Intertestamental Period

Preview of the Next Class in Sovereign Grace Academy

All right everyone, good evening. We are here for the last class and as is always the case, there are less people going out than there were coming in. We always have a few that drop off through the series of lessons, but I am thankful that you all have continued with us and I'm thankful for those who are learning with us online.

We have several folks who are doing this from home this time and what I want to do in our startup tonight is I want to give a little bit of a preview of the next class and then let you know what's going on with that.

Then we're going to do tonight's lesson and then the last 15 minutes of tonight I want to talk to you if you are looking at doing a paper. If you're looking to earn the certificate, I want to spend the last 15 minutes talking to you what's required.

So tonight has basically three parts. We're going to start with talking about I'm going to give you a little commercial for the next class and let's do that. Let's start with that. If you are interested in continuing with Sovereign Grace Academy, this is a two-year program.

There are eight courses that make up the two-year program. Four courses per year. Each one of those courses is eight weeks long and there's about a month and a half in between each course. Right now we are in Survey of the Old Testament.

In September we begin Survey of the New Testament. The eight courses are Survey of the Old Testament, Survey of the New Testament, Church History, Apologetics, Christian Ethics, and there are a couple more and I have to look at them.

But the eight courses make up a solid foundation of teaching for you if you are interested in going deeper in God's Word and especially if you're going to be doing any kind of ministry work. It's a very, very small foundation but it is a foundation upon which you can build.

If you're going to do the next class, which is Survey of the New Testament, and you have the Believer's Bible Commentary, then you already have your only required textbook. I'm trying to make that as easy on the pocketbook and on the issue of having to order things.

So I said I was only going to require one book for the two classes. The one full Bible Commentary is good for the Old Testament class and the New Testament class. However, because I always have optional books, just like you can see all these other optional books, I do have an optional book that I'm going to recommend that you purchase if you want to.

It's not a have-to. I won't be using it in class except for I'll use it to make my notes because it is a very helpful tool. This is Introducing the New Testament by D. A. Carson and Douglas Moo. Introducing the New Testament by D. A. Carson and Douglas Moo.

This is a very helpful tool. It's a handbook in and of itself for the New Testament, and if you do not know who D. A. Carson is, he is one of the preeminent New Testament scholars alive today. He is a brilliant man, and Doug Moo is no slouch either.

So these two guys coming together to put together a handbook, it is useful. I've mentioned it several times on Coffee with a Calvinist. This is a good book, and yes, Moo, like cow goes moo. Yeah, exactly.

Yep, Douglas Moo. So D. A. Carson and Doug Moo. This book is, I think it's 12 bucks on Amazon, maybe a little bit more, but it's a small paperback book, huh? Okay, yeah, so it's not much. Yeah, 13 bucks, definitely worth it, and the great thing about the New Testament survey course is the Old Testament covers a writing period of about 1 ,500 years, and it covers an authorial base of about 40 different authors.

The Old Testament is hard to get through in a short amount of time. The New Testament is, you're looking at about 50 years of writing time versus 1 ,500. You're looking at 27 books versus 39 books, and you're looking at only less than a dozen writing figures in the New Testament.

So the number of authors is less, the number of books is less, and the number of years of writing, so the number of history, is less, which means we're going to be able to look, we're going to be able to spend less time on history and authorship and more time in the text.

So I think you're really going to enjoy the survey of the New Testament. I think you'll get a lot out of it in regard to learning more about the New Testament books. So that's my commercial. I hope you will all want to participate in that class.

The Intertestamental Period and the 400 Years of Silence

All right, so we're going to begin tonight with our final lesson, and the title of tonight's lesson is The Intertestamental Period. The Intertestamental Period. Have you ever wondered why when you read the Bible from the Old Testament to the New Testament, there are entire groups who are mentioned in the New Testament who you never hear about in the Old?

For instance, you come to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and you're almost immediately faced with men called the Pharisees and the Sadducees, but you never see them in the Old Testament. Those names don't come up anywhere from Genesis to Malachi.

