North Africa, giving a list in his

Easter letter? Well, he has the 27 books, the Old Testament. He lists the Old Testament books as well.

And then so Bart Ehrman says, well, that's his only view. But if you ignore these other two, then you kind of have a problem.

You're missing out on the rest of the argument here. And so that's why he's going to arrive at this conclusion that says, well, we didn't even have really anything clear.

I think if you only stop at definition one, you may say that. However, if you move forward to the functional definition, which is the collection of authoritative books, which would also be referring to the frequent use within the church.

They would say this little C, Catholicity, meaning it's consistent with the rest of the apostolic teaching or it's used a lot.

It's in that some of that also demonstrates its validity as being a valid book.

That would be a part that is worth considering. But I say we shouldn't stop there.

And Dr. Michael Kruger would argue the same. Now, the third part is what I've been already arguing is the ontological definition.

Ontological is really just dealing with what is the very nature of these books. So I'd say the canon from God's view is when it was written itself, when the last book of the

Bible was written or the last book of the New Testament was written. Someone's put it all the way up to 90

AD, some a little earlier when referring to, say, Revelation. That's when the authoritative collection of authoritative books in the mind of God was completed.

Now, the recognition of that in the people of God may have taken a little later. And I think there's some good reasons we can see why it might have taken later.

For example, a persecution and the collaboration was different before Christianity was legalized is a brief answer on that.

But I think we cannot ignore the third one. And Michael Kruger acknowledges all three of these.

But when we hit on this, this, I think, will help us answer some of these issues of how we even think about and answer this question.

I really like some of these quotes here kind of dealing with this issue. David Platt says,

Canonicity was revealed by God and recognized by man. I think that would be true where you would see the first and second play out.

But if the third one is true, the ontological canon, this would also follow. The church no more gave us the

New Testament canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity. God gave us gravity by his work of creation.

And similarly, he gave us the New Testament canon by inspiring the individual books that make it up,

J .I. Packer says. And I also like what F .F. Bruce, a great textual scholar, he said here that because – let me back up.

The one thing must be emphatically stated, the New Testament books did not become authoritative for the church because they were formally in a canonical list like Athanasius 367 list.

Which, by the way, there was a list before that by origin. On the contrary, the church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognizing their innate worth.

And there's many other quotes that are saying this as what I've been hitting on. Now, the Old Testament Hebrew books.

Now, we're going to make this differentiation of the Hebrew recognized and received books from the apocryphal books.

Now, 1400 or 400 B .C., most were written in Hebrew and some in Aramaic.

Old Testament books were separated from other writings. We know this is true. We talked about it separated from Jasher as mentioned in the book of Joshua.

Things were separated in the temple. Exodus 25, Deuteronomy 10, many others. Josephus talks about this in Antiquities of the

Jew. Josephus, a Jewish historian, late 1st century, he's mentioning these. And we see scripture is laid up in the temple, and he mentions this.

And his letter to Aristides in 1st Maccabees describes how

Greek soldiers defiled the temple in 186 B .C. and burned the books of the law that they found.

So there was this differentiation, this separation. Now, I think when we think of, okay, well, how do we know these apocryphal books that Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church have in their

Bible? And recognized in varying degrees as inspired and authoritative. How should we think of that?

Well, I think the Hebrew Old Testament canon, they have recognized the spirit -inspired prophecy after Malachi ceased.

And that's affirmed by several early Jewish writers. 1st Maccabees 4 .46, Prayer of Azariah 15,

Josephus against Apion, his letter there, and the Apocalypse of Baruch. And Hebrews 1 .1

would seem to refer to that that was ceased in Matthew 11 .13. That it didn't pick up until John the

Baptist. Now, I think this is interesting that Greg Lanier points out that Malachi 4 .4

-5 seems to be pointing to that the law of Moses must sustain people until prophecy returns.

So the spirit of prophecy has ceased in this view, and the spirit of prophecy will return in the new covenant.

We see that to be true in Joel 2 .28, and that's affirmed in Acts that Joel has been fulfilled and pouring out of the spirit.

And the new covenant is being fulfilled and the work of the church going forth. And so we see even within itself of the

Old Testament, Joshua and the prophets talk about the law as being the center of Israel's life, Joshua 1. 2

Chronicles talks about the book of Moses, and 1 Kings 4 .32 acknowledges the Proverbs.

