The Putative Citation of Enoch in Jude | Peter Gentry | PhD

thank you so much dr. hardy I am so delighted to be with you I just love Danny akin and all that is happening here and have many friends among the faculty and students here I'd like to speak today on the putative citation of Enoch in Jude I I do make an effort to find out what young people are thinking and the the young people the youth today their biggest question is the reliability of the Bible and so this is this is connected to that mmm and to many other things so interred I don't have a PowerPoint to make my points powerfully but this this will help you at least see you can sort of see the paper as I'm going along and some of the charts charts that are in it introduction a consensus exists today nearly equivalent to establish fact that when the Apostle Jude in the New Testament refers to Enoch in verses 14 and 15 he is quoting a book now referred to as first Enoch and that his citation raises the question of whether this book was considered canonical Scripture by at least some early Christians so this comes up in the famous work by Peter ends concerning first Enoch nickelsburg concisely states the book is a collection of traditions and writings composed between the fourth century BC and the turn of the era namely mainly in the name of Enoch the son of Jared okay too sections of Enoch that Enoch is a collection of traditions is evident from the fact that the book is divided into eight major sections and that each section has a different history in terms of composition in it and integration into the book that we have at present likely these sections existed as booklets before being combined into a single work these booklets or sections are listed as follows in their putative order of composition so you have the book of heavenly luminaries the book of the Watchers Enochs to dream visions two pieces of testamentary narrative the Epistle of Enoch an account of Noah's birth another book by Enoch the book of parables and the book of giants which is at Qumran but not part of the ethiop of Enoch it contains material directly related to it this confirms that at the earliest stages there was a body of loosely related traditions growing in connection with the person of Enoch so I think that's very important that last point that there's a book of giants found at ena at Qumran which is definitely connected with Enoch ik traditions but not connected in later collections of the Enoch materials thirdly the history of the transmission of the text that would naturally be something I would be interested in for our purposes we may mention the dates assigned to the three earliest sections of Enoch and major reasons given for these dates aside from the evidence of the manuscripts which will be listed shortly although much recent research has been done on first Enoch I begin with a 1992 article by nickelsburg in the anchor Bible dictionary so the book of heavenly luminaries part of the evidence for considering the book of heavenly luminaries as the earliest is that the discussion of the function and structure of celestial and terrestrial phenomena belongs to the bitter debate in some sector of Judaism in the second century BC about whether a lunar or solar calendar was divinely instituted Jubilees for 1721 and 635 to 38 it is argued cite first Enoch to attack the lunar calendar as you Gentile secondly the book of Watchers this is considered the second oldest section dating probably to the second half of the third century and reflects a developing accretion of traditions that stem from the 4th century nickelsburg states it is likely that in the original form of this myth the Watchers were sent by God to instruct humankind in useful arts believe it or not like the Lord of the Rings this is largely a growth of speculation based on that Genesis 6:1 before so you didn't know it had in common if Tolkien has something in common with the anarchic traditions Enochs to dream visions the first vision foresees the flood while a second provides an allegorical apocalypse of history from Adam to the eschaton dependence upon materials in the Book of Daniel indicates it must have been composed before Judas's defeat of Nicanor in 161 BC that's because nickelsburg dates the Book of Daniel to the 2nd century there is no pre-christian evidence for section 7 and 8 the first part of section 4 or for the arrangement in the ethiopian now we'll look at the textual witnesses first of all the ethiop octets this is the only complete and we can put the word question mark there because it doesn't include the book of giants version the only complete version of enoch is in ethiopia it is a translation based on both a greek version as well as a copy of the aramaic parent text and made between the 4th and 6th centuries ad michael nib prepared a critical edition based on 33 manuscripts the oldest of which dates to the 5th century a.d 15th century the Aramaic text numerous fragments many of them extremely small from Qumran cave for are as follows notice here that this that the tilde symbol means corresponds or corresponds roughly to parts of so we have 4 q 201 ye and a are and you can see there are four parts that are mostly from the first section and then we have 4 q 202 which has six parts also from Ethio the first section 1 to 36 for q 204 is Enoch C in Aramaic and has parts of 1 to 36 83 to 90 and 91 to 107 but it also has parts from the book of Giants 205 there's three sections there and two sections there I don't think we can put them all on there's 4q 206 from a hundred 250 BC and it has parts of one to 36 and 83 to 90 there's also fright of fragments of the Giants 207 where is one fragment containing three verses from 86 to 12 has from 50 BC and has parts of 91 to 107 then we have four pieces that are labeled en ast are the astronomical in its Enoch astronomical it's basically just discussing the phases of the Moon and is related to the book of the hem of heavenly luminaries so