Likewise, when you leave off the history of the Old Testament, the Persians are in power, but when you get to the Gospels, the Romans are in power. So there's a major shift from the Old Testament to the New Testament, and the time period between the two is 400.

So we're looking at about a 400-year period. Louis Giglio, in speaking about this, said this. He said, We go from Malachi to Matthew in one page of our scriptures, but that one piece of paper that separates the Old Testament from the New Testament represents 400 years of history, 400 years where there wasn't a prophet, 400 years where God's voice was not heard, and that silence was broken with the cry of a baby on Christmas night.

So, wonderful thought. 400 years of silence is broken by the cry of the Christ child. So what happened? What happened from Malachi to Matthew? Well, tonight we're going to look at this 400-year period of history.

We're going to get an overview of the political and the religious changes that happened, and they are many. I will tell you this, I'm going to be sticking much closer to my notes tonight than I normally do, because a lot of this information I'm going to have to simply read off the page, because it's just information.

So I'm going to encourage you to stick with me as I go. I'm not saying it's going to be boring at all. I'm just saying it's an accumulation of information. The period between the last book written in the Old Testament and the first words of the New Testament are sometimes called the silent years, because it is believed that God gave no prophetic revelation during this time.

Interestingly, this is not the first time that we see God being silent. Does anybody remember another time where God was silent? The time when Israel was in Egypt, which was about 400 years. And it was interrupted by the coming of a Christ figure, Moses.

Remember we talked about last week the shadows of Christ, and we said Moses would be Christ-type. So there were 400 years approximately where God was not giving a prophetic voice, and then out of the silence came the voice of Moses.

After Malachi, there was a time of silence, and out of the silence came the voice of John the Baptist crying in the wilderness. So what can we conclude about these similarities? Well, it appears that God withdraws himself for a time just before a major revelational shift.

Think about what happened when Moses came. Moses brought the law. We went from a period of patriarchy, where you had Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and you moved to a time of theocracy, God's law. Then after Malachi, we have a period of silence, and in comes John the Baptist, whose job is to pave the way for Jesus Christ.

And the New Testament tells us the law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus. And it compares the two, both being tremendous revelatory figures in history, and both of them, as it were, breaking the silence of God.

Between the last writings of the Old Testament and the appearance of Christ, several major developments set the stage for the gospel story. The political, religious, and social atmosphere of Palestine changed significantly during this time, and this lesson is going to focus on those changes.

So let's first look at the political changes. At the political changes, Israel was under the control of the Persian Empire from about 532 to about 332. The Persians allowed the Jews to practice their religion with little interference.

They were even allowed to rebuild and worship in their temple. We see this in 2 Chronicles chapter 36 and in Ezra chapter 1. This period included the last hundred years or so of the Old Testament period and about the first hundred years of the intertestamental period, and this relatively peaceful and content time was the calm before the storm.

This relatively peaceful and content time would give way to a time of great war and bloodshed. Alexander the Great, you've heard of him. He was great. Not even a good joke. It's not even a joke. Alexander the Great defeated Darius of Persia, bringing Greek rulership to the world.

Now, remember, when we say rulership to the world, we're speaking mostly of the western world. At this time in history, there were other powers in the east, and when we talk about rulership of the world, we talk about Rome being the world power.

This is referring to that particular area of the world. Most of Africa was not a part of this. Most of Asia was not a part of this, but we have to consider what we mean by the world. But for all intents and purposes, Alexander the Great did rule the world in many ways.

He required that the Greek culture in which he was taught be promoted in the land that he conquered, and this gave the reason why the Greek language was so prolific during the time of Christ. In fact, 200 years before the coming of Christ, the Hebrew Old Testament was translated into the Greek language, and that's called the Septuagint, or sometimes just called the Septuagint.

It is a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, and the reason why it was translated into Greek was because of the influence of the Greek language that had become basically the universal language of the known world.

