Making of the Bible [Year of Biblical Literacy] Tim Mackie (The Bible Project)

hey guys done great it's good to be with you alright here's here's what we're going to do my goals are pretty modest we're going to explore the history of the formation of the entire Bible is there like 70 minutes to something I am going to talk a lot for the next hour and there's going to be a lot of fat firehose you're going to drink from I'm going to make you drink from a factual firehose for the next hour so and so you know whatever obsessive note-takers your hands are going to cramp by the end and that's fine I'm totally fine with that this is being recorded you know suit you can go back and it'll be available somewhere through reality's world of online goodness so so let me at least give the framework here because this isn't just about we learned a bunch of facts tonight my my goal is not to somehow try and prove that the Bible is divine or something like that I'm not trying to make a case you know that that you should necessarily read the Bible as God's Word or something I happen to have that conviction and I think that there's that's a reasonable conviction to have about the Bible if you're here and a friend invited you and you wouldn't self-identify as a Christian first of all you're my hero because walking into a room full of mostly Christians in a church on a your own choosing on a weeknight like that's really admirable and the fear you're incredible for doing that and that's awesome but so if that's you you know I really the first conversation topic I would want to have with you it's not really to convince you anything about the Bible I just really want you to consider Jesus like Jesus of Nazareth and how amazing and remarkable he is then we'll talk about the Bible later what's your processing who Jesus is and what he said and what he did so mainly I'm thinking about people who are followers of Jesus and I said I said this yesterday in the Sunday gatherings but followers of Jesus who have the same relationship to the Bible that you have with your strange uncle right namely that you were with him over the holidays likely and he's odd and he's in your family so you're supposed to like him alright but he's really behaves weird and he does weird things but he gives you gifts sometimes and he's kind of nice so you like him sometimes but you know most of the time and I really think that how if most Christians are honest that's how they feel about the Bible at least some of the time anyone in the room here it's like you're supposed to like it and sometimes it really is beautiful in what it says and but then like you actually read most of it and it's disturbing and the violence and the sex candles you know and all this kind of thing and so what what is this and and the reason why that disturbs us is I think the main story and this is really what I my hope would just be that you walk away from this evening considering what links all the facts that we're going to consider a narrative about how the Bible came into existence and it's the narrative that I think is based on a reasonable honest reading of all of the historical evidence outside and inside of the Bible about how it came into existence because there's lots of narratives out there about how the Bible came into existence if you've ever watched anything on the History Channel about the Bible you need to never do that again but because it's just you know I don't know what to say they get the most fringe on the margin voice who happens to have gotten the PhD or whatever they don't represent the majority views of biblical scholarship and they're the people who are telling the stories about the making of the Bible on the History Channel which makes you wonder about everything that's on the History Channel you know but anyway at least for the Bible it's just not a reliable source of information you know The Da Vinci Code book and movies and everything that came out of that made it splash you know over over a decade ago now but that narrative still remains long strong in American culture and that's that the Bible you know is the production of a select few you know powerful political theologians who got together and said not this book yes this one not this one yes this one because we want to dominate the world you know and pull the power play on the masses and so on and of course the only problem with that is the da Vinci Code set up front though not as clearly as Dan Brown up to this that it is a novel okay and that its historical fiction emphasis on the fiction of of the historical fiction so so that story's out there and for people who grew up in a church setting full of self-righteous legalistic people who were constantly appealing to the Bible once you hear the da Vinci Code story you are liberated and free and quite happy to ignore the Bible for the rest of your life are you with me here so so that's a problem and that's those are the dominant stories out there about the Bible and so I just I'm I am doing what I can through whatever cartoons and doing stuff like this to just really help people say like that's not that's actually the those stories are the historical fictions in honest reading of the making of the Bible that the story is contained within the scriptures itself but also evidence the public accessible history of the Bible throughout the historical record tells a different story and so that's the big picture that I hope you walk away with tonight and that's what's going to link together all of the historical facts hi guys done ok fire hose fire hose on ok so I you were at the Sunday gatherings at reality Church San Francisco yesterday I put this image up here by MC Escher and I don't know if you're a sure fan I think he's brilliant but he this image for me has become such a helpful helpful illustration of the historical both Jewish and Christian confession about what the Bible is this so this is a it's called drying hands and it's exploring the the paradoxical truth of complex entities of things that are one yet two of things that are distinct two distinct things yet they exist as one so which hand is drawing the other yes exactly so so to me this is just perfect because the Jewish Christian confession throughout history has been about the Bible that it is a divine and a human word at the same time and again if you were here at the sunday gathering in reality you heard me but repetition will help you right with this one so that it's a divine and a human word and that neither one cancels out the other or Trump's the other they both exist fully simultaneously - at the same time and the the dominant narrative that I just laid out for you one would be you know the common Christian narrative which erases the human hand for the most part and treats the Bible as I call it the golden tablets falling from Heaven's view so the biblical authors of course you know people wrote it but for the most part they're incidental and you know God's presence or spirit zapped them and in ecstatic trance and they're little bit you know doing that whole thing as they write out the books and so that's a very common a common story it's usually wrapped up with a view of what the Bible is for namely that it's a divine rule book that gives you the instructions for how to be the kind of person who makes it to the good place and not the bad place after you die so that story of where the Bible came from and what it's for is very dominant in American Christian culture then you have the view that erases the divine hand and says it's merely a human book written by people it's a very important cultural artifact you know this book's very influential it's shaped course of many human civilizations and so it's very important that you should know about it and we might even say that it's a witness to how people in the ancient world experience the reality of God but it's a but it's merely a human word and we shouldn't take it that seriously so that and so that story is out there too and so uh again my case is that I think it's reasonable I'm not going to persuade anybody who isn't open-minded already on either side but I think a reasonable reading of what the Bible is trying to tell us about its own origins tells a different a different story so here's and again if you say this is third time I'm going to summarize really quickly what I said at the reality gathering yesterday on this and the sunday gathering and the first mention of the writing of the bible in the bible i know this is repetition but this is only going to last five minutes i went for like 45 minutes on this yesterday so only five minutes here tonight the first mention of the writing of the bible is very interesting it doesn't occur in the first book of the Bible there's actually nothing about the writing of the Bible in the first book of the Bible it comes rather at a point connected to the key figure Moses and it's after the Israelites have been rescued out of slavery in Egypt and they oh thank you I just realized I'm supposed to forward the slides but I think someone did it for me so that thank you whoever did that the big green button I should be able to push it so after the Israelites escaped out of slavery in Egypt they're wandering through the wilderness and this South Canaanite people group is right for plunder they attack and here's how here's how the story goes the Amalekites came and they attack the Israelites at refa demon and Moses said to Joshua hey get some of our men to go out and fight the Amalekites tomorrow I'm going to stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand and if you're familiar with this odd story I think Moses goes up and as long as he holds his hands up the Israelites are winning the battle but he's old and his arms get tired and so he has to get friends the hold his arms up or so the Israelites don't lose and they win the battle and then after the battles over the Lord said to Moses write this on a scroll as something to be remembered the first mention of the writing of the Bible in the story of the Bible and this is significant for a lot of reasons first of all Moses it doesn't appear is getting like zapped by a Holy Spirit lightning cloud or anything like that it seems like he's in possession of all of his faculties okay right that he is from his own memory and experience of this event to write down on the scroll this thing to be remembered are you with me here this is very like who's writing Moses is rushing them he's a human right now he's doing it under divine direction right he hears and senses this is a story of a remarkable deliverance of God's people we need to remember these stories of what God has done and so that's that's the first purpose that we're told about why the Bible came into existence to tell a story right not a comprehensive history of every event that ever happened in Israel but to a story of choosing the select events in the history of this people where God did remarkable things to save and redeem and rescue his people that's the first mention of the writing the Bible in the Bible so whatever we think the Bible is for has to take this into account first of all it's a divine and human word and it's one of its primary purposes is to tell a story the second mention of the writing of the Bible in the Bible these are great facts to know as I said use them at a party this Friday night you'll win friends and influence people I'm sure so it's after the Israelites come to the foot of Mount Sinai and God asks these people to enter into a covenant relationship with himself with the God who just rescued them out of their slavery in Egypt and so through Moses he delivers the terms of this covenant relationship we call them the Ten Commandments but those are just the first ten right there in that story between the story we just read in this story a total of 42 get given to the Israelites and it's all it's mostly about like what we would call social justice it's shaping the the life habits of these people towards greater justice greater wisdom greater generosity in their cultural context and setting and so these laws come because God wants to make Israel a kingdom