All right, let's go ahead and get started.
Well, welcome. My name is Jacob Rodriguez.
I'm a New Testament professor at Trinity Anglican Seminary.
That's the sort of the flagship seminary of our province.
So lots of folks from really all over the the country, North
America, and also from the global Anglican Communion come
to Trinity and study for a three-year Mdiv or a two year
Masters of Arts and Religion. And so I get the privilege and
the joy of training the next generation of clergy for our
province, for the mission that we have here as Anglicans and
our gospel witness. And one of the best parts of
that from my perspective is that I get to teach the Scriptures
how to faithfully handle the Word of God, how we can have a
good confidence in the authority of Scripture and the clarity of
Scripture and the foundation that Scripture is for our faith,
our practice, and our identity as Christians, as the people of
God. I also have always tried to keep
my scholarship and my academic work deeply connected and rooted
in the local church. Theology in and for and through
the church has been one of my mottos.
And so I hope that today and, and this summer really with the
four lectures that I'll give, that I can use some of these
gifts and experiences that others have poured into me and
hopefully provide a good foundation and an encouragement
to all of you as we dive into these topics.
Let me go ahead and pray and then we can jump right in.
The Lord be with you. Thank you, Heavenly Father, that
you are a God who speaks, that you have given us your word, the
scriptures that are sufficiently clear for our life, our
doctrine, and our salvation. Thank You that ultimately You
have spoken to us and Your Son Jesus Christ, the center of all
of Scripture, that He has given us the Spirit and that we can
understand with hearts that have been restored, made new, and
eyes that have been open to behold Your glory.
We ask that this small lecture would have a role to play in our
hearts, being more confidence in Your Word that we may follow it
more faithfully, teach it more clearly, and celebrate that it
unites us to You as Your covenant people.
We pray this through Christ our Lord, Amen.
All right, so the first of these talks will be is called the
formation and authenticity. Let's go to the next slide of
the Old Testament. I copied and pasted a couple of
slides from last year. And the irony.
Is that this is actually a manuscript, A Coptic manuscript
of 4th Maccabees. So this is not actually the Old
Testament, lest anybody wonder that I'm starting things out
kind of controversially with this being Old Testament.
Let's go ahead. First of all, and define our
terms. So the next slide, Old Testament
Canon. What do we mean by Old
Testament? What do we mean by Canon?
So a Canon is the collection of scriptural books that God has
given his corporate people, which are distinguished by their
divine qualities, reception by the collective body, and their
prophetic or Apostolic connection either by authorship
or association. Canon comes from the Greek word
for rule, something that guides, that shapes, that draws the
boundaries. And as we've we as Christians
have the theological concept that we serve a God who speaks.
He speaks orally for those who heard his voice when in the
older New Testaments, and he has left a written record for us
that speaks just as clearly. Now if we have a concept for
God's speech, then the inverse we also have a concept for what
is not God's speech. Doesn't have to be something
wrong or erroneous, but it by definition, if it's not
proceeding from God, it's not his speech.
And so following that theological concept to the
written level, there is the concept of that which is from
God, authoritative calling it scripture, and that which is not
from God, which could be helpful for giving us wisdom and showing
us a paradigm for life, but doesn't have the authoritative
claim that this is from the Lord.
Think of the prophetic maxim. Thus, saith the Lord, we have a
concept as Christians that there is that which is spoken by the
Lord and that which is not. So a Canon is simply the the
category that we use, the concept that we use to describe
how this right here is spoken by God.
And this right here is not what is scripture and what is not.
Now, the Old Testament, the second term that we'll define is
the collection of scriptural books inspired by God and
written before the coming of Christ, consisting of the law,
the prophets, and the writings. Now, if you have your Bible,
your English translation, you'll see that looking in the contents
that you have in your Old Testament, it begins with
Genesis and ends with Malachi, and things are arranged in a
particular order in my next slide, which we're not getting
to just yet. But in the next slide, I'll
explain to you why I'm dividing it as law, prophets, and
writings, which is distinct from the ordering that we have in our
English Bibles. Now, Christ here is the central
principle of our understanding of Old Testament versus New
Testament. So a Jewish person who believes
that the Torah and the prophets and the writings are inspiring
scripture would not call them Old Testament because for a
Jewish person there is no new written record of God's speech.
There is interpretation of God's speech of the Old Testament, but
the authoritative writings are still the Torah, the prophets
and the writings. So, but for us as Christians who
are following Jesus Christ has come and become and always was
the central principle of God's speech, whether that is before
his incarnation or whether that's subsequent to his
incarnation. So Christ and his coming as the
central event in human history and that that which orient's our
whole understanding of reality actually is the centrepiece of
the whole Canon. Anything before his incarnation
we understand as the Old Testament, and anything after
his incarnation we understand as the New Testament.
Now I'd like to propose a concept for understanding how
all of Scripture fits together. I'll be using this for today's
lecture on the Old Testament and next week on the New Testament.
And that is simply that Scripture is a covenant text
that binds us to God, binds us in covenant with God.
Anybody who has been at a wedding or been or is married
has seen how a text, the marriage document that you sign.
Some ceremonies have the husband and wife sign.
It's right there in the ceremony or maybe in a separate room on
the same day, etc. But there is a text that you
sign where you put your own signature on that signifies that
you are united to your husband or to your wife.
And that text is a covenant text that testifies to the promise
you've made to your spouse before God and before the
people. Now, if you turn your Bibles to
Exodus chapter 24, this is exactly the function that the
Book of the Law serves. When Israel is on Mount Sinai,
they have just been set free from Egypt.
They have just been brought by God to the mountain where God's
going to reveal to them the Law. He reveals to them the Law in
its compact summary form, which we call the Book of the Law,
which is Exodus chapter 19 through Exodus chapter 24.
And this is a summary of what the whole Torah is going to
teach with regard to loving God and loving neighbor.
Now at the end of all of this book of the covenant, when the
law has been spoken to to Israel, look what Moses says in
Exodus chapter 24. Moses came and told the people
all the words of the Lord, and all the rules, all the commands,
and all the people answered with one voice and said all the words
that the Lord has spoken. We will do.
And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord.
He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of
the mountain and 12 pillars according to the 12 tribes of
Israel. Moses took the blood, he
sprinkled it, and then he took in verse 7, the book of the
covenant, and read it out loud in the hearing of the people.
And they said, All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we
will be obedient. And Moses took the blood and
threw it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the
covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all
these words. Now, we still preserve that
liturgy in our church practice today.
We have the reading of the law, we have the sprinkling of blood,
we have the our Eucharistic celebration, and this preserves
that same covenantal structure. We've been given the Word of
God. It's been read to us.
It's been written down and preserved.
You might also recall from our reading today in First Kings 8
that the Tablets of the Covenant were housed in the Ark of the
Covenant. So at the if anybody has a
bibliophile, you can take comfort in that.
The Ark of the Covenant was actually a very early library.
It housed the testament of our covenant with God in those
tablets. So all of this speaks to the way
that Canon is not only a historical reality of which
books were recognized as Scripture.
It's also a theological and a covenantal reality that shows us
there are texts that bind us and bind our consciences to God
because they they genuinely come from God as his word to us.
This is how God has chosen to reveal Himself to us.