People ask, why is the New Testament in Greek? Why is it not in Hebrew? Because the New Testament was written to the world. It was written to all tribes, tongues, peoples, and nations, and the one language that all tribes, tongues, people, and nations had to be able to speak for commerce was Greek, and that's why Greek is called Koine.

Koine means common. It's the common language. Most of the New Testament references do not quote from the Hebrew Bible. Most of the New Testament references quote from the Greek Septuagint. How do we know that?

Because the Greek Septuagint uses particular words in Greek, and we can tell when it's being quoted from rather than from the Hebrew, and so we can see, especially certain authors in the New Testament, we can say this person used the Septuagint exclusively.

This was the translation of choice, but I don't want to go too far into that. The point is the Septuagint was a very important translation, and it was Greek because of the Greek influence of Alexander the Great.

Alexander allowed the Jews religious freedom, but he promoted Greek lifestyle, and this was not a good turn of events for Israel because Greek culture was very worldly, very humanistic, and very ungodly.

Almost a picture of what we see today. People who say they are Christians but live like the world. What we see in this time period, people who were Jewish but being influenced by Greek culture. Greek culture was a threat to Jewish faith, and there is an interesting story given to us by the historian Josephus, so you might have heard it pronounced Josephus, who was telling the story of how Alexander the Great spared Jerusalem, and I just want to read this to you.

This is from the writings of Josephus. Josephus recounts how Alexander's troops surrounded the city and readied themselves to attack. Suddenly, the city gates sprung open, and out came the high priest with his entourage.

Josephus writes, for Alexander, when he saw the multitude at a distance in white garments, while the priest stood clothed in fine linen, and the high priest in purple and scarlet clothing, with his mitre on his head, having the golden plate whereon the name of God was engraved, he approached by himself and adored that name, and first saluted the high priest, whereupon the kings of Syria and the rest were surprised at what Alexander had done, and supposed him disordered in his mind.

However, Parmenio alone went up to him and asked him how it came to pass that when all others adored him, he should adore the high priest of the Jews, to whom he replied, I did not adore him, but the God who hath honored him with his high priesthood.

For I saw this very person in a dream, in this very habit or clothing, when I was at Dios of Macedonia, who exhorted me to make no delay, but boldly to pass over the sea thither. For that he would conduct my army, and would give me the dominion over the Persians.

Whence, now seeing this person in it, and remembering that vision, I believe that I bring this army under the divine conduct. Very interesting story. It goes on, and when the book of Daniel was shown him, where Daniel declared that one of the Greeks should destroy the empire of the Persians, he supposed himself was the person intended, and as he was then glad, he bade them ask what favors they pleased of him, whereupon the high priest desired that they might pay no tribute on the seventh year, and he granted all that they desired.

That is from the Antiquity of the Jews, book 9, part 8, section 5. Now, here's the thing. This happened long before Josephus was alive. So, did this happen, or was this a Jewish fable? We don't know. It's an interesting story, though.

It's interesting that Alexander the Great did allow the Jewish people to worship essentially freely, and so the story goes that because he saw this vision of this person with the name of God, that's why he allowed it.

However, Alexander would not live forever. Alexander the Great eventually became Alexander the Dead, and after Alexander died, Judea was ruled by a series of successors, culminating in a man by the name of Antiochus Epiphanes.

Antiochus Epiphanes did far more than refuse religious freedom to the Jews. He did that, but he also did much more. Around 167 BC, he overthrew the rightful line of the priesthood and desecrated the temple, defiling it with unclean animals and a pagan altar.

This was the religious equivalent of rape. Eventually, Jewish resistance to Antiochus would come under the Maccabees. You ever heard the term the Maccabees and the Maccabean revolt? The Maccabees restored the rightful priests.

They rescued the temple, and the period that followed was one of war, violence, and infighting. There's an interesting story that comes out of that that says there was a statue of Zeus that was erected in the temple, and one of the battles, one of the Maccabees came and beheaded the statue of Zeus, which was an affront to the teachings of the Jewish people.