there are four sections a is vaguely like 73 B B has five sections corresponding to that say same section C here's C has what two sections 52 0 BC phases of the Moon here's an interesting part for Q 211 has material which logically would follow chapter 82 verse 20 so in there's a section in 82 that talks about spring and summer and this section talks about autumn and winter so logically it would fit into that section which therefore suggests that the ethiop as we now have it is really not complete so there's a little chart giving you a summary of all of these data there's also a Greek scroll at qumran a Greek scroll at Qumran this is the scroll that if that Jose O'Callahan thought had verses from the New Testament and it turns out that so you have a column showing what to O'Callahan thought they were and actually they've been recognized as pieces of the Book of Enoch and all of those little fragments r7q for one that's we're considering that one one papyrus the Greek text the Greek text there are four fragments cited in some kelas who is a Byzantine writer that died after 810 and they're all from the first they're all from chapter 6 and 8 there's also something called codex panel Paulette anis anak a manuscript from the akhmim area of Egypt in the 6th and it's a 6th century manuscript this manuscript actually duplicates chapters 19 3 to 21 9 so um this often happens in manuscripts so they're listed as pen and pen a codex Vaticanus an 11th century has 7 verses from chapter 89 there's the Chester Beatty Michigan papyrus which has parts of 97 to 107 and then there are there is according to milik this there are fragments of all corinthis papyrus 2069 mostly from 78 to 86 there's a Latin text British Library manuscript Royal 5 which contains 18 verses out of chapter 106 there's a Coptic fragment that contains chapter 6 verses 1 to 7 there's something in Syriac it's a citation of chapters 6 verses 1 to 7 in from an author called Michael Assyrian who wrote a chronicle in the 11th to 12 in the 12th century there are also some very important patristic witnesses that preserve the old Latin and these are pseudo Cyprian in a work called ad navazio gnam and pseudo vigil iya stop census contra very Mandan I've given you the standard text there see SEL and see CSL now for a simplification that's nice too you say what does all of this mean here's a here's a simplification basically apparently the enoch at traditions were first written down in booklets as follows alright so there are five main booklets the astronomical book The Book of Watchers the Epistle of Enoch the book of dreams the book of parables you can see what each one contains there's an abbreviation a bvw e e BD and BP and you can see the dates and there let me see if I can get all of this on the screen the book of Giants as we said come is found at Qumran but it's not can not connected with the other parts in later textual tradition later on the booklets were combined on a single scroll on the manuscript evidence for this is as follows so three of the manuscripts have more than one of these booklet parts parts of more than one of these booklets so for example 4qe noxee as the book of watchers the book of Giants notice that the book of Giants is included there the book of dreams and the Epistle of Enoch this is from the the very end the very end of the first century BC so it seems that these traditions started out as individual booklets and by the 1st century BC and 1st century AD were being combined in the way that we see later in the ethiop now what we're going to do is we're going to compare the texts we're going to compare Enoch 9 which is the verse that is supposed to be cited the verse that is supposed to be cited in Jude with with the book of Jude so first of all the we start with the with the Qumran scrolls that were edited by Milich what you have in red are the words on the scroll okay what you have in black is reconstructed by Milich on the basis of Jude okay and so I've done this in both Aramaic and and English so you can see that we have part in in three lines we have like a couple of words in each line and and the rest of it is mil X reconstruction based on on the citation in Jude okay here so now we're going to go to the Greek text there's the Greek text of enoch 1:9 and the Greek text of Judah got separated here but the words in red are the words that these two texts have in common okay and it's about 72% so these two texts have about 72% of their words in common here's the Ethiopia of chapter one verse nine behold he comes with ten thousand Holy Ones to execute judgment upon them and to destroy the impious and to contend with all flesh concerning everything which sinners and the impious have done and wrought against him so what you can see here is that the Ethiopia's is not very much like the text in jude so the Greek text the Greek text I I don't know very much about the translation technique of the Ethiopians later or he's supposed to have been basing it on an Aramaic parent X plus the Greek text but the bottom line is his his version of verse nine looks a lot less like Jude than the one we have in the Greek text these are the these are these are the Latin ones it's not very difficult to read Latin so it's scripture says behold he comes with ten thousands of his his angels to make judgment upon all and to destroy all the impious ones and to accuse all flesh of all their impious deeds which they have impiously done and of all their impious words which they have spoken against God okay so I'm putting these out for a reason and you'll see that in a moment here's the text from pseudo vigil iya stop census it's okay he actually thinks he's quoting Jude and in the Epistle of Jude the pasal behold he comes or this one is he came he comes the Lord comes with with ten thousands to make judgment and to destroy all impious and to accuse all flesh notice how it's this word flesh comes in here it's quite different from Jude of all their