I'm going to do something that I feel is long overdue, healthy for the body and helps us to put in our minds afresh why we study this book and how fortunate we are to have this book to study from. As human beings, we seek knowledge and understanding. The quest for truth, whatever that is for each individual, I guess, should be life-long. We live in an age where no one can claim they don't have access to some tool to not glean and learn more. No book in the history, recorded history of humanity, has been more studied, more abused, more translated, than the Bible. So my goal today is actually to present a brief history. I know I will not do it justice in one hour so━whew━suck in your breath. For some of you this is old school. Some of you wandered through the halls of the Cathedral, and got to look on the Bible collection, while other people, they're just waiting to see what we'll uncover in our next exhibit and didn't have the privilege to be exposed to the collection as it was then, which I've said I have since enlarged many times over. The Bible, 66 books, made up of 39 books in the Old Testament and 27 in the New, when people talk about the canonization process, the word “canon” comes from the Greek, which is used in the New Testament but it used not in the sense of the way we use it. It's used as in “standard” or “rule”" But when people talk about the canonization of this book, I think that many times there's difficulty, both from Old Testament and New Testament scholars seeking to fasten down a specific time and date, while the whole book, by the way, gives us the revelation of the way God intended to relate to His chosen people from creation until the giving of the law all the way through to the close, if you will, of the Old Testament canon with the book of Malachi. I always say when people try to date the book and they say, “How old do you think Genesis is?” And I refuse to give an answer, because I don't think it's an answer we can glean. Bishop Ussher dated the book back, dating time of mankind back to 6000 years. If that was so, we may have other issues. If you're a person who studies archeology we could have other problems. Indeed, we know for a fact, that if you study pre-dynastic Egypt the pre-dynastic period dates back to at least 5500 BC, so you'd be hard-pressed to put a date at something, at 6000, when a civilization actually occurred 5500 years in that framework. So rather than do that and get into speculation, I'm going to jump into a real hard date in the Bible and go forward from there. Some of this will be review, in fact, most of it will be review for most of you, but as I said this is long overdue. I cringe at the fact that there are churches today who do not study Bible history because I'm sure it's not spiritual enough, it's not exciting enough, but when you really study the history of this book and the production of this book, it single-handedly points to one thing. Although the men and women who were used as conduits and tools through the ages, both the inspired writers and those who propagated the word, they all point to one place, not individual revelations of something unique to them, but they all pointed to Christ, which is what we will talk about next week. But let's jump into a hard date and let's talk about King David and go forward from there and this will be what I've called 70-league boots to get to a point of departure in this message. We know a hard date for King David, putting him at about 1000 BC to 962, and that Solomon his son reigned until 931 when the kingdoms divided. We looked at that last week and saw that God looked on Solomon's foray into strange women. And because of that it's written 1 Kings exactly for this reason that the kingdom would be rend and it was spared in his day for David, his father's sake, but at his death, Solomon's death, the kingdoms were torn apart. We know that in 586 the fall of Jerusalem and the carrying away of the last few, we read about them in the Old Testament. The decree of Cyrus for the people to come back and rebuild, 2 Chronicles and Ezra open this way telling us about this heathen king whom Isaiah prophesied about. This is why I feel sorry for those people who are not interested in examining this book, both its writers and the propagation there afterwards, because it tells me that you are surrounded by such irrefutable, impossible to contradict proof of God's hand in history, in time, His control in all things, including your life and mine. So Cyrus issues the decree for the people who had been carried away. We know a small percentage of those people, we just finished studying Nehemiah, came back. And it is in Nehemiah's book we read about the rebuilding of the wall, which I put somewhere in the 440s. And the close of the canon, Malachi, we'll put that somewhere around the 400s. Now people have spoken and said that in the intertestamental period that is between the Old and New Testament, there was silence. They obviously don't know what they're talking about. Books like the 1 and 2 Maccabees and many other books that were written that later on became controversial as to whether they should be included or excluded from the canon. And if you read many of the church reformers, many of the church fathers who decided that those books should not be included in the canon, yet said they are helpful and edifying to understand, whether it be in a social or in a spiritual way the things of that day. But what is greatly important is what happens between the Testaments, not so much in our Bible, but what happens in the known world. So you'll have to forgive me, there's no way to cover Bible history without delving in, in parts, to language and translation and historical things that were happening to put it all together. Just so you know I presented this on Friday night and I was overwhelmed at the amount of people who asked me if I had a CD or a DVD of this particular talk, and I said, “Well, we'll fix that.” So, in between the Testaments, what is happening in the world becomes very important. Alexander the Great is conquering the then known world, bringing with him the language, the Greek language, which will become the lingua franca, the language spoken, just as supposedly English is spoken in the United States, Greek was in the then known world. And what happened with this language being brought into that newly conquered territory was it influenced many things, including the fact that people's language, culturally, from the background even of great Hebrew scholars, began to be influenced by the culture and language of the day. Hence we have between the year 3- and 200, I'm making it a sliding scale to not be so dogmatic, BC, of the translation of the Hebrew Bible Scriptures, there was no New Testament yet, so the Old Testament into the Greek language, which is referred to as the Septuagint. Now I'm not asking you to remember dates, some of you know all these dates, and others of you it's just, “Whew! Just she's tossing stuff at me.” But what I do want you to remember is that in the year 90 AD, a council will be held, that's 90 AD, after the death of Christ, a council will be held in Jamnia and many people believe it is there that the canon of the Old Testament was fixed. That is impossible and not true, and the reason why that's not true is because when the Septuagint was produced, these 70 scholars that went to translate