So these are the theological foundations for how we talk
about Canon and how we talk about the authority and
reliability of Scripture. Let's keep that in mind as we go
through some difficult, perhaps dicey, historical questions in
terms of the formation of the Old Testament and it's Canon.
Let's go to the next slide. OK, so back to the question
about the ordering of the books. Your English Bibles will follow
what is known as the Greek ordering, where we have the law,
Genesis to Deuteronomy, the historical books, Joshua all the
way to Second Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, poetry and wisdom.
Let's see. Yeah, poetry and wisdom.
So Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon,
and then the prophetic books, the Major Prophets, first Isaiah
through Ezekiel, and then the Minor Prophets, Daniel all the
way through to Malachi, or in different renderings Hosea all
the way to Malachi. Now this is because the Hebrew
Old Testament was translated into Greek, and in that Greek
translation they had major codices, large books made from
vellum, made from a very expensive material of that of
that day. This is in the 1st to 4th
centuries AD and they ordered these books by topics, by
historical progression and ordered it as a first half to
the whole Christian Bible which and the second-half would have
the New Testament. But if we look at the New
Testament itself and look at the ways that Jesus understood the
Old Testament, we get a picture, a window into a thoroughly
Jewish way of understanding the makeup, the structure of the Old
Testament. And this is what Jewish scholars
would call the Tanakh, T for Torah, N for Nabiim prophets,
and K for Katuveim, the writings.
So the Law, the prophets and the writings form the Tanakh and
this would structure it differently as Genesis through
to Deuteronomy. And then the prophets are Joshua
all the way through till Malachi.
The former prophets were the prophets that whose whose
ministry represented either by Joshua all the way to Elijah and
Elijah, and then latter prophets whose ministries now are were
preserved in their writings to us.
So the former prophets and the latter prophets form this
collective voice of prophecy that relates to the law that has
already been revealed. We'll get into that.
Let's go to the next slide and see how these things work
together. OK, first of all, some evidence
for dividing the Canon, the Old Testament Canon to a tripartite
Canon. There's a little.
Disclaimer here. I'm not saying that you
shouldn't read your Bibles from Genesis all the way through to
Malachi in the order of the English translation.
That's certainly a legitimate way to do it.
But just as if you've read the Bible chronologically versus
canonical ordering, you can get different.
Insights from it, so I would say.
This could be a complimentary way to read the Bible, and it's
a theologically rich way to read the Bible to understand how
Jesus himself saw the Old Testament as it fit together and
as the voices mutually informed each other.
So the Jewish concept of Old of the, the, what came to be known
as the Old Testament Scriptures is that they're divided into 3
major bodies, the law, the prophets and the wisdom or the,
OR the Psalms, as they might call it, or the writings.
We see this three-part structure in a in a rudimentary form in
Jeremiah chapter 18. Jeremiah's prophesying against
all Israel and against the authoritative voices in, in
Israel. And he says, come, let us make
plots against. Sorry, this is the those who are
opposing these are opposing Jeremiah, and they're appealing
to what is sort of common understanding of God's
revelation. They say, come, let us make
plots against Jeremiah. For the law shall not perish
from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word.
From the prophet. And so they have a confidence
that hey, look, we're special people.
God has given U.S. law, He's given us wisdom, He's given us
prophet. And so they're already dividing
God's revelation into three parts, law, prophet, and wisdom
literature. You see Ezekiel appealing to
that same tripartite structure in Chapter 7, verse 26 when he's
preaching A condemnation against Israel.
He says disaster comes upon disaster.
Rumor follows rumor, they seek a vision from the prophet, while
the law perishes from the priest and counsel or wisdom from the
elders. And so again, this was sort of a
presupposed understanding of God's revelation that it could
be divided into law, prophecy and counselor wisdom.
As time progresses and we get to the post exilic period, the 400
years before the coming of Christ, you begin to see these
this tripartite structure become widespread.
So whether this is a document known as 4QM TMMT that's a one
of the scrolls from the Dead Sea from the Qumran sect from.
Cave #4 It's a document that speaks of, it's an
eschatological text that speaks of what is to come in the latter
days. But it mentions the Law, the
prophets and the Psalms. So again, Law and prophets and
A. 3rd category that includes another kind of writing Philo, a
1st century Jew, roughly contemporary of Paul, will also
use that same tripartite designation.
And then most famous, famously, and I think authoritatively,
Jesus speaks of the scriptures written before him in a
threefold manner. Chapter 24 of Luke, verse 44.
Then Jesus said to them, These are my words that I spoke to you
while I was still with you, that everything written about me in
the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be
fulfilled. So lastly, to kind of cap off
this discussion, we have other Jewish sources, Bansira, 2nd
century BC, so 200 years before Christ.
And then the rabbinic text Baba Batra, section 14200 Years after
Christ use the same threefold division.
There is theological significance to this threefold
division. But before we get into that, are
there any questions? I would like me to slow down and
focus on one of these things before we move on.
No worries. Not.
Yeah. Yes, that would be one of the
former prophets. Yeah, absolutely.
Because it's really, the narrative really revolves around
key prophetic figures, whether Elijah or Elijah or Samuel,
etcetera. Go ahead.
Andrew. Chronicles would be in the
writings. Yeah.
Historical.
Yeah. Absolutely.
And is the the Hebrew? Yes, the last.
Chapter of Chronicles is the last chapter of the Hebrew
Testament. Yep, Yep, I.
Commend that to you as worthy of your reading, and think about
that being the last word in Hebrew.
Yes, yes. So in your, in your, in your
free time today, look at Second Chronicles 36 and try to find
the. Massive ellipsis, the dot dot
dot like it's almost like A to be continued or it's almost like
a in one of The Avengers movies where they have like credits and
then the teasers like, Oh no, you know something's going to
happen next. So which at the end of Avengers,
which one end game, like the last proper one, There's no kind
of sorry. OK, OK, well, there's no teaser
at the end. All you hear is like a like a
iron kind of hammer. And then it just stops.
And I think that's the perfect way to close a cannon.
Just like ending with Return of the Jedi rather than adding
anything afterwards. Sorry.
OK, let's go and look at some theological significance to this
tripartite cannon. Let's see.
Where's my notes? There is Dan, can you skip
really quickly to actually no, So keep that question in your
mind. How do these three parts of the
Canon relate to each other? And we'll, we'll address that in
about 15 minutes. For now, we'll look at each of
these collections individually, the law, the profits, and the
writings, and see how they. Were composed how they came to
be. So let's let's look at this next
term. Let's define it formation.
I'll define this as the process of composing, collecting and
ordering the books of the Canon. So I think it's important to
understand how authorship worked in the Old Testament or in the
in the ancient world really in general, it's it was a process
that was not a solo endeavor. Sometimes it could obviously be
a solo endeavor. We have personal memoirs really
throughout antiquity, Marcus Aurelius was someone who's sort
of most famously had his own personal notes that were
eventually published, etcetera. So you could have a solo
writing, but for the most part there was a degree of of
collaboration in the process of writing.
We have this even explicitly described in Jeremiah, Jeremiah
36. Jeremiah's scribe, Baruch has a
very important role to play in the first instance of Jeremiah
dictating the scroll and the scroll is burnt by an apostate
king and so Jeremiah has to dictate it again and Baruch
copies it again. So Baruch has a, an
authoritative role really in, in, in inscribing and copying
and preserving the text that originated from Jeremiah.