impious works there is a critical edition of the old Latin that was is for this is another project that has gone by the by so there was a there was a project the Vedas latina project in boy on Germany and the project it was it was like many Roman Catholic projects had been going for over a hundred years and then was was defunded and shut down but no we had just to make things very simple we have very few manuscripts of the old Latin so most of the old Latin Bible is reconstructed from quotations in church fathers I could actually show you a text I could show you a page out of this the apparatus is huge because it's it's full of the it's mostly the citations that's why I spent so much time spend time looking at those two quotes are really the two most important quotes that is that this text here is actually reconstructed from there's the Vulgate which I just put in for good measure so the text in Jude and the text in Enoch have 72% of all words in common this could be considered an abbreviated or adapted citation if Jude 14 b2 15 8 to 15 as a citation of first Enoch then Jude has cited the text fairly fairly freely another possibility is that both first Enoch and the reference in Jude go back to a common tradition in Judaism much like Paul's reference to Janis and jam as the names of the magicians opposing Moses elsewhere their names are only known in the Aramaic targets a targum nail feeding the most recent research on the statement and Jubilees is by Jacques van Righton and he concludes the author of Jubilees knew about the Econo in the anarchic traditions he is strongly influenced by this material however in my opinion it is not possible to say that Jubilees is dependent on the text of first enoch the wording of the two is too different so it could be that Jude is like Jubilees these people are drawing from a common tradition and he may not necessarily be citing an actual text I don't if he is citing a text I don't have a problem with that as you're going to see now we're going to look at Roman numeral seven Enoch and inspiration in second temple Judaism so I want to I want to rate deal briefly with the question of the cessation of inspiration I want to show you three things this was predicted by the last of the prophets it was acknowledged by the people living during that time and it was affirmed by those who lived after that time hey number one if you look at first first if you look at this is Zechariah 13 - two-six predicts the cessation of prophecy the beauty of these things as phones as we can just pull up the Hebrew text here Hebrews there's no Zechariah 13 - so it will be in that day declares Yahweh of armies I will cut off the names of the idols from the earth and there will no longer be they will no longer remembered and also the profits and that and the spirit there's the spirit of impurity I will cause to pass away from the land and so if anyone if any man prophesized further his father and his mother will say who bore him will say to him you you will not live because you have spoken falsely in the name of the Lord and they will pierce him through his father and his mother who bore him when he prophesized and so then then if if he survives he he staggers out of the room and and its people say Lord you get these wounds in your body and he says well I was in the house of my friends so my dad and mum so Zachariah very clearly predicts the cessation of prophecy secondly the cessation of prophecy is demonstrated historically in two ways positively there is an awareness in second temple Judaism that that inspiration has ceased so three times in the book of Maccabees it clearly says that they didn't know what to do because there was no prophet in Israel so for example when they were rebuilding the altar they didn't know what to do with the stones from the former altar you know where Antiochus Epiphanes had had sacrificed a pig to Zeus and therefore defiled that altar they didn't know what to do with those stones and because there was no prophet to tell them what to do so they just put them in a special place and waited waited for some prophet this is very interesting because in 1526 at the Council of Trent the Roman Catholic Church affirmed the deuterocanonical texts as Scripture but these texts not only do not claim to be Scripture they claim not to be Scripture and then if you're probably familiar with the rule of the community at Qumran 1q sarahfey I had there was a very interesting section that describes the structure of the community with their teacher there priests their Levites and then the men in the assembly all of whom have a particular pecking order from the greatest to the least and that structure clearly shows you that there is no profit there is no one who authoritative Lee speaks for God at this time so there are there are these there are other people like Enoch who claim to be speaking for God but there are some standard leaders in Judaism who are who clearly say no one is speaking for God at this time the there's also negative evidence and that is the emergence of sutapa graphical literature it's a clear testimony to the crew to the cessation of inspiration since authors appeal to authoritative figures in order to claim divine inspiration so there's a list of all the above all the pseudepigrapha and here's here's something that I wanted to quote I actually know john van cedars personally his parents went to knox presbyterian church in toronto they were godly people and one son was president of a liberal seminary in vancouver and the other son you probably know where Jonathan Cedars is at I can tell you this that he was so kicking against the evangelical pricks of his upbringing that he was too much for the Liberals in the department where I studied and they kicked him out and he went down to Chapel Hill in where that's in North Carolina yeah okay so this is a man that I know personally I actually talked to him in the last five years when we went to the funeral for John