the Hebrew into the Greek had settled on the books that they translated. And by the way, they included the apocryphal literature; at least some parts of it were included. So think about this, not all the Apocrypha, I should say, but some of it was included, some of it was yet being written, how's that? So not all of it could have been included, but when people talk about something being fixed, it was already assumed that the Scripture, the Hebrew canon was fixed. Now the order of the books varies and still varies today depending on what Hebrew translations you may read. But I can tell you this, the biggest question that people ask is, “How come there are not more older Hebrew witnesses?” and I'm not referring to the Dead Sea Scrolls now or to the Nash Papyri, which I'll talk about later. “How come there are not more older witnesses to the Hebrew writings?” And that is very simple, there are many fragments that exist, but when the temple was destroyed in 70 AD, it is very likely, most scholars agree that the bulk of material: torahs, scrolls, anything that might have existed was destroyed at that time. And if anything managed, was saved, it was copies of copies, not the originals. So we, we have a safety line to say that the bulk of that material was lost. And you've got to go way into the year 1━980 and 1000 to find the most extant Hebrew manuscripts which we know as the Aleppo and Leningrad Codex. Now forgive me for a minute, I'm going to go in and out of things because I just went forward to AD, but I need to back up just a little bit, because people always get confused about this. The biggest question I get asked I will say is, “How then, if the language, the Greek language was the lingua franca, how did Latin grab hold of the people and the church, and how did the Latin translation then become the translation that essentially was the, the translation of the Roman Catholic Church, at least for 1000 years and the basis of many other translations?” And the answer to that is one must examine the Latin language and its progression. From 250 to 100 BC, that is called the Early Latin period. And in that period we've got language, but we don't have a lot of finesse writing. You've got to wait until 150 AD to the Classic period where you'll have people like Virgil, Tacitus and Cicero will be writing and the language will begin to be much more refined. So there is a development period and it is very important to realize that the language of the New Testament, and people always get caught up in this on this as well, we can know one thing, that Jesus was definitely, when He went into the temple, as it is recorded in Luke 4, regarding His reading of Isaiah 61, it is more than tenable to assume that He was reading out of a Septuagint version. Now people say, “Well, if that's the case, where's the proof?” Well, the proof is this: when we match up the Septuagint versus the older and oldest versions that we have available of the Hebrew, we see slight discrepancies. So let's leave that alone unless you'll interested in the minutia, some of you, your eyes are already turning. But we have; let's go back to BC for a minute, we have obviously the birth of Christ and the other anomaly which is the calendar, because some people still believe that Jesus was born in the year zero. We know that Jesus must have been born a few years BC, and the sliding scale is as few as 3 and as many 7 BC. And how, the question is: how could Christ be born BC, before BC? But that's what happens. And there's a lot of footsy with the calendars, unless you want to study the history of the development of the calendars, which we're not studying today. Lord, help us because I can open up more doors for━I told you I can, I can make you ask more questions! And some of you are so over-stimulated that you stopped listening to me five minutes ago, you're still stuck on, “Oh,” that thought cloud is━shut it down, come back here! Okay. So we have the writing then, the oral, spoken words of Christ that become the written words of Christ. And there's great debate about this and I'm going to say something radical, which may offend some scholars, but I believe that most scholars place the writing, at least of the Gospels too late. For the most part when you read, most of the books will say that the bulk of the writing was done in the 60s. I reject that, and I reject it for a myriad number of reasons and I really believe that the writing was done earlier, within a much quicker timeframe. If Jesus died in the year 33, if we take that between 30 and 33, whatever that date is, it's very plausible to say that the bulk of the writing would have been done within; except for John, within about 20 to 25 years. And I've got other reasons to back that up which I don't want to get into at this time; I'm just going to put it out there. We know that many of Christ's followers were martyred: James the Great and Phillip, 44 and 54, and if you start going down and looking at the martyrdom of all of the followers of Christ, except for John, we can pretty much ascertain that by the time the temple is destroyed, most of the disciples are dead; most of them, save John, who is on the isle of Patmos. And we, I believe firmly that he wrote Revelation in the very late 90s possibly early 100s, putting it at a very late date at that, and he died we assume a natural death, we have no other record than that. There the books of the New Testament as we have them, as we call them, begin to be circulated, and as early as 140 AD, a man by the name of Marcion, who was declared a heretic, produced what we call a truncated canon. Basically he could not wrap his mind around the God of the Old Testament being the God of the New Testament, so anything that appeared to be too Old Testament he removed. He was branded a heretic, but it tells you that the Gospels were circulating as early as 140; we know they were circulating before that. And by 160, a man named Tatian who is a disciple of Justin Martyr at Rome will make what is called, Tatian's Diatessaron, which is a harmony of the Gospels, which by the way, were not called the Gospels, they were called the Gospel, singular. We refer to them as the Gospels now, but they were called the Gospel and it was according to Mark, according to Mathew, and so he made a harmony. And what he did was he took everything to try and remove the difficulties, reducing it down, synthesizing the four records into approximately 72 percent of the four. So a small percentage was left out to harmonize the Gospels. By this time, people are talking about proof and validity of these writings. And the more we begin to probe we begin to see small fragments of things begin to circulate. We now know that we've got a whole system for dating papyri. If you were going to look up the papyri dating from 1 all the way, and I think they go all way to 500, some of the most important papyri that are listed; p52, which is John Rylands, is one of the oldest, considered one of the oldest fragments of John 18. And so we know that we've got good sources to pick from. So when people say, but how are these reliable? I always tell you go and read F. F. Bruce or Metzger, they both wrote an excellent treaties on the reliability of these pieces of work that we know refer to as the Gospels and of course the New Testament. By 170 AD there is something uncovered called the Muratorian Canon