of priests he says a contrast community that'll go out and live in among the nation's as different kinds of humans and so here's how the story goes here when Moses went and he told the people all the Lord's words and laws they responded with one voice everything the Lord has said we're going to do and then Moses then wrote down everything the Lord had said second mention of the writing of the Bible in the Bible now so once again there's no mention of a trance here right it's Moses had this experience of being in the divine and holy presence of God now that's remarkable I'll give you that so it's a very very remarkable experience I've never quite had that experience and I'm not sure I want to because most of the people in the Bible who do are afraid for their lives so but but what and that and what he hears and discerns the voice of God speaking to him is this new way of life for God's people and so Moses is then asked from his own recounting experient writes he's asked to write down everything that the Lord that the Lord had said it's a divine and human word but here's doing something different than the previous story right so the first story the first story it's about writing the story of this event how God saved his people but now we're we're riding down right words and laws we're riding down again not such as rules and commands we're writing down the terms of a covenant relationship Israel is to come under this God's loving gracious authority because they know he's loving a gracious because they already rescued them and this is this is the new way that they say they want to live as an expression of their gratefulness and motion to this guard who rescued them and so it's it's the terms of the Covenant so whatever the Bible is it's not a rulebook dropped from heaven it's telling the story of what God has done to rescue his people press the green button and lo and behold a wonderful what a real summary right so I just released two first mentions we can learn we learn a new story about how the Bible came into existence and why it came into existence it's a divine and human word and it tells the story and then it it contains the terms of the covenant relationship that God wants his people to live by not just because God's uptight you know and it's because God wants to make new and different kinds of humans out of us and that's and that's what all of these laws represent they're good they're a blessing you read later Israelite poetry in the Bible about what these people thought about the laws and they were thankful they thanked God and they praise God for the laws of the Covenant because it challenged them to become the best versions of human beings that they had ever known about before okay there you go hi guys done so that's the first drink from from the fire hose it's a recap of what I did yesterday but right here you get the meaning of the Bible the the writing of the Bible is just getting started but the meaning of the Bible it's all it's all right there so here's what we're going to do we're just going to briefly kind of paint the narrative of how each of the two huge collections of the Bible came into existence the Hebrew Bible or Christians called the Old Testament and then the New Testament or the New Covenant documents the Hebrew Bible continues to be written and over a process of about twelve hundred years from those stories when those stories and events took place in history a process of twelve hundred years of the writing of the books of the Hebrew Bible the final shape of the Hebrew Bible has this shape to it it's called the Tanakh in Jewish tradition and that those letters tnk it's the a little acronym and then the Jewish traditional ordering of the Bible it's very very ancient and will and we'll talk about why that's important it's three sections each of which begins with the letter you see there on the on the left that's underlined so Torah so Hebrew word that means teaching or instruction and that refers to the first five books of the Bible called the books of Moses or the Pentateuch in Jewish tradition the next section of the Hebrew Bible after that is called the Nevi'im that's the Hebrew word for prophets and that has two sections you see the yellow and the orange right there in yellow it continues the narrative of contrite from the book of Deuteronomy you can finish the Torah and turn to the book of Joshua and it you haven't skipped a beat it just continues right on going and you've got four books that are telling the story of Israel going into the Promised Land of failing to live up to the terms of the Covenant in the ruin and the destruction that happened Samuel the Kings that come along and sometimes they're good mostly they're bad and the whole thing does a crash landing in the book of Kings and the they have a civil war and they split into two kingdoms the northern kingdom is erased from the map of history by the Assyrians in 722 BC and the southern kingdom Judah and Jerusalem is destroyed and conquered and taken into exile to babylon in 587 BC that's the story that those books in yellow take place the books in the orange called the latter prophets these are the poetic and narrative writings and collections of these very eccentric figures in the story that you just read and yellow it's like we're time warping back into the story it's very interesting so will the white and the yellow is one long sequential storyline and then the orange books come on and fill back in the stories of these very important figures who appeared at different moments in that big sequential storyline and what these figures are is they I call them watchdogs for the Covenant they were humans speaking on God's behalf calling Israel to be faithful to the terms of the Covenant and they never were and they predicted the doom and destruction and ruin would await them if they didn't be faithful to the Covenant they didn't listen ruin finally came the last section is called the ket to V which is the Hebrew word for writings and I think if this section is like that kitchen drawer that you have that has batteries and twist ties you know and some Ziploc bags and a map and you know and the matches and that kind of thing so but it's a it has roughly three sections to it it begins with the Book of Psalms which is a collection of Hebrew poetry almost half of the poems in there are connected to King David and somehow somehow but the rest of them come from a variety of Hebrew authors throughout the story job proverbs these are wisdom writings you have what's called the five books of the Meggie lote they all have those five books Ruslan songs Clues the Astor's lamentations Esther and Hebrew the title for each of those books is a feminine noun in Hebrew it's very interesting and feminine characters dominate those books in different ways that are really interesting and then the last three books daniel ezra nehemiah chronicles bring the story of israel up to the point of their return from exile okay there you go let's quick overview of the traditional shape of the Hebrew Bible and each of these sections came into existence in really interesting and unique ways so I what is what I want to do I just want to touch down each of these sections and look at some of the biblical passages that tell us about the human and divine origins of how these books were written and my case is just simply this to tell us that if the narrative of there's the Bible as a result of like a bunch of old political theologians who want to dupe the masses you know and create this collection of books that is a political ideological power play over everybody else then the Bible is a very very strange document is that's how I came into existence because the Bible has loads a very public information about how it came into existence and it is definitely not definitely not that so for example the white section the Torah it we're told multiple times we looked at two examples how did the Torah come into existence well who do we at least know played a role at the beginning of its formation loves us right and so but here's what's interesting is that if you are reading in different parts of the Torah you'll come across different things so I guess a good one in the book of Genesis right which is recounting events from before Moses even came into existence and you'll get to a genealogy which is great bedtime reading here revealing Flavian in Genesis 36 and the genealogy begins yeah this is the genealogy of the generations of Esau Jacob's brother now this genealogy records of the generations of Esau from before when there were any kings in Israel you're like wait a minute like the kings in Israel didn't come like four centuries after Moses came into existence do you see this here so the Pentateuch itself points to the fact that it came into existence in different stages it had its own formation history moses is at The Fountainhead and there's a succession of authors after him and these authors drew on lots of different historical sources as they compiled this epic narrative of the Torah and the prophets and they don't even hide the fact that they're telling that they're drawing this from different sources they tell you it quite a few times so excellent right there so you'll be reading a story in numbers and Israelites are going through the wilderness and they're going into this region they find a well there and then there's a little poem that says you know they found this well there oh yeah sorry I got all this from the scroll of the Wars of the Lord right you're reading a story in Joshua about this battle they went in here oh yeah dear reader I got all this from the scroll of Yashar and so on this is having dozens of times as you're reading through the story so the the book itself gives full evidence of how that came into existence and that it came into existence and stages what you know think of like like a book that would be like a hist three of a people group and there's ten different historians working on it each on different sections it goes through multiple editions revised and updated you know that's there you go the Bible's telling us that's how these first books came into existence now what are these sources and what what should we envision the biblical authors doing okay two nerdy facts I haven't shown you any ancient tablets yet so let's solve that right now so so this is a this is fascinating okay the most exciting discovery of ancient biblical texts in the last 100 years is what great event Dead Sea Scrolls the greatest most exciting finds of ancient texts related to the Bible of the hundred years before that hey I haven't heard haven't heard about these before have you yeah this this rocked rocked the world of the late 1800s and early nineteen hundreds so the ancient city of ugarit it's a coastal town along its modern modern Syria has a whole section of its coast on the Mediterranean above Lebanon and you gara was a flourishing Canaanite city metropolis from precisely the years that Israel was coming out of Egypt and settling up in the land these are Israel's neighbors to the far north and so in the early 1900's a number of French scholars had a lead that this you know that there were some ruins here they began a large-scale excavation they found a city a whole city they found a temple dedicated to a god known it's from the Bible his name's ball or bale is how we butcher it in English but about all is how you pronounce the name and and also a god named a goon who's also referred to in the Bible and then in the temple they found a library huge boxes you know like you know just imagine an old box you don't stone box and they took off the lid and it's filled with hundreds and hundreds of these and the script was known from other called Akkadian and Sumerian language and script and so on but the language was like we don't know what this is it was a rosetta stone if you're familiar with that story kind of moment and so what they you know so all of the scholars go to work and spend their whole careers trying to figure out what this is and they discover oh my gosh like this is the this is a Semitic language this is a cousin language to