The Formation & Authenticity of the Old Testament – The Rev. Dr. Jacob Rodriguez

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

Exodus 24 · chapter mention

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.

Exodus 19 · chapter mention Exodus 24 · chapter mention

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

Exodus 24 · chapter mention

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

Jeremiah 18 · chapter mention

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.

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

Acts 2 · chapter mention

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

Isaiah 44 · chapter mention

chapters 44 through 55, and then Isaiah chapters 55 through 66,

Isaiah 55 · chapter mention

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.

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.