And 2 Samuel 22 uses Psalm 18, 1 Chronicles 16 uses several Psalms. And this is important because we don't build our argument merely off of the internal testimony of Scripture citing itself.

Because if it doesn't cite, say, Esther, do we say, oh, it's not in the Old Testament canon?

That's not the only metric we would use. And I like how

Lanier says not every citation of a prior scriptural writing within another scriptural writing guarantees that it was received as divinely inspired documentation.

However, the overall pattern, and even in some data points could be debated, is that later inspired writers were acknowledging the divine authority, the scriptural status of antecedent writings remarkably early.

They didn't wait for a council. And I think this is important. I think it was probably – this is a marker of its internal use within the

Old Testament. But the Old Testament canon was closed before Jesus, I believe, was affirmed and recognized as such.

And Romans talks about the oracles were given to the Jews in Romans 2. And Dr.

Peter Gentry, an Old Testament textual scholar, he says that he thinks Ezra and Nehemiah were made part of the

Old Testament canon or received, excuse me, in the 4th century BC. And here's

I think even a stronger argument when we think of, well, how did Jesus view the books of the

Bible? Did he give a list? Well, no. But I think we can affirm that he would only recognize

R39 from Genesis to Malachi when he says in Luke 24, 44, on the road to Emmaus, everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the

Psalms must be fulfilled. This is commonly referred to today as the Tanakh or the tripartite or the threefold

Old Testament canon. So this threefold division of the Old Testament canon, the

Tanakh, and this is broken down. The Ta is referred to as the law.

The Na is referred to the Nevi 'im, the prophets. And the Ketuvim is referred to as the writings.

Now, this is important because we go, okay, well, is this just some recent thing that Christians are doing when we have this three -part division?

I don't think so. And part of why I can say that is we have, and I'm looking at it here, this is apocryphal book, but you see them.

This is also known as Ecclesiasticus or Wisdom of Jesus or Son of Sirach. This book, probably 132

BC, before Jesus, it affirms this division and mentions these three categories, if you will, and mentions the

Greek translation of the Old Testament, Wagner says, and his work on a journey from text to translations.

So the Torah, as we mentioned, the first five books of the Bible, and then the prophets joins prophecies with historical texts and tells of Israel's history from the promised land to their exile from the land.

And then the writings, the wisdom in poetry, Proverbs, Song of Psalms. And sometimes the whole section was just called the

Psalms, like Jesus said, right? Now, again, the New Testament does not provide a list, but we have a good case where we said,

Ben -Sirah, he says, law, prophets, and others that followed him. And I have it pulled up right on my desk here. The Dead Sea Scrolls, they have this sectarian -like manifesto.

Again, not scripture, but it gives us some historical, interesting indicators that Jews before Jesus were making this separation.

There's reference to the book of Moses, the prophets, and then David. Is that referring to that whole category?

Fourth Ezra, this is, again, not an Old Testament canonical book, Jewish book, referred to 24 books plus seven esoteric ones found in the

Dead Sea Scrolls. So Fourth Ezra indicates that the author knew of a division between widely accepted 24 books and the larger esoteric books.

Now, first, you may be like, what do you mean 24? I thought you said 39. Well, briefly, and I could hit on this more later if there's some questions related to this, there are different ways that people had counted the

Old Testament canon. The 24 in it would be kind of dealing with – it corresponds to 24 letters in the

Greek alphabet. But the grouping of the books, sometimes they would be counted together, for example.

And you still have that threefold division in this 24 section. This is also used by the Jews. And then the 22 book

Tanakh, just counted differently, what some would say is it connected with the Hebrew 22 -letter alphabet.

And then the 39, so it's really the same books, just counted or grouped differently, is the short answer on that for those who are curious.

And so we also see several other books before Jesus. 2 Maccabees 2 .13 and 15 .9 refers to writings about kings and prophets,

David, and the epistle to the king. So there's so many more I could give. I'll move on because I think one of the stronger ones is dealing with a quote from Josephus.