ancient hebrew and it is it reads virtually like ancient hebrew but in a totally different alphabet so when you when you hear about the people groups that we're in the land of canaan here's one of them we discovered their city and their whole library and this is so fascinating that okay I could go on much longer but I'm not going to write but it's really really interesting but so here's an example this was a the production of text in the ancient world in Egypt they've got lots of papyrus and so they're making it down there on scrolls and so on but up in the land where Israel is clay tablets and they're small they're like this big and this is how they are this is their right the writing system and it's all it's historiography it's priestly texts there's text in here that read just like the Book of Leviticus it's really interesting Pressley tech manuals for how to butcher animals and you know that kind of thing is really interesting okay so anyhow there's also so imagine like this is how people in those times would write text so when you envision a Moses or these other anonymous disciples of Moses and prophetic scribes who were working and compiling the history of Israel they've got a table of these they've also got memorized all of these different fixed forms of oral tradition that have been passed on to them because they didn't care about Twitter or Facebook and they didn't melt their brains with TV they actually used their brains and memorized huge huge amounts of information you have no idea what your brain is capable of and it's capable of quiet quite a lot so here's here's so that's one of the great textual finds from the hundred years before the Dead Sea Scrolls the other one is connected to this picture in this story right here in the late 1800s there was a cynic in Cairo Egypt and it the community wanted to expand the synagogue and so they had a wall at the front which is where the Torah scroll and a large wood thing that holds it is usually kept and then there's a wall so they wanted to blow out the wall and they did and what they found out it was a false wall and between that walls they could all see from the inside and the wall that they could see from the outside was a space about like this along the whole length of it full of ancient scrolls it was just like dream come true so the so they um this man right here named Solomon Schechter he was the professor of Jewish and biblical studies at Cambridge was called you know he got on a ship and he crossed the Mediterranean and he goes down to the Cairo Egypt and he crawls into there and he oversees the organization and selection and publication of all of these texts are called the Cairo Genizah texts and there's it's not just biblical texts that were found in here but although there were a lot of Scrolls of the Bible in there as well so his job this whole career after that event was organizing and publishing these texts and here he is this is this is such an epic photo because this is all like he's sorted it all out and now it's like which one goes with which one you know like is there a piece of an ancient divorce certificate there were lots of those in there and so like Vallon it's like a ripped off piece that should be go with that one over here's like the gigantic jigsaw puzzle with no cover on it you know I'm saying so I don't look I don't know how he feels about his job but there you go that was his job this is um this I think is how we ought to imagine of the authors of the Hebrew Bible they have received the all of these collections of texts and materials from sources that they quote and tell us about and the formation of these books it's a collection of a collection of collections and so we should envision you know like a Moses or in Isaiah or as we're going to see a guy a scribe like Beru Oh prayerfully sifting over these you know like a scrap here that has a beautiful poem and here that tells the story of Judah and Tamar it's some of you read recently that's a whopper right that one and so like all these different stories in there and then they're collating them and then they're putting the writing it onto new scrolls and tablets are you guys with me here the so it's the Bible in a sense to say the Bible was written doesn't really help us because we think of writing like this or like this that's why I titled this talk the making of the Bible the the Bible is something that was it's tactile and was physically produced and the biblical authors aren't trying to hide that fact from us in fact they highlight it for us another example from the orange books Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel the prophetic books and again they tell us quite explicitly in the books themselves how they came into existence so you have these prophetic figures who are called and they're out there preaching on the street corner and so on and you know they're they see the poor being neglected you know in the city of Jerusalem and they see like crooked a people doing crooked business practices and like uh none off weighted scales so people get cheated out of buying their grain or whatever and then they see like the wealthy you know rulers in Jerusalem and they're having all these drinking parties every night and people are getting robbed in the streets and they're doing nothing about it and so in Amos or Jeremiah or a Micah they're kicked because they're like no the whole point of the Covenant laws was that this doesn't happen this is how everybody lives on two planet Earth the whole point is that this is a people that's different and so these prophets would preach they would write poetry they would write essays they would write songs and then at certain points they as we're going to see here collected all of these materials and weave them into the books that are before us in the prophets so Book of Jeremiah this is excellent Jeremiah we're told in the fourth year of your hiking the son of Josiah king of Judah this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord so easy human but he he he senses that God is directing him to do something to say or do something in the unique way and that is a that is a true reality of these figures in the Bible I'm not trying to minimize that fact at all where this is the divine hand here these are humans sensing an awareness of God's Word and reality to direct them to say and to do different things and that's a part of how the Bible says it came into existence but and this is the human part take a scroll and write on it all the words I've spoken to you concerning Israel Judah all the other nations from the time I began speaking to you in the reign of Josiah till now now Bible nerds you know if you read the Book of Jeremiah you know that that date period so in the fourth year of a hyeme where the Book of Jeremiah started it says in the first sentence of the book and the range of Josiah 25 years 25 years of preaching in writing and speaking and writing essays so imagine you know imagine a pastor or you know a public speaker 25 years worth of material right he's being asked to summarize and condense and cook you with me here Calissa writer yes laughs you know that's a lot of work that is an enormous amount of work and there's Jeremiah sitting at his table you know oh my goodness but then it's this is really interesting he actually doesn't do it himself because writing and producing these texts it's a lot of technical skill and so what does he do so so Jeremiah called Baruch son of Neriah and you learn about brouk in the Book of Jeremiah he's a professional scribe he makes text for a living and while Jeremiah dictated the words that the Lord had spoken to him Baruch wrote them down on a scroll now this is a great story and this is what happens so it all gets summarized on the scroll and then Jeremiah is scared to go read the words aloud in the street or in the temple because they're all very critical against the most powerful people in the city and so he I have brut go to it remember it delivers it and then people here start saying it and the Friends of the King here at know like oh my gosh stop talking out loud and so they take it and they go read it to the king and it's this great scene of the king sits on his throne and he hears the scroll being read to him and he gets so angry a column of text gets read and he cuts it off with a nice and throws it in the fire another column read that's what he thinks about the word of the Lord through Jeremiah and so Jeremiah took another scroll okay and he gave it to describe Baruch son of Neriah - Jeremiah dictated bruecke Rohan's all the words of the scroll that joy came king of Judah burned in the fire and many similar words were added to them what does that mean as various so this is what edition of Jeremiah is this this is addition to in addition to has more than addition once had how much more what similar words are the Jeremiah's words another prophets words that I just it's madelung maddeningly ambiguous are you with me here but there you go the Bible is not trying to hide how it came into existence it's very public and sometimes very vague right like this could this could mean lots of different things and okay so one sentence on this though I did part of this in my dissertation I think it's so super interesting the composition of the history composition history of Jeremiah is one of the most fascinating test cases because the Book of Jeremiah these two editions left two different traces in history and you can actually find Hebrew texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls that attest to addition one and two a shorter edition - very interesting there we go so talk to me about that more afterwards if you're nerd so so here we got the the prophetic books just a sample oh yeah how can I forget this one some Siri I have note here in front of me I don't know why I'm not using them right now okay too excited so so our more ancient things that have been dug up out of the ground so in the city of Jerusalem you know just imagine a city like Jerusalem with literally over 3,000 years of habitant inhabitants and people in excavations so archaeology in Jerusalem's the most exciting thing going on right every year they turn stuff up in the early 2000s they were sifting through a section of old Jerusalem you know they're sifting through you know dirt and up pops this little tiny fossilized rocky thing and actually they find a lot of these it's an ancient seal so think like a scroll right Lynbrook we know they're in the business of writing scrolls and then but think of like a medieval movie or something movie about medieval times when you have a scroll and you seal it with wax and then what do you do to tell you you know who it comes from the seal stamps so on a ring or on a necklace or something and it has a name or an insignia on it so they find these all the time of testing - names of people living in ancient Jerusalem and so they found this one about over ten years ago belonging to Baruch the son of Neriah the scribed ok ok so that's really incredible I think and here so and apparently this would have this was a necklace one that would have been used to like press down into the wax because can you see the ridges the foam ridges of a singer this thing's small very small can you see the thumbprint ridges Reza they're gonna migrate this is a fingerprint of a biblical author and it's the only thing like it you know this is very unique and special other seals have been found referring to biblical characters and the kings of Israel but this one you know that makes your makes your ears tingle which is a phrase from the Book of Jeremiah go look it up okay so a sample from the last section of the Hebrew Bible and this one this one's really fun because the implications I think are significant this one's from one of the wisdom writings the Book of Proverbs and that's this it's that the these books of the Bible very often have the prominent figures that the books associated with how do their name on the front that doesn't necessarily mean that they wrote and produce the book Jeremiah's an example proverbs is another interesting example so the book of Proverbs