dumb John William Weaver's so he in his book the edited Bible he says child's objects to this historical-critical notion of authorship is modern and anachronistic but our notions of author and authority are certainly ancient this is especially the case with the Canon all the works within a Canon must be attributed to an author who bears the appropriate authority and for Scripture this could only be satisfied by divine inspiration from the age of revelation that with Ezra the closest parallel to this of course is the establishment of the Greek classics especially home or the rival of Moses notions of authorship sand authorship in the case of the Hebrew Scriptures seem to have been directly influenced by conceptions of the Hellenistic world at the very time that the limits of Scripture were being debated the ancient world knew a great deal about Sudha Sudha photography and the attribution of false authors to text in order to gain Authority for the views expressed in those writings the Book of Daniel is a rather blatant example of an instance in which a suit of pig Rafi succeeded in deceiving the rabbinic canonize errs so this is this is hilarious this is from a liberal and this here's a liberal a liberal scholar saying pseudepigrapha is a clear testimony to the fact that inspiration is ceased only they they fool them Daniel fooled them of course because Daniel was written in the second century it's nice when you have a I don't know what you I don't know what you men think I had I had no I have 19 years of education after high school and 17 of them were in this kind with this kind of teaching ok so it's I react to it constantly and some of you some of you have no idea of what it's like to be in an institution like this confirmation in the rabbinic period the rabbi's agreed that the Canon was closed and had been closed for a long time with the death of Haggai Zechariah and Malachi the latter prophets the Holy Spirit ceased out of Israel ok so you see that this is found in in some of our oldest sources so this is a this is repeated this text this statement is found at least four times number four we have warnings in Paul about endless genealogies and foolish myths so if you look at these verses in first Timothy one four six four seven six four second Timothy two 23 in Titus 3:9 he warns his readers not to avoid endless genealogies and foolish myths and I submit to you that the anarchic traditions fit exactly it fit exactly this what Paul is talking about because they contain an enormous genealogy of all of the angels and they are speculations based on Genesis 6 1 2 4 so now I want to turn 8th flee to the literary structure of the book of Jude let's see the following literary structure of the book of Jude is the research of Andrew M fountain it does not seem to be based on any earlier scholarship which that those are the commentaries that we check the literary structure let's look at the literary structure here I don't know if you can see this well very well first of all there are three examples from history of the rejection of God's authority and punishment and these are these are related in chiastic structures so so we have the exodus out of Egypt you have what I think he's referring to the angels who did not keep their proper domain as Genesis chapter 6 and then you have Sodom and Gomorrah and these are acts it I could give a long lecture on how Hebrew literature works but the fundamental principle of Hebrew literature is to repeat yourself and there's actually a it's actually a brilliant concept because it's like it's like listening to a stereo with a left speaker and the right speaker so in one sense the music coming out of those speakers is the same but they're slight each one is slightly different and the difference is what allows you to have a stereo music so instead of Aristotelian rectilinear logic you actually have stereo ideas or holographic ideas it's a different approach to communication and so one if you have two ideas and you're going to repeat them twice you can do a B a B or you can do a BB a which is what we call a chiastic structure and so these are the three biblical examples are united by a chiastic structure and then separated from that is an extra-biblical example which is the dispute between Moses and that the devil and Michael the Archangel over the body of Moses which is from the Assumption of Moses then we have three examples of individuals from three years of history Cain Balaam and Korah notice again that the that repetition and chiasm unites the biblical examples and then there's an extra biblical example which is the putative citation from enon so even if you consider it a direct citation from the Book of Enoch the literary structure shows that he's carefully separating the biblical examples from the non biblical examples the function of Jude's appeal to Jewish traditions at the second enoch seminar in Venice Italy 2003 Paolo Saatchi one of the Guru's in the field gave a paper entitled history of the earliest anarchic texts he makes the following interesting observations concerning the book of Watchers the origin of evil in the world lies in an angelic sin that contaminated the whole world number two the impure truly exists in nature is an outcome of angelic sin impurity in the root is the root of evil in history besides the devil continues his work in the world the focus then the central message of the book of Watchers is to demonstrate through genealogical and narrative speculations on angels based on ex Genesis six that chaos and evil in the world are due to angelic sin it seems then that the function of Jude's reference to the eat non anarchic traditions is to demonstrate and emphasize you notice how the word ungodly appears four times in that verse that evil in our present world is due to human rebellion so he's using their own text against them do you see that he's taking the Enoch ik traditions and saying look guys evil is here not because of angelic sin