or fragment. It's called a fragment, but it actually looks like a book. It's called a fragment because it's missing the beginning and it's the earliest, oldest know list of New Testament books as we essentially have them today, which is quite radical. If you think about it, that's essentially 70 years after the death of John; that's a very close timeline. We're talking about the lifetime of a person now, no longer hundreds of years removed. In 180, and this was a recent find, in 180 AD, there is a fragment now that they have confirmed because of some, something that was deciphered on the fragment of a man who professed to be holding the writings of Paul in what is known as the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, which again is another witness to this book. Now I'm almost up to the good point here. I know, it's, it's a lot of dates, but once you get past the early stuff you realize that there's a whole lot backing this book up and what's even more perplexing is as I travel and as I speak to people, it disturbs me that people do not know the background, the long, long history of what is contained in this book. They simply, it's a mass produced book for them and they discuss if their translation is the best translation, but I'd like to talk about the way to getting there, which is kind of a very complicated one. And it should give us the sense that we shouldn't take this book for granted, which is why I study it, which is why I tell people read the Bible. Don't read it because you think you will glean something that will be a special revelation to you, read it from cover to cover, read it page by page, read it chapter by chapter, but read it. And then once you've read it and you've started to digest it, learn about the history, the ecclesiastical history and the history of the book itself are riveting, but it gives you a sense of awe. By the year 200, between 2- and 300 hundred, the cache called the Chester Beatty Papyri, now I'm, I'm, I'm telling you it was discovered in 1930, but it fits into this timeframe. And we've got excellent witnesses of the Gospels and the Epistles. And people have often asked me the question of why we need all of this evidence. We really don't, but if people are going to start nitpicking, you want to be able to know that these writers were coping and saying the same thing. Somebody somewhere along the way may have changed something, “scribal error,” as they call it. All right, by the year 220 into the 250s, this is called the Late Latin period, and this important because it is at this time that language is going to begin to shift away from the Greek. The western half of the empire is falling to pieces but the, the portion that's holding on to the Greek is doing well, but Latin is becoming a language that now people are starting to use for transmission. And there is a multitude of Latin translations that are circulating. Now we're at mid-300s and we're not even, we're not even halfway there. By the mid-300s, Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, circulates a list of 27 books that are the current list that we currently use. So it's pretty safe to say that what we have, the books we have, even though, if you read the church councils, and there were many church councils that were held, people debated whether, for example, James should be put in and whether or not Hebrews should be put in, whether or not Revelation should be put in, and there was lots of fights, but we ended up with this. So by the; in the mid-300s, we know that this was essentially a fixed canon. Now I say this very carefully, not for the Roman Catholics, by the way, that would be a completely different story, but in their history, which seems to be rewritten twice, Athanasius will appear one time and then at a later time they'll be a slight modification. This is also the time, by the way, in this particular window, where we begin to see translation of the Bible into other languages; Ethiopic, even though that we do not have the witnesses of early 3- to 400s, languages such as Armenian, the language itself was created in 406-410 by Misrob, to produce a Bible. We begin to see how exactly what Christ said, when He said, “Go in to all the earth, go and teach whatsoever things I have commanded.” And it's very easy to see, we as English readers can read by the fact that Paul when writing to places like Philippi or the Thessalonians, they were Greek speakers, so we can already say the Greek tongue was taken care of. But other tongues when you read in the New Testament in the book of Acts and we encounter the, the Ethiopian eunuch, it, it says to me that the message was already spreading and the transmission, people found it necessary to put it into their own tongue. In 313, there is an edict issued, it's called the Edict of Milan, and it basically says that Christianity will now be tolerated in the Empire. See, up until that time you would suffer great prosecution for being a Christian. And this is I guess my lament, because I study history, I often wonder what today's church would do if it had to survive in those days; it would not survive. People gave their life before they would give up their faith. Now by the time Constantine becomes emperor and Christianity is now two thumps up, this is an interesting tie in, which is again another point of contention among scholars. Most of you here remember Dr. Scott printed the Tischendorf Bibles, and within the Tischendorf Bibles, we read about the three versions: the Alexandrinus, the Sinaiticus and the Vaticanus. It is assumed and it was even assumed by Tischendorf, he uncovered these, at least the Sinaiticus. He was the Indiana Jones of the 19th century uncovering the Sinaiticus that was apparently leaves were going to be used to be tossed into the fire in a monastery. But what's so important about this is that apparently Constantine commissioned Eusebius to print 50, 50 books essentially of this Bible. And Tischendorf, he is the one that postulated that quite possibly the Sinaiticus manuscript may have been one of those 50 copies, I think it's perhaps dubious because the dates don't coincide too well, but that's what the scholars say, many books suggest that. So what I'm trying to say is by the time Constantine is emperor and Christianity's approved, 50 volumes, 50 books are commissioned by Eusebius that are essentially to be distributed, not for mass consumption by the way, but for the learned ones to study, which is somewhat interesting. But we now get into great volumes of works. And as I've mentioned the Alexandrinus, which dates to 425, which must have been part of the great library at Alexandria which was destroyed by fire in 624, and finally, and I'm going to try and move a little bit quicker because I see like, you know, we're, I'm not moving very quick through time. I tried to make the connection for you linguistically of what is happening with Latin so that by the time Jerome, a man named Jerome is commissioned by Pope Damasus II to make one translation, one version of the Latin, which becomes known as the Latin Vulgate, there were so many versions floating around that the pope went to Jerome and said, “Would you please make one standardized version?” which of course begins in the late 380s and is finished, well completed, most sources say by the 400s. And why is this important? Because that Bible at that time will become