begins the Proverbs of Solomon son of David the king of Israel is the first line of the book so in modern terms we consider that to be the on the cover of a book oh that is the person responsible for this book but even in our culture we know there's often more to the story in fact right then does that person actually like you know hacked it all out on their laptop or whatever so because you get into the book of Proverbs itself and you come across if the break the new poem begins and it says yeah these are the sayings of the Wise Ones well who's that and then you get to chapter 25 oh yeah here's some more Proverbs of Solomon but these were the ones compiled by the men of Hezekiah the king of Judah and if your Bible nerd you know that Solomon and Hezekiah are separated by two centuries so this is another collection of proverbs that were in the royal archive they were in the temple archives somewhere and someone's like oh man these should be a part of this book too and then you get to chapter 30 and it says the whole collection of little poems the fascinating little riddles the in chapter 30 of the sayings of Aguiar the son of Yaka who's that like nobody knows is the only time in ancient history that this guy's mentioned and that goes also for the King Lemuel in chapter 31 is a collection of the sayings of King Lemuel that his mom taught him all right and some of you might be like that's actually that I'm going to trust that chapter more than any other one you know cos Solomon was a shady character so there you go the book of Proverbs so the book of Proverbs and this is tied to the theology and the message of the Book of Proverbs is that wisdom anytime you see a human being acting with justice and generosity and wisdom you're seeing the image of God at work and wisdom that's that's a part of human nature it's a part of God's glorious goodness that we are made to be and that we reflect to each other and so a man wisdom taken from our lemme wells mom or Solomon it all comes from the same source so you with me here and that that idea is the main point of proverbs chapter 8 where wisdom speaks out and says wherever kings are reigning justly they're using me and it's very very powerful so anyway the book of Proverbs is trying to it's a very public about that it came into being and has the wisdom of lots of different people okay that's our crash course we looked at one example from each section of the Hebrew Bible and it's just I mean I think it's really awesome but this isn't a golden tablet falling from heaven this is a book that has a traceable history of human origins and that claims about itself that it's a human and divine word that tells the story of this people that demands the people who have been saved and rescued live under God's goodness is a new and different kind of people it Act tells the story of their failure and it tells the story of what God wants to do with these people and with his world now here's what's really interesting and um okay here we go alright I just looked at the clock for the first time all right the here's what's really interesting and I can't do more but just note writers write it down this is this is really really really fascinating these three sections of the Tanakh the Torah the never even the Ketuvim if you look at what scholars called the literary themes of these three collections if you literally look at the last paragraph of the Torah you'll find that it concludes with a little line that says now dear reader Moses was really a remarkable prophet he leads God's people he rescued them from Egypt and you know no prophet like Moses has ever ever come again so very clearly that's written by somebody other than Moses right and and it's it's saying that somehow Moses was amazing man wouldn't it be great to have a prophet come who is remarkable and who could save God's people again and if you then turn to the last sentences of the last book of the prophets you read a line that reads for all intents and purposes like a little editorial addition to the end of the book of Malachi that says hey dear reader remember the Torah for Moses and look forward to the great prophet like Elijah who's going to come again one day and restore God's people to him and then you read the first lines of the book of Joshua and God and God tells Joshua hey the scriptures that you've inherited from Moses you need to meditate on them day and night and not turn from the right or to the left and you'll have success and all you do if you are guided by the scriptures and then you go to the first book of the writings which is Psalm 1 and Psalm 1 opens many of you read it you know in the last few weeks and it says dear reader you know what you should be like the person who meditates on the Scriptures day and night it doesn't turn to the right or to the left and you'll find success and all that you do anybody this is called editing this is called somebody with a literary sophistication in brilliance who's woven the entire collection of collections together into one book with two message two main ideas first of all we need a powerful Word of God in a new way that's going to restore the hearts of God's covenant people because we're sitting here in exile and we don't know what's going to happen and in the meantime as we're waiting for the prophet in the Messiah we need to bury ourselves in these scriptures and allow the story and allow the terms of the Covenant to shape us into new and different kinds of people anybody okay so that's our crash course through the Hebrew Bible so what's significant what is significant about this is that this this thing drops into history it has a long history of formation the final books of the Hebrew Bible sorry back back here we go in terms of the dates in which they're written and you can tell from looking at inside of them are Daniel Ezra Nehemiah Chronicles and a couple of the prophets and Esther and we can tell that this collection got edited into the single book somewhere in the 300s BC so we're bad somewhere in the ballpark of two to three hundred before Jesus cut just a couple centuries is when the final editorial weaving of the Tanakh came together and then here's what's the literary production and the writing of manuscripts in Jewish culture didn't stop there are lots and lots of other texts that kept on being produced but there's something about this collection as a coherent unified statement that was unique it's like a boulder got thrown into Jewish history when this thing got unified and edited together because all of a sudden you start reading the literature from this later period the Dead Sea Scrolls are included in it and they're just referring to all of these writings right here as a divine and human word but what's fascinating is that everybody's quoting from these books and I'm just want you to hear the words of a Hebrew Bible scholar he's written the definitive historical treatment of the formation of the Hebrew Bible he's a part of the Christian tradition he wouldn't self-identify as like I'm a follower of Jesus so just hear me he's like he would he's a secular critical historian right who's you know grew up in church basically and so and this is this is his description and you know I'm not putting these words in his mouth and I think this is super fascinating he says it is very striking that over a period ranging from the 2nd century BC so the history Jewish sources and literature right after the period of the Hebrew Bible getting unified right through to the 1st century CE II so the century in which Jesus of lots of Jewish history and events going on there so many riders of so many divergent groups and he named some Palestinian those living in Jerusalem and Judah Hellenistic Jewish communities living down in Egypt in Alexandria pharisaic Jews living in the land of Judah that are super super rigid all right and they have a very like discern well-defined theology the essence and by here he's referring to the Jewish community that produce the Dead Sea Scrolls and this is a group a sectarian group they got essentially a set of power I'll sit out of power in Jerusalem they think everybody's going to hell in a handbasket and that they're the only true Jewish people and so they withdrew to the desert and they took their library with them and we're very thankful that they did that so that's the essence and then and then the early Christians which for the first two generations was a Jewish messianic movement so what he's saying is from 300 years of all of this diverse very diverse Jewish cultures here's what's happening they all show such agreement about the Canon of the Hebrew Bible none of these witnesses are concerned with asserting the authority of the books they mention rather they all assume scriptures Authority and they go on to debate about their interpretation so the Qumran community that produces the Dead Sea Scrolls they think that their community is the fulfillment of the Torah and the prophets in the whole story in a figure that led the community to call them the teacher of righteousness and of course the the sect of the Nazarenes the earliest followers of Jesus they believed that the story of the Scriptures is fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth and the Pharisees believed that the story of the Scriptures will be fulfilled if the people of Israel will just live according to their theology but so you have all of these groups that all disagree what they're all what they don't disagree on is what is the Bible they quote from it they debate about it and these debates assume assume that Authority so here's his conclusion he says clear that these groups don't speak simply for themselves they represent Judaism as a whole so they all hate each other right they're very broad representation of Judaism any inference that the Canon was decided by councils one group pulling a power-play over all the other groups do you see how ridiculous that conclusion is in light of the evidence are you with me here because you have I'm sure all of these groups would dream and salivate at the opportunity to pull a power play over all of the other grooves but that's precisely what did not happen the he revival isn't that the role of later councils was not to decide the Canon but rather to confirm decisions about the Canon already reached in other ways there's no evidence in the history of Judaism or the Hebrew Bible about a group of people sitting down and saying oh this books in the Bible but that one no definitely not let's take that one out it's just that it's that that never happened we don't have evidence for that we have evidences for the organic growth of the law the prophets and the writings that just by nature of what they were created their own momentum in Jewish history and that they were collected and put together and received and then fought over and debated about in June are you guys with me here Hyden okay so that ah that's a very reasonable honest conclusion to draw about the nature of the Scriptures and you can disagree with it but if you're going to disagree with it you should have other evidence right the points in a different direction and of course scholars debate about this and I'll give you some recommended reading at the end but this is a historical defensible position it's held by many scholars in the field and it's definitely not the da vinci code story are you with me okay part two oh yeah oh yeah um no we're just gonna go we're just gonna go okay all right all right really no I'm really I'm supposed to okay real quick real quick all right so how do we know that that unified Hebrew Bible so you've got a maybe if you've got a Bible sitting your lap right now it's English translation of the Bible and you know how it works how did you get from that 2 to 300 BC collection of the Tanakh to the books that are translated into English in your Bible and in a very brief nutshell that doesn't do justice to how wonderful and exciting this section of biblical studies is there's three main bodies of textual evidence there's actually more but these are the three most significant ones about the text of the wording of the Hebrew