Now, when we look at – here's this list, and this will probably be helpful for you guys to frame up. The Protestant, we would call apocrypha, these would be books that are not received as canonical and we can talk about some of the history in a little bit.

But these books were actually copied together with early Protestant Bibles, but they were not recognized as inspired and authoritative.

And now they're obviously not copied in Protestant Bibles. But you have these other categories.

The Roman Catholic has Tobit all the way through 2 Maccabees.

And then the Greek Orthodox has several other and some that may show up in appendix, but they have a few extra books all the way through 4

Maccabees and then Psalms 151. And so that kind of gives you a picture. But again, this tripartite view, this threefold view of the

Tanakh did not include these. The Hebrew canon didn't include these, and the

Jewish canon does not include these either. And so let's jump back to these terms here.

Apocryphal, that term from Greek would be like a hidden writing or something that shouldn't be seen. It was kind of used differently throughout history.

This describes a group of writings mostly written in Greek during what we'd say between Malachi and Matthew 400

BC to 100 BC. Some would say all the way early first century. They contained in the

Christian Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, and the Latin Vulgate, which we'll talk some more about this, the history of the

Apocrypha. But this, as we said, accepted by Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Scripture, but rejected by Jews and Evangelical Protestants.

And now the alternate name would be Deuterocanonical, which means second canon, not second in lower authority, but received later was how that was viewed after the

Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation. So there's these terms like first canon in contrast to the

Deuterocanonical books that were always been accepted. And then the pseudepigraphal would be books like Book of Enoch.

Athanasius says, well, no one wrote inspired works in the Old Testament before Moses, the first five books.

So the Book of Enoch is talked about a lot online. If you follow that, that would be an example. Enoch did not actually write that.

It was dated way later than Enoch himself. So how do we think about this list?

Well, like, are these useful? Should we read them? Are they inspired or authoritative? Some people have their different arguments.

Why were they in the Septuagint? Why were they in the Latin Vulgate? We'll get to those.

But first I want to hit on some key figures and quotes in relation to the Old Testament canon. Now, I think this is one of the most significant ones right here.

Josephus says, we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another as the

Greeks have, but only 22 books which contain records of all the past times, which are justly believed to be divine.

And of them, five belong to Moses. And then he talks about it contained the law, tradition, and the origin of mankind.

And then he talks about from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia. So he kind of puts a limit on the canon.

If he's affirming this much of the books written after that would not be understood in his perspective as canonical.

The prophets who were after Moses wrote down what was done in their time in 13 books. The remaining four contain hymns to God and precepts for the conduct of human life.

So you see this threefold division. Now again, you have this 22 count here. He doesn't list the names, but I would say it's probably this 22 count grouping and this threefold canon right here.

Josephus further goes on and he says, it is true our history. And how firmly we have given credit to those books of our own nation is evident by what we do.

For during so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add anything to them, to take away anything from them, or to make any change to them.

And then he says later how they would be willing to die for these doctrines.

This is in part in response to Appian who was a critic of Jewish doctrine and claiming it wasn't historical.

But this tells us several things. The threefold vision, it talks about, you see in some of these quotes here if you look carefully, it talks about it not containing contradictions.

It was written by a prophet or someone recognizes as having divine authority. We can see in a lot of his quotes here it originated through inspiration of God.

It was accepted by Jews as authoritative. And we have further people

I think that would affirm like Edward Young that when it was written it became scripture and as much as it had been spoken by God it possessed absolute authority.

Since it was the word of God it was canonical as I said earlier. And so we have the Jews that yes they may have disputed some books but just because they disputed it doesn't mean it wasn't understood later.

Sometimes you think of why is the issue or what's the reason they were disputed in the first place?

And of course Psalms and Esther because it doesn't mention God explicitly. At first that was why it was initially had some questions to it.

And there's a lot more with Esther that could be discussed. We have Philo, a Jewish philosopher from Alexandria in the first century.

He never quotes from an apocryphal book as authoritative. And now I think what's also very interesting is in the early church.

We'll skip some of that other quote there. We have in the early church there's the Bishop of Sardis in 170

AD. We have Melito. Now you have this guy named Marcion around that time who was trying to say the

God of the Old Testament is different than the God of the New Testament. And so he like cut out a lot of the books of the Bible, particularly the

Old Testament. So Melito in response, he talks to the Jews and he says, what's their canon?