it's because ungodly ungodly ungodly ungodly did you get the message impious impious impious impious case you're deaf I will repeat it four times so evil cannot be blamed on angels Jude uses the anarchic traditions against those who follow them the reference to the dispute of Michael the Archangel what the devil over the body of Moses appears to function and it's precisely the same way here we have another reference to speculative traditions from Second Temple period the Assumption of Moses scholars are agreed that the comment of Jude is a clear reference to the lost ending of this work Jude refers to this work to show that the greatest angel of all did not have authority to rebuke the devil but committed the issue to God himself hence all appeal to angelic authority is worthless so he's using their texts against them the influence of the Jewish anarchic traditions in history to aspects of history subsequent to this should be noted first Syriac christianity did not heed the warnings of paul so it already in the writings of off rahat one of the earliest we see the angel gabriel receiving the prayers of christians and determining whether or not they will be heard in heaven so syria crushed christianity has a very developed angel much beyond what we find in the Bible attention to angels is advanced and developed in Syria Christianity further details are tracked down in the major study by a net read fallen angels in the history of Judaism and Christianity the reception of enoch ik literature the major areas affected geographically were Egypt Palestine Syria and what we know as Turkey today doubtless Christianity in the West was spared this influence not because of superior spirituality but because they were cut off linguistically from the Jewish traditions ii patricia crone not not not someone known for being a conservative has demonstrated that the quran has at least five distinct instances where it is directly dependent on the book of watchers although angelic genealogies are not in the quran much of islam today it follows an elaborate genealogy of angels and the teaching that angelic sin is responsible for evil and impurity in our world and avoids the biblical doctrine of sin in fact this hot I was evangelized on the airplane in the past year by a Muslim and and this this this was a very educated man he was a doctor in Chicago he told me he told me he was paying off loans worth of six hundred thousand dollars for his education so this was not you know this was a very educated Muslim and so and and he proceeded to evangelize me by giving me the genealogy of all these angels and and and until we come to Shaitaan who who led us all astray and is the response of responsible for evil in our world so so this is very much part of Islam today tracing the connection between earlier groups whether Christian or Jewish that held to the anarchic traditions and later Islam is not possible on the basis of our current evidence note that we have citations from the book of walk in the in the extract of choreography of sing of sink Ellis who died shortly after 810 ad since sink Ellis was drawing on earlier sources we can assume that the book of Watchers was known in Byzantium in the fifth or sixth century AD the fact that Michael Assyrian cites the book of Watchers in Syria however does not mean that there was a seer of a version in Syriac Michael Cirrus was dependent on a translation of the work of a jnanis into Syriac for his information on iana's and his older contemporary Pandora's Pandora's box Pandora's word monks in Egypt deeply influenced by the Indian 'aqaq traditions the influence of monks in from Egypt upon Syria Syria Christianity can be attested by their graves at Margaery L in at Torah Deen in eastern Turkey so I've been there this is the oldest monastery I don't know what's happening to it today but they had krish continuance continuous Christian worship from 390 up to the present conclusions number one Jude's presentation of enoch as an example of delivering the godly in the midst of ungodliness may be drawn from a common Jewish tradition is not necessarily a quote of the book of enoch that is both literary works could be drawing upon a common tradition clear evidence that Judas citing first Enoch as a literary worker or even as Scripture is lacking to the literary structure in Jude clearly distinguishes examples drawn from Scripture and those drawn from extra biblical tradition 3 although there is much in the Jewish tradition that ought to be avoided according to Paul some of it is true such as Enoch skin' condemnation of his contemporaries and the names of the magicians who opposed Moses for Jude is using the Jewish anarchic traditions to counter their own assertion that evil in the world is due to angelic impurity rather evil is due to human rebellion against God as taught in Genesis 3 thank you for listening to this hey well I'm sure you doctor she can stay up there if you like okay sure lots of questions here Chuck's got a mic there if you just raise your hand and we can come around and and start with questions yes sir Thank You dr. Gentry for an excellent presentation Kim Keithley I teach theology dr. Moseley and I what we're at a conference just a couple of weeks ago on the doctrine of Scripture and we were asked by a layperson that very question what about Jude's citation of first Enoch how if you were speaking at a church or if you were asked by laymen how would you succinctly perhaps answer that you know how would you distill that down I guess you did kind of do that that for points but if you were at a Sunday School class or something that nature how would you perhaps answer that to laypeople well I would just say three things number one it's not clear that Jude is citing a book he could be he could be drawing on a common Jewish tradition these secondly these traditions were speculations based on Genesis six and thirdly I would say that Jude is the structure the literary structure shows