So, around 63 BC, only one lifetime before Jesus Christ, Pompey of Rome conquered Palestine, putting all of Judea under the control of the Caesars. This eventually led to Herod being made king of Judea by the Roman emperor and the senate, and this would be the nation that taxed and controlled the Jews and eventually executed the Messiah on a Roman cross.

Roman, Greek, and Hebrew cultures were now mixed together in Judea. That's the way the Bible opens the New Testament. You see in the New Testament, Roman soldiers, Greek philosophers, and Jewish rabbis.

You see them, or Jewish people, you see that collection, and that's how it came to be. Now, when I say that's how it came to be, I gave a very superficial overview, but you understand that's the movement.

What's interesting about that is how powerfully important Daniel is to that, because you'll remember what the prophecies of Daniel were. He prophesied the rising and falling of nations. Remember, he interpreted the dream of Nebuchadnezzar.

You had the statue with the golden head, and the silver chest, and the bronze legs, and the feet mixed with bronze and clay, right? And he said each one of those represents a kingdom. You have the kingdom of power that was Nebuchadnezzar's, that was Babylon, that was the head of gold.

Then you have the kingdom that would take over after Babylon, which would be what? The Medes and the Persians. Then you have the Greeks, and then finally the Romans. Four rising and falling world powers.

Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. What's interesting, if you go back and read that narrative in Daniel, he also talks about the feet mixed with clay, and how a stone was cut out by hands, without man's hands, and was cast into the feet of the statue, and destroyed, and became a mountain.

That stone represents the kingdom of the Messiah. That stone represents the kingdom of Christ. In fact, I have a friend who started a ministry of teaching. It was a teaching ministry, and he calls his kingdom Fifth Kingdom Ministries, because Christ's kingdom is the fifth kingdom.

You have the four kingdoms, ending with Rome, and it was Christ's kingdom that would overtake and overcome all of them. So we have, that's the, it's just interesting when you study Daniel's book, and you see how it's so perfect, and so correct.

Some people even believe it's too correct, that it had to have been written after the fact, because it's so accurate as to what happened. Obviously, I don't believe that. I believe Daniel wrote it. I believe Daniel wrote it as a prophet of God, but it is very accurate to the history of world powers.

So that is what we see, and that's what leads us to Roman power during the time of Christ. Now, before we move to the religious changes, does anybody have any questions? Now, let's look at the religious changes.

During the span of the Greek and Roman occupations, two important political and religious groups emerged in Judea. The first, oh, by the way, I'm going to write this. We are now moving to the religious.

The first major power to arise, well, when I say first, the first that we're going to look at is known as the Pharisees. The Pharisees were a conservative religious group, conservative Jewish group. They believed in keeping the law of God to the point that they would add to the law of God.

They had oral traditions and extra biblical writings which were used to add to the law of God. Eventually, they would consider their laws even more important than God's laws. Go in your Bibles with me to Mark chapter 7 and go to verse 1.

Mark 7 verse 1. Now, when the Pharisees gathered to him with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands holding to the tradition of the elders.

Stop right there. This was a tradition, not a law. That's an important thing to understand. This was a tradition, but to them, tradition was law. Verse 4. And when they come from the marketplace, they did not eat unless they wash.

And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches. And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?

And this is Jesus's response. And he said to them, Well, did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, The people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.

Very important passage. The most dangerous thing that we can do when it comes to teaching people about morality is establishing our personal. Traditions and desires as the law of God. And that is what the Pharisees were known for the most.

Notice what it says in verse 8. You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. There was a practice among the Pharisees called Corban. You've heard this. You've read the New Testament.

You've probably heard when Jesus talks about the Corban rule. The Corban rule was used by people who did not want to take care of their parents. So they would take the money and they would dedicate the money to the temple.

And therefore, that money was earmarked and could not be used for supporting other people. They could use it for themselves. And it was a loophole in the law. And it was a way that the Pharisees had created to allow people to essentially escape the obligation of caring for needful family members.