We also have a description of Proverbs, of the Proverbs many,
most of which originated in Solomon, but we have a
description in Proverbs 25 of of how this process came to be
Proverbs 25 verse one. These also are Proverbs of
Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah copied.
So that is, there's several generations between Solomon and
Hezekiah. And the act of copying probably
also entailed ordering, ordering Proverbs, putting one after
another. You can do a lot by ordering
things together. So for example, let's see here
if you have, if you put a Bob Dylan song next to next to a
sort of a, how do I put it atypical or a, if you have the
national anthem song with great pomp and circumstance, and you
put that on one track and then you have Bob Dylan at the second
track, you might then communicate, I'm saying a
subversive message about the first thing that I said, and
you're putting those two things together.
So the collection itself is beginning a meaning that is
constitutive of both of those elements as they interact with
each other. That's more of a subversive
example. On the other hand, you can put
put two things together, almost like 2.
Have you ever seen the movie with the rat who cooks
ratatouille? You know, when he closes his
eyes, he's like, no, no, no, take that strawberry.
OK. And what color do you see?
And his brother sees a faint red.
He's like, and now take that cheese, put it together, and all
of a sudden there's an explosion, right?
So if you put two proverbs together, one that says, for
example, like if you if you if you put one that has a timeless
principle about how you should live your life, and then another
proverb right after it, that kind of gives you a nuance to
that principle. You have both of those things
being true at the same time and the tension is supposed to be
appreciated. So it could be that Solomon said
both of those proverbs, but Hezekiah scribes were the ones
that put it together in its collection.
And that gives us a canonical meaning that is really the
fullest meaning of those two texts put together.
Similarly, you can see how the the the Psalms were not all
written by David. You also have Asaphs.
I'm originating in Moses. You have many generations of
Psalms that David could not have compiled in their fivefold
format. Maybe he initiated that that
process. But because many of the Psalms
were written after David, even their inscriptions would say so.
Their super descriptions would say so.
It must have been someone after the psalmist who arranged it,
put it together. And sure enough, they put it
together in A5 part structure to mirror to to to resemble the
five part structure of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and
Deuteronomy. So this ordering is it does
something to or it draws out a fuller what we call canonical
meaning in the text that is latent, certainly present there
in the original form that might have come from Moses or David.
But when it's put together canonically by I would argue
Spirit inspired collectors of scripture who are really
operating with the prophetic function, then this is how this
is the fuller picture of how Old Testament Canon comes together.
So it's definitely authorship that involves singular
individuals who are inspired by God prophets.
There is a historical Moses, historical Jeremiah, historical
Solomon, historical Ezekiel. But then there's also a
collaboration of Spirit inspired individuals who are either
assisting in the composition or subsequently collecting,
arranging and shaping the the the the the the Canon of
Scripture. Any questions about this
definition of formation? All right, let's go to the next
slide. Sorry.
Question on. Formation.
Yes, go ahead. What?
You describe describe how a lot of Jewish scholars also believe
the Old Testament to be or not, though what they would not help
the. Old Testament but to not Yeah
in. Fact.
Let's go to. Let's skip next slide and then
next one. Yeah, what we'll find actually
is that in the in the Talmud, in, in, in Yoma.
So Talmud track date Yoma, section 80, subsection A.
They actually identified Jabez, mentioned in First Chronicles 2,
as having a kind of a team of super scribes that are able to
to to copy and then shape the Torah as it had been delivered
by Moses. Also rabbinic tradition.
So tractate Sanhedrin, section 21, subsection B, they say that
Ezra changed the script of Torah from an older alphabet, paleo
Hebrew alphabet and updated it to to the Assyrian script.
That's more similar to what we have of Hebrew script today.
So at the very least the the rabbis who were legitimate, like
really skillful scholars of their day, they understood that
there were different generations of Hebrew scripts.
So at the very least Ezra must have updated the the script.
From what had been transmitted from Moses, but then all the way
into the day of Ezra to what then what became the final form
of the, the Torah. So good question.
We'll, we'll, we'll say more about that after we go back two
or three slides to authenticity. So next slide, so.
Our lecture is about the formation and the authenticity
of the Old Testament Canon. So we've defined Canon, we've
defined Old Testament, now we've defined formation.
So now finally authenticity. This is this is usually where
the rub is. This is where questions of can
we rely on the Bible arise because of of the, the, the fear
or the the the important question of is this really from
a historical Moses? Is this really from Jeremiah?
Is this really from the individual who is purported to
have been inspired by God? If there wasn't a historical
Moses, then I think that poses huge problems for how we
understand God to have revealed authoritative speech to his
people through a vehicle of a, of a, of a human being.
If that human being never existed, then that that really
poses huge problems for our understanding of Scripture.
So authenticity, let's define it as it's, it's so authenticity.
We can define it by when we see it, and we can we can.
Conclude that something is authentic.
When the genuine origin of that text resides in the attributed
author. So is something is Psalm 16
originating from David? Peter quotes it in Acts chapter
2. So if David never existed, Peter
is saying a falsehood because David never existed.
And then how can he? How can he attribute this?
To David. That's how the logically how the
problem is presented. Furthermore, when Jesus quotes
Moses, he talks about the book of Moses or simply he says Moses
in to speak of the law that he's disputing debating about with
the Pharisees. Now our underlying concept here
that we have to uphold, and then I'm going to make a case for is
that the genuine origin of that text resides in the attributed
author. Now, this leaves a lot of space,
and though there could be a lot of debate here, some scholars
might be more more comfortable with saying only a tiny modicum
of the text actually came from perhaps a historical Moses or
historical David. And then that leaves a whole
bunch of room for several or many, many generations of
recensions and things that subverted, rewrote, and
completely contradicted what Moses originally said.
That's not what I'm going to argue for today.
On the other hand, when you look at say, Plato quoting Plato
quoting Homer and just saying Homer said, and then he'll quote
from the Odyssey of the Iliad or more, let's see here.
More specifically, Aristotle doing the same in Aristotle's
stay, there was a burgeoning library in Alexandria where the
first authoritative editions of Homer were emerging.
And so you actually have in our in our manuscripts of the
Odyssey in the Iliad, you have like asterisks and different
marginal notes that say this probably wasn't original to
Homer or this was original to Homer, but it's reworked by so
and so or, And so there's like a commentary on on the historical
Homer in those in those manuscripts that are housed in
the Alexandrian Library in the time of of Aristotle and
following. But there was still their
convention to say Homer said. So there was there was an extent
to which an ancient text with its its collective
interpretation and which with its with its tradition of
interpretation was accepted as being genuinely Homeric, even if
there were some ambiguities and uncertainties about a vowel here
or a vowel there. Now when we come to Jesus
quoting Moses, we can I I think we can also have an approach
that says if there were several instances throughout the history
from historical Moses to historical Jesus where the
initial utterance from Moses as he wrote it down in paleo
Hebrew, then was given an additional explanation by a
spirit inspired individual who was writing in the faithful
tradition of Moses. Just like Moses handed down his
mantle of authority to Joshua, Joshua to those after him.
I think there is a, a theological allowance for a
measure of, of, of collaboration after Moses.
That brings us to the final form of the Torah of Genesis through
Deuteronomy that was given to us by Ezra, who is very much
described as a second Moses. He's the the in in Ezra.