Bible the first is a set of medieval manuscripts that come from the period you see there they're called the Masoretic text and so this is a body of text spanning 600 years which is itself a pretty long period of time and within this body of text these guys were such introverts okay my god could they had no life other than this was a trained professional skill within the tradition of people who became rabbis and they were absolutely brilliant and so these these manuscripts come with not only the biblical text but they come with all kinds of notes and references the resolution of the picture isn't that great but can you see there's three columns their butts from Jonah chapter 1 and can you see there's some stuff on the top and the bottom can you see that there's kind of something on the side I know it's hard to see in this image right here in a better resolute just google Masoretic text and you'll see a picture for yourself and this is all these are all Bible nerd notes right here on the sides and on the bottom and they are there's little symbols connected to words in the text so you're reading along and you see a little symbol oh and it takes you a little footnote and it'll say hey dear scribe you know this see that word it's spelled kind of funny do you know that word occurs three times the entire Hebrew Bible here's the references right here don't misspell it right here thank you very much and then it goes on and it's all like super super detailed about words that are odd so don't miss but it's all about but it's all about preserving this text so this was the main form a textual witnesses that we had along with Greek translations that were made you know we're talking like some 800 years or more before the Masoretic text this was produced by a group of Jewish communities down in Alexandria Egypt and so that's a very significant witness to the text of the Hebrew Bible but then the Dead Sea Scrolls show up and now we're talking because now we can look at the same book of the Bible from 1200 AD or 600 AD and then time-warp back six hundred eight hundred years and look at the gap and compare these texts and its abs it's so amazing and remarkable this field of biblical studies it's where I focus on my research for my dissertation with the Book of Ezekiel and the first the most important takeaway is that the text of the Hebrew Bible over this period you know this test sample period of a thousand years it's remarkable how these texts have been accurately preserved it's absolutely remarkable are there differences between these witnesses oh yes Oh totally yeah and that shouldn't bother you one bit it shouldn't bother you one bit in fact I think it's fast the most fascinating and interesting thing about all of this most of them are inconsequential they're scribal errors because dude if you had a written text in front of you and you're doing this you know six hours a day you're going to make some some mistakes and and this is your mind melted by TV and Twitter you know what I'm saying like imagine these are like people who are actually smart and use all of their brains who are trained to do that's right and set but even they're going to make mistakes you know what I'm saying so but some of the differences are significant some of the differences actually piqued us back into addition one addition to like the Book of Jeremiah we actually get a window through the Dead Sea Scrolls into that final period of the formation and the crystallization of the text of the Hebrew Bible and it's so interesting and fascinating what's great is that we is we don't have it's not the case that like some part of the Bible was lost we actually have too much of the Bible this is like thousands of manuscripts right and so imagine a boulder thrown into a pond ripple effects go everywhere and so we have text from over here we have text from right in here and here in a nooner here so any difference or error that happens here well we can just look over here oh yes that's clearly an error this is definitely the right one here and so Bible nerds through the centuries have been culminating and this is right here every English translation of the Old Testament you've seen in the modern world comes from one source and that you're looking at it right here it's called the biblia hebraica Quinta I used to be called the biblia hebraica Stuttgart Anthea but now it's called the Baker Quinta and so this book of Ruth there it is Hebrew text of the Book of Ruth and all under there is decades and decades and decades of scholars looking through all of these ancient texts witnesses compiling all of the differences right there so that we can with a high high degree of confidence know what the text of the Hebrew Bible says are there places that are puzzles and mystery and things to be solved absolutely that's why you would become a difficult caller because you love that Krista but can we with a high degree of confidence know that the Bible's that we have come from that unified Hebrew Bible from the 3rd century BCE I think is it's not just more than reasonable you need to have exceedingly good reasons to not think that how you done I was going to skip that maybe I should okay all right here we go all right I think we're doing it because the New Testament shorter so this one is too far so we get to the New Testament toward fire hose fire hose is still spraying right now so we get to the New Testament and this is interesting and the fact that I think most Christians don't really know about is that the Bible that Jesus read was so this is this is a Bible study that Jesus had risen from the dead and I don't know maybe if you're not a Christian you find that one hard to buy okay but that doesn't matter what matters is here's the Apostles and what they when they remember Jesus talking about the Bible here's how they remember him talking about it this is what I told you Jesus says while I was with you everything must be fulfilled that was about me in the Torah Moses in the prophets and in the Psalms now that's interesting because that's a you know he's referring to a section of the Bible a section of the Bible and then one book of the Bible but you remember where did the Book of Psalms come in the catch of him Go Bag was theirs Oh conveniently and ha what are you what name are you going to give that sexist the juncture you know as the default kitchen drawer of the kitchen you know it's the twist ties Ecclesiastes and the battery song of songs like it so he calls it by the first by the first book of that third section of the Bible so to me that's just okay there you go Jesus grew up and was immersed in the writings of the Tanakh it was his Bible that's the Bible that he was referring to when he said that I didn't come to set aside the ancient scriptures I came to fulfill them when he said love God and love your neighbor the Torah and the prophets everything hangs it's all its essence is all is all right there so here's the here's where we go in terms of where the New Testament comes from and this is going to sound familiar and because it's very similar it's a very similar story you have the rhythm Jesus who's forming a new covenant people who are being transformed by what who he is and what he's doing for them and they're the people that he believes who are going to be able to fulfill the terms of the Covenant not because they're so great but because he's here to do it on their behalf and so he does that in his life and in his death and his resurrection his last words to his closest circle of eleven disciples at the end of the Gospel of Matthew reads like this and then Jesus came to them and said all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me therefore go and make disciples you know invite everybody from planet Earth right everybody into this new covenant family to acknowledge Who I am and what I've done for them baptize them in the name of the Father Son the Holy Spirit so bring them into the family teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you so just stop and think about that just remember our first point first couple points what why did the Bible come into existence to tell the story of what God has done to rescue and redeem the people and then to invite those people into a covenant relationship in to live by the terms of the Covenant right so what what is the Gospel of Matthew it's telling the story of what God has done to save and redeem a people through Jesus of Nazareth and then it contains all of these teachings of Jesus and Jesus says yes exactly if you want to follow me and become a part of this family then you will live by my teachings and that's exactly what he's commissioning them to do right here are you with me here so what right here is the origins of the New Testament right the the meaning of the New Testament it's just being formed in terms of the history of offense but the meaning is right there and it's just a continuum a continuation of what the meaning of what the barber already was in the first place you with me okay so here's we just really have two sections to go at in terms of how the New Testament comes into existence the first main section of the New Testament it's it's four biographies of Jesus and lucky for us the third one in terms of the order of your Bibles Luke he has a little note at the beginning to say hey do you read or hi you know it's me I wrote this and here's why I wrote this here's what I want you to get in fact here's the process that I went through to bring this book into existence and here's what he says many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us that's a way of referring to Jesus and the story about him as fulfilling the storyline of history and of the scriptures just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses left s should be yellow and servants of the word now it is in mind since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning I too decided to write an orderly account for you most excellent Theophilus so that you may know the certainty of the things that you have been taught that in Greek was one sentence yeah look in English you had to cut it up but in Greek that is one beautiful literary sentence okay so so what is Luke telling us here first of all do other accounts of the story of Jesus exist by the time Luke starts doing his work yeah yes they do we know one of them was because he used it as a source it's called the Gospel according to Mark and he says just where did we get these account the accounts that he's going to pay attention to and that he's going to incorporate a source material into his account of Jesus where do these come from so they were handed down to us and here he uses a technical term pardhu to me in Greek it's the it's the work of professional keepers and passers on a oral or written tradition scribes and oral historians and who are these people who are the keepers that he calls them the servants of the word who are these people what does he call them the people who were there do you see this here so he's like okay the Gospel of Mark which is rooted in the eyewitness memories of Peter and there's indications within mark that give us clues of that and that's actually what was remembered in a hundred years after it and said about the Gospel of Mark by the early church scholars so he's uses the eyewitness testimony of Peter written down by John Mark that's one of his sources but then he's like yeah I went to work you know everybody's still alive so I went to work like investigating everybody and I put it all together here for an orderly account for you most excellent Theophilus now who's that that's the million dollar question right who's why you know to have a biblical book dedicated to you what does that cost [Laughter] and we're not far from the truth probably because most likely this is one theory I think it's the most probable there are other theories out there this is a common thing that authors would do dedicate the book to the patron who paid for the research leaves as they could do the so they could do the hard scholarly work of research the u.s. makes here so there are other views out there but I think that's