That's the kind of thing that we see that came out of the movement of the Pharisees. While Christ's teaching often agreed with the Pharisees, and I do want to make this point, Christ's teaching often agreed with the Pharisees when they were speaking of the law of God.

And it was true. He would still rail against their hollow hypocrisy and their lack of compassion. The Pharisees teach us something very important. Conservatism without compassion is an ungodly mixture.

The Pharisees were the consummate conservatives. They were all about tradition. But they had no compassion. I heard this one time and I thought it was kind of funny and I'll share it with you. Heard a person say, if a person isn't a liberal when they're young, they have no heart.

But if a person isn't a conservative when they're old, they have no brain. There are not. Conservatism isn't always right. Because some things aren't worth conserving. If it's not true, if it's not right, if it's not good, it's not worth conserving.

The liberalism is dangerous, too. And isn't it interesting that we see today liberals and conservatives and you go back 2000 years ago and the two major character, the two major sets of characters you see are the Pharisees, which were the conservatives.

And the Sadducees, who were the liberals, and that's the other group. The Sadducees represented the liberals. They were the aristocrats. They were the wealthy. They wielded power through the Supreme Court.

It was called the Sanhedrin, but that's what it was. And the Sadducees sat on the Supreme Court. They rejected all of the Old Testament except for the books of Moses. They refused to believe in supernatural things like the resurrection and angels.

They were generally shadows of the Greeks, whom they greatly admired in regarding their philosophy and their understanding of life. Isn't this amazing? If you think about the comparison to today, the Pharisees were the hollow traditionalists who were hypocrites and in themselves adding to the law of God and are ungodly.

And the Sadducees, the liberals who are concerned with culture and wealth and aristocracy and the rush of events that set the stage for Christ had a profound impact on the Jewish people. Both Jews and pagans from other nations were becoming dissatisfied with religion.

The pagans were beginning to question the validity of their polytheism. Romans and Greeks were drawn from the mythologies of Rome and Greece to the one God of the Hebrews. But the problem is the one God of the Hebrews was being represented by false teachings of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

And the Jews themselves were despondent because they were a conquered people yet again. They were living under the tyranny of Rome. Hope was running low, faith even lower, and they were convinced that now the only thing that could save them was their Messiah.

At the time of Christ, several people were thought to be the Messiah because people were looking for the Messiah. Why do you think it is when Jesus was brought to the disciples, they said, do you think this is the who is to come?

Because they knew someone was coming. They knew a Messiah was coming and they were expecting him. They were looking forward to him. And the New Testament tells us the story of how hope came, not only for the Jews, but also for the entire world.

Those Romans and Greeks who were now poised and ready to abandon their polytheism would, but not for the religion of the Pharisees or the Sadducees, but for the Christ of the Jews. Christ's fulfillment of prophecy was anticipated and recognized by many who sought him out.

And the stories of the Roman centurion, the wise men, the Pharisee Nicodemus, all show us that Jesus was recognized as the Messiah by those who lived in his day. As I said earlier, the 400 years of silence had been broken by the greatest story ever told, the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So those are the major religious shifts that occurred. The bringing of the party. There's also another party that is not in my notes, but I want to throw this out there because you'll also read in the Bible, the Herodians might be unfamiliar with who that is.

The Herodians were more of a political than a religious sect, and they were supporters of the Herodic dynasty. You understand there was Herod the Great, and then his son is the one who came after him, who was the Herod during the time of Christ, Herod Antipas.

So we have the Herodian dynasty had the support of the Herodians. So if you ever read in the Bible, if you see the scribes, oh, and the scribes as well, I guess I should mention them. The term scribe refers to those who were trained in writing and law, and they were sometimes referred to as lawyers, but the scribes were those who were tasked with the writing, the use of language, and particularly writing scripture.

Not writing scripture, but copying, copyists, if you will. Remember, there weren't no fax machines in the first century. There was no mimeograph machine. You guys remember a mimeograph machine? Do you know what that is?