Would that be chapter 5 through 7 as he emerges in Persia as
someone who's going to travel back with the Exiles to Israel
and re teach them the law as they learn, as they relearn how
to live faithfully as God's covenant people in Israel.
He's re reviving the law in their hearts by copying it, by
interpreting it and even translating it into an Aramaic
interpretation. So this is what Ezra is doing as
a second Moses as a spirit inspired individual who can then
say thus saith the Lord and thus saith Moses or God through
Moses. So this on the one hand is not
allowing for a kind of minimalist approach saying Moses
might have said God said, but he didn't say anything after that.
And it was a whole bunch of rolling tradition that.
Really undermine what the historical Moses said.
But on the other hand, is also allowing for a, a, a, an
understanding of inspiration where the prophetic authority
continues after Moses and can give, can, can collect, can
shape and update what Moses says to the final form of Ezra that
we have in 450 BC in Ezra. That's a whirlwind kind of
historical introduction to the composition of the Torah.
Do we have any questions about that, especially as it pertains
to authority? Go ahead, Jared.
It's easy to understand sort of from a secular perspective why
text coming from a largely oral culture much longer ago where
between might have multiple receptions taking inspiration
out of them for a second, yeah, yeah.
Why later text where you have more circulating copies and
better practices would have less of that.
But if we're saying these are authentic, these are inspired,
this is the word of God and we do allow for some level of
retention that's developing that text in.
The old. Testament, yeah.
And we just don't have that in the New Testament.
We maybe argue about like the long ending.
Markers that. Yeah, yeah.
No one would say that. Yeah, Irenaeus was allowed to
write. Yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. What would be?
Sort. Of a.
Good biblical. Inherently biblical reason for
why you would have. A difference, difference between
Old Testament composition and New Testament composition.
So I, I, I think it has to do with the fact, so we have the,
the prophetic and the Apostolic voice, which is really the same
voice, but it's just different sides of Christ's incarnation.
The prophetic voice before Christ is, you know, 1500 years
old or 1300 years old depending on the date of the Exodus.
And so that's 1300 years of prophetic voice.
Or if we, if we, if we allow for a 400 year period of silence
where no authoritative scripture was written, then that's 1300 to
400 BC. So 700 years of the
authoritative voice being live being.
So the Spirit working through Moses and the prophets to
communicate God's word in written form.
So that allows, I think theologically for 700 years of
the Spirit to work through the processes of, of, of, of human
authorship in its ancient form. Whereas after Christ it's 90
years, or if, if Jesus is beginning his ministry in 30 AD,
it's really a 60 year window of the Spirit working through that
same prophetic voice, this time through the apostles.
So because it's a shorter period, we see the we see the
collaborative processes of the apostles as they as they work
together to write their texts. We see that kind of narrow to a
smaller period. So you see less of the of the
processes that you would see over 700 years for the Old
Testament. Yeah, good question.
Yeah, yeah. And so.
The having a book having literally having a binding to
your book. Allow us for cross referencing
in a way that wasn't as easily accessible with with scrolls.
So yeah, good question. Yes, Debbie.
The ascension is it's so it's it's a a revision to a text that
kind of re does the text to a a large enough extent that it is
not merely like a correcting and misspelling, but it's giving a
different version to it. So we have the 15.
Correct me if I'm wrong with these dates.
What's the earliest BCP? 1537, No 1550, 1549, OK, 4749,
one of those. So 1540 something retention and
then we have several more after that.
And finally Richard Hooker's 1662, which is then considered
the authoritative. And so there were enough
substantial changes that it wasn't just a new addition, but
it was a retention. And so retention is a more
significant revision to a text. Yeah, good question.
All right, go ahead. Just.
Quickly. Comment on that.
That had been changed or corrected in the Canon.
Yeah, there. Was something that Moses had
said. Yeah, yeah.
But. That then got changed as we've
received the text. Was that saying of his not God's
speech? Or was it God's speech that
needed to be updated? So that's a question that has
implications for our entire discussion of Canon.
So for example, the, the letters that Paul, so Paul's
correspondence to Corinth has at least 2 letters that have not
been preserved. And so the question is, are
those God's speech if they're not preserved canonically?
I think we need to have a, a robust theology of God's
Providence for the preservation. So the providential preservation
of Scripture, the Spirit was not only active in in the production
of the text from speech to writing.
The Spirit is also active in the preservation of the text and the
collecting of the text into a canonical whole.
So I think from our theological concept of God's Providence and
from the teaching of Scripture itself, that not one jot or
title will fall from this word until everything has been
accomplished. There is, down to the minutiae,
a a providential overseeing of this process.
So that we can say what has been preserved, we can confidently
receive and hold on to as the word of God.
And then what will we do for stuff that once was there and is
not there any longer? We can hypothesize one way or
the other, but I think if we understand that God has
providently preserved it, then that's sufficient for us to know
what we handle as Scripture. So, yeah, question.
All right, let's go to the next slide.
OK, so that was pretty much this is a summary of what we've
spoken about in the last 15 or so minutes theologically.
Now talking about the tripartite structure, the Torah.
So Genesis through Deuteronomy, it sets the terms of God's
covenant. It forms the first major section
of the biblical Canon. And this Torah, this fivefold
law of God never had any competitors.
Like there wasn't another alleged book of Moses that
created a hexatu. Oh, there's a term for hexatuke,
which includes Joshua because terminotically that helps if you
read the law with Joshua right after it.
But there was never a separate book that someone said, oh, that
was also one of the books of, of Moses's law.
And then, you know, 1 sect disputing with another sect.
There were certainly Jewish sects throughout antiquity, but
they never debated about what was actually Moses, the law
revealed to Moses. They all agreed these five books
are God's authoritative revelation to us that even the
Sadducees agree with the Pharisees that Genesis through
Deuteronomy was the law given by God through Moses.
So it was never really disputed, never any competitors, and it
forms the first major section of the biblical Canon as a covenant
setting text. Like here are the terms of what
it means. Here the terms of the terms of
your covenant relationship with God.
Here's how he established things as the Creator.
Here's how he described human flourishing in Genesis and all
the Pentuch. Here are the.
Laws that he has commanded you, Israel, to follow if you are to
be his people. So.
The law establishes the covenant and the terms of the covenant.
We'll see later the prophets call Israel to repentance when
they have fallen away from the covenant.
The prophets also further interpret the terms of the
covenants and then finally the. Writings give us liturgical and
wisdom nuances and embodiments and expressions and
interpretations of the law and the prophets.
So law, profits, and writings work together canonically.
Let's go to our next slide of Torah composition, again to
reiterate some of the points we've already made.
I find it interesting that ironies, Tertullian, Clement of
Alexandria, all of these are writing 2nd century AD.
So about 150 to 200 years after Christ they are.
They presuppose that same rabbinic narrative about Ezra.
Ezra as someone who had a vital role in re establishing the
Torah after the exile, and he is the faithful heir of Moses's
composition. So the early patristics were
actually probably in some kind of conversation with early
rabbinics. And so they have that same.
Unwavering commitments to the authority and clarity of
Scripture, but they also understand it at with the
historical process moving from Moses all the way to Ezra.
Let's go ahead to the next one, prophets.
OK, so from Joshua to 2nd Kings and the sources in this in this
hair in this history really extend from 1200 to the exile in
586 BC. But it was probably compiled and
edited as one continuous history after the exile to Babylon.
