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

Creation Fellowship Welcome and Ministry Introduction

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.

Why the Canon Matters for Scripture’s Authority

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 perfect. 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 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.

Bart Ehrman, Athanasius, and the Need to Define the Canon

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 that was 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 have 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.

Scripture as God-Breathed Covenant Writing

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 briefer on this issue, is How We Got the Bible by Greg Lanier. I've often referred to this or Scribes and Scriptures 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, Now, I think this is a very important and precise definition for many reasons.

First of all, 2 Peter 1 .21 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 1400-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, Now, others will say, what about the New Testament writers?

Did they even know 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, that'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 in 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. And 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 traditions, 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 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, 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 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 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 formerly 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.

The Hebrew Canon and the Apocrypha

Now, 1400 to 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 recognize in varying degrees as inspired and authoritative, how should we think of that?

Well, I think the Hebrew Old Testament canon, they had 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 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, Wegener 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 and 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 Sirach, 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 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 Kings. 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 1st 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 as scripture, but rejected by Jews and evangelical Protestants. And now the alternate name would be Deuterocanonical, which means second canon, not second and 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, 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, contain 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.