And basically is affirming pretty much the 39 books. I think minus Esther at that point. But again, on that list doesn't mean that it wasn't or shouldn't be understood as scripture.

But his list didn't include pretty much all of almost all of our

Old Testament canon from the Hebrews, not the apocryphal book. And then we have many other lists that we can speak on.

Now let's look at the history of the apocrypha. Now, Jerome, he translated the

Bible into the version that became the dominant Latin version of the

Bible. There were other versions later before Jerome, but his was called the

Vulgate, meaning it was the vulgar Latin. But it came the dominant one from like the late 400s all the way to the

Reformation. And now he was translating not from the

Greek Old Testament translation, the Septuagint, also seen as LXX. Referring to the story goes that there were 70 people that translated it and it was miraculous.

And so it's held the name Septuagint. But he was translating from the Hebrew. And now the

Septuagint had the apocrypha copied with it.

But now Jerome set these aside as apocryphal. He said they're not in the canon. He appraised them positively for their edification, but he had two different categories.

One for canonical authoritative and useful writings, edification or useful writings, that tier.

And so you have people making this argument though. Jerome at the same time was saying

Augustine of Hippo. He argued that the apocrypha should be recognized as inspired and authoritative.

And so you have these interactions between Jerome and Augustine talking about this. And Jerome, he knows

Hebrew and actually as wise as Augustine is and as many things I may agree with him on, Augustine did not know

Hebrew. Jerome did. So I think that's kind of interesting to keep in mind when it comes to this argument.

And I think Augustine – there's a lot more I could say if there's Q &A. But Augustine actually viewed the

Greek translation of the Old Testament as an inspired translation that was part of his argument.

So you have this separation by Jerome that happened with the

Old Testament apocryphal books that would happen after Malachi. And now it should be also noted the

Masoretic text around 900 AD, the Hebrew text that was the only one we had before the

Dead Sea Scrolls, which dated before Jesus' time. Before they were discovered, the

Dead Sea Scrolls, the Masoretic text didn't include the apocrypha to my knowledge. And so I think that's worth noting when it comes to this.

There's a lot more that could be said. I know there's so much more that could be said related to this issue. I'm going to try to move along because of time.

But I want to point out here that before the Council of Trent in 1546, there was the

Roman Catholic Church response to the Protestant Reformation. And you can, of course, read all the decisions there.

There were actually many people, Catholic cardinals like Cardinal Jimenez. He had the complete

Bible in the original languages called the Complutensian Polyglot. And he said there are books outside of the canon, which the church accepts more for the edification of the people for the sanction authority of ecclesiastical doctrines.

But he had the separation as well. Erasmus, he raised questions about the canon of 1525.

Cardinal Cajetan did not accept apocryphal books for establishing doctrine. But then even some at the

Council of Trent were unsure about the status of the apocrypha. Yet the Council of Trent, they essentially codified it and said an anathema if you don't accept it as inspired from God.

And now after that, Protestants used what they were calling as deuterocanonical, received later second canon.

Protestants called that second in authority, meaning it's not authoritative for establishing doctrines. But Sixtus, a

Catholic leader, he established this deuterocanonical view later. Now, Protestants, as I said, did copy it.

Even the early King James Bible had the apocrypha listed in there and people would read it.

And I think that's part of the issue is sometimes evangelicals, we may not read the apocrypha and we hear about it.

Some may think, well, was it hidden as in people don't want us to know this information? And did they take books out of the

Bible? And we would say they were never really, truly containing the voice of God in the first place.

And we see that from like Philo and Josephus, those quotes there. And, you know, eventually it was removed out because people didn't see it as useful.

And I could talk more on that if there are questions. But it was around 1828. And Scribes and Scripture cover some of that history if you want to read more on that in that book.

1828, the American Bible Society followed the British and Foreign Bible Society. But I think we can say a lot of other reasons why the apocrypha should be rejected.

Well, besides that, Jesus didn't affirm that or didn't speak of it as a scripture. Its own testimony doesn't affirm that it was inspired.

First Maccabees 927 mentions he lived in a time there wasn't prophetic words. Not since the time that a prophet was seen among them, he says.