And this really I don't think should pose any theological
problem for us because it doesn't have an introduction
saying, you know, I, Hezekiah wrote the OR no, I, Joshua wrote
this text. We can maybe historically find
some sources that attribute Joshua's narrative to Joshua
himself, but. The the The Expanse from Joshua
to 2nd Kings fits together as a canonical narrative that has so
many correspondences, so many bookends, such a rich literary
artistry that and it. When you get to the end of
Second Kings, there's a lot of retrospect.
It's this happened because God's people forsook the law.
This happened because, well, God gave the law on Mount Nebo at
Mount Sinai and Mount Nebo God's people forsook, and they
constantly went against the prophets who called them back to
repentance. And so it is completely
theologic and not only allowed but also encouraged to
understand this, this expanse from Joshua the Second Kings as
in its final form, as authoritative Scripture that is
intentionally A continuous narrative of God's faithfulness
and Israel's covenant unfaithfulness.
And that is really hermeneutically and historically
moving forward to the coming of Christ as the ultimate
revelation of God and the answer to Israel's covenant
unfaithfulness. The major prophets and the book
of the 12, the minor prophets, they do in literary prophetic
form what the former prophets. So Joshua through second Kings,
what they do through historical narrative.
So in poetic prophetic utterances, Isaiah, Jeremiah and
Ezekiel communicate that same legal case against Israel and
call to repentance for Israel in their major prophecies, Isaiah,
Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Now these are attributed to real
historical persons, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.
And we also know that specifically with Jeremiah that
Baruch at the very least, was a scribe involved in the process
of, of, of inscribing the revelation that was given to
Jeremiah. And so it's quite likely that
Isaiah and Ezekiel also had a scribe or if or a team of
scribes or a team of scribes helping them in their
composition of their prophecy. I have given this kind of
lecture a few Times Now at Rez. And if I were to turn this into
a small book, there would be there would be a sense in which
each of the versions of this talk is if I say, say I'm, I'm,
I'm, I'm an authority of any kind.
Say I'm an ultimate authority. OK, I, I would have spoken
authoritatively the first time I gave this talk.
I would have spoken authority the second and third time.
And now the fourth time that I gave this talk, I'm still
speaking authoritatively. And you might have taken notes
of this as my students. And then if you came together
and tried to compile the final form of what I.
Did there would be different? Different versions of this, but
a final form that we say OK with my with with my authority of
stamp on it. This is the view lecture that
Jacob gives on Old Testament formation.
That's probably what happened with Isaiah, Jeremiah and
Ezekiel. They're traveling through
northern Israel. They're traveling through Judah.
Ezekiel has even traveling with the Exiles all the way and
Jeremiah as well with the Exiles all the way into Babylon.
And so there is time, there is the expanse of time and of
geography that are involved in these prophecies.
So there were probably different instances where these prophecies
were uttered. And when we bring them together
to the final form, we need to understand the the authoritative
text that's left for us to read and follow and obey is the final
form that God also by the Holy Spirit was overseeing.
And so that is what we have with Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
And so when you see Isaiah chapters one through 39, Isaiah
chapters 44 through 55, and then Isaiah chapters 55 through 66,
scholars might say, oh, one of those is actually Isaiah.
The other one is someone writing under Isaiah's name 200 years
later, and then 100 years after that a third Isaiah.
I think the differences in each of those quote UN quote Isaiah's
is actually different phases of the historical Isaiah's own
teaching and towards the end of his life, probably overseeing a
process of collecting all those prophecies and giving a final
form. I think 1 can make a legitimate,
robust case for Isaiah's agency in the final form of his own
prophecy, and I'd say the same for Jeremiah and the same for
Ezekiel. OK, I could say a lot about the
book of the 12, but for the sake of time, we can apply the same
principles for the composition of the major prophets to the
composition of the minor prophets.
Are there any questions at this point about the composition and
formation of the prophetic collection?
Go ahead, Sarah. Yeah.
Because I've heard a few people mention that Deutero Isaiah.
Interpretations. Like people Hunter that multiple
people wrote it. Yeah, yeah.
Is that mostly common with Isaiah, or did Jeremiah and
Ezekiel have similar interpretations?
With some people, Jeremiah, definitely Ezekiel, I don't, I
don't know. I don't know off the top of my
head about the the interpretive history of of Ezekiel.
I know that some of it, its reception by rabbis was not so
straightforward, but because of basically because it has a image
of, of a Son of man, a very almost incarnated revelation of
of Yahweh. And so they found that
scandalous. But because of its origins and
historical, Ezekiel said we have to accept that anyway, but it
actually is a beautiful bridge to our incarnational theology in
the New Testament. But, but as regards as regards
the historical processes, so most critical scholars will
because it's sort of the the the reigning paradigm in historical
critical scholarship would. Think they have?
To kind of nod to or assent to, Oh, of course, this is 3
Isaiahs, but, or, but the, that is not because of, because of,
of the weight of evidence. It's, it's for the most part
determined by a, a secular principle of predictive prophecy
is not a, is not a category. So how could Isaiah predict
Cyrus if Cyrus hadn't existed yet?
And so that's sort of the, the key point of saying, OK, so
first premise, we know that predictive prophecy is not a
thing because we're in a closed world universe.
Second premise Isaiah predicts Cyrus.
Third premise Isaiah lives before Cyrus.
Therefore Isaiah could not have predicted Cyrus and therefore we
need to have a later version of Isaiah, a pseudepigraphic Isaiah
that's post exilic Richard. Schultz, one of my old.
Professors at Wheaton College, top notch Isaiah Scholar is kind
of a minority position in the broader critical historical
school of thought, but has made consistently really good cases
for a a genuine Isaanic unity of all of Isaiah.
And just because the paradigm is leaning it One Direction in a
particular generation doesn't mean that it's intellectually
foolish to be in a minority position on something.
And so that's personally where I land with the Isaanic and
Jeremiah questions. So there you go.
All right, anymore what I see on your hands around here now.
OK, let's go ahead and see if we can finish in and by the hour,
which will lead time for more discussion.
OK, so summary of the law and the prophets.
We can reasonably say then that since Ezra writing ministering
after, after or in the time of Malachi.
So really at the end of what we have as our Old Testament now,
he quite plausibly was involved in the the overseeing the the
the collection of at the very least the law.
And then since the term law and the prophets begins to emerge
right after Ezra, that is also probably when the prophetic
corpus began to be consolidated. In fact, Jewish tradition
preserved in in the Talmud, in Yoma.
So Talmud tractate Yoma and tractate Baba Batra.
They speak of the great assembly led by Ezra and three prophets
who collected the scriptures of Israel.
I need to go back and check who those 3 prophets were.
It might be Jeremiah and Ezekiel or Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel,
or it might have been 3 prophets who were contemporaneous to
Ezra. I'll have to go back and check
that detail there. But there is really understood
as the rabbinic teaching that the great assembly which was
overseen by Ezra were the authoritative scribes and
interpreters and collectors of the scriptures that came before
them and were the ones that divide organized it according to
these three major corpora law, prophets and writings.
And so the law and the prophets can be summarized as so this is
putting aside the role of the writings temporarily the the law
and the prophets can be summarized as the body of
scriptural texts that teach God's covenant to love with
Israel and Israel's covenant obligations to God and to
neighbor. That's why Jesus will speak of
the law and the prophets being summarized by by this one
command. Paul can speak of the law and
the prophets, testify to Christ, etcetera.