the most compelling I know what he wants to do is to Theophilus and to the church at large so that they can have even more certainty about the things that they've already been taught about Jesus so here's my way of drawing this note-takers you'll you'll like this this is um so here we go this is my silly way of thinking about how the Gospels came into existence the picture right there this is interesting about five years ago there's a a group of British archaeologists and they worked in the field of Jewish archaeology and so on in the in the Holy Land and when they did these 3d scans of every Jewish male skull found from tombs and so on that dates to the time period and they created a general portrait of the average Jewish man living in the time of Jesus all right there it is that's it you can google it it's really interesting so I don't I don't know it is it Jesus no could it be what Jesus looked like absolutely I mean I that's actually the best crack we have at it you know not the stained-glass windows so where European movie stars or whatever so they're so dig us that's Jesus so here's Jesus right the years and the years that he lived he's there speaking teaching doing healing talking all that and then you have the four accounts each of which is linked as we'll explore in a couple minutes to one of those apostles who is a part of that circle that Jesus deputized been commissioned to spread the story and his teachings to all of the nations so but we've got a gap of a few decades in between those two you with me so that gap in popular imagination gets filled with what you used to do at your junior high sleepovers right with your friends which is like you would say some telephone game guys with me so you would whisper you know whatever 10 little elves go to the market and get some milk or something like that I just made that up so you so you whisper that into a friend's ear and then your friend like whispers that you guys know the game you know what I'm talking about here and then it's like comes back and it like 10 elephants go buy a popcorn or something like that so and are you guys with me I'm anything like oh yeah they were just tellin campfire stories of Jesus and they were doing this that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard first of all the brains weren't melted by Twitter and TV all right and second of all we not like these the events of Jesus whatever whatever happened with Jesus these were clearly absolutely life shattering transforming experiences that people had with this man and you're telling me that they're going to tell and retell and retell among circles of people who they were all there they all saw and heard what happened and in the span of the lifetime of the eyewitnesses those are going to get so overcooked that there's no legitimate authentic historical trace of what Jesus said it did in in these four Gospels system yeah yeah you have to be unreasonably skeptical to come to that conclusion in my opinion there are really smart people who disagree with me but I disagree with them and I don't know what to say about that I just you know let's not let's not be silly anyway so here's here's a very simple way of depicting how these books came came into existence and think of them like like quilts that's a picture of a quilt that my wife has it was a gift to her from her grandmother a number of years ago and it's you know it's in the plastic bag that's why it's all still nice and cleaned and so on but a grandma made this decades ago the pieces of this quilt come from her grandma's whole lifetime some of these pieces of this quilt were given to her by her mom some of the pieces of this quilt were things that she acquired throughout the decades and so honest of my wife's obvious very special quote and so on and so there you go it hangs it hangs on the wall in her bedroom now you look at a quilt and just take two seconds of thought even people I guess whose brains are melted rise by Twitter TV is the age of the quilt the same as the age of the pieces that went into the making of the quote know are you with me do you get it yeah do I need to say any more about the making of the Gospels so that's exactly you guys third this 30-ish year gap it's uh it's not it's not to be people like it's not these are this is the light within oh oh that's interesting yeah yeah I'm not sure what happened though though but you guys see how the spelling got funny anyway so so the the events of Jesus by these Apostolic eyewitnesses they're remembered they're told and retold and retold it's like this like my wife and I we've married fifteen years and we now have a sixth form when someone asked us oh how did you guys meet you know how many times have we told that story in 15 years we've told it dozens of times so when we it's kind of like we to know our parts - well I was in the way we met in a library oh you guys we met in a library our our first conversation was about whether she should sign up for ancient Greek classes I'm not joking it says there you go so we told that story so many times you know what I mean it's taken on a sixth form we've abbreviated it right we've done all kinds of things we've done to condense it and to shape it so that we can tell it in a few minutes not bore the people who houses or whatever but with so over 15 years now over half the time period of the gap that we're talking about my wife and I have done this are the odds are that I'm just going to be like well remember I was riding a stallion you know and shows me like you're an idiot you know like what you guys get what I'm talking about here we're taught we have the people who were there for the events who have been telling and retelling and retelling the events of the most important events of their lives and it's they become their job to do this because they travel around and they do it for a living because they want everybody to know how amazing Jesus of Nazareth was and so these stories that get written down these eyewitness accounts that have a fixed oral form a Gospel author like Luke does his research he goes investigates people and then just like Moses or Jeremiah sitting at the table with all the scraps he prays he goes to work that day and he arranges the story of Jesus into the Gospel of Luke because you and I it's a divine and human word about the store shy do it again about the story was it at least concerns of the Covenant in some I guess done ok keep going the apostolic letters so at the end of Matthew Jesus commissioned write that circle of apostles and what did he commissioned them to do to go out invite everybody into the covenant family tell the story and then to convey my teachings what it means to live according to the terms of the Covenant as a follower of Jesus that's wasn't so right after the four accounts of Jesus are the Apostolic letters of the New Testament there's a collection of letters by Paul and then there's a collection of letters by the other key figures Peter John and so on you guys with me here it's the letters of the New Testament now Paul was one of the first editions onto the team Judas dropped out right so you went from twelve to eleven and then Paul not not without a period of discernment was added to that circle because he had made it his life goal to kill as many followers of Jesus as he could right and then all of a sudden he met the Risen Jesus and it scared him to death right and all of a sudden he's he becomes a part of this circle so they're writing letters what are these letters about these letters are they bear witness to the growing family of followers of Jesus and so they're writing to Jesus followers in Rome all these places they're doing exactly what Jesus told them to do right the movement is spreading into all the nations and so Paul and what these apostles are doing they they're not just repeating the stories and the teachings of Jesus the Gospels you know art and those stories are already out there what they do is they give greater discernment and greater guidance so you have Christians in Rome and the church is split between Jewish Christians and non Jewish Christians and there's all these like cultural conflicts happening between them and so what does Paul do he takes Jesus is a great command love God love your neighbor he takes the great covenant story of Abraham who has become a and a blessing to all nations and he applies the teachings of Jesus and the story of the Bible to help this community resolve its conflicts so they can become the light to that city in rim that Jesus wants them to be do you see that there that's what each of these apostolic letters does is address to a real community and it applies the story of Jesus and the truth and the whole story of the Bible to the problems that this community was facing and so it's wonderful for us because we actually get all of these test cases of the Apostles doing what Jesus has them to do because all because if you're a follower of Jesus you're in a Jesus community too and my hunch is that that's full of other people who are in that community that you know they're like your weird uncle you know you're supposed to like them but really you don't and they sing different songs than you and they dress differently than you and Jesus says that you're supposed to love them more than you love yourself how are you going to do that lucky for us we have the writings of the Apostles who they're helping the early Christians sort this out so who wrote these letters well okay so that's they're supposed to be written by the Apostles themselves but it's more interesting than that so the first letter first episodic letter in the New Testament Romans how does it begin who they're written by Paul a servant of Christ Jesus called to be an apostle to all who are in Rome and you're reading the whole letter through and you're like okay this is Paul's voice and nobody debates that there's actually not any skeptical scholar on the planet who thinks that the book of Romans doesn't come from Paul the last chapter of Romans chapter 16 it's a greeting list it's what is wonderful you'll get there sometime in September that's right and it's literally like he's never been to Rome he wants to get there but he knows lots of people there and so it's a whole chapter of be like oh say hi to Phoebe and I really Priscilla is going to come by soon and my it's this whole thing of like saying hi to different people here's how the last paragraph reads it's so great so he says Timothy my co-worker oh yeah he sends his greetings to you oh yeah so delicious Jason's so sapater my fellow Jews I tertius who wrote this letter I hello finds me - oh yeah guy yes whose hospitality I am a whole church here enjoy Cindy was greetings Erastus he's the city's director of public work her brother cordis right so you've read through this whole letter you're going oh this is I'm hearing Paul and you are hearing Paul but you're hearing Paul mediated through who's technical scribal expertise tertius this was great are you with me here there's no scandal here there's no it's like he's very you know like did you think he wrote this without Paul's permission yes no there's no like this is how you write letters right if Paul's in prison he's whatever so we know that some letters he at least wrote some sections and Galatians he says look I'm so ticked at the Galatians because they're treating each other so horribly he's like I write this conclusion with my own letters he says at the end of that one but here you let sturdiest say hi but no scandal here no scandal first and this one is actually really significant so the letter of first Peter same thing you read the first sentence Peter an apostle of Jesus Christ so those who live in resident aliens all aliens all throughout Pontus Galatia all these different areas in in Asia Minor you get to the end of the letter and you read this by means of Sylvanus who I regard as a faithful brother I've written to you briefly so it's Peters voice but he's telling you listen you're hearing my words and teachings through this letter through the scribal work of of Sylvanus and this this is really interesting and this