And three times in the Apocryphal Book of Maccabees, the author pointed out that he lived in an era when, yes, when it would come to an end.

First Maccabees 446 and 927. I would say it denies other clear teaching.

You can see a good article on that on CARM .org or GotQuestions. We see

Tobit 6, 5 -8 promotes use of magic. Tobit 411, 12 -9 and 2

Maccabees 12 -43 will refer to salvation by works through alms. And this indulgence idea of giving to help contribute to salvation became an issue.

And that was part of the debate of what is the authoritative claim? Why are souls scriptura?

How do we establish what the gospel is, that it's by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone? And so you see those issues.

That's a problem there. That I think there's clear teachings that are in contradiction against the rest of the received canon of scripture that does have contained the divine word of God.

And God doesn't contradict himself. Now, I've covered and I actually skipped over a few parts because it's looking at and managing the time here.

A basic case for why I think the 39 that we have, and of course the 22 or 24, it's the same, just counted or grouped differently, can be recognized as our

Old Testament and received as such. Now, this is what

I'm going to mention one more time tonight. Athanasius, in his letter, he doesn't seem to say like it's referred to by even

Ahriman and others, my friends that I mentioned before, that it was being established. And then we have a

Bible. No, the Bible is meaning the full collection. That's something, yes, we could talk about historically when it was copied and printed all together.

However, we can also refer to scripture being recognized and used very early, well before 367.

But in this letter, he has a New Testament and Ultimate Testament list. But he says here, referring to the

Apocrypha, since some have taken in hand to set an order for themselves, the so -called Apocrypha, and to mingle them with the

God -inspired scripture concerning which we have attained to a sure persuasion, according to what the original eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered unto our fathers,

I also have decided to set forth in order the writings that have been put in the canon, that have been handed down and confirmed as divine.

These are the springs of salvation. I love that quote. It's so beautiful because that's saying there's a self -attesting authority to scripture.

And I don't think that Athanasius sees himself as being the stamp, but more clarifying, which many have already understood on this.

And, you know, what I'm going to do, if I can probably do in 10 minutes, if you guys will allow,

I can do a 10 -minute case of the New Testament canon. I actually think it takes a brief amount of time compared to the

Old Testament canon versus the Apocrypha, because I think there's some clear indicators that we can easily point to when it comes to the

New Testament canon. Sure, go ahead. Okay, perfect. So, when it comes again to the canon, let's look at the timeline.

Jesus' resurrection in 33 AD, the destruction of the temple in AD 70, and then you have Paul and James being killed in the 60s.

So briefly, we have most of the books being written between 40 and 70 AD. Maybe there's a case, and I'm not going to talk about all the specific of the dating.

I'm more going to recognize that I think the large majority of the New Testament canon was accepted, most of Paul's letters, if not all, and the

Gospels before the end of the first century. And this is well attested in history. And now if you look at these other lists, these guys, other church fathers, if you will, they're disciples of the disciples going down.

We have Polycarp, a disciple by John the Apostle. And Irenaeus was connected with Polycarp, and he would talk about in his writings about Polycarp speaking about learning from John.

And you have Justin Martyr mid -2nd century in the 100s. And all these guys, we're going to briefly hit on them.

These guys are actually talking about the books of the Bible, quoting them as authoritative.

And I want you to see some of these quotes because this is very fascinating to see. If you just read some of these, you won't make the kind of claims that Ehrman is making.

I think he knows enough to make a claim. He knows enough on this issue, and I'm not saying he's not intelligent.

He is very intelligent. But I think his logical conclusion is not the proper conclusion here because many of these guys are making lists before 367.

And as a side note, the Council of Nicaea had nothing to do with the canon that was primarily about the divinity of Jesus.

But you should also note here the Gnostic Gospels that are saying the spirit is good, body is bad.

All these so -called lost Gospels, they came after the 1st century. They came late, late 2nd century and some later.

And we should see this on the timeline. I think it helps us get a good list. And this actually list doesn't even include

Athanasius close to the 400s here. And so the eternal testimony, I like this a lot here.

Charles Hill, he says, The scriptures are auto pistoi, the

Greek meaning self -authenticating, self -attesting. And this extended to the question of canon as well.