This understanding of the law and prophets working together to
reveal God's will for Israel is probably originated at the end
of those those of the process of those writings in the time of
Ezra. 5 minutes. We have for a quick run through
the next slide about how the writings feature.
We have this third part of the tripartite Canon of the Old
Testament, which involves poetry, which involves A
fivefold scroll of Ruth's Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes,
Lamentations and Esther, some 2 historical compositions, and
then finally Daniel. Let's go to the next, next
slide. So these, these writings, they,
they nuance the covenant principle of blessings and
curses. They give a like a real life
account for suffering and evil that seems to at first undermine
the principles of God's sovereignty and his blessing of
obedience. But in reality, they set up a
tension that is resolved only by Christ and the resurrection that
he brings. So, for example, if the law and
the prophets say obey God and you'll be blessed, and if Job
and Ecclesiastes say obey God and you might have a horrible
life, Jesus comes and says, when I come and when I come again and
the debt are raised, I will pay to each according to what he has
done. And those who have been faithful
to me will come into my everlasting Kingdom.
Then all those principles of the law and the prophets that say
the righteous will be blessed, they come true at the eschaton
when Christ makes all things new.
And Job and Ecclesiastes still is true, because in this life we
will have trials. But take heart, Christ has
overcome the world. So the writings give a
theological nuance to the law and the prophets.
The writings themselves are a little bit flexible in their
ordering. They're a little bit like the
like the Catholic epistles that we have in the New Testament.
They might have been the last kind of capstone or part of the
Old Testament that was arranged in the post exilic period.
But even though they came at at the tail end of the composition
of the Old Testament. They should not undermine our
confidence in how the law and the prophets came together,
really without much controversy at all, and how the writings.
Then, even with their continued history of of collection served
a vital role in how we interpret the law and the prophets.
Let's go to the next slide. OK, we'll have to keep going
because of time and OK, let's see here again, this is sort of,
this is sort of reiterating the same point about the Great
Assembly. Oh, there you go.
Those are the the three prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and
Malachi. According to the the Talmud,
those were the three prophets who worked with Ezra in the
Great Assembly to collect the scriptures, codify them and give
them their final form. Josephus, 1st century Jew who is
contemporaneous with the Goth. The evangelist Luke would say,
he said that all the Jewish scriptures were written from the
time of Moses to the time of the Persian king Artaxerxes.
So that is again, Moses to Ezra and the status of these texts
never needed defense, except for Esther, Song of Songs and
Ecclesiastes that if you'd like to talk about more, we can.
But often times someone who is wanting to give a historical
critical perspective on this with an emphasis on the critical
will bring up these three books, Esther, Song of Songs and
Ecclesiastes and say, look, the whole thing was unstable.
But they neglect the narrative that I've been trying to give
today, which is actually quite remarkable, how the law,
fivefold books of Moses was so widely, widely accepted and
revered and preserved. And the prophetic corpus as
well. Really no controversy there.
And these are really the exceptions that prove the rule
of the consistency of revelation and the reliability of its
transmission and its collection and finally arriving at its
final form. I think I have two minutes now.
If people bring up the question of the Apocrypha, what about
those other books? Let's just say if you have all
the disputes from other church traditions saying well, what
about the seven Deuto canonical books that the Roman Catholic
Church uses and the longer ending of Daniel, Jeremiah,
Esther? What about if we go to the Syria
Syrian Orthodox Church and includes second Baruch and
Joseph Anasmith and the longer Daniel and some even some
Josephus? And what about if we go to the
Ethiopian Orthodox Church and say, well, they're they're the
I've given this lecture several times and I the the phrase I've
used, I call them the canonical pack rats.
But that's so pejorative. I wish there was like a better
term to say someone who likes the more the merrier, you know,
so the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is the church that collects all
of them and has it the most expansive Canon.
But if? You.
If you kind of put all of those in overlapping circles, the
common, what's overlapping in all of those, the core to all of
those is what we have as the Protestant Canon, and it is what
is actually advocated within the first 7-7 centuries of
Christianity as the authoritative Old Testament.
I have several slides in a row to show that.
Let's go rapid fire. We have Josephus, the 1st
century Jew, who would argue, based on the number of letters
in the Hebrew alphabet, that there are only 24 books of the
Old Testament. Now if you do your math, you'll
probably recognize right away that that's not the the
numbering that we have in our English Bibles.
That's because the book of the 12 is considered one book.
The Jeremiah and Lamentations is considered one book.
And then there are other, let's see here, Chronicles, yes, first
thing Chronicles first, second Kings.
Those are considered Ezra, Nehemiah, those are all
considered one book. And when you put all of that
together, depending on your counting, there's 22 or 24.
The the Hebrew alphabet had different versions in antiquity.
And so sometimes people say 24, other times people say 22.
But this is quite similar to how ancient grammarians would would
number the books of, of, of the Odyssey.
There's 24 books of the Odyssey by Homer and 24 letters of the
Greek alphabet. And so it kind of encompasses
the entire human experience of homecoming in a much more
profound way. Let's go to the Jerome quote.
Keep going, keep going.
Just as there are 22 letters with which to write in Hebrew
everything that we say, and by their elements the human voice
is expressed, so 22 scrolls are reckoned by which, like letters
and prefaces, the infancy of a just man, still young.
And nursing is instructed in the teaching of God.
So it gives us the full revelation of God as Old
Testament. These 22 books of the Old
Testament, which is the same thing that we have for our
Protestant Canon, we can go back to Athanasius would say Amen to
that origin before him would say Amen to that is before him.
The rabbinic Talmud agrees with that.
Let's keep going after origin and Jerome so to see if it's the
origin Athanasius Jerome Cyril of Jerusalem as well after Cyril
of Jerusalem, Gregory the Gate, Gregory the Great who I'll
probably mentioned him in my Roman Catholic talks, so we'll
punt that for then but also is advocating for what was this is
the Protestant Canon one more after him.
John of Damascus, the great doctor of the Church for the
Eastern Orthodox Church as well, holds a special place,
authoritative place for the 22 books of the Old Testament Canon
which represent every letter of the Hebrew tongue.
Again, giving this full representation of human speech
and an alphabet is analogous to the full representation of the
revelation of God in the Old Testament Canon.
So going all the way back to Moses, seeing the process of
composition and collection that's reaching its final form
in Ezra, and then seeing the reception by Jesus and the
apostles and subsequently by Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of
Alexandria, and then all the way down to John and Damascus.
This is really unparalleled in human history.
To see this level of consistency, this level of of
continuity of authority of a text with with such a diverse
body of followers from north in Africa all the way to Western
Europe, all the way to what's modern day Iraq and farther.
East. From Jews and Greeks and Romans
are receiving these texts all as authoritative scripture and
having such a level of agreement about which are the texts that
are indeed God's divine speech. I think it really should cause
us to marvel and to worship our God with more confidence and joy
that he has overseen this entire process.
And so we can hold a Bible in our hands and finish reading it
out loud and then say the word of the Lord and have us all
respond. Thanks be to God.
All right, thank you very much. All right, we have probably
about 20 or so minutes of Q&A time.