the Bible that the church world will essentially have as a millstone around its neck at least for the next 1,100 years. There'll be a little break, but it, it will be the translation that will essentially control the church, and that's quite unfortunate. Now, as we move through time, about the time, a little bit after the time that the Latin Vulgate has been made, I'm putting this at about 460, a man by the name of John, a deacon in Amid, he copies a copy of the Pentateuch in the Syriac. He dates it, he signs it, so it's the earliest known to us version of the Syriac, which will then become the Peshitta version, and when we talk about the Peshitta, I want you to think about Peshitta like Vulgate. Vulgate is like the vulgar, common language, Peshitta would have meant that exactly for the Syriac speaking people. Now, I think we've covered the worst part of it, because that's like a lot, a lot of stuff to handle. Between the 6th and the 10th century, people now come on the stage called the Masoretes. If you've been studying Hebrew with me, you know that we study the vowels underneath, but the Masoretes designed a whole system of cantillation points so that putting in the vowels to be able to, to try and replicate what the oral pronunciation would have been and through these great scrolls and codexes, cantillation marks to indicate where, when they would be sung in the synagogue how, when to pause, when to speak, when to be━just like a music, sheet music that tells you faster or slower, louder or quieter; exactly like that. They produced this codification which would become the norm to Hebrew books and manuscripts, pretty much until this day. Okay, we've now covered a bunch of time and something is going on in the world; people are enjoying, they're enjoying copying the Bible. In the year 7- and 800, we have what I would say is probably some of the most beautiful artwork with the Latin text. The Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells, that are produced and they are some of the most remarkable. When you talk about their, their artistry and what they put in combining Celtic and a combination of Gothic, a whole color of just everything that you can imagine in design, but what was staggering about this, especially the Lindisfarne, which supposedly was the work of one individual that at a later date, it appears about 100 years later, somebody went in to the text and wrote in English between the lines of the Latin, which appears to be the first attempt at an English translation from the Latin. But it wasn't, it was just hand-done. There wasn't any printing at this time. The Book of Kells is another that speaks volumes to us about the artistry and the preservation. And these people, by the way, are in far-flung corners of the earth, so if you think about it, it is remarkable. If I could put up a map━we don't have one, I don't have one to show you, but you can imagine in your mind, as the gospel is beginning to spread, people must also be able to read Latin. And not everybody speaks Latin. And by the way, between the years 6 and 700, Latin is starting to die. So go figure that: that the manuscripts remain in the Latin language. One of the most extant, that is full and complete Latin codexes that exist today is the Amiatinus, dating from 716 and we have a full complete copy of that. It's not the original, it's a full copy of it though, which is quite staggering because it gives us an oldest complete witness of the Latin Vulgate, and here's the real irony of this. It wasn't until much later, until the 1780s, when it was brought to Florence, that somebody figured out that the origin of this, of the Amiatinus, was not as they supposed Latin preservers, but actually it was in English hands. So there's an interesting tie-in there that the English origins were already there. The Book of Armagh, which is related, of course, to Patrick and for those of you that celebrated the luck of the Irish━but what I marvel at is that these treasures, for the most part, have been preserved. If you have the time, we're, we're working on a project to digitize all of our manuscripts. We just finished capturing two or three of the manuscripts which was a labor of love to do it by hand. And the goal is eventually to get it up online for you to peruse, but until that time, there are wonderful witnesses you can look at. The British Library, the British Museum, and right here the Getty; wonderful images to peruse and to look at, that you can just get a glimpse of the artwork and the artistry and what has been preserved. Seventy-league boots here to the year 1066 and the Norman invasion, which basically brings French to the nobility, and this is important, because language is beginning, once again, to shift. It's always the question that nobody wants to deal with: how did the Latin books stay intact? And the answer is very simple. The church basically ruled and established that if they could be the only ones to understand it, then you'd have to come to them. And most people were illiterate anyway, so imagine being illiterate and it's bad enough that you can't even read your own language, but you've got to try, if you could read, you'd have to read that language, so perfect by design. But in the year 1199, Pope Innocent III bans the unauthorized versions of any Bibles, including the French version that was done for the Cathars. And we begin to see a common thread of things going on with the Catholic Church. And this is not Catholic bashing, this is history. I covered some of this history in the Luther presentation, but by the year 1300, the Catholic church has realized that it can make money with the sale of indulgences, and people, some people say, “Well, but didn't the people know that this was not the way to seek forgiveness from God?” No, not if the church was telling you that this was the only way that you could get forgiveness was to pay it and be issued a piece of paper that said, “You're forgiven; do a couple of acts of penance and mea culpas, and then you're, you're all set to go. Or go and kill a couple of people and we'll give you an indulgence for life; forgiveness for life━if you do it in the name of Jesus”" But we know that what was going on in the church, essentially, it was less about the word of God and more about money. And unfortunately, I, I hate to say this, but I see history really repeating itself in a very dark way in these days. The church is now become all about money and when we talk about━I'm not saying don't talk about money, I'm saying teach people about what the Bible says. But everywhere I turn it seems to be all about money and people asking for money and people wanting money and money, money, money, and it's become a machine of money instead of people of the book and fewer people study this book, truly study this book and more people talk about just listening to somebody say, “Give and you'll receive a blessing.” And that's why I said it really makes my stomach turn to see that we're really not come that far. In terms of the Bible, by the year, and we're in the 1220s now, the bishop, the archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, will introduce the chapter division into the Bible. And what's remarkable about that is, you know, today I stand here and I say, you know, Matthew 6:33, but in that day, you know, you'd have to have the Scriptures memorized, you'd have to have