Indeed, he says, actually, I think he quotes Calvin in his book. Scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth as white and black things do of their color or sweet and bitter things do of their taste.

So Calvin would say this kind of self -authenticating nature of scripture. And now this is different than the

Mormon saying we'll read the Book of Mormon and pray about it and you know it's true. One, meaning it's not merely just a feeling that you get with the

Mormon's claim. You know it's self -authenticating because it's consistent within itself. It has fulfilled prophecy.

It's connected with these eyewitness testimonies when we're referring to the New Testament canon. And I think that we see that.

Now Justin Martyr, we said mid -2nd century, he would talk about proofs and he proceeds to just quote scripture.

And he would say when talking to a Jew, he would say, it has been proven already, gentlemen, to those who have ears.

And he says, he shows his understanding that recognizing the truth of the self -attesting scripture requires the work of the spirit who gives ears to hear.

And we know that to be true. Any of us who are born again through faith in Christ alone have received forgiveness, received a new heart.

We've been given the eyes to see. And before we come to faith in Christ, we are spiritually blind. We are enemies of God.

And there is absolutely a sense that, yes, you can even affirm this to be true, but to truly see it as the springs of life, as Athanasius says, that becomes a work of God.

And faith comes by hearing and through hearing of the Word of God, as Paul says in Romans 10. Now let's look at some of these here.

Papius of Hierapolis in 110 says, he's investigating. He says,

I asked about their sayings in detail. What Andrew Peter said, referring to the apostles, what Philip, Thomas, James, John, Matthew, or any of the

Lord's followers. They had a concern for what was said. So one of the clear metrics, if you will, that's pointing back to it being self -attesting is it had to be connected with an eyewitness apostle.

And so we have here Serapion. This is in response to someone wrote, they wrote something.

It was the Gospel of Peter. That was the name of it, but it wasn't written by Peter. And he said in response, at first he said, yeah,

I'll read it if it's by Peter. And then later he realized, no, no, that's not by Peter. And he says, we brothers and sisters receive

Peter and the rest of the apostles as we would receive Christ himself. But those writings that are falsely ascribed with their names, we reject knowing that no such writings have ever been handed down to us.

That's huge. That's important. That's early, you know, late second century, but early in the timeline of things that we see this.

And so Dr. Timothy Paul Jones, my apologetics professor at Southern, he says there was a definite standard that directed this process.

A conviction that these writings must be rooted in a reliable eyewitness testimony about Jesus Christ.

So there's reason to believe that the testimony we find in the New Testament reflects the experiences of men and women who personally follow

Jesus and pass on their experience to generations to come. And we know this is a key part of the entire test here.

And we even see this in how the manuscripts of the gospels and the manuscripts of Paul the apostle, they were copied together and how they were handled themselves.

And I'm going to just briefly hit on this just so we can kind of wrap up here.

But the manuscripts were treated differently and treated with different care.

And Charles Hill in his book talks about this, of how they were bound together in codexes or codices, bound books.

And a lot of the gospels were copied together. And so we have, compared to say the gospel of Mary, which is not truly from Mary, it was rapidly written, informal, cursive hand, kind of used for bills and other things.

But the gospel of John, Charles Hill would say it's written in clear, upright, very regular calligraphic hand.

And this gospel of Mark 1, I think we're looking at here. I think we're showing that it's demonstrated as it has more care that's put into this.

And we can revisit this more. But we see that there is more care in these manuscripts itself. Their basic physical form is one distinguishing mark of these as well.

And so I like this quote here by Tertullian. He says, you're ready to exercise your own curiosity, run over to the apostolic churches where their own authentic writings are read.

And the timeline here, this is like 180 by Tertullian. And Polycarp, disciple of John, he's already saying in the scriptures as it's written, quoting

Ephesians. So we see this very early on. Papias talks about asking about their writings in detail.

This is a very important one, I think. Justin Martyr is one of my favorite early apologists. He talks about on Sunday morning they read the memoirs of the apostles and the writings of the prophets.

That seems very closely understood and read and recognized on a

Sunday morning. And he talks about more about their Sunday mornings and what they did.

But they were reading them as equally authoritative as the Old Testament writings. And Irenaeus talks about there being four zones of the earth.