Go ahead, Jared. So you you had a slide earlier
you mentioned Ezra and one thing that he said, I think in that
same section he talks about prioritizing the Septuagint over
some of the Hebrew texts that I know that others later have done
the same thing, especially using the Metoretic text, which is
10th or 11th century. Yeah, version Aaron Anne's plan
to do it because he wanted a different reading of Isaiah 7.
And I don't think that holds up very well.
But is there any argument forever giving consideration to
the Septuagint text versus like a 10th or 11th century mesoretic
reading? Or should we always default to
the? Hebrew, Yeah, yeah.
Oh, really good question. So that question might bring up
another question about, so I'll get to that question, but
another question about what do we do with all these ancient
versions? So you have Latin Vulgate, you
have a Syriac Rashida, you have a the Greek Septuagint.
How do we, how do we wrestle, reckon with, understand these
different versions, especially when there might be differences
between each of them? And I think a good principle in
terms of confidence and how we. Handle this as the word of God
is an analogy, a story that was told by a guy named Austin
Farrer. He was a friend of JRR Tolkien
and CS Lewis. He's kind of a proto post
liberal thinker so I don't agree with everything that he says but
this I found this paradigm really helpful.
He was an analogy of someone who.
Someone who went to. War and was in the trenches and
his wife had written him a letter and in that letter his
wife has had expressed her love and devotion to him and he he he
kept that letter like on his person when he was in the
trenches. He was subsequently killed and
by shrapnel and part of the much of the text was was marred and
his own blood was on it. And so they unravelled it and
had to piece together what the wife had said to to this this
soldier. But they were still able to
understand the love of the wife for her husband as he was away
by her writing, by the what what they could piece together.
And even the the blood that kind of covered the text and marred
it in a way actually spoke of the commitments that they had
one to another because he was fighting to preserve her life
ultimately. And so the analogy of it falls
apart on many levels. But one thing that actually
what, what actually I think can be communicated is that the, the
love of, of in this case, the wife to the husband is so
powerful that it breaks through even what, what the, the ups and
downs, the vicissitudes of life or the, the, the contingencies
of history might do to to mar the historical record.
So when we have a a Vulgate translation that was perhaps
based on not the best manuscripts, or we have some
kind of freewheeling Syriac translations are the same with
sometimes how the Septuagint translates.
The Word of God is so powerful that it can still get through
what God actually inspired Moses to say and Joshua faithfully to
transmit and Ezra faithfully to codify.
That's going to come through regardless of of.
Of the ES VS mistranslation of Genesis, whatever, or of the new
New Living Translations mistranslation of 2nd
Corinthians 5, or the NI VS mistranslation of Hebrews 26 in
the 2011 version. So these are modern examples of
how human error, it does affect what we have before us as we
read it, but God's Word is more powerful than that and we'll get
through. So that's why I think we can
read an ESV version out loud and say the word of the Lord and
respond with genuineness, thanks be to God, even though we
understand that there is human error in the translation of
that. So that's a long winded way of
saying the Septuagint, the Vulgates, the Syriac, Peshitta
are valuable translations that I think can be read in their
context as the word of God, even if we understand there's some
human fallibility in the translation.
Now, what is the value of using those translations?
I think so in terms of the critical process, having a
Vulgate and a Syriac and a Septuagint and then the oldest
manuscripts we have in the Dead Sea Scrolls, putting those all
together, that helps us have a a pretty strong case for what was
the earliest available text. So I think the Septuagint as a
translation is valuable for that text critical process.
I also think the Septuagint as a translation in in was actually
a, as translations go, was a pretty faithful ancient
translation. And when we compare how the
Septuagint translate something versus how the Vulgate
translates it, I actually think that gives us a window into the,
into the, the, the potential interpretation of a passage that
we can compare with other scriptures.
It's, it's basically like having an ancient commentary next to
your next to your Old Testament. You can say if the, if the
Septuagint translates this word differently, this is an ancient
commentary, which is very valuable.
How does this is just like reading, you know, a reading
like Douglas Moore or a Greg Beal or your name, your favorite
commentator. They're commenting on the text
and they help me understand it. This ancient Greek speaking
translator is commentating on this text by his ex identical
decision when he makes that translation.
And it ultimately helps me understand the original meaning
of the text. So that's, I think a few very
helpful uses of the Septuagint or any other ancient translation
that you have. So question.
Yes, yeah. I'm curious.
How to think about understanding the Old Testament?
And I guess also this applies to the New Testament Canon as like
a unitary block of God's speech. Versus yeah.
What scripture seems to suggest, which is like a real ordering
of. Like, yeah.
Parts of the Canon that are way more important.
For. Us and the rest of the Canon.
Yeah, yeah. I know for a fact, like there's
a whole bunch of stuff in joke that I simply.
Never. Read.
But that's just that's just as much God's speech as is the
backlog or comfortable or. Whatever.
Yeah, how should? We think about that in our
personal practice, like how what we decide to.
Reach. Yeah, I.
Think a really good way to answer.
That question is brilliant. Is a really, really good
question is ask yourself if you were building a church and you
were given I'm horrible with my terms for church architecture.
So imagine we're in a Gothic cathedral.
What would this wall be called? Like the like if if this is
where the table is? And is this the nave?
Cool. Who said that?
OK, OK, so the back wall where I'm a real Protestant, sorry,
where the you have the where you can have a great stained glass
window. OK, what would you put there?
OK, what would you put front and center?
And then how would you feature different stories of Scripture
to speak to that main point architecturally?
Then what would you put on the sides?
What would you put by your baptistery?
How would you tell the story of Scripture knowing that it's all
authoritative? But some things kind of have a
Orient orienting function, you know, so.
So it might be Christ the Great Shepherd holding a lamb on his
shoulders, or it might be the vision of the Son of Man in
Revelation in the 77 lampstands of the church.
When we look at how what we emphasize in Scripture, there
is, I, I think I'm, I'm convinced a gospel narrative of
God as rights, as creator, as Redeemer and redemption finding
its fullness in Christ that orients us to how we read all of
Scripture. We can do that.
And then also the, the iconography analogy also works
in terms of simultaneity. Like all of this as a blocked
speech of God. The amazing thing about being in
a three-dimensional space of scripture being proclaimed in in
a mosaic or or in a stained glass windows all surrounding
you is that you, you can focus on one and almost treat it like
a text where I can only read really one word at a time if I'm
actually honest, or I can perceive one paragraph at a
time. I can focus with that minutia in
mind, or I can just stand there and have the.
Whole. Thing speak to me simultaneously
Scripture works both ways we can focus on the minutiae of a
pericope of an individual passage and be faith make sure
that we're faithful to interpreting that passage or and
we should step back and say how does this fit into the whole
thing simultaneously spoken by God.
When we get that simultaneity of God's speech that really taps
into the ancient one of the ancient ways of reading
Scripture. The church father is really read
Scripture sacramentally outside of chronological time where it's
God's perpetual speech of law, prophets, writings, gospels
possible. And since it's simultaneous,
it's, it can have like a kind of matrix effect where one verse
mutually interprets another mutually interprets another kind
of creating these networks of meaning that when we when we put
those in three dimensions, what we see is Christ exalted.
Irenaeus used the example of a mosaic saying it's a whole bunch
of little pieces that have been cut out.
And when you arrange them properly by the hypothesis of
the gospel, then what you see is not a fox, what you see is a
king. And so the simultaneity of all
of God speaks really shows us Christ as the centerpiece of
Scripture. So.
