What Is the Apocrypha and Should It Be In the Bible?

hey i'm not trying to be condescending but whatever stupid thing you bicker about with people in your state is not nearly as cool as what we bicker about in our state in wyoming we fight about wolves that's right literally wolves that's our big divisive issue because about two decades ago somebody was like hey we should just put more wolves in wyoming because they probably would want those and then the wolves i don't know if you've heard about this it turns out they eat meat tons of it so they started doing that and that causes some people in wyoming to say literally all the wolves need to be lined up and just summarily executed smoke a pack a day that's a bumper sticker that we have around here because they eat all the animals and they mess with the livestock and they gotta go then you got other people who are like no the wolves are what gaia is using to return balance and to create the circle of life and make it whole again and without the wolves we can never be complete as a cosmos and honestly like i'm being a little hard on these people they're both both these groups are full of cool reasonable people who treat other people really well they just disagree on this one perspective and this one point and it really does create some palpable division around here well likewise within western christianity there is a debate about a little thing that revolves around the table of contents of the bible and pretty much everybody in western christianity agrees that the old testament is the old testament no problem that the contents of the new testament are the contents of the new testament no problem but the debate centers around this little chunk of books that some people think should go in between called the apocrypha now long story short roman catholics say the apocrypha should be in there non-roman catholics specifically protestants the people who broke away from the catholics in the early 1500s they say yeah it shouldn't be in there all right turn it over my cards here in this video i want to talk about why i think they shouldn't be in there but i also want to try to give a fair treatment to why catholics think they should be in there and then because you are smart and because i'm just some idiot on the internet you can decide whatever you want to think for yourself [Music] to understand the apocrypha we have to understand the old testament in general the old testament has a clear narrative arc where everything is made things fall apart god chooses to be redemptive anyway and he chooses to be redemptive by picking a group of people that he's going to make deals with and work with to explain himself the jewish people so he makes a deal with abraham he makes a deal with moses he makes a deal with david and these successive deals have god saying i am going to make myself known i'm going to bless the whole world through my relationship with you i'm going to make myself known to the world through my relationship with you the deal with moses is a little more conditional in that one he basically says hey the whole world's going to know that i'm god because if you guys obey me you're going to be blessed in ways that defy expectation if you guys disobey me you're going to be punished profoundly either way everybody will know that i am god well it works out for a while but the old testament tells the story of the jewish people not keeping up their end of the bargain and god following through on his end of the bargain and eventually their kingdom collapses they get hauled into captivity by the the babylonians and then eventually the persians take over and the old testament ends on a pretty down note with just a little uptick glimmer of hope that there is some great redemptive thing coming down the road that god is going to do and so the whole old testament the good stuff the bad stuff it all points to jesus and that is the narrative trajectory of the new testament the apocrypha has a different narrative trajectory it largely tells the story of the jewish nation overcoming their difficult times in captivity and arriving at a place of independence under the rebellion led by the maccabees the books have different genres just like the old testament and the new testament the books are not super long it really is a pretty compact read some of it is more wisdom teaching reflection oriented some of it is more narrative history oriented here's how my catholic friends would defend the inclusion of the apocrypha in the bible first of all they would say we don't have to defend it at all they would say in our mind it has been there since the beginning and it's the protestants who would need to defend why it's not in there and as evidence they would say go all the way back to the version of the bible that was floating around at the time of jesus this translation of the jewish old testament into greek was called the septuagint and the septuagint they would say included the apocrypha further my catholic friends would say that the apocrypha in one form or another though admittedly debated at times was regarded by many or most as scripture through the early years of christianity and there were a few church councils right around 400 a.d and those in one form or another basically all affirmed what the apocrypha was and then for the next 1100 years or so it was basically in circulation until the early 1500s my catholic friends would say when martin luther and the protestant reformation came along and then luther just because he didn't like those books said they got to go and protestants followed suit my catholic friends would also say that protestants were quick to follow suit because it benefited them theologically to reject those apocryphal books i think that's a pretty fair treatment again i'm not a roman catholic but hopefully that gives you the gist in the new testament you've got quotes from all over the new testament direct quotes there are no references to the apocrypha so the absence of any reference to the apocrypha means that it's likely jesus did not view that as scripture it's likely the disciples did not view that as scripture further if you look historically at the trend as these books were debated and they were debated you will see that the support chronologically as we move along wanes for viewing the apocrypha is scripture but the apocrypha