Thus there's four gospels. There can't be any more. An interesting argument, but you see it was recognized very early.

Scriptures to be the pillar of our faith. This was before 367. So we see scripture after scripture talking about this.

The moratorium canon. This was a fragment that dates to the mid to late second century.

And it talks about writings like the shepherd of Hermes that were not recognized. They said it's not accounted among the prophets for their number has been completed, nor among the apostles.

Words after their time. It can't be read publicly. So we see this distinction here that is happening very early on.

And we see Serapion as we mentioned earlier about the gospel of Peter issue. Why he rejected that was falsely ascribed.

So, and the early Christians call us around the New Testament books remarkably early.

While it was not until the fourth century that disputes over some of the peripheral books were resolved. For example, second

Peter, because he seems to have a reference to the book of Enoch or the concepts mentioned in Enoch.

That was actually part of the reason why it was partly debated. But then they realized it was connected with the apostle

Peter as well. Doesn't mean Peter was quoting it as scripture. You could say quoting the ideas there.

So Athanasius in closing here is not choosing these 27 books as we mentioned.

But acknowledging how the church has become persuaded they are God -inspired, scriptural, delivered by eyewitnesses, handed down, and confirmed as divine.

And again you see that quote here to remind us of that truth. So I know I've covered a lot of Old Testament and New Testament canon.

But I think we can clearly affirm that scripture is the divine deposit given by God to the covenant community.

And that was received and recognized as such in the early church and even the Jews before Jesus as well.

So I think, I have things obviously I skipped that may answer some questions.

I think we, are we going to open it up for questions now? Is that correct? Yes, I was just going to comment that was a lot of information.

Yeah. It was very thorough. One of our good friends of this ministry who passed away in 2021, he had spoke to us on how we got the

New Testament. And it was, it was good information. This was very thorough information.

And I didn't see, Jessica likes that you're a Dr. Lyle fan.

We're all big Dr. Lyle fans. He speaks to us often. He's actually a friend of ours. Good, good. Yeah.

Yeah, we're having Dr. Lyle come to El Paso in November 11. Very nice.

Well, we can't afford to bring him anywhere. We're like a poor ministry. So we just get him on Zoom.

Rob Langsford, longtime member of our group. Maybe the critics should be called bad error man.

And then Linda states, anything

Bart says is suspect. And when we can let her take her mic off, we'll have her explain that statement because I wasn't sure what she said.

But yeah, I think that was a lot of information. Now I have some questions. Apocrypha.

Apocrypha. What is what exactly.

Is that just all of those extra Catholic books, or. Yeah, I don't

I don't under. Yeah, sure. Sure. Let me I'll pull up that slide again for you guys on that has the apocryphal books.

And hopefully we get it here. Okay. So these would be books, we would say, are like the intertestamental period now

I would say they're useful to read. Understanding some history, particularly first Maccabees we see like the

Maccabean revolt before Jesus. You learn some more Jewish history, but the apocryphal and I know

I we talked some related to why I wouldn't affirm it and why no Protestant would affirm it as inspired from God, meaning it has theological errors has some historical errors

I don't know if I mentioned those. But also the Jews did not recognize it and do not today is my understanding, recognize it as the inspired books from God.

Yeah, you did mention there were errors and okay so that is the the

Jews do not consider that a part of the tradition. Okay. I personally don't read these.

I bet I've always wondered, because when I, I actually liked the book of Enoch I downloaded it.

It's interesting to read I know it's extra biblical. But it seems to have some

Jewish tradition in it. Yeah. There's some interesting other channels who've done some good work related to that book

I think someone say it's probably more Jewish mysticism but I think you know historical value to read some things.

I don't, none of these three categories Orthodox Roman Catholic would affirm say even

Enoch is scripture. I think the only one to my knowledge is the Ethiopian church.

Right. Yeah. That affirms that. But there's a lot more I just skipped over this.

You know I have, I have friends who have strong views on it to would not be Protestant. So, both thinking of, you know, want to make sure

I'm understanding and quoting sources actually but also what I have seen is, I don't, I don't see any of the

Jews or early Christians were even referring to that Enoch would be scripture either. Right now it's fascinating to read.

So yeah, it's, it's interesting I mean I don't use it as a source of scripture or anything. That's some more questions here.