We should read. Carefully, with minutiae in
mind. And then we should also step
back and appreciate the whole thing all at once.
So question, any other questions go ahead.
So. We had I.
Remember correctly from the slide like the Old Testament,
such as it was, which had mostly compiled by the time.
Of Ezra, Ezra. Yeah.
So in the time of like the Gospels, how was was it treated?
Like if you walked into a synagogue, would you just hear a
reading from these texts or would it be like commentary?
Yeah, yeah, was. It like a tool.
Was it like did did the the Jews treat it like we treat?
Our Bible today, or is it like something different?
Yeah. Yeah.
So they certainly treated it as a covenant text.
So, OK, if you want to read an article on this, I actually I
published an article on this. If you just Googled Taker
Rodriguez, all that Yahweh has commanded, we will obey.
That's an article published in 2017, I think it is where I
addressed exactly that question. I have another one in 2020 on
the Christian version of Reading in that way based on Justin
Martyr in the 2nd century. And actually there's a long term
book project that I'm currently it's, it's one of the things
that I'm working on right now. Hopefully in three or four years
we'll be done a book chronicling from 200 BC to 200 AD how Jews
and then Christians read the law, the prophets in synagogue
or in in their ecclesia and their their church gatherings.
And when I argue is that that covenantal function was present
there on Mount Sinai and then it was present in the rereadings of
of the Torah throughout the pre exilic, exilic, post exilic
periods. And then in the day of Jesus and
time of Jesus. And then the early church.
I go to any synagogue and when they roll out the scroll after
they read the responses, Amen, Which is this ascent of let it
be so. And it also echoes back to how
the Israelites responded in Ezra and Nehemiah's day when they
read out loud, when Moses read out loud, when Joshua read out
loud, etcetera. And then Christians carry that
same practice. And so there was something
really, really powerful about holding the objects that
contains the text, whether it's a scroll or whether it's a
codex, rolling it out and putting your hands to the point
where you're reading that has a a prophetic function that binds
the people to the authoritative word of God.
Jews were doing that all over them, ancient Mediterranean and
Christians as Jesus following Jews carried on that same
practice, but just added the gospels and the letters of the
apostles to that authoritative collection.
So good question. Time for one more.
Go ahead, Ian. Yeah, yeah, it depends.
On where you are in the nerd scale.
I really love love to do. That there's a website
calledsafaria.org, so SEFARIA and they have the entire
rabbinic corpus free and they give you the Hebrew and they
give you the translation. It's, it's an amazing resource.
So I would read. So I, I, I I've read rabbinic
sources like as if I'm talking to a distant, not too distant,
but medium distant cousin who is has the same ancestry as me and
can help understand things perhaps by being an because
they're in a different cultural location.
I wouldn't, that's why. But I don't read it.
So I read it as a commentary that can help me understand with
Jewish sensibilities that can mitigate against some unhelpful
his kind of call this unhelpful historic Christian readings.
I use Christian that in the sociological sense, not in the
religious sense. So for example, a an extreme
super sessionist reading that says not only are the Jews, not
only has the Jewish ceremonial law been fulfilled and no longer
necessary, Jews by being Jews are therefore automatically
excluded from the Kingdom. And so in order to be in the
Kingdom, they have to stop being Jews.
So that's sort of an extreme super sessionist reading of the
New Testament. So a, a rabbinic or a Jewish
reading of the, of the Old Testament, I think helps
mitigate against what has become a Christian habit of reading
ever since Chrysostom. And following other things that
that rabbis notice, they notice different, different points of
correspondence from a random mention about Jabez to ascribe
later on in the Canon. And so they, because they're so
immersed in the text, I, I, I do not have much of the Old
Testament memorize to the extent that I have New Testament blocks
of text memorized. And so for me, I can, because of
people pouring into my life in my teenage years and then in
seminary or in, in grad school, etcetera.
I, I have a sort of a database or a heart level knowledge of
much of the New Testament that I can retrieve different things
from different parts in my field of vision and put them together
to have an understanding of what the text is saying.
But I only have 80 or so years to live and I don't think I'll
ever be able to have that with the Old Testament.
Whereas a rabbi who's been immersed in the text will have
an even deeper heart level knowledge of the Old Testament
where they can make those correspondences.
And so my hope, my prayers that they would not be far from the
Kingdom, but that that deep knowledge of the law, the
prophet and the writings would eventually lead them to Christ
before that day arrives for them, though, I can definitely
learn from their wisdom. So the question. 1.
More question actually think we have time go ahead unless.
I'm mistaken the BCP, oh man lectionary has.
Yes, if. You have any advice for how to
purchase? Those, yes, so they are.
Where is it? Who has a BCP on that?
I'll just quote the BCP on that. So it's in 39 articles, Article
6. Let's see where we are here.
Documentaries give me a second. OK so a 39 articles Article 6
and it is yes so and the other books as Jerome says the church
does read for example of life and instruction of manners, but
yet they do not apply them to establish any doctrine.
Such are these that follow Third book of Ezra, 4th book of Ezra,
Book of Book of Tobit, Book of Judith, the rest of the book of
Esther, the book of Wisdom, Bansira and Baruch, the Prophet,
Song of the three children, the story of Susannah Bell and the
Dragon Prayer of Manassas, 1st and 2nd book of Maccabees.
So these are they read them for example, of life and instruction
of manners. So this is exactly how I would
read the Apostolic fathers that were writing a generation after
the apostles, or how I would read the the patristic record as
they're interpreting the New Testament.
Or how I might read some hagiographies about martyrs
who've stood the test of of testifying to Christ, even to
the point in martyrdom. Their stories, their writings
that they leave us are not authoritative scripture, but
neither are they worthless. On the other hand, they can be
very helpful for us to understand to understand the the
true meaning of the canonical text with the texts that are
between the period of the Old Testament and the New Testament.
They're also valuable for us to see what kinds of expectations
and hopes were in the air before the coming of Christ in the
people of Israel. Father Dan mentioned how Second
Chronicles 36 is one of the best endings to the Old Testament
because it leaves us with a huge dot, dot, dot like this is to be
continued. So there was a New Testament
just begging to be written. And so when you look at the
writings in the Dead Sea Scrolls, when you look at the
what are called the stutopigraphy that even go
beyond these Deuto canonical books.
And when you look at these Deuto canonical books, you see the
themes of exile and a longing for a restoration of the Kingdom
of God. You see themes of of apocalypse,
like God actually is going to come and judge us by all of the
deeds that we've done and how can we live up to the standard
that Moses has given us? There needs to be some more
sufficient sacrifice. You have questions about how are
our sins going to be interceded for?
So we need some kind of mediator to intercede for us after we
have, after we have sinned and even after we have died or this
question of after we die, where do we go and is there really a
hope for the final resurrection? So these kinds of questions are
mulled over quite a bit in the apocrypha that's in that's
recommended for reading, and also in a lot of the other
intertestamental writings that are between the Old and New
Testaments. So reading those all together
with our doctrine guided by the Old and New Testaments, it is
certainly helpful to read the Deuter canonical books for
instruction of life and as an example of how faithfully it's
interpret, read and follow the word of God.
And if you do it according to the lectionary in the BCP, you
see some really cool connections.
So I would highly recommend that.
So thank you everybody. Really enjoy this time with you.