hangs around so does that mean people were lying no i think what it means is that the church found value in these books that it helped get inside the head of where the jewish people were between the testaments it helped to understand philosophy and ideology of the time it helped connect the dots historically between a story that ends really abruptly in the old testament and one that picks up really abruptly in the new testament it's a lot of use for it but there's a lot of use for a lot of books doesn't make it bible even jerome the really important catholic saint who translated the bible from greek into the latin vulgate that's the roman catholic bible of choice said the apocrypha is not bible he translated it at the end of his life because he thought it had some value but went out of his way to say this thing isn't scripture further protestants would say that the apocrypha is never in any way publicly affirmed at a council of the entire church your little regional councils that affirmed it at moments and you certainly had the all-catholic council of trent that happened after the protestant reformation but at no point do you have all of christendom getting together to sign off on that set of books beyond that the biggest thing that protestants would point to for why the apocrypha has no place in the bible is just the internal content itself earlier i talked about the narrative thrust of the apocrypha well the old testament it's all messianic messianic that's a fancy word for pointing to the messiah pointing to jesus like the whole thing is a setup to get people to recognize it when god makes his big redemptive move and sends jesus well the apocrypha doesn't do that there's there's nothing that points to jesus it's not uh prophetic in that it describes who jesus will be or what's going to happen when he gets here it's it's a footnote it's a side note that deals with jewish nationalism and points towards some evolutions in jewish faith and particularly political ramifications of their move toward an ultimately successful rebellion okay here's the deal i know that some of you are watching this video coming strongly from one perspective or another perspective within christian faith i know that there are other people who are watching this because you're sizing this thing up for the first time ever and just want the closest thing you can get to an objective take in a reasonable amount of time welcome by the way i know there are other people here because you're just curious to see our weird history and see our laundry get aired out and and that is kind of what i'm doing here like the fact of the matter is christians do not agree on this point on this particular question i think it would also be really easy to say okay i'm out if there was any debate or dispute about what ought to be in the bible or any group of christians disagree on this the whole thing must obviously be a fraud and it discredits the whole thing uh the bible is a man-made document and i can't believe that okay um i get that impulse i've felt that impulse but let's consider the alternative how would it look to you how would it look to me as i hope a reasonable fair-minded person if there was some moment in history where people who wielded the sword and had all power in society got together and said this shall be the bible we announced it from our secret torture basement and now we're going to enforce it and everyone's going to have to have that for the bible and it'll be exactly the same and no one will disagree about anything involving christianity ever and that's just how things are well i can think of a four-letter word that describes what that kind of religion is that's a cult that's a controlling violence-oriented manipulative cult the fact that christianity continues to thrive that there continues to be this abundance of agreement remember you've got 66 of these books there's no debate everybody's on the same page they're doing great it's this one singular little bit of disagreement with that much agreement golly i think that's actually kind of a testimony to the validity of the thing and given the two options one being centralized control where everybody has to think it or you just can't be here or what it actually is i'll take what it actually is it would be easy for you to be discouraged or feel like truth is unknowable coming out of this conversation but i just encourage you to read all this stuff i'm not going to promise you some magic feeling that you'll have and when you feel that magic you'll know this or that must be true come on that's nonsense instead you're smart you know how to engage your brain read something critically compare and contrast two different things and figure out what makes sense last thought the actual implications of the apocrypha compared with the new testament and the old testament are minimal and if you choose to go and read it i'd invite you to keep an eye out for that this is not the kind of thing where the central the stuff that just must be a certain way for there to be a god or for this to hold together it's all in the apocrypha none of it's in the apocrypha it doesn't claim to be so profound it's additions and bonuses and historical detail and some fill-in-the-gap jewish stuff the key theological ideas that christianity absolutely hinges upon are found in the teachings of christ in the new testament and they're found in the ongoing work of god though it can be confusing and hard to read in the old testament any rate again this is one of those things where i think we can get along just fine if we land on different places there are really smart people who think i'm an idiot on this one and they may have a point i i think that disagreement is a healthy aspect of faith at any rate we're going to keep going with this nuts and bolts of the bible series i'll get into more of this next time around as we move toward how the translation aspect of this whole thing went i'm matt this is the 10 minute bible hour [Music]

Channel: Matt Whitman

Views: 171,156

Keywords: Matt Whitman, Worst Christian Ever, Acts, Jesus, Christianity, Bible, 10 Minute Bible, Manatee, Wyoming, Tobit, Judith, Susanna, Deuterocanonical Books, Extra Books of the Bible, Intertestamental Period, Apocrypha

Id: UeVz-yvX39o

Length: 12min 45sec (765 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 12 2017