It was a pre-copier. Before copiers, they had mimeograph machines, and they didn't have that either. Can you imagine taking just a few pages of the Bible and having to copy it by hand? Do you guys do that?

Isn't that part of like some of your homework that you have to copy some of the New Testament by hand? Imagine having to do the whole thing. That was the job of the scribes. So the next part I want to look at is the interpretive challenges, and so I'll just write that up here.

These are interpretive challenges. I've already mentioned one, but I want to bring it up again. Daniel's prophecies. Daniel giving the prophetic word of the rise and fall of four empires is sometimes considered an interpretive challenge because not only does he give that in chapter two, he gives that again in chapter seven and eight in the picture of the four beasts, the vision of the four beasts.

Again, four nations, four world powers, and some people want to argue that Daniel was written later, and as I said, I don't believe Daniel was written later, but if he is, in fact, the author as I believe that he is, then what we have is nothing short of miraculous, but that is, again, there's nothing saying we have to believe it, but I don't have any reason not to believe Daniel's the author.

Daniel's the prophet. I have no reason not to believe Daniel himself is the author. I remember years ago getting a Bible handbook. I think I've told this story in this class maybe a few weeks ago when we went through Daniel.

When we was in the major prophets, I think that was the week y 'all weren't here, and I recorded it, but I mentioned how the writing of Daniel was so accurate that I bought a Bible handbook, and I remember just using that handbook to study, and I opened it up to the book of Daniel, and it said in the very, very opening paragraph said, one of the things we know is that Daniel didn't write this.

I was like, oh, I just want to throw it away because I was like, I just spent money on this thing. I mean, I don't mind being challenged, and I certainly don't have a problem with people who necessarily disagree with me on issues like that.

I mean, it makes for good debate, and I'm not above being questioned on things like that, but when the assumption is, yeah, we know he didn't write this, I think that's a dangerous assumption. Daniel is the only book of the Old Testament that mentions hell.

Did you know that? Well, let me go back. There are passages that talk about the place of the dead, places like that, but Daniel mentions eternal torment, which is a very particularly New Testament idea because the concept of eternal reward and eternal torment, while it is in the Old Testament, is not as frequent or as explicit as it is in the New Testament.

I mean, the promise of the new covenant is eternal life, and the promise of rejecting Christ is eternal damnation, but if you go to Daniel chapter 12, it talks about the coming day of judgment, and it talks about those who will be taken to eternal life and those who will be consigned to eternal punishment.

I've heard Jewish people say, our Bible doesn't teach heaven and hell. I say, yes, it does. It may be only in that one place, but I can show you, unless you are denying Daniel as scripture, which they don't, it clearly teaches judgment, heaven, and hell.

Is it as explicit as the New Testament? No, but it is clear, and so one of the things that we do see in the transition between the Old Testament and the New Testament is a much more clear and propositional explanation of the afterlife.

A lot of the Old Testament focuses on now, and the here, and the land, and the promise, and the descendants. The New Testament focuses on kingdom city built by God, right? A new kingdom, kingdom that is otherworldly.

So Daniel, because he speaks of what happens in the intertestamental period, is part of how you have to consider your interpretation of what's happening in the intertestamental period, and how you interpret Daniel is going to be determined by whether or not you think he was the author, or whether the author came later and was basically writing about what had already taken place.

I believe he wrote it. I believe he is the prophet who is having the visions. Daniel chapters 1 through 6 are narrative. Daniel chapters 7 through 12 are prophetic visions. Who had the visions? Daniel.

Who would have been in the best place to write about those visions? Daniel. So again, for me, the argument is, it's really a non-argument, but so yes, sir. Yeah, I mean, if to say that he didn't write it, yeah, they would basically be saying that it's a pseudepigrapha, which means a false author, and I don't believe that at all.

Yeah, so yeah, as I said, I don't see any reason not to believe Daniel is the author, but that's why it relates to the intertestamental period, because he's prophesying about what happened in the intertestamental period.