is why this is an important example who's Peter Peters he was a fisherman from up in Galilee from up in the you know boondocks up in the sticks we know he didn't get a proper synagogue education because it was held against him throughout his career that he wasn't an educated man and the the the Greek of 1st Peter is beautiful flowing flowing literary Greek it's like high style Greek and so how on earth does an uneducated Galilean fisherman produce a high style work of literary Greek through Sylvanus so what what first Peter is we're hearing a faithful representation of the voice of Peter of the of the teaching of Peter who what did Peter actually say to him it's a divine and human word right Peter was with Jesus he heard him he had no knee he knows about these these here in first Peters these church communities that are under fire they're under persecution and so he starts talking to Sylvanus here's what I want these people to hear in Silvanus translates all of that into the flowing glitter very Greek and it's called the letter of 1st Peter it's a divine and human word hi guys doing okay we're almost we're almost almost there to land the plane so we have the the apostolic letters and here's how we know they spread and this is fascinating it's a little clue in Paul's letter to the Colossians he says when this letter is read among you have it also read in the Church of the Laodiceans and you for your part should read my letter that's coming from Laodicea now there's a whole bunch of implications of this first of all when do you think this letter would be read aloud to these Christians you know in class a in the sunday gathering when they get together to worship Jesus to hear that and celebrate the stories and teachings of Jesus to take the bread in the cup and to hear the teachings of Jesus through the Apostles and so he says listen you know my letters read to you so and if you know about Colossians he's addressing some specific problems in the church in Colossae but he's written it in a way that other churches will benefit from how he helped that church sort through their problems and then he says hey you know we should really read I wrote a letter to the Laodiceans do I think you guys would really be helped I thought you should read it too and right here in this little line is the window into how the New Testament spread and so you have a Jesus movement spreading organically spreading spreading throughout the ancient world around the Mediterranean out into Asia down into India and China and so on I'm into North Africa and wherever these new Jesus communities get planted they live and meet weekly by the teachings and the stories of Jesus and the apostles and so the the who has a book somebody has hold up a book with a nice spine right there somebody just show me a book a book there you go cheers all right there you go so I hear a fascinating fact of history that technology of pages bound like this with a solid backbiting is a Christian invention in the history of the technology of writing that's a Christian innovation why would the early Christians have need the pack as many pages as possible into well they really care about this thing called the Bible and if the spread like the Bible actually pushed the technological envelope in the history of the technology of writing and not so a guy named Larry Hurtado this is a scholar on this go read his books is really interesting so so this is the spread and these things are spreading and spreading and everywhere you go whose writings do you have and so on and so there you go it's the spread of the New Testament and when people receive these letters of the Apostles look at how Paul talks about how they envision what they're doing when they write these letters and how he how the early Christians feel when they receive a letter from Paul or from Peter he says we thank God continually because when you receive the Word of God which you heard from us so Paul goes in and he starts telling stories about Jesus you accepted it not merely as a human word but as it actually is the Word of God which is at D in deed at work in you who believe so then brothers and sisters stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you just like Jesus told us to do whether I'm here giving a sermon or whether I've written you a letter is the Bible a human or a divine document in what it claims about itself yes yes all right you see elect it's the two hands right here and this is not a this is not a scandal this is actually the whole this is the whole point of what these writings are okay we're really we're cruising they're not there go read second Peter three that's what I'll just say down right there so here's again Henry Gambell you know he wouldn't say I'm a follower of Jesus he grew up in a Christian tradition he's a critical scholar he's one of the authoritative sources on the making on the formation of the New Testament and this is what he has to say New Testament was not self-consciously created by the church either as a response to some external pressures which we'll consider in a second where as a means to some end it arose naturally and spontaneously from the inner life of early Christianity above all in the context of worship and instruction you get it so so when like leading scholar on the formation of the New Testament any secret council of politically motivated theologians I know what we'll do we'll get everybody in the world to believe in this guy we made up yeah you know like just it's just so not where the evidence leads you what it leads you is to something that's messy and that is the Jesus Movement it's the organic spreading of these communities that keep spreading because people hear about Jesus and they encounter his presence in these communities and their Lord and they're like I'm all in for this guy and then all of a sudden they get the writings of the Apostles and the little Torah and the prophets and is all clicking together for them and then you know man I have some friends down the road in that town they need to know and so it spreads over there and oh we need to copy more writings and they need more and that's how that's how the writings of the Apostles the Torah prophets Jesus and apostles it's likely my analogy is that they went viral quite literally it's those writings that rose to the top everybody wants to read them all these new churches need them they get copied and copy and read copy collected and collect and collected it's a very complex process but the idea is very simple isn't it but you get it it's not that it's not that complicated and none of the evidence points to a secret group doing this in some corner if it was a secret group doing it in some corner the evidence of what early Christianity is actually doing would not look like what it is you guys with me on that point okay now I kind of have to skip and that's okay oh yeah but not this quote because it's really good what so this is good yeah leave it to junior Packer who is a Christian theologian but he is looking at all this evidence misses ways as the church no more gave us the New Testament Canon then Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity do you get his point there so Newton didn't obviously create gravity he pointed out and he's like everybody do you see what the Apple and so I'm this little thing so the whole point is that no one needed to argue for the authority and the power of these documents they were the documents connected to Jesus in the Apostles and they just happened to the early church and they're the documents that got copied and recopied and re copied and recopied those are precisely the documents that are connected to the Apostles and they are what you would we have in the formation of the New Testament did it take time as the church spread and you know you have ya believers up here in Rome you have people down here in Carthage and North Africa I mean think about the geographical spread here all right this is going to take time for all of this to spread out but but it's precisely these writings that rose to the top the writings that did not rise to the top were these all right and then brown we have Dan Brown to thank for this idea but somehow there were actually all these other versions of the life of Jesus and all of these other writings of the Apostles that were floating around and that were originally in the Bible and then some crew of old politically motivated theologians got together and said note we take those out because we don't like that you guys with me here that's that's a dominant narrative about the formation of the Bible and all just two minutes of thought why do you think that some writings about Jesus ended up lost forgotten and buried in the sands of Egypt for 2,000 years where others were never lost because they were being constantly read and reread and reread and recopied because precisely those are the writings connected to the actual apostles and what Jesus actually said are you with me here these books were never taken out of the Bible because they were never they was never even entertained that they would be a part of the Apostolic testimony in the first place Jesus and I don't know I don't know what to say about this because you watch The History Channel and it's just like you know I said I don't where do they get it I don't know where they get this idea maybe you know they want a smoke pot and sleep with their girlfriend and so like okay so like I don't want to live under the authority of the Bible and I conveniently find the historical theory that makes me make that okay and I'll be okay with my conscience I mean I'm being quite serious about that it's very easy to accept a narrative about the Bible that's convenient for the lifestyle that you want to live and Jesus is is anything but convenient for your lifestyle he'll challenge every human to their very core and it's precisely these writings connected to the Apostles that do that and have been doing that to God's people for millennia now and there's no secret MIT society that did this it's a public event whose history we can trace one concluding quote and then we're good Michael Krueger's excellent excellent book on the history of the formation of the Canon it's worth it's where it's a it's boring but you'll learn a ton and here's um here's his summary says the Canon was never authorized or mandated by any General Council of the ancient church it rather rested on the early and largely informal consensus of the church and we're talking about the centuries before like the cat and there's any centralized power centers in Rome or Constantinople it's just a broad international multi-ethnic movement where these writings have risen to the top that's what he means by informal and in short the church did not close the Canon because it never started it to begin with the Canon was inherited from the Apostles to every single point that I've made there are footnotes there are books and interesting questions to be written but do you see the narrative and it's a reasonable narrative I've been talking for a long time and I know that but I think this is important because somehow this is not the narrative that's put forward in our culture it's also not the narrative that people who grew up in church is good and that's actually absurd to me and we need to change that don't we so we started here tonight and and there you go so there you go I'm done talking and we have some time for live Q&A and we're going to do that right now all right it's um it's a big room but I'll do my best to restate your question and you know if it's a real technical question maybe come up and talk to me later but if there's a question that you think odds are a whole bunch of other people in the room is taking this to be brave be bold and be strong hi yeah yeah yeah this is great I can with covetous just say Wikipedia the Council of Nicaea the Council of Nicaea was the culminating Council of a number of prominent theologian to deal with a theological debate about the nature of Jesus about his human and divine nature and how they go together that was the purpose of that council and it was actually culminating decades and decades of debate there were a number of theologians and really influential guys Pelagius and arias and they had views about Jesus that the majority of Christians and these leaders thought weren't true to the writings of the Apostles and so what they were debating at that council and what they decided was a position on the nature and identity of Jesus part of that debate was what biblical writings what writings of the Apostles can be legitimately appealed to as sources for truth about Jesus's identity and so there were some conversations about certain books that people were appealing to that you know not necessarily the Gnostic Gospels but other writings that some of these leaders were appealed to so the whole point is that in go watch The History Channel the Council of Nicaea you know Constantine paid for the closure of the Bible basically that's the idea but it's ridiculous it's actually it's ridiculous and I just read go read all of the material that we still have about the Council of Nicaea it was a debate about who Jesus was and a tangent of that debate was what writings can we refer to as a source of truth about who Jesus is and that's where the writings about the Bible came in to play in that debate but I'm being a real nut shell here but I know that such a prominent claim about the Council of Nicaea and it's just it's not true to what I would actually happen there I'm not an expert on those church councils but I've I have just read the summaries of people who are and nobody who's actually informed about the Council of Nicaea thinks that the Bible was made at the Council of Nicaea - sure yeah good question please yeah sorry yeah hi thank you for being so bold I'd like you yeah hi my mom had older neither other books yeah yeah hmm I haven't been able to find it which was the first Bible in that that did not have those books and with our Council of Churches and that's not people book City and which one that first Bible yes thank you yeah thank you yeah thank you for that question yeah if you grew up in certain Orthodox traditions or Catholic traditions there's a section of books called the apocryphal books there they're actually second editions longer editions of Esther and Daniel other separate books called the wisdom of Ben Sira kludgy asticus it's a cool collection and these are Jewish writings that came into existence and precisely that period after I said the Tanakh was edited into one unified document and so these writings were translated into Greek they were very popular very popular they were very popular in the early Christian movement and there they are included in manuscript so there'll be a manuscript that has you know some New Testament writings in it and then you'll find some of these other writings too so they were very popular in the early church and in second temple Judaism what's interesting is that the internal evidence of the collection of the three-part Tanakh Torah Nevi'im Ketuvim those books were never considered to be part of that unified collection when Jesus referred to that three-part collection you can tell because he actually quotes from quite a few books I mean just count up all the times Jesus clothes from the new from the Hebrew Bible it's quite a lot and he refers to books in all three parts of the collection what he never quotes from as scripture is any of those books and so here theologically this is where I stand and other brothers and sisters in Christ disagree with me that's okay but why why do I even read the Hebrew Bible I'm not in the habit of reading thousand-page ancient texts you know for what actually I ended up to go and do quite a lot of that over time but but I'm not in the habit of doing it right I did it so that I could earn a degree but so why do i marry think covenant lis why do I marry myself to a book as strange as the Hebrew Bible because I'm a follower of Jesus you with me I read the Bible because I'm a follower of Jesus and Jesus said these writings strange and wonderful as they are bear witness to him they helped me understand the story that he sees himself as a part of these other writings called the apocryphal books they're just when you immerse yourself in the Hebrew Bible and then you go read these documents you go oh these were people who were themselves immersed in the Hebrew Bible they're aware of their derivative authority from the Hebrew Bible and their consulate we refer and quote from the Hebrew Bible the same way Jesus does and these writings right here the reason so these writings were widespread I mean just you know what go to any pastors library right here will you find a Bible in that passage library I sure hope so will you find lots of other books in their library I sure hope so right oh they think those books are a part of the Bible because they're in the same room together that's ridiculous as ridiculous is what that idea is and so the these books are quoted they're widespread in Judaism and Christianity they were never considered to be part of the Tanakh there's no indication that Jesus of the Apostles thought they were a part of of the Tanakh which was their Bible but they were widespread the complicated history and then we'll get to another question is is that those books as the church spread those books were regarded as scriptural by some communities some theology illogical ideas doctrines were were formed on the basis of those books and when the Protestant Reformation took place part of it was the traditions of the church have become so distorted we need to go back to the scriptures and let Jesus and the Scriptures be our authority and so you have Lutheran and the Reformers and they're pointing out things like yeah we shouldn't be doing that anymore we shouldn't be doing that anymore and the put and the Pope disagreed and so in 1546 the Council of Trent though that collection of books was declared to be a part of the Bible so it's important to get the story right so it's not that they were a part of the Bible and then there was a council to take them out there was a council to make them a part of the Bible because of a religious political debate that was happening in the church and so there you go I mean they're brothers and sisters who I'm you know I love I love the apocryphal books actually I think they're really amazing to read but I don't think they were part of - not because there's no historical reason to suppose if they ever did in short reason yeah totally yeah hey they're Gregoria Hey haha I that's a serious question and I'm quite serious I don't think there is one I think there's a friendship that needs to be made and I think that that's a human being who needs to be loved as you love yourself and that I'm not just trying to preach I'm being really serious like you can't prove to somebody that Jesus is real you can't prove to somebody that God exists or that the Bible is God's Word but what you can do is rely on the power and presence of Jesus so that as you're in friendships with people that you can in these moments that you look back and you like without me did I really do that where you become a new and remarkably different kind of human and they're in crisis and you've got them covered and you and all your strange Christian friends pay their rent and take them to the hospital and give them food and you know what I mean and then they go like oh I am interested in the story about Jesus note you know you know I'm with you I doesn't want to hear about Jesus and odds are they probably have good reasons because they've had some self-righteous jerk people who say that they're Christians burn them in the past and so I yeah in my mind you you convince people by actually being like Jesus and then this story and living by living in this strange way becomes attractive to people there's lots of historical obstacles or factual obstacles that we need to get out of the way and I understand that but when it comes to responding to someone that I hope to persuade them I you know it we're not just brains in a jar waiting to be convinced to facts we're humans and we're complex and the way that we come to believe things has as much to do with our desires and our affections as how we arrange the furniture in our head so that's that's my short answer last last question yeah hi yeah yeah yeah you would ask that question as three minutes till the clock might be my Savior right here no I'm just joking I'm just joking um yeah so that so I'm sorry oh yeah I haven't been doing that I'm really I said that I wouldn't I haven't been so the question is about this concept called the inerrancy of Scripture and how do you think that through in light of the divine and human origins of the Bible is a clay ass what does that word mean okay unfortunately that's the the debate has become about a word that isn't even a normal English word unfortunately and it's a word that have all kinds of connections to it that aren't helpfully connected to the question the question is can I trust the truthfulness of the Bible that's the question when the Bible says Jesus did what he did you know when these sorry when the Bible it's a diverse collection of writings when the Apostles write these accounts they say did Jesus do and say these things can I trust that they did when the when the Torah tells a story about these refugees escaping out of Egypt and coming and encountering God at this mountain can I trust that those events happened and it's a very important question did this make believe okay so the word inerrancy has come into the debate to say the Bible has no errors in it and I just to phrase the question that way it to me it's just not helpful so let's can I just answer the question can I trust the truthfulness of the Bible because that's actually the question that we're asking and so here's how it's I would say when the biblical authors by the style of writing that they are employing are making a claim then an event took place in history then I think we are being asked to trust that that's the case when the style of writing that they have used is making a claim part of the complicated issue is that the style in which the biblical authors write is very different than how modern authors write history and so you have you know a ball especially in the first parts of Genesis you have stories that are from ancient ancient past and they are written in ways that heavily use conventional imagery from the way their cultures wrote about ancient floods and the first people in the gods and so on are there events under there that generated these stories I think so is the way that those authors wrote about those stories use metaphor imagery I think so and I think they give clear indications that that's how they're writing about it so for me this is about respecting the way that an ancient author wrote history which is very different than we do and once we clarify that I think it really illuminates a lot of problems but the basic issue is can I trust when the Bible says Jesus said and did you think I mean my goodness you guys find the follower of Jesus my whole worldview is built on a claim that Jesus rose from the dead that's very improbable that such an event would happen in the course of history have you ever seen anybody experience that you know like no so it's not probable that Jesus rose from the dead but I trust the claim and the testimony of the eyewitnesses who were there and say the truth is stranger than fiction this world is a more marvelous place than can be contained in my head and so it's very important to me that the truthfulness of the Bible is something that we care about what I want to make sure we don't do is then make the Bible into a 21st century book you know and make it talk like we would and read all of our modern ideas about science or whatever in these know we need to respect and learn how they wrote poetry how they wrote about events and and read the Bible respecting them as authors so that's my not so short answer and we're one minute after I'm supposed to end thank you so much okay you

Channel: Tim Mackie Archives

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Published: Fri Aug 04 2017