them committed to memory and you wouldn't be able to say Matthew 6, you'd have to learn them and know them. So the verse, the chapter division, rather, gave the ability to at least have some divisions and some references. The chapter division is one thing; the verse division will come later in 1551. That's a kind of late invention. So I'm now at the most important place for the English Bible, because that's what I wanted to talk about and I've only used up about 38 minutes. Now, now let us begin. Yeah? Okay. You know, most people wouldn't sit through something like this, because it doesn't leave you feeling high. But you know, I feel, I feel really good to know that this is something we can stand here and talk about because we are a thinking people. Christians are thinking people. We're not stupid people and I just, I'm blessed to be able to stand here and share with you; some of you it's review, and some of this you're hearing, some of you for the first time. So 1320 is the year that a man named Wycliffe is born and he's born into the background of what I've just said, high illiteracy, we've got waves of the plague that have wiped out populations of Europe on and off. This is a man who would be a learned man. He was a teacher and a preacher and he studied the Scriptures. There was no English Bible in his day and it was put in his heart that the people should be able to read and study in English, so he undertook the first translation into the English language. Now what's such a shame is that we know in his history, he started this translation, we know that his, one of his students and colleagues John Purvey and Nicholas Hereford ultimately ended up finishing and revising. Mr. Wycliffe, we know, died a natural death in 1384, but we know that many years after his death, he was such a hated man for putting the Bible, the Holy Sacred Bible into the corrupt and disgusting language; English. He was so hated and reviled by the church that the pope at the time, Martin V, ordered his bones to be dug up from the grave, for his bones to be burned and thrown into the River Swift. And I love the close of our video that we did, because we really did show indeed that whatever the plans were to, to destroy, in fact it was like those ashes were spreading the gospel, in his bones, carrying the gospel to the ends of the earth and washing the globe with those ashes that were intended to be seen as an act of riddance. Of course, there was no printing press, it was all done by hand and in spite of what people talk about, there were several revisions done. It is reported that there are perhaps 180 to as many as 180 to perhaps 150 copies of this Bible that remain today. We have, we have one of them. We put, we put it on display. I thought I would bring it and share it with you briefly. It's, it is probably, I think, one of the books we just finished digitizing, because it's my goal to get all of the books that we have, all the manuscripts digitized. But it's reported that anywhere from as low as 120-180; 150-180 of these exist. I think we are the only possessors in private hands of this. And the Lord was very gracious. I like to tell the story about how I, I had to move out of my house and I was torn between buying a house to move into after Dr. Scott's death and I had liquidated many things, and it was between a house and a book, and I bought a book. Now I should do one thing, because I, I didn't intend to, to bring a whole bunch of stuff, but I should do this while I'm passing through, because I've already passed over so many of these and I didn't intend to bring out the whole collection, but just to give you, to show you something because I know these are things you, some of you, have not━ I know you've not seen this before. This is, this is a Proverbs and Solomon from about the year 1125 that's been added to the collection with glosses on the side so you can see the handwritten element to this with notes. And these are treasures that I'm, as I said, I want to be able to not only exhibit at some point, but I want to be able to preserve in digital form, but also to tell the story, which should never be forgotten. When I see how casual people treat the word of God and act as though coming to church is, is some chore and learning about God━you've heard me quote this often enough. I'm sure many of you say it in your sleep, what did Jesus say in His high priestly prayer in John 17? “That they may know thee the one true living God, and his Son Jesus Christ, whom he has sent”" Well, how do you get to know anything about God if you won't spend the time in His word? So I do this for a purpose, not, this is not show-and-tell or entertainment. This is to say, this is the business of understanding what we're about here and I pray that the Lord will give me the years and the people around me to be able to make these presentations come to life in exhibits and have the ability to show you, the stewardship that Dr. Scott started out with, the Lord blessed me many times over to be able to have opportunities to acquire many of these things after his death. The holes, as I said, that were missing in the collection that we didn't have, which now we possess, and they're treasures not just because of the idea somehow that they're rare, but they represent to me the perseverance even in the darkest of times of God's word. Now we're going to jump ahead a little bit here, we're going to jump ahead a little bit here, and I hope you can hold your kidneys a little bit; just hold them, all right. I've said many times that 1453 is an important year in history, because it is the year the Muslims take Constantinople, and Constantinople, obviously, we know was established by Constantine. But it's an important year because of the exodus of the Greek scholars leaving and going into Western Europe, bringing with them Greek manuscripts that had not been seen before that time. So in the history and the collecting, it's important to have some of these dates and understand that area never recovered. And quite frankly, if we had time, I would spend a little bit of time talking about that. We don't, but 1453 is an incredible year in history and what happens to Christendom specifically in those parts of the world. All right, just three years later, the Gutenberg Bible is printed and, I think, probably because many of you have heard a lot about the Gutenberg Bible, at the rarity of the Bible, we know this, that patent laws did not exist in Gutenberg's day and he wasn't a good business man. He obviously did not invent printing. Some people say, “Oh, he invented, he invented the printing press.” No, he didn't. Printing existed for, guess what? Hundreds of years before Gutenberg, it was what he did with his invention, making movable type was number one, the type of ink that he used; the whole method. It's like he took from the best situations, born as a, and into the trade of someone who worked with gold and metal, he understood how to use this lighter form of metal and the press that was involved. So basically now, instead of having to make book, one plate carved out, or woodcuts; movable type now with this type of ink allowed them to crank out Bibles. The only problem, by the way, was that he was a bad businessman. He got into debt, he kind of had some of the wrong people around him and he ends up dying destitute, unfortunately. And in that period between his invention in 1456 and the year 1500, his invention essentially will go across Europe and every major city will have a printing press. So something is changing faster, you know we talk about technology today and we're this instant society, but then, to have a book be produced, or a pamphlet, propaganda, anything that quick, that was radical. So we know for a fact that although Gutenberg's endeavor with his Bible, which is still a prized Bible, by the way. To be able to try and acquire one, we'd, it wouldn't be like I'd just give my arm and my leg and my, and my head for it; we'd need about 50 or maybe 100 arms and legs to be able to buy one, if you could get a hold of one. If one ever comes on the market it's multiplied millions just for one. We happen to have, I think, at least somewhere close to about 15 or 20 leaves. They're like rabbits; they multiplied over the years. But when we talk about the concept of printing and the printing press, there was an early stage of printing. And in this early stage, we have Bibles being printed, the incunabula period, which essentially is Bibles up until the year 1501. This is what it would look like, not very fancy, by the way. But this is what a Bible from that cradle period, that's just the beginnings of printing. This is not a Gutenberg; by the way, this is at the very tail end of that early printing period. And if you want to know, I mean, I've jumped over so many, I've jumped over so many periods of Bible production, but I'm trying to fill in the blanks when people say, “Well, okay, what happened after that? And what happened after that?” There's a flood of Bibles in a small period of time between Gutenberg's press and 1501 that become famed Bibles, but they're not part of Gutenberg's printing press. One of them is the Bamberg Bible, the Koberger Bible and the Poor Man's Bible. These are Bibles, by the way, that if you have the opportunity to see them, they're not, except for the Pauper's Bible, they're not that attractive. And what's happened now with, with the manuscript era of things being done by hand coming to a close, things are just beginning to look a little bit sterile, if you will. And that's not to say that some of the other later printings didn't have flourishes to them, because we know that artwork begins to be added in. Names like Albrecht Durer and Hans Holbein begin to flood into religious art and Bibles. So it's not all boring, by the way. Most people do not know this, but there was a book called, The Golden Legend, it was the first attempt to print parts of the Bible into English, but that English production would not happen until the time of Tyndale in 1525. I'm going to jump back just a little bit, because I talked about the sale of indulgences, so in 1506, the full swing to get the money to build St. Peter's Cathedral is underway and, boy, oh, boy, the Catholic church is just going to town: sending out people to preach the indulgence so that they can rake in the money. In 1509, a young man by the name of Henry VIII becomes king of England. Not that important, I guess. And in 1515, Martin Luther is lecturing at the University of Wittenberg on the book of Romans. One year later, a man by the name of Erasmus will make a great contribution. Between 1516 and 1517, Erasmus will make two great contributions, maybe the only ones, by the way. You'd, you'd have be around me to know that I have issues with Erasmus. But never mind, but his first Greek New Testament, which would become the basis for Martin Luther eventually will use that Greek and others will use that Greek to begin to make translations; not from the Latin, but from the Greek and from the Hebrew, from the original languages. So Erasmus does have something important. By the way, something really great happens in 1517. I almost want to run around, right. But none of you will be running around when I say this, when I say the word Complutensian Polyglot. Yeah, okay━one person! Christopher, thank you! I love you! But that is the year the Complutensian Polyglot was produced and it was really such a radical production and why I'm saying, mentioning this in passing is because that rat, Erasmus, see, you've got to know history here. This Complutensian Polyglot had the first Greek and other translations in it of the Bible, but there were sanctions put on it by the pope. Pope Leo sanctioned so they could not release it, so Erasmus ends up printing his Greek New Testament before, even though the Polyglot, the Complutensian Polyglot was being done before Erasmus's; so that rat; but anyway, so, but the polyglot changes everything and after that polyglot many polyglots are produced. Probably the king, in my opinion, the king of the polyglots is produced in 1657, called the Walton, or the London Polyglot, which bless Dr. Scott, we have several copies, but the one that he liked to use, which I now use for my studies, is the one that he put colored marker in. One day, a thousand years from now when they're digging up the polyglots and they'll say, “Oh”" And I'm going to leave a note in there that says, “This was done by Dr. Gene Scott,” like a time capsule. Now what's so great about this is, you know, we have, we have a lot of these treasures. Obviously time would not permit me to bring out all the things that we have. And we have so many things that I know you have not seen, but one of, one of things that I'm inspired by as I've told you, my whole life changed when I began to study the life of Martin Luther. And I really felt that that first exhibit we did was a testimony to really what true men and women of God should want to stand for. Forget about what somebody else says you cannot do, stand by God's word, trust God's word and that inspiration, to me, it really did change my vision for this church, for my life, because I began to see that it doesn't matter what other people say or how they're doing it. I'm concerned about what's in this book. Now Martin Luther, as we know from the exhibit, kind of fueled the flame with the Reformation. We talked about his, his 95 Theses in 1517, if the act happened of him nailing it to the church door at Wittenberg and that opening up the floodgate, which ultimately brought about him being threatened with excommunication and ultimately being excommunicated in 1521. It is during the time after his excommunication, but he is, he's secreted away to the castle at Wartburg that he produces his version for the people. So there's often this confusion. There were German Bibles before Martin Luther's time, but they were not Bibles produced from the original languages, so in 1522, Martin Luther produces what is called the September Testament. And the Lord blessed me to be able to acquire this. We did not have this before in the collection and I will show you exactly what this looks like. This is the September Testament, Martin Luther's September Testament that was produced in 1522. We never had this before, by the way, folks. It's kind of hard to give you an idea, but we'll look at the front page there. So, if you can see that, yeah, I told you I think the Lord, as I said, has, has found in me, I'm, I told you I'm a faulty vessel and I make all kinds of mistakes as I go, I'm a work in progress, but the Lord's found in me, I really believe, a defender of the faith and a champion for the things that pertain to the church of Jesus Christ and the propagation of the gospel and not all this funny business about━you know it's really just like the days of indulgences, selling goods to get people to get excited about something when this should excite you: history of people who gave their lives and fought valiantly to protect the right for us to read and to know about our Lord Jesus Christ. What more could you want, right? Now I'm, I'm not done. I'm not done, so I'm going to do, I'm going to do another marathon through time. We're going to do a big, whew, get ready here, here we go, okay. So Tyndale, Tyndale, he sought in 1523; that's just a year after Martin Luther's September Testament, he sought to make a new English version of the Bible and was refused. He sought the authorities to do it and was refused. He left England for Hamburg in 1525; began his translation, which was complete in 1525 and there's many people who talk about whether or not Tyndale and Luther met or knew each other, and I believe that would be inevitable. In 1535, the treachery of a man named Henry Phillips turns Tyndale in. You have to remember that to undertake the translation of the English Bible, of the Bible into English, would be tantamount to treason. The rumblings of Wycliffe and Hus, "the Bohemian traitor”; all these people who “betrayed the church” were still in the hearts and minds of anyone who had any power or control, so of course, unfortunately for Mr. Tyndale, and I really, I think that if history could be really rexamined, we'd really say, “Boy, this guy got the short end of the deal here,” because we know that 16 months, he's arrested for 16 months, he's put in prison and then he is hung and burnt. And just before they hang him, he says, “Lord, open up the eyes of the king of England.” And many, many people believe that his prayer was heard. We know his prayer was heard because the translations that will happen, the versions that will happen immediately after Tyndale; Coverdale doing the first complete printed Bible in English, Matthew's Bible in 1537, Taverner's Bible in '39, the Great Bible, which was commissioned essentially, by permission of King Henry VIII, who was no longer, by the way, defender of the faith after he sought his annulment from Rome and was refused and decided to break with Rome. All of these Bibles, including the King James, you will find Tyndale's words are in even the Bible we use today. So unfortunate, it's unfortunate, because if you and I could go back in history and see the king saying he commissioned the Great Bible in 1539, the frontace page, I wanted to bring our Bible, but there was just too many things to bring. The frontace page of that Bible is delightful, because it has Henry and all of his splendor and he's handing down God's word. In one hand there's Cromwell and in the other hand there's Cranmer, and God is squished right above Henry's head really small. They can barely fit God in and here are all these poor subjects at Henry's feet as he's dispensing the word of God to the small people. I just sounded like our former Bible curator; there, there. In; what's so great about that, that is a beautiful frontace piece, but if you know anything about collecting, what I love about that particular Bible is Cromwell fell out of favor with Henry VIII, like many people. It's reported that over Henry's, I believe, 38-year reign, over 72,000 people were executed: 72,000 people, uh, yeah. So, without an exception, when Cromwell fell out of favor, they were still printing the Great Bible, and instead of having to redo the frontace piece, they simply gouged out his coat of arms, so if you see copies that have the━they look like eyeballs, they're blank, it's because that's the ones that tell you he fell out of favor with the king. Okay, we're, we're on our way, but in the midst of all of this what I need to tell you is the Reformation is definitely underway and there is rumblings and boilings between England and Rome, and between Germany and France, and everywhere, it seems, there are people who have taken to what was called an anathema in the Luther translations and now Tyndale's. By the way, Tyndale's work had been smuggled back into England in cases of goods and merchandise. I mean, think about it: God's word could not be stopped and it was illegal to bring those Bibles in, but God's word could not be stopped. Now there are successive Bibles that happen after the Great Bible, Edmund Beck's Bibles, the Complete Geneva Bible. And I should stop right there because the Complete Geneva Bible is the Bible that most people tend to say, “Oh, yeah, I know about that Bible. That's the Bible that the Puritans brought to America; or the Pilgrims brought to America.” But what's important to note right here is that Henry has died, the Catholic daughter, Mary, has taken the throne and all of the Protestants have fled. They've gone elsewhere, specifically Geneva to get away from the Catholic queen and they're waiting for her to die. Don't you like that? “We moved away to wait for her to die.” And it is in this process that the Geneva Bible, the Complete Bible, not just the New Testament portion in 1557, but in 1560 the Complete Bible is made, Elizabeth takes the throne, Protestantism is really, it's tolerated. It's not, I'm not going to say that she was a for or against, if you read history aright, but she was more tolerant to Protestant and had the Protestant bent. But this Bible became the Bible that we'll just say for at least up until the time of the King James printing was the Bible that was used by-and-large by most of the people. When we talk about the Bible, bringing the Bible to America, and this is the thing that scholars often argue over, because we talk about what Bible was brought by those on the━the pilgrims coming to America in 1620, which undoubtedly was the Geneva Bible, but let's not get dogmatic and say that that was the first Bible in America, because Jamestown was established in 1607 and although there was not yet a King James Bible being produced, there were other Bibles in circulation. In fact, we know for a fact that when Christopher Columbus came to the Americas, he brought with him a Latin Vulgate. So people tend to want to skew a little bit of what happened in history, forgetting that there were other Bibles and other people did come and go before we talk about the settlers in New England in 1620, but that does bring me to the first book printed in America. And again, I say to you we have so many different things, so many different treasures. I brought with a facsimile copy because it seemed like the better thing to do, but the first Bible, the first book rather, printed in America was the Bay Psalm Book, in 1640. And it was metered, 150 songs, metered to be sung so that people could learn the Scriptures, right? So the Psalms were metered in song. This production in 1640 was quite an undertaking. When people talk about the value of a book, what's in a book, just so you can get an idea, it's why I'm carrying the photo━the facsimile copy and not the real deal, in 2013, a Bay Psalm Book sold at Sotheby's for the small price of 14 million dollars. Yeah, glad you all said that. It was a simultaneous “Whoa!” too. So when we talk about, when we talk about the Bible in America, we need to be clear about a few things, especially for those people who tend to get dogmatic and they'll talk about what came first, the chicken or the egg. There was a Bible; the first Bible printed in America was the Bible in the Indian, Algonquin language, printed by John Eliot. He gathered together, as the story goes, 1,100 praying Indians and divided them into groups and the, the translation that he did, he was a linguist, but no one had experience in this language, the people of that area called Natick, extremely difficult. And it remains, most historians say, one of the most unreadable, misunderstood translations, but yet the greatest anomaly, because it was indeed the first book, the first Bible printed in America, not in the English language. You have to wait a while for the English Bible to be printed in America, and when people talk about the production of the Bible, it seems like without having enough time to get into American history, I'll just say this to you. There was enough going on in America that people were now vying for something they could call their own. In 1777, that's a year after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a man by the name of Robert Aitken petitioned to have Bibles printed because the Bibles, there was a shortage of Bibles, by the way, and the petition was that if they couldn't, if they could not make them, they would bring them in; Holland, anywhere! There was a shortage of Bibles. In 1777, Robert Aitken went ahead and printed Bibles and then this was not enough, by the way, went back to the Continental Congress, asked for money. By the way, the money was never given, contrary to what people spin on the tales, the money was never given, but he printed the Bibles anyway, which resulted in the Bible of 1782 being printed, which is the Aitken Bible. And when we talk about this Aitken Bible, many people think this is probably one of the rarest Bibles in the world. It, we actually have three in our collection, yes, they multiply, but this is what you would have been looking at. And we talk about something that has history to it that tells the story of the Bible in America, that's what the title page, if you can read anything on the title page there: “Philadelphia, by Robert Aitken,” right at the bottom, “at Market Street.” And so we have a Bible printed in English in America. Now don't think, because a lot of people start to think, “Well, what did that mean for the translations”" We know that, for example, a man by the name of Carey, who was an Irish, an Irishman, he took up with Ben Franklin for a time and before coming to America, by the way, disguised himself as a woman to get to America, but he started printing and he's remembered as the first printer of the Douay-Rheims, the Catholic Bible in America. But when we talk about, in terms of modern, not English, but modern printing in a modern language, after the Eliot Bible, you've got the Sauer Bible, which was produced in the German tongue for the people of Pennsylvania, which essentially was a Luther Bible. And then Sauer has sons and they keep producing Bibles until that Bible got the name the Gun-Wad Bible, and don't think it's something dirty. They were using the, the pieces of paper from the Bible for their guns. Think about that and think about the timeline, you'll understand that you'd use anything if you needed to have something to shoot at people. What has happened, I've taken you through as quickly as I can and I'm sure I've jumped over so many different versions and translations, but what has happened is that suddenly by the time the early 1800s come, Bibles are being mass produced in America. Family Bibles are being produced and the American Bible Society and Bible societies, at least two or three Bible societies that are working in the Americas have distributed over a half a million Bibles to families. And the need for Bibles, to have Bibles in schools for education and in houses for people to read went up and then started to decline. And if you trace the time between the First World War and the Second World War, you will see the decline in the interest and study of the Bible. All of our colleges in America, specifically Harvard, founded by John Harvard, but those around John Eliot, Mather, and others who were the Eliot Bible and the Bay Psalm Book people all guided people to the study of theology. In the early days, you had to study that even if you were going on to another vocation, but between World War I and World War II, the study of this book, the decline in its interest, you can track it. It's not just industrial revolution, it's not just the progressive education system in America, but you can track what happened right down to the time where Christianity started to ebb a little bit and we started to see the turn of a nation where now we have pulled away from prayer in school, we have pulled away from any public establishment bearing even something like the Ten Commandments. Crosses sometimes, especially in public places, if they haven't been there for such an amount of time are being removed. And the desire for people to actually get into this word, seems like the word is it's not relevant. And this is what I would say to those people. We just covered hundreds of years of history in an hour and a little bit, ahem, and the reality is that I really believe what Jesus said to be true: the need to still keep going into all the world and to preach and to teach. And there's only one way to do it and it cannot be done through any other method or means but through this book and through the study of this book. And when I think about the great sacrifices I have just shared with you, it should be something that we walk away today saying, “I want to know my heritage,” I want to know where this book came from and how it came into my hands so that when I study it, I'm not only studying it with the absolute faith that I'm trusting in my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but I know that the words contained therein, although they're all in English, and it's all English to me, I know the journey that it has made that God essentially said, “Until the end comes,” until He decides the end of days and the end of time, the word of God will go forth and the history of this book will be told to people who have never heard such a thing, that we might be mindful that the next time you hear somebody as a carnival barker, pretending to act in the name of Jesus or to dispense blessings, which they do not have the power, save that it comes from this word and from the Holy Spirit, don't have the power to dispense and don't have the right to act as though we live in the Dark Ages, but to open up this book and say, “Taste and see that Lord is good.” And there's only one way to taste and see. The progress, by the way, may be slow for me and this church and we may be walking a very lonely path, but I will say this to you. I'm glad I'm walking this path. I'll take church historian and I'll take someone who loves the ecclesiastical journey and what we have gleaned from it to make me say, you cannot remove my hands from this book or from my heart, for these words that have been passed down by so much shed blood and by so much sacrifice live in my heart as a testimony to the word that will keep on living until He says, “It is indeed end of days and finished.” Until that time we will remain a people of the book who study the word to study to show ourselves approved by God. That's my message. Come on up. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com