Linda asks, does the Apocrypha teach purgatory and if it does, do you know where. Okay, yes

I have that in my notes, let me pull it up here. Yeah, um,

I was just watching a sermon no no it was at my church on Sunday he, he was talking about purgatory.

How it does. I was so surprised at this is a new church for me. And, you know, he's

Bible believing teaches only from the Bible and he did a sermon on hell. And the next week after that I was expecting nobody to be there but everybody came back so that was good.

Yeah, well, um, let me see I'm trying to find well one

I know that some Catholics would prefer to first Corinthians three talking about being refined by fire and that's obviously scripted they would use that to prefer to purgatory

I had a long discussion with very kind gentlemen last Thursday actually. And, and that's tends to be one of the go to verses of Catholics from our from from scripture, what is it first Corinthians three and I could read it they'll say, verse 12 anyone builds on the foundation with gold silver precious stones would hey straw.

Each one's work will become manifest for the day will disclose it because it will be revealed by fire and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.

If that work. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives he will receive a reward.

If anyone's work is burned up he will suffer loss though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. Well, I think if you read the scripture you're seeing that whatever is not built upon the

Lord is not going to last. It's, it's not talking about a purifying before we get to heaven but that's what my

Catholic friend would say is, I asked him if you died tonight would you go to heaven and he said no because I am not in the state of grace,

I would be in purgatory for a long time. And so we spent time going to Romans three and Ephesians two talking about how you were declared righteous by God at the moment of belief, and it's not becoming righteous when

God says you actually are righteous in and of yourself, which is a whole other debate on the

Protestant and Catholic view of how justification of how we're made right with God. But yeah,

I can't, I'm trying to find I think I thought I had one of my notes of the apocryphal reference,

I want to say there are some references to praying for the dead and the apocrypha not in scripture purgatory itself, obviously wasn't in the early

I wouldn't think that that would have come around until Catholicism.

Why you are thinking about that let me quick go with Rob's question here. Didn't Paul talking to the people of Corinth in one of his letters remind them about how to keep the communion by quoting what

Jesus said, as quoted in Mark. Oh, so you are talking about when when

Jesus is our Paul and in one of his letters is quoting one of the Gospels referring to communion communion is that the question.

Yeah, didn't Paul talking to the people of Corinth in one of his letters, remind them about how to keep the communion.

And he did that by quoting what Jesus said, as quoted in Mark. So, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, that's true.

Um, I wouldn't say first Corinthians 12. He's quoting from the

Lord's Supper. And I want to say the gospel Luke, though, I could be wrong, but yeah that's another their inner enter internal witness of the

New Testament. I think it's fascinating because you have Peter saying

Paul has some writings that are hard to understand in the as he does with the other scriptures and second

Peter 315 and 16. I think that's very fascinating, and I had that in some of my notes and there's other internal witness of the

New Testament, quoting other books that I think can tell us that the argument that Bart is referring to doesn't make sense if you know how scripture talks about itself, and how the early church fathers talked about them so the other scriptures as well.

Okay, and if, if Rob wants clarification when we stop the live stream he can go ahead and ask you.

Sure, sure. Yeah, of course. Okay, so that has exhausted our questions I think people are still digesting the information

I know I am. I have a lot of questions but we're short on time so I'll just have to email you or something.

Like I said that was a lot of information on the Old Testament that I was not aware of and I like to think myself as being pretty studied in the

Bible, but apparently I'm not learning. So if you wouldn't mind praying to close us then we will stop recording

Joyce when Caleb says, man, go ahead and stop the recording, and it'll take me just a moment to get the live stream stop so go ahead.

Sure. Well, dear Lord, we thank you so much for your word that we can receive it as authoritative without error, and it is the wellspring of life,

God that we find in your word, a message of hope and and the joy that is found in Christ ultimately pointing to the, the one who laid down his life for his enemies,

God we we praise you for that the second Adam, God that we can have a new life a new heart we can have our guilt removed in Christ and I pray if anyone listening or watching today has not put their

God that they would look to your word and see where it speaks of the anyone believes in you they will have eternal life now, and God we thank you for the new life you have given us in Christ, I pray that we live our entire life to make you know, and it's named