The next thing that is an interpretive challenge, and when I say interpretive challenge, what I mean is it's something we have to consider. What do we think this meant? And that is the influence of the Essene community, the Essenes, E-S-S-E-N-E, the Essene community.

The Essene community were a religious group that lived in an area known as Qumran. Qumran is near the Dead Sea. They were a very strict religious group, and they referred to the other Jewish people, the Jews in Judea, they referred to them as covenant breakers.

What's that? Yeah, yeah, to call them covenant breakers is basically calling them blasphemers, calling them false believers. They lived a very strict religious life, one that would later be compared to a monastery.

However, they had a great contribution to your world, and you probably don't even know it. Maybe you do, but they made a huge contribution to your world, because it is they who most likely gave us the Dead Sea Scrolls.

You see, not only were they a monastic community, a community that separated themselves from the others and lived to themselves, but they were also a scribal community, and they wrote, well, copied the scriptures.

In 1946, a library was discovered near Qumran in a cave. The story goes that there were boys playing and threw a stone, and the stone went down into the hole, and they heard a shatter, a crash, and when they went to investigate what had broken, what had broken was the pot that was holding the scrolls, and you might think of the pot as like a pot with scrolls.

No, these pots were this big. The scrolls are as tall as a man almost, and when they unroll, they unroll for several yards, and these were the scrolls that were copied, and what they did for us is they took our earliest known copies of the Old Testament a thousand years back, because up until that time, the earliest copies of the Old Testament that we possess that still are in existence was the Masoretic texts that were around the 900 AD mark, well after the time of Christ, well after the rise of the Roman Catholic Church, so when the Dead Sea Scrolls are discovered, they find their writings that predate Christ by possibly up to 200 years before Christ, so now they could compare the writings to the ones that were a thousand years later, and what they found was almost identical, which showed the great and amazing ability of God to maintain His Word.

In fact, the scroll of Isaiah is on display now. It's been on display for years in Israel. It's on display in a museum. If you look up the Dead Sea Scrolls, Isaiah Scroll, they unrolled it, and it's a museum.

It's a circle, and they have it unrolled in a circle, and they built a plexiglass window that you can literally start on one side and walk around the whole thing and see this written scroll, and the museum is built in the shape of the pot that it was in.

It's got the top on it like the top of the pot in the bottom, and you walk around the scroll. The Asen community was a monastic scribal community that gave us a wonderful blessing. However they felt about the Jews of their day, however they felt, whatever they believed, we don't know a lot about what they believed, but we do know this.

They gave us a gift. They gave us the gift of a very well-preserved copy of the Old Testament scriptures. Now, there is a myth surrounding the Essenes, and the myth is that John the Baptist was an Essene.

This is complete mythology, but the argument goes that John the Baptist was and had gone to the Essene community, had learned, and that's why he came back to Jerusalem and was crying out, repent, repent, because he had been among those who saw the Jewish people as covenant breakers, and that's what influenced him to go back and call them to repentance.

Now, what's the problem with that? Well, my problem with it is John the Baptist wasn't called by the Essenes. He was called by God to be the forerunner of Christ, and there's no historical evidence of it.

It's one of those things where somebody sees something, and they say, oh, that may be, and therefore it is. No, there's no evidence for it, but you can see how people could come to that conclusion. I mean, John the Baptist was a pretty strange fella.

I mean, he ate locusts and wild honey, lived out in the woods. He was in a sense a monastic person himself. He separated himself from the world, but there is no evidence of him living in the Essene community.

The next thing I want to mention is the extra-biblical history that we do have from the intertestamental period. What do we call the books of the Bible that the Roman Catholics use and we don't? Apocrypha.

What does the word apocrypha mean? Hidden. Hey, who said that? Good job. The apocrypha is a highly debated portion of texts that is universally accepted by Roman Catholics, accepted by the Eastern Orthodox, but is not accepted by Protestants.