that these examples are clearly separated from the biblical examples so it's there's no evidence that that Enoch is part of the canon in Jude's mind and fourthly Jude is actually using their texts to disprove their own teaching is that simple enough for an adult Sunday School class dr. if it was a legitimate exercise for Jude to use their own non-authoritative games against them would you suggest then that it is okay for a missionary to use the Book of Mormon and refuting Mormonism or the Koran to refute Islam well I mean doesn't Paul do something like that when he says cretins are always the liars and glutton gluttons and any he quote in in acts he quotes artists right so in in a sense he's using their their I would say a all communication has to begin with the worldview the cultural worldview of the hearer so the person who is speaking and that's what you see in the Bible God always begins with the cultural setting in the linguistic data of the people themselves and then he turns that inside out so I think that's the example of God himself look look at the tabernacle for example so when the Israelites first saw the tabernacle they they would have said oh I've seen this before I I can show you the plan of over a hundred temples in the ancient Near East that all have an outer courtyard you have an altar of sacrifice and there's a room with tube there's a building with two rooms and outer room in an inner room you see so they would have said oh we know what this is but the difference but there's one tiny difference and that is between the Canaanite temples and the Israelite temple is that after you go through the courtyard and the altar of sacrificed from the outer room to the inner room first of all instead of a statue inside that represents one of the forces of nature there's nothing there there's a little box and what's in the box is the ten commandments and so the Canaanites their religion was based on sympathetic magic which means if we get things going downstairs sexual orgies the gods will get things going upstairs and the land will be fertile and you can see that God is saying you cannot manipulate the powers-that-be to guarantee the good life for yourself if you want the good life you have to come my way ethics determines the future and not not sympathetic magic so I I think the right way to interpret the Bible is to compare and contrast with a surrounding culture and so I I think since God communicates that way that that would be a the way we we would communicate as missionaries as I make any sense would it really undermine our doctrinal biblical inspiration if you were actually quoting the Book of Enoch but using it as you've suggested I don't know I don't think because I'm I'm citing it as a historical source I'm saying there is a tradition that says this but look at what this tradition says this tradition says that evil is due to humans not to angels so you guys can't even read your own texts you know that would be that would be the I think theof the approach you know when you look at sunberg thesis you know he says that you can't even speak of canonization or in in those terms you know this radical bifurcation between Scripture and canonization until the 4th century when we look at you know the way the early church used the Septuagint you know what can we say or can we say regarding how we should view the Septuagint versus the Masoretic text you know is de is the Septuagint Scripture you know you have the prayer of Azariah and other texts at the Eastern Orthodox tradition would view as canon mm-hmm but what do we do with these things and secondly I'm not able I'm a commuter so I'm not able to stay for your talk in the biblical theology talk which I really sad for that but one question I that's really I would love to get your response on are what what are maybe the two or three main topics in biblical theology or systematic theology in your opinion that are in our in our context and our Sitz I'm Leben that really need to be written on it all these scholars in a room what can we write on you know that may be a lacuna in scholarship from a biblical theology standpoint that ought to be written on to speak to what we're going through in our in our culture today oh that's a big question let me answer the first one first so when I give give a course in introduction to Old Testament with the way they do it at Southern Seminary it's just introduction to Old Testament part one an introduction Old Testament part two so they give us two semesters and then they give two semesters to the other guys with their skinny little book and I'm just I'm just teasing actually as a septa gen scholar I sit on the fence and I work with both Testaments all the time so I believe in the whole Bible I'm not really an Old Testament professor okay let me show you that let me show you this I give I give a three-hour lecture on the Canon because I'm convinced that well I'll tell you what I think it's only in the last year I I'm over 60 and it's very hard for me to find out what young people are thinking and I work very hard at it so I've read all the Hunger Games books and divergent insurgent than the legion series and seen the movies and yeah I'm trying to trying to find out what these people are thinking what I've discovered especially among people people that are connected with the church is the they in a very vague sense the reliability of the Bible is is one of the biggest questions that is out there today what I would like to see happen is a conference the size of t4g where we have people who I'm not trying to be arrogant but a lot of the people who speak at these conferences aren't specialists I I don't think we it's not a conference for the first for systematic theologian says speakers we want expert I've spent my whole life in textual criticism and I would like you know I could address the text of the Old Testament someone like Stephen Dempster is probably the best evangelical scholar on the Canon you know this new book that came out last week the enduring authority of the Christian scriptures edited by EDA Carson 37 essays while Steven Dempster has an essay in there on Josephus they read so so we need some really we need some real scholarly work that are addressing each one of these problems and so I I picked a very small problem and I showed what I thought what what I hope was a masterful treatment that will will completely shut down the opposition or shut down a Peter ends because he hasn't thought of these things here it's very obvious in his book that he hasn't he hasn't done any serious study like this of the text I've got every last source here and I've looked at the literary structure and I put the whole ball of wax together so we that's that and we need someone we need someone doing Canon of the New Testament probably Chuck Hill or Michael Kruger and we need somebody on the text of the New Testament someone who can speak authoritative ly there and and we need in a in a conference in the conference that I'm proposing we also need a number of many papers just like this that deal with very particular problems that are constantly gnawing away you know you need someone to deal with the NAG Hammadi codices last year I was in Toronto there was a full-page spread on how Jesus got married and and and and his children you see and and and halfway through the article you find out that it's a manuscript that comes from 300 AD which is Wow this is incredible this is so early but nowhere in the article is there any any concept of the fact that these are Gnostic documents and you know how do those relate to to Orthodox Christianity you see what I mean so so the average reader the average reader they don't even know that all they know is I saw this full page article and it was based on a really old manuscript and Jesus was married and so that that's all that the average person knows and so we need to we need to deal with this let me address your your question of the Septuagint here I've got to find the canon OT canon here it is now my PhD my PhD is in Septuagint when I did my PhD there were only four scholars in the entire world who could have supervised my work and two of them were at my university so I got a training that just doesn't exist anywhere else today my professor John William Weaver's believed in an Alexandrian canon as opposed to a Palestinian Canon and he believed that the Alexandrian Canon was bigger than the Palestinian Canon but that's not true for the following reasons Alexandria and Judaism was not independent of Palestinian Judaism you can see that even from the letter of Aristeas they had to send at Jerusalem for these great scholars to come down and bring their manuscripts and and the King wined and dined them and they amazed him by their answers and even if this is propaganda it shows you that Alexandria and Judaism was not independent of Palestinian Judaism number B - not all of the Apocrypha were originally composed in Greek or even in Egypt number three the verses that I showed you in first Maccabees acknowledged that inspiration is ceased number four the evidence of Ben Sira or Ecclesiastes Clichy asticus shows that the Canon was closed so if you read if you read the preface written by the grandson the grant is he said three times he mentions the law and the prophets and the other books are the other writings so he has a definite body of literature and in his mind and his grandfather's great work is not included in that three in that body of literature Philo of Alexandria does not fifthly Philo does not quote the Apocrypha nor did he write commentaries on these books fifthly there are no New Testament quotations of the Apocrypha so what we have here is pseudepigrapha or the witch which no one can consider no one at least up until 100 years ago considered scripture 6-7 the manuscripts of the Septuagint are of Christian not Jewish origin do you understand that our oldest manuscripts Vaticanus Sinai Atticus and alexandrinus are not Christian men are not Jewish manuscripts their Christian manuscripts and they're made their copies made 500 years at least after the original translation those manuscripts can tell us nothing about the canon in Alexandria in the 3rd century BC the next point in manuscripts of the suffrage and the Apocrypha varying in number and name so we could take those three oldest codices and we could be very certain about what books belong to the Canon of the Old Testament but we but they but we could not define the body of the Apocrypha from those three manuscripts 9 during the second century AD the Jews adopted a cuales Greek translation which excludes the Apocrypha and rejected a substitute so what happened is the Christian the church began of course as a Jewish sect but quickly spread to the Gentiles and the Gentiles were Greek speaking and so they naturally adopt adi greek translation as their Bible and the Jew we see a reaction because we have revisions of the Septuagint made by Accola by Theodosian Accola and Simic as' that's the proper chronological order Theodosius is older than a cola or Simha cos and they were trying to bring the Hebrew the Greek translations into closer alignment the Hebrew text and one of for probably a number of reasons but not the least of which was to you know Christians would quote verses from the Septuagint to prove that Jesus was the Messiah and these were bad translations in some cases and 10th lis Orlov 11th Theodosia and a Jewish proselyte made a revision of the Septuagint in the 1st or 2nd century which did not have the Apocrypha there are good reasons why Christians included a number of the books of the so called Apocrypha in early editions of the Greeks of the Scriptures number one they believe these books were helpful and useful reading for Christians number two because they were separated from the Jewish community and therefore from a knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures they did not have a clear grasp of which books were part of the Old Testament canon and which ones were not so the Christian Church was very quickly separated from its Jewish roots and therefore not able to distinguish the fact these the facts show that the circulation of books emanating from the late second temple Judaism along with Greek translations of the book of the Old Testament does not constitute proof for a different kind in Alexandria so it's like somebody a thousand years from now doing archaeology at Southern Seminary in concluding that Wayne Grudem systematic theology was part of the Canon because it's found on so many bookshelves and seems to have a more prominent place than the Bible does that answer part of your question ok now what was what was the just you know from front from a systematic and biblical theology I mean you know what what are some of the the major gaps you see in scholarship that need to be addressed you know from as from a New Testament scholar Old Testament Missy ology what are some maybe one or two the top ones that you think that we ought be thinking about and writing about well first of all I would like to begin with a disclaimer which I will also make in the next session is that I'm not really a theologian I want you I know that may that may sound silly since I've co-authored this book with Stephen Wellum but i i i i have a bachelor's degree in in arts and sciences i went to dallas seminary for two years and dropped out and then the rest of my training is in wasn't it wasn't in a department called the Department of Near Eastern Studies so my training is just like dr. Hardy's it was in archaeology history and languages of the ancient Near East so I'm a specialist in the ancient Near East and I'm a specialist in the Septuagint but I don't even have a theological degree I I wrote the book kingdom through covenant because I was I was brought up in dispensational premillennial home my father was a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary in 1954 so I go back before Craig blazing and and and my mother my mother had had a degree from a Bible College that where all the professor's came from Dallas Theological Seminary and in addition to that both of my she had training what we now call Christian education in our seminaries was being invented between 1945 and 1955 and my mother there were two sisters up at Wheaton College so she who are the pioneers in Christian education I'm trying to think of their names and and Howard Hendricks down at Dallas Mike both of my parents were influenced by them so they not only had dispensational premillennialism they knew how to teach it the whole our home was a Sunday School so basically what happened to me yes so basically what happened to me is during the 70s I that's when I went to university and was taught you know it was given some education taught how to think critically and I and that's when I started learning the languages and learned how to do exegesis I learned a lot of that at the University of Toronto and I was they did a very good job of teaching exegesis at Dallas seminary and so what happened to me as a pastor is that what i faithfully applied that exegetical method and every time i came to a sort of big light bulb in the system i an executed the passage for myself I came away thinking if I didn't come with their framework I wouldn't come away with their conclusions so so I basically gave up the system I was not attracted to covet classical covenant theology because it was also basically both of these systems had a meta-narrative that was not straightforwardly equivalent to the meta-narrative of Scripture I could look at the I could look at the Bible and say the the basic plotline of the Bible does not match the plotline that these people are talking about and so they are so I was in no-man's land for a long time I one of my one professor that had a huge influence on me was s Lewis Johnson jr. he taught my father and he taught me 25 years after and we had the privilege of hosting him in our home in Toronto on several occasions and we were sitting there and he said - well Peter he said the word covenant is a lot more important than dispensation which kind of blew me right out of the wateriness is s Lewis Johnson telling me this so that's what got me started studying the covenants and I realized after a number of years that the cover the progression of the covenants you are at the heart of the Bible's plotline if you will so we're not arguing that covenant is the center of the Bible or that's the most important word in the Bible but the sequence of covenants is central to the plot line of the Bible and after teaching this in my classes for my students bugged me for six or eight years to write the book and I didn't want to write it by myself because I knew I would make mistakes so I roped in my friend Steve Wellum to try and keep me on track so I so I kind of stumbled I kind of stumbled into biblical theology but I'm now a big believer that we need that systematic theology has to be based on biblical theology biblical theology has to be based on exegesis and I think that there are book kingdom through covenant is not the end it's really just a suggestion of a hundred new ways to to to look at the Bible in fresh ways and and do further studying

Channel: Southeastern Seminary

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Keywords: Southeastern, Baptist, Theological, Seminary, Chapel, Message, Jesus, Preaching, God, North Carolina, Wake Forest, Gospel, Danny, Great Commission, Training, Education, Southern, Boyce, SBTS, Al, Mohler, Urban, Ministry, Ronjour, Locke, MWBTS, NOBTS, Jamie, Dew, Gateway, Universtiy, ERLC, Matt, Chandler, B21, IMB, NAMB, SBC, SBC19, SBC20, NCSU, ECU, UNC, Duke, Divinity, School, Platt, Greear, JD, David, Whos, Your, One, Midwestern, Akin, RDU, Conversations, That, Matter, New Orleans

Id: _2J0j3RcBMQ

